CHAPTER XIIBOY 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 thereis 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 acommon 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 exhibita 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 interestof 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, underthe 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 theJudge 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 toone 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 therewill 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 standingin loco parentisto 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 gangstands as a barrier between the boy and delinquency.
Your boy is a natural gangster, therefore encourage him to join a clean gang.