So, a couple of days ago I wrote a post reviewing an article about gangs that really annoyed me.  That post has been gnawing away at me ever since.  I think I let my frustration get the better of me which is unfortunate because I think it takes away from my central argument that:

1)  Sullivan fundamentally misunderstands the gang problem (its causes,scope and relation to society)
2)  His attempt to pigeon-hole gangs into his generations theory makes understanding gangs more complicated rather than less and provides no insight into developing anti-gang strategies or predicting gang activity
3)  His arguments are repetitive and lazy

When I first started this blog I made a decision to limit re-writes, edits and deletions to the bare minimum and because of that I’m going to keep that post up as a lesson (to me) that I can and should make better arguments in the future.

I think I made a much better case in my earlier critique of another Sullivan article that addresses many of the same issues.  So if you’d like a review with a little less heat I’d recommend that.

Peter over at the Strategist had a post up about an article by John P. Sullivan.  I’ve written about Sullivan before and I really don’t know what it is about this guy but he really gets under my skin.  Perhaps it’s because I’m jealous he keeps getting quoted and  published even though he has nothing original to say (I suspect a social network analysis of Mr. Sullivan would be much more informative about how he manages to be quoted as an expert rather than an examination of his writings).  Never mind what he does say is total gibberish, it’s not even interesting gibberish.

I didn’t want to read it.  Lord knows, I didn’t really need to read it since once you’ve read one of Sullivan’s articles you’ve read them all (almost literally since he tends to cite himself as a source to prove his arguments) but I just can’t let it go.  So, here’s my take on…Global Cities – Global Gangs (yeah…don’t get too excited about that title).

…a rise in newer, networked ‘third generation gangs’ in increasingly ‘global’ cities means that the street gang is becoming an aspect of foreign policy warranting attention and combined domestic and international cooperation.

Whoa…newer, networked gangs?  Sounds scary.  Well, wait a minute.  I guess they really aren’t that new since Sullivan has been attempting to peddle his theory for over ten years now.  What exactly is a ‘third generation gang’? Well, accoring to Sullivan:

Third generation gangs have evolved political aims, operate or seek to operate at the global end of the spectrum, and employ their sophistication to acquire power, money, and engage in mercenary or political activities. To date, these gangs have been primarily mercenary in orientation; yet, in some cases they seek political and social objectives. Examples of third generation gangs can be seen in Chicago, San Diego, Los Angeles, Brazil, South Africa, and throughout Central America.

Of course this definition is so vague it’s worthless unless you just want to cherry pick examples and make it looks like it fits your theory.  What does ‘global end of the spectrum’ mean?  Is a member of the bloods who works with a Dominican to transport cocaine from Mexico qualify?  I don’t know and you won’t either because Sullivan can’t be bothered with little things like details.

The most obvious third generation examples are MS-13 and M-18, which conduct business internationally across many parts of the Americas. MS-13 is estimated to have 8,000-10,000 members and M-18 30,000 members, although telling hardcore maras from affiliates and associates is problematic.

This whole paragraph is bullshit.  First off, MS-13 exists in the U.S. and Central America, however those gangs manifest themselves in very different ways and there isn’t much other than wild speculation to indicate that the gang is organized in any sense of the term.  Most gangs in the U.S. are really best thought of as a franchise business.  Members think there are benefits to attaching themselves to a ‘big name’ gang but generally resist control or being crammed into any strict hierarchy because they’re profit seeking criminals.

As an aside, I think one of the real beauties of the American system is that even those who refuse to work outside of it’s boundaries don’t want to destroy it, they just want a quicker path to the top.  I suspect that’s why we see the disenfranchised and ‘have-nots’ join criminal gangs and not so much politically motivated groups.

No one, and I mean NO ONE, can give you membership estimates of gangs that are anything other than wild guesses.  Even if you could get an accurate number, however, it’s value would be highly questionable since gang membership is a very slippery thing.  Most gang members in the U.S. only stay in for 2 years or so before dropping out (growing up and family life tend to calm most young men down – read Clockwork Orange).  Too often, throwing out a number like ‘8,000 members’! gives the impression that you’ve got an army at your command ready to hop to at a moments notice.  The truth is that the vast majority of gang members (at least in the U.S.) don’t work that way.  You’ve a relatively small percentage of sociopathic crazies and the rest are fairly rational actors who are at various levels of loyalty to their gang.  I sure wouldn’t count of them to stand by me in a fight.

