Additionally the police courts and rival gangs may

Additionally, the police, courts, and rival gangs may not be
aware that a person has quit the gang and, therefore, continue to
treat them as if they were still members.
Most, however, age out and are allowed to leave without
violence or harm.
Next slide.
Slide 13 Gangs and
Gang
Delinquency,
continued
Far from being disorganized, leaderless mobs engage in wanton
acts of delinquency, some gangs are highly organized with
defined roles and clearly established lines of authority. For
instance, the Vice Lords was a highly organized gang in Chicago
during the 1960s. The gang consisted of various subgroups who
had representatives that attended weekly meetings. An
administrative board was created to handle issues that affected
the entire Vice Lord Nation.
In terms of leadership , most gangs have an established leader

and an organizational structure that follows the chain-of-
command system that is used in the military. Some gangs
instead are led by charismatic leaders who lead by force and
intimidation. They tend to be the strongest, older, and most
respected members of the gang.
Turf refers to territoriality and involves identification and
control. Most gangs identify with a certain neighborhood, park,
or school. Boundaries to a gang’s territory are frequently
marked by graffiti intended to announce their territory to rival
gangs and to threaten some form of retaliation if the boundaries
are crossed. Automobiles, however, have increased adolescents’
mobility and, as a consequence, blurred territorial lines.
Identification with a particular territory has changed and now
refers more to an area where a gang feels strong enough to feel
secure and in control, not because the territory is necessarily
central to their identity.
It was once believed that gangs are tight-knit, cohesive groups
whose members are loyal to one another because they share
common interests. While some criminologists still adhere to this
belief, others do not. For example, Klein argues that gangs are
not cohesive because they have few group goals, membership is
always changing, and group norms are nonexistent. Other
researchers point out that gang members often fail at school, at
work, and elsewhere, and that these failures fuel insecurity
about their status in the gang. Others contend that gangs are
loosely organized, at best, and are cohesive only when they are
engaged in delinquency.
It has often been assumed that gangs exist for the sole purpose
of committing crime. However, purpose is difficult to measure
because, as one author has noted, it is a state of mind and cannot
be observed. What can be observed is behavior and has led
some researchers to examine the extent to which gangs commit
crime. While saying little about purpose, Schneider found that
gangs often specialize in certain offenses. Other researchers
report that gangs spend most of their time “partying and
hanging out,” and not involved in crime.