Because youth subculture trends
change quickly, Korem wanted to
update law enforcement, educators,
researchers, gang task forces, etc.
without resorting to the usual
"revised editions." This
page, provided by International Focus
Press, provides readers with the
latest current information regarding
this new gang phenomenon and proven
gang prevention strategies . . .
without additional cost.
All comments are provided by Dan
Korem, and the information provided
here should be considered in the
light of Korem's book. His
observations on this page are not designed
to be evaluated apart from the
content in his book.
Presently, we estimate that
between 50 and 100 universities now
use Suburban
Gangs-The Affluent Rebels as
curriculum text as well as numerous
gang task forces, in-service
educational groups, etc.
NEW ADDITION - REFINING
THE GANG PREVENTION STRATEGY
Dan Korem has worked with numerous
affluent communities across the US
(including Swiss police in
Switzerland in November 1996) as they
sought to implement the gang
prevention strategy detailed in the
book: diffusing the Missing Protector
Factor. (Presently, it is still the
only gang prevention strategy that
will sure-fire stop gangs from
forming.) During the last two years,
Korem as collected a number of
valuable and practical application
suggestions offered by various
communities. In January 1997, Korem
will post a new page that will list
those ideas that have will make this
strategy work even more effectively.
Additionally, he is currently
producing a gang prevention video
that can be shown to youths that
explains how they can take action and
stop gangs from forming - and without
putting themselves in harms way. It
is the same presentation that Korem
presents in local communities and
hopes to replicate across the US and
Europe. This, too, will be detailed
next month.
HAVE A HELPFUL INSIGHT?
For those who have new and useful
information regarding this trend,
please forward Email using the form
provided. Also, indicate whether you
are in law enforcement, educator,
etc., as requested in the form, as
this will help expedite our response.
USE OF MATERIALS
Please feel free to copy and use any
of the copyrighted information in
this update with the following
copyright acknowledgment: Dan Korem,
Suburban Gang Update, (Richardson,
Texas: International Focus Press,
1996)
Thirteen-Year-Old
Terrorist Threat-Syracuse NY
Throughout Suburban Gangs I
warned that we must take preemptive
action to halt the formation of
suburban gangs or face the
consequences. In an OP-ED article
syndicated on the Knight-Ridder
syndicate, I closed with an urgent
warning:
Affluent gangs will be with us
long into the next century. The
choice is preemptive action now, or
engaging a new uncontrolled form of
terrorism in the future-the very near
future.
Two weeks after the article ran,
three thirteen-year-old youths were
arrested in a Syracuse, New York
suburb. Their crime? They downloaded
instructions for making a fertilizer
bomb, had obtained the necessary
materials, and were plotting to plant
the bomb in their junior high.
Numerous similar isolated
incidents have occurred during the
past two years. In fact, almost every
week for the past year, a bomb has
gone off in an affluent community
somewhere in the US. Some were built
by youths acting on their own, but
many were built by youths in affluent
gangs. Today, the conditions are ripe
for youths from affluent families who
fit the profile detailed in Chapters
6 and 7 to carry out even terrorist
attacks. There are many at-risk
youths who might not have the
physical constitution to engage in
physical assaults, but they do who
have the money, mobility, and
connectivity through computer
terminals to cause wide-spread
destruction. If this is hard to
fathom, just imagine the violent
bombings of the 60's translated to
high school and junior high
teenagers. Then you'll get an idea of
what we are facing with increasing
frequency - and will only grow over
the next few years. In some ways,
these youths pose a greater
concentrated threat per individual
then their inner-city gang
counterparts, because of their
affluence and mobility.
Tagger Gangs: In
Chapter 4, a gang is defined as: A
group of youths who are banded
together in a specific context and
whose activities include, but are not
limited to, criminal acts. Adults may
or may not be a part of this group,
but when there is adult involvement,
they will only represent a small
minority of the members of the gang.