Yet other gangs elsewhere in the world combine political aims and criminal action.  These include the Latin Kings active in the US, Caribbean, and Spain; Tamil gangs in Toronto linked with Sri Lanka’s LTTE, gangs (like the Premier Capitol Command-PCC and Red Command) and vigilante militias in Brazil’s favelas, as well as Cape-area gangs in South Africa like ‘Hard Livings’ and their bitter foes, the vigilante group Pagad (People against gangsterism and drugs).

There is no way on Earth that the Latin Kings can be compared to the LTTE.  None.  Full stop.  Whoever checked this article should have thrown it out at this point.  A gang trying to bribe a local councilman in order to get the authorities off their back so they can peddle their drugs is not the same thing as a decades long counterinsurgency campaign.  While the Latin Kings have very lofty rhetoric (and, incidentally, a completely incomprehensible ideology which appears to have been written by someone who had enough time on his hands to read various religious and philosophical texts but unfortunately lacked the ability to comprehend most of what he read) but it was, is and always will be a group of profit seeking criminals.  In my experience, gangs spend a great deal of time and effort to emphasize what a tight knit organization they are and how all the members need to be prepared to sacrifice for the group.  That’s usually an indication that the group leaks like a sieve and they’re all planning on how to stab each other in the back.

Just because one gang is represented in multiple places does NOT mean they are connected.  Just because a gang has connectivity over distance does NOT mean that’s a systemic characteristic of the gang.  Usually it means there’s a personal relationship involved and the connectivity does not survive beyond it.

“some networked street gangs are increasingly the locus of political authority and popular resistance against corrupt local governments that no longer provide social benefits. They attract local allegiance while expanding their own profits and power”

This is not new and does not require some sort of ‘3rd generation gang’ framework.  It’s common sense.  Human societies hate a vacuum as much as nature does.  When government retreats from an area, something will move in to take its place, usually that something is able to muster the brute force to impose it’s will.  Gangs can (and do) do that.

Networked gangs and criminal insurgents are in many ways an updated version of an old phenomenon.

So why in the world did you just say that they were a new threat?  He really should have left that whole paragraph out because it just makes him sound irrelevant.  If we already have a way to talk about these gangs, why do we need a new lexicon?  What is the utility of this generational model?  I mean other than creating a false sense of progression?

It operates on a multinational level, running a number of organized-crime style businesses and front organizations as opposed to simple opportunistic crime. It is heavily plugged into what is now a global illicit economy. In some areas where government is weak, it can offer alternative, parallel forms of sovereignty.

Sounds a lot like the mafia (who street gangs in the U.S. idolize and try to emulate at every opportunity).  So, the mafia are 3rd generation gangs?  But they’ve been around for decades as have other, similar criminal groups.  It sounds to me like this is taking old gangs, festooning them with fancy words like ‘networked’ and presenting a scary picture of them all decked out in iPhones and viola!  I’ve got myself a gig at a think-tank!

In Brazil, the leader of the PCC was also found in his jail cell with copies of books by activists and philosophers such as Malcolm X and Karl Marx

So what?  Plain fluff designed to make you think you’re being told something but you’re not.  Hey, I read Marx in college, does that mean I’m going to try to lead the proletarian revolution?  A weak argument at best.

Other than that there’s a lot of blah, blah about Mexico and Brazil.  Hey, guess what, they’re called failing states for a reason.

But I’ll end on a positive note and that is I agree whole-heartedly with his conclusion:

Most importantly, a new way of thinking about gangs is needed in order to stem the threat. Gangs should not be viewed primarily as social deviants who need to be crushed nor underestimated as purely commercial and petty youths squabbling over turf. Gangs need to be recognized as emergent social actors that combine the popular appeal of social bandits with the globalized reach that only organized crime once possessed. Solutions should not be rooted in brute force crackdowns nor conducted on a purely domestic basis.   Rather, security should form a foundation for a viable community; blending competent application of the rule of law with solutions that build resilient community structures that enable legitimate opportunity for social, economic, and political activity.

So, I’m not sure how I should feel about this.  I endorse his conclusion but hate his methodology.  I think my problem is that it looks to me like he’s so bonded to his crazy gang generations theory he’s got to fly all sorts of circles to get at a reasonable ending.  Just drop it, man.  Remember the rule.

This past weekend, civic hackers from around the country got together for the Great American Hackathon.  It’s goal was to:

“…develop open source applications to open government. The goal is to solve as many open government problems as we can with as many hackathons across the country as possible.”

