BOY GANGS
Boys are as gregarious as sheep. Their desire to herd together and have
a leader is one of the requisites of play, a most important factor in
their educational development. The call of the wild to you is not half
so loud as the call of the lot to your boy. It is as natural for boys
to run in gangs as it is for minnows to run in schools; youth calls to
youth. There they find others possessing the same viewpoint, tastes,
desires, ambitions, and occupations as their own. To the active boy the
gang is a democracy made up of those of his own kind in which he is a
free citizen without paternal or maternal restraint. In his new world
there is no querulous nor uncomprehending adult to shout repressive
commands directed at conduct or action. All is as wild and free as his
own wild nature.
There are two classes of organization to which boys belong--those
formed by themselves without supervision; and those formed and
supervised by adults for them. In the former class are the street
and alley gangs, the “Dirty Dozen,” the “Noisy Nine,” the “Pirates’
Crew,” the scrub baseball team, the “Swipers” (organized for petty
depredations), the lot loafers, school fraternities, school “crowds,”
“bunches” or cliques, and other loose organizations whose only bond
of cohesion is some common interest. The latter class comprises boys’
clubs; Boy Scout patrols; Sunday-school classes; nature-study clubs;
baseball, football, and basketball teams under the direction of a
coach; and numerous other boy organizations having a common interest,
which are controlled by an adult.
The gang spirit is strongest between the tenth and fifteenth years and
it is at this period that boys spontaneously form themselves into a
gang. The leader of the gang is the member who is best equipped for
the position by reason of age, courage, physical prowess, and inherent
qualities of leadership and the selection is never made by formal vote
but by tacit recognition of the leader’s superiority and by willing
obedience to his commands.
A place of meeting or “hang out” is essential to every gang. It may be
a room behind a shop, an attic, a stable loft, a dugout, or a shack
built of old boards, scrap tin, and paper. Such shelter supplies the
place for their meetings, houses their communal property, and satisfies
their atavistic desire for cover, privacy, and security. They exhibit
a strong sense of proprietorship in such a retreat. It is all their own
and is guarded from intrusion by other boys with all the physical force
necessary to accomplish this result.
The morale of an unsupervised gang (just as of a mob) is never so high
as the individual morale of its constituents--while in the supervised
gang it is higher. The gang will steal milk bottles from a back
door-step, loot a fruit stand, or smash a window, when no individual in
it would commit the same acts.
The love of excitement and adventure and the desire to be “doing
something”--including the joy of being chased by the police without
capture--are the motives which prompted a certain gang to grease street
car rails and to derail cars by placing spikes in the switches; none
of which depredations would have been committed had the interest
of the members been directed to legitimate activities and sports
which would occupy their leisure time and satisfy their need of
physical activity and mental occupation. Such offenses are unnatural
manifestations of natural tendencies--exuberance run wild, because
unrestrained. The contest of matching wits with the police is thrilling
in its possibilities for adventure. Hours of time are occupied in
planning depredations and much ingenuity is afterwards shown in evading
detection and capture. Their common danger is the bond which knits them
together. They have a code of honor--exhibited principally in their
dealings with one another--the first and chief rule of which is that no
member shall “snitch” on any other member of the gang. And woe betide
the gangster who violates this cardinal principle! He may confess as to
himself, but under no circumstances may he include the others, under
the certain penalty of a beating--or worse still, in the eyes of the
boy--ostracism by the gang. Psychologically considered, this trait is a
manifestation of loyalty gone wrong. It is as unwise as it is useless
to attempt to stamp it out, when it can and should be directed into its
proper channel of manifestation in which it becomes one of the highly
prized virtues.
The great mass of male offenders haled to our juvenile courts are
members of uncontrolled gangs and only rarely is there seen a member of
a controlled gang. Street and alley gangs are the training schools for
delinquent boys and from them is graduated the juvenile criminal. The
arrest, conviction, and imprisonment of such offenders will not work
their reformation. It can be accomplished only through the parent on
whom the duty naturally devolves, or, in the event of parental default,
through the Judge of the Juvenile Court, by patiently pointing out the
evil results of such lawlessness to themselves as well as to others,
by the stimulation of their pride and honor, and most of all through
diverting the gang’s activities, by parent or probation officer, to
lawful channels such as the school, office, workshop, athletic field,
and supervised society.
Here may be seen the beneficent results flowing from the application
of positive suggestions for employments which will supersede those
of harmful import. The inhibition of a lawless activity without the
substitution of a lawful one to fill the void thus created has always
proven resultless. The gang spirit is inherent in boy-nature and can
never be suppressed. No one who understands the boy would attempt to
suppress it. Objection should not be made that your boy belongs to a
gang--and he does belong to one of some sort--but only to the kind
of gang with which he is associated. It is your concern whether he
belongs to a Boy Scout gang or a Dirty Dozen gang. The good gang should
be encouraged; it is good because it is supervised; and the bad gang
should be converted into a good one by adult direction. The recognition
of the psychologic necessity for gangdom has changed the former
prohibition against gang association to the encouragement of the boy to
join a clean crowd engaged in clean activities. This innate tendency
to gangdom furnishes the cue for his reclamation. Supervised gangs
are the tongs by which many boys have been pulled from the fires of
delinquency. They furnish the means for his reformation as well as for
his formation. It is an everlasting stigma on the parent that his son
needs reformation. If the boy’s formation has been properly nurtured
there will be no need for his reformation. The supervised gang forms
the normal boy and reforms the delinquent boy, while the unsupervised
gang unforms both.
Recognizing this intuitive tendency of boys to organize and maintain
gangs, in whatever multifarious forms it may take, and the pernicious
influence of unguided and unrestrained organizations on his moral and
physical life, it is incumbent on parents and those standing _in loco
parentis_ to supply him with an organization which will satisfy the
gang spirit in his nature. A failure in this regard will drive the
boy to association with the unsupervised gang which is frequently the
school for dishonesty, untruthfulness, bullying, profanity, unclean
speech, disregard of the personal and property rights of others,
cigarette smoking, and social impurity. The unclean gang exerts a
powerful pull toward criminality, while the clean gang stands as a
barrier between the boy and delinquency.
Your boy is a natural gangster, therefore encourage him to join a clean
gang.