One of the founders of the Crips, a Los Angeles gang, tells the reader about the dangers of gang life, particularly of getting involved with drug use and drug dealing.

A discussion of drugs and gangs, how they relate to each other, and how young people can protect themselves from dangerous involvement.

Drawing upon unique empirical data based on interviews with high profile ex-offenders and experts, this book sheds new light on drug markets and gangs in the UK. The study shows how traditional methods of tackling gang violence fail to address the intertwined nature of those criminal activities which can overlap with other organised crime spheres. McLean sparks new debate on the subject, offering solutions and alternatives.

"In 2003, an FBI-led task force known as Operation Fly Trap attempted to dismantle a significant drug network in two Bloods-controlled, African American neighborhoods in Los Angeles. The operation would soon be considered an enormous success, noted for the precision with which the task force targeted and removed gang members otherwise entrenched in larger communities. In Operation Fly Trap, Susan A. Phillips questions both the success of this operation and the methods used to conduct it. Balancing her roles as even-handed reporter and public scholar, she brings together personal narratives, crime statistics, gang cultural histories, and extensive public policy analysis to reveal multiple flaws within the U.S. criminal justice system, building a powerful argument that many law enforcement policies in fact nurture, rather than prevent, violence in American society."--Back cover.

"This important new work by critically the acclaimed sociologist and author of Dangerous Society makes it clear that girls and young women have become a real force in the drug culture and in 1990s urban gang life. Girls, Gangs, Women and Drugs is based on a decade of field work undertaken in the city of Detroit by one of America's foremost gang experts and his team of researchers. In the course of this investigation, Taylor and his staff interviewed hundreds of girls and young women. Based on what they learned, Dr. Taylor has prepared this spell-binding account of drugs, money, sex, and violence. He commands the reader's attention as complex webs of female gang life and drug culture are unraveled." "Girls, Gangs, Women, and Drugs is a book about women, young and old; it is about gangs; it is a book about their survival in a society that has abandoned them; it is a book about women in the criminal justice system; it is about judges, attorneys, administrators of the court, and correctional officers; it is about the women who serve on the police force. It focuses on a large segment of Detroit's female population and how these women see what they are doing as committing acts of self-empowerment - the personal pursuit of their own version of the American Dream." "Girls, Gangs, Women, and Drugs takes a close look at the hard economic realities of life on the street and the women who must encounter them every day. Its message is clear: female involvement with drugs and gangs is yet another facet of America's decaying urban culture, one that commands our immediate attention."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Revisiting the young men interviewed in Deuchar's original fieldwork over a decade later, this book ascertains how early exposure to gang culture and weapon carrying acts as a path to wider types of offending. Through empirical insights and policy analysis, it considers the evolving nature of gangs, knife crime and street violence in Glasgow.