A group formed in the Philadelphia area, took the data from the New Jersey State Police 2007 Street Gang Survey, mashed it up with some mapping software and produced the New Jersey Gang Survey Viewer.  The amount of work these guys did in two days is really incredible given the shape of the underlying data.  It was fine for researchers and academics but not suitable at all for the general public.

The website is, hopefully, just a beginning and (if enough good hearted volunteers are found) more data from the survey (and previous surveys) will get incorporated into the project.

Not long ago, I mentioned on another site that the democratization of information and the ability of people to collaborate who (in the pre-internet days) would not even known of each others existence was one of the global issues which makes me feel optimistic.  This was the type of work that I was thinking of when I wrote that.

Check out the work these guys did and then start asking your local and state law enforcement agencies why they don’t make information like this available to the public.

UPDATE:  They’re looking for assistance to continue work on the project.  If you’re interested (or know someone who is), contact Josh Tauberer.

Coolest house ever.

One nice thing about being born in the late ’60s before everyone got jaded with all this new fangled technology:  The fact that people are actually living in space totally blows me away.

Pirated music isn’t as bad for the music industry and they would have you believe.  In fact, it’s pretty darn good.

Sven has an great post about self organization and team dynamics (no, really, it is interesting).  I also highly recommend the comments section.

Blogging FAIL:  I wrote a blog post about Camden, NJ  in less than glowing terms.  It got picked up as an automatically generated link to a post about the ‘Top 3 Exciting Weekend Getaways in NJ‘.  Not exactly sure what the target demographic is for tourism to the city labeled as one of the most dangerous in the country for the past several years but this takes thrill seeking a bit far.

Biggest question about the TSA?  What’s the ‘S’ stand for?  It certainly can’t be security.  Really, couldn’t they do something right, I mean, just to surprise us?  (H/T Boing Boing)

Hey, you know I love the Swedes, but they make shit recruiting commercials for their military.  Who the hell would sign up after watching this commercial?  Nothing about service, training, patriotism or peacekeeping.  In fact, it looks like you’ll be shooting at and brutalizing civilians.

I can only be left with two alternatives:  Either this isn’t a real commercial or whoever approves these ads don’t really want people to join the military (*cough* SDP and Greens *cough*).  Given Swedish politics I am unable to discount the later.

I figured I had said all there was to about this subject and then David Kilcullen had to go and appear on The Colbert Report.  Check it out (sorry, I can’t seem to embed it).

Here’s the relevant exchange (forgive any errors in the transcription but this is really close if not exact):

Colbert:  …[You say] people in poor communities turn to gangs for protection, for services when the government can’t do it for them…

Kilcullen:  Exactly right…There’s actually a huge amount of similarity between basic police work and the sort of stuff that happens with gangs and so on and what happens in this [insurgency] environment.

So, first, it’s nice to know that David obviously reads this blog but he really should credit me for these ideas [I'm just kidding Mr. Kilcullen.  Call me! ]

More seriously, I’d make a slight tweak to his observation.  There is a huge similarity to the challenges in police work and insurgencies but I’d argue that most American police departments have been trying to approach those problems from a mindset that more closely hews to traditional military thinking that counterinsurgency doctrine.

Current anti-crime measures are almost exclusively reactive and suppression based.  You wait for a crime to occur, you find the suspect and you arrest him/her.  There’s no identification or addressing of underlying factors.

This video really struck a cord with me since I had virtually the same conversation with my command which I was in Afghanistan in 2003.  My command could not get their heads around the idea of insurgency and could only conceive of conventional military threats.  Hence, I was tasked to do an Intelligence Preperation of the Battlefield so that they could plan what to do if the Taliban attempted to overrun Bagram airfield.  Now, Bagram had over 10,000 soldiers at the time, in addition to a sizable number of attack helicopters and aircraft and yet, the only threat scenario these guys could come up with was a Taliban motorized rifle division coming over the Koh-i-Safi mountains.  IEDs?  Rocket attacks?  Nah…”This isn’t Iraq” I was told or “C’mon…who does that?”

As a side note, my repeated attempts to convince them that such a scenario was highly unlikely and that other threats should have a higher priority went unheeded, setting off an unfortunate string of increasingly dysfunctional exchanges which ended with me telling the S-3 that he was full of bulls*it at a very full shift change brief.  (Not a particularly wise move for a mid-level NCO although, miraculously, I avoided any repercussions).

We had a number of soldiers with civilian law enforcement experience and I recommended dragooning them, on a part time basis, to assist in intelligence gathering and developing a decent view of our new operating environment.  Command couldn’t figure out why we couldn’t get all the information we needed from the internet.  Needless to say, that didn’t happen and 2003-2004 in Afghanistan (at least in the Bagram area) can best be thought of as a year of lethargy.

Still, it is encouraging to hear that the military was inspired in part by the academic/research work done in law enforcement and people who understood the issue made it to the top.   Hopefully the military can return the favor to the law enforcement community.

Last week I wrote a piece about an article trying to describe criminal street gangs as insurgencies and a serious threat to nation states.  It did generate a couple of comments that highlighted my tendency to offer superficial answers and I think it’s worthwhile to flesh out my ideas a bit.

Peter said:

Where I part company with Dean is the idea that urban counter-gang strategy should be modelled on counterinsurgency doctrine. In Dean’s words, “Restore order, establish you’re there for the long haul and rebuild infrastructure, opportunity and trust”.

In theory this sounds like a good plan. But in practice, how many American municipal authorities have the resources to do this justice? And how would they sustain progress for the long haul? Success ultimately depends on people having secure jobs in legit economies. That in turn relies on industry returning to inner cities. There are good reasons why industry left – like changing patterns of demand, new means of production, the lure of cheap offshore labour – and that will be impossible to reverse.

There are some problems with me advocating counterinsurgency principles when discussing dealing with domestic criminal networks.  I’m not talking about calling in troops, imposing martial law or anything like that.  Rather, it’s an understanding that there are underlying factors which are driving the negative behavior (whether financially or politically motivated) and until you address those factors, you aren’t going to get any long term success.

So, we’ve seen policy groping towards this idea through Broken Windows theory or the implementation of the Boston Gun Project or its new incarnation. These programs attempt to go beyond the standard ‘Book ‘em Dano’ approach and aren’t unrealistic in terms of resource requirements.  They do however face some serious problems:

• While, at their best, they incorporate and encourage social service/community involvement, law enforcement by its nature (with access to reliable funding, it’s highly structured organization and the ‘long tail’ of the criminal justice system behind it) is gong to be the (very) senior partner in any such program and effectively calling all the shots.
• Government decision makers are similar to business decision makers in that they have short term horizons.  Instead of looking at the next quarter or fiscal year they are primarily concerned with the next election cycle.  Therefore, reducing crime now is usually more favored than enacting policies which might lead to reduced crime later.  That means money and resources will flow to those things (like cops on the streets, new prisons, tougher criminal penalties) which encourage short term suppression rather than those (better job opportunities, social services, education) that lead to long term crime reduction.
• There are few to no potential partners for any of these schemes which can address long term concerns.  In COIN language of ‘Clear, Hold, Build’, we’ve got the ‘clear’ capability, might have the ‘hold’ capability and aren’t even trying to address the ‘build’ portion.

Admittedly, local and state governments (most of which are strapped for cash) would need to make some tough decisions if they wanted to address these problems over the long term.

Right now, anti-crime/gang initiative usually originate in the same way:

1. Ignore problem
2. Some ‘newsworthy’ event occurs (usually a child killed in a crossfire between warring groups)
3. Public outrage ensues
4. Officials spring into action and flood the area with police resources, arresting anyone and everyone they can
5. Criminals lay low
6. Crime falls
7. Law enforcement is quietly withdrawn
8. Return to #1 above

This is not a recipe for long term success and I reject the idea that we have to tell (implicitly or explicitly) that this is the best they can hope for.  Local/State/Federal governments will have to make some choices and I’m by no means an expert who can recommend what should be cut to pay for this but accepting the status quo seemsincredibly short sighted.

The first priority must be to restore order and not with the ‘drive by policing’ system we have now.  In many communities the public safety sector is viewed as indifferent (at best) to hostile (at worst) and trust can be non-existent.

Law enforcement and emergency services therefore should be permanently stationed (and adequately staffed) in the worst areas and not just drive through on patrol.  This will be difficult for some municipalities which find themselves running from one emergency call to another but where county or state law enforcement resources can come into play.  Right now, those resources are often disbursed on a myriad of investigative missions, diluting their effectiveness.  Instead, those forces should be used as a strategic reserve (think of county/state law enforcement as a potential comitatenses to the local police’s limitanei).  This is where the Broken Window/Operation CeaseFire plans can be implemented.  Restore order and trust.  Commit to a long term presence.

While I’m not an urban policy guy I suspect there are a host of ideas and initiatives that could be tried to restore legitimate opportunities for employment in even the most depressed communities.  People in these areas get by now through the gray or black markets.  Microfinancing for small, legitimate service jobs (auto repair, tailoring, babysitting, etc.).  Tax subsidies for outside business/industry.  Converting/leasing open space for food production.  Don’t worry about competing in the world economy but initially focus on serving the local community (which is what the illicit market has done so well by providing narcotics, prostitution, gambling, etc).

Foreign Policy has an interesting looking article about the organized crime and insurgencies.  In it, the author cites a new paper in the Small Wars Journal by John P. Sullivan titled “Future Conflict: Criminal Insurgencies, Gangs and Intelligence”.  I don’t know how but Sullivan somehow manages to sucker me into reading his stuff every time and every time I’m disappointed.  The paper is a motherload of unexamined assumptions, outdated information and self promotion (17 of his 24 footnotes cite himself).  I don’t know Sullivan and I’m sure he’s a great guy but if this is the sort of thinking that’s driving policy as Robbert Haddick is kinda-sorta implying, we’re in big trouble.  Sullivan has been promoting essentially the same idea for over 10 years, that gangs are going to politicize and become the major threat to the nation state system as these modern day barbarians storm the gates and plunge us into a new dark age.

Oh…he also seems to have a bizarre obsession with the number 3.  There are three ‘generations of gangs’ and three types of cartels.  Why three?  Beats me, since the categories are entirely arbitrary and there’s no evidence to support these divisions.

He begins with a bold statement:

“Gangs dominate the intersection between crime and war.”

I don’t even know what the hell that means but he tells us he’s going to examine areas where “acute and endemic crime and gang violence challenge the solvency of state political control.”  Therein lies his major defect, as I see it.  For Sullivan, gangs are a cause of instability rather than a function of it.  Therefore…eliminate the gang and stability returns.

Too bad there’s no evidence for that.

Gangs don’t form to ‘challenge the rule of law’ as Sullivan states, but rather, form to fill a void where the rule of law is absent.  In the absence of order, people organize and when a group of people are in a Hobbsian state of nature (whether in a Brazilian slum or an urban housing project here in the U.S.) the people who can wield force tend to run things.  They may get more ambitious later but I think you’ll find very few people entering the life of crime with the goal of undermining the Westphalian system (check out Gang Leader for a Day if you want a brilliant 320 page example of this).  They want to meet their basic Maslow(ian?) needs initially.

Transnational gangs aren’t the reason there isn’t a strong, stable democracy in Russia, Columbia, Nigeria or Mexico.  Those nations have a history of corruption, instability and lack of public safety that precedes the arrival/creation of transnational gangs in their territories.  Gangs certainly don’t make the situation better but I’d like to see the evidence that they are the cause of these problems.

He then describes ‘criminal enclaves’ and uses Ciudad del Este as an example.  He discribes it thus:

A jungle hub for the world’s outlaws, a global village of outlaws, the triple border zone serves as a free enclave for significant criminal activity, including people who are dedicated to supporting and sustaining acts of terrorism. Denizens of the enclave include Lebanese gangsters and terrorists, drug smugglers, Nigerian gangsters and Asian mafias: Japanese Yakuza, Tai Chen (Cantonese mafia), Fuk Ching, the Big Circle Boys, and the Flying Dragons. This polyglot mix of thugs demonstrates the potential of criminal netwarriors to exploit the globalization of organized crime.

That certainly seems to make sense but if there’s such a good case that the area is as bad as all that why does he use a reference that’s ten years old?  Are we to assume that this area of the world has been untouched by 9/11 and its aftermath?  There’s certainly been work done to assess the nature of Ciudad del Este in the past ten years why not mention any of it?

Ciudad del Este is a cartel?  Who’s running it?  Is there some sort of Evil League of Evil pulling the strings or is it an anarchic wonderland that attracts all sorts of criminal and terrorist group because they can all do their own thing?  If the latter, how could it be a cartel?

There’s just so much to critique in the paper I’m not sure how much detail I should go into.  His ‘generations of gangs’ is absolutly terrible and has no utility when discussing gangs or anti-gang strategy.  It’s uselessness is demonstrated by his definitions of the generations which require the existance of gangs which exist in more than one generation at a time.  So, does that mean there are five generations?  Four and a half?  It starts to feel like the papal astronomers adding more and more orbits to the planets in order to keep the Earth at the center of the universe.  Just dump it and find a better explanitory tool already.

I’ve been looking at gangs for about 10 years now and ever since that time I’ve been hearing horror stories about how gangs are just about ready to destroy civilization.  I suspect scaremongering like this has a lot more to do with securing grant funding and speaking engagements than it does with depicting reality.  Some gang leaders in the U.S. do occasionally attempt to transform their gang into a politically motivated force.  There are even some examples of short term, local successes on their part.  But they don’t last over time or space because of a number of inherent contradictions between the conditions needed for a politically motivated group (even if criminal) and an economically motivated one.

There are some interesting parallels between gangs and insurgencies.  They both feed on disenfranchisement.  The Sunnis fueled the insurgency in Iraq because they were out of power and looking to be on the wrong end of a payback spree.  The reason street gangs went from neighborhood nuicence to serious criminal problem has a lot to do with collapsing economic systems in inner cities in the 70s and 80s, the rise of narcotics as an opportunity to achieve financial well being and neglect by government of social services.  Both populations had little to lose and so elements of that population decided ‘What the hell’.

There are important lessons to our response to both as well.  Our current anti-gang strategy (such as it is) much more resembles our Iraq strategy (such as it was) in 2003-2006.  We generally isolate ourselves from the population, do the occassional ‘kenetic operation’, engage in the usual post operational chest pounding and declarations that we’ve ‘turned a corner’ and then find ourselves right back where we’ve started.

Perhaps the answer isn’t what Sullivan recommends (more riot police, counterterrorism forces, high intensity policing, etc. – you know an M-16 armed balaclava wearing dude on every streetcorner to kick the shit out of anyone who questions state authority) but rather the same principles advocated for COIN operations.  Hearts and minds.  Clear, Hold, Build.  Restore order, establish you’re there for the long haul and rebuild infrastructure, opportunity and trust.  Yes, it’ll be expensive.  Yes, it’ll take a lot of time.  Clearly building and filling prisons isn’t proving to be the answer so perhaps it’s time for a different approach.

Effective today, all of the underlying data for the New Jersey Street Gang Surveys conducted in 2001, 2004 and 2007 are available to the public.

You can access the data here.

Enjoy!

I just finished listening to the audio version of ‘Gang Leader for a Day‘ by Sudhir Venkatesh.  The book has so much to recommend it, it’s hard to know where to start.  To begin with the reader is simply brilliant, giving voice to the wide range of characters and delivering the intensity of the content.  My only quibble is the lame bass beat that begins and ends each section of the book.  It tends to play over the first seconds of the reader and is a bit annoying but overall isn’t a deal-breaker.

The content of the book is the real winner however.  Venkatesh spend six years conducting research in the Robert Taylor projects of Chicago during the early 1990s.  During his time there, he became intimately acquainted with the underground economy with the guide of a local gang leader.

For anyone interested in the issue of street gangs this book really should be required reading.  Too often, street gangs are portrayed as one dimensional characters who do little other than sell drugs and conduct drive by shootings.  Venkatesh describes how the gang both preyed and protected the local population.  Local authorities esentially abondoned the residents of Robert Taylor to their own devices and the gang stepped in to provide some sort of order.

The gang then, perhaps intentionally, got the local population to accept their leadership as legitimate which is, I think, one of the key points about gangs that often is overlooked by law enfocement.  Usually, when law enforcement completes a gang investigation it ends with the arrest of some of it’s members and considers it a success if the gang’s ability to conduct it’s criminal activity is disrupted.  In situations like those described by Venkatesh, however, it’s easy to see how such an investigation could lead to a population more at risk then before.  After all, the law enforcement resources that were dedicated to the investigation get pulled out to put out the next fire.  The residents are left with the same dearth of services and the inattention of local government and, in addition, are seen as vulnerable territory by rival gangs.

That’s one of the big reasons why big arrests of criminal networks tend not to solve crime problems.  If we could eliminate the Coca-Cola company today would millions of people stop drinking soda or would Pepsi and others just move in and absorb their market share?  How about if we did nothing further to hinder the drinking of soft drinks?  That’s essentially what we do with many of our gang investigations today (although they’re rarely lucky enough to take out the biggest company in the field…usually it’s just the local Nehi distributor)

The story is loaded with more ideas that deserve to be explored.  How gang members see themselves, the community in which they live/work and the world at large.  How various groups of the residents self organize in order to provide protection and resources.  How the authorities (both corrupt and non-corrupt) interact with the projects.

In fact, I’m going to have to buy the hard copy in order to reread it.