Groups of youths who simply have a
subculture bent but don't commit
crimes should not be classified as a
gang. Chapter 11 addresses the many
aspects of the youth subculture that
affects and inspires gang activities,
including graffiti. A relatively
recent graffiti style that appeared
in the 1980s was the "tag,"
also described in Chapter 11. While
graffiti is a form of vandalism, I
resisted classifying groups of youths
who tag as gang members. It was a
prejudicial decision based upon the
fact that taggers typically aren't
violent. But over the last couple of
years, homicides have been committed
by taggers to protect their
territory, and thus these groups of
youths should be classified as a
variant of a delinquent gang (described
in detail in Chapter 12).
Skinhead Gangs and Their
Crimes in Canada - Illuminating a
Previous Perspective: As per
Chapter 13, which addresses the
ideological gang type, it was noted
that gang researchers, such as Mark
S. Hamm, have speculated that crimes
committed by skinheads are less
likely to occur in Canada, where
racial hatred hasn't been as common
in comparison to other countries,
such as the US. As noted Chapter 11,
however, youths are now being
inspired by one another
internationally at a level
unparalleled in history. For this
reason, we can no longer assume that
simply because youths in a specific
country are resistant to specific
criminal activities because the
historical inspiration point hasn't
been present. International
inspiration points for youths by all
forms of media are now rewriting our
previous assumptions. One assumption,
for example, is that skinheads are
more likely to commit crimes in the
US, which has a long history of
racial tensions, in comparison to
Canada, which doesn't. In January of
1995, the same month that Suburban
Gangs was
released, I lectured at the FBI
National Academy at the invitation of
the Behavioral Sciences Unit. During
one lecture, several Canadian law
enforcement officers shared that
crimes committed by skinhead gangs in
Canada were rising significantly.
Furthermore, I received concrete
intelligence reports that US and
Canadian skinheads were merging
groups. Ten years ago it would really
have been a difficult stretch to
speculate that something like this
could occur. The power of media
(music, magazines, etc.), to
influence youths, however cannot be
underestimated in the international
youth subculture theater.
Number of Gangs Members
Increasing: The numbers of
gangs in affluent, upscale
communities has risen significantly
since the publication of Suburban
Gangs-The Affluent Rebels in
January of 1995. At that time, it
wasn't uncommon to find 50-250 gang
members in a community of
50,000-75,000. In 1995 in three
Dallas suburbs, for example, the
numbers of youths were as follows:
Plano 150; Richardson 100; Farmers
Branch 150 (reduced from 250 in
1992). Prior to the publication of
Suburban Gangs, obtaining reliable
statistics regarding gangs in upscale
communities was difficult, typically
due to political pressure preventing
the collection or release of such
surveys. This trend is now slowly
reversing itself, similar to the
reduced resistance by communities in
the 70s and 80s when acknowledging
increased youth drug use. Today,
after numerous interviews over the
last two years with law enforcement
agencies across the US, the numbers
of gang youths in these communities
has risen to an average of 250-500,
such as in the above mentioned
communities.
The overall number of youths in
gangs is over 650,000 in over 25,000
gangs according to the1996 National
Youth Gang Study conducted by the National
Youth Gang Center. We know that
the numbers are actually much higher,
because many rural communities have
gangs, and these communities were not
included in the report. In the last
60 days alone, I have received
inquiries from small towns in many
states, including: Ohio, W. Virginia,
Vermont, Michigan, and Washington.
Additionally, it is a common practice
by most suburban communities to
under-report their actual gang
statistics by at least 50%.
Therefore, the best estimate today of
the total number of gang members is
about 850,000 - 900,000.
Appearance of Leftist
Anarchist Gangs in America: When
I keynoted at the National
Youth Gang Symposium (Dallas, June
1996) I talked about the
appearance of leftist/anarchist youth
gangs in America. In
Chapter 13, I predicted that these
gangs would one day appear. Three
months after Suburban
Gangs was published, I
received the first hard evidence that
these were now a reality in the
US--and some are extremely violent,
even planting pipe bombs. What
follows is an excerpt of January 5,
1996 correspondence I received from
the Salt Lake Area Gang Project
providing a brief overview of one of
these new gang variants, which should
be compared to similar gang variants
in Poland, noted in Chapter 13, and
their predictable inspiration points
and activities.
The gang described were youths
involved with a youth subculture
called Straight Edge. It should be
noted, however, that the Straight
Edge subculture is primarily
comprised of youths who are not in
gangs. Most Straight Edge youths
embrace a non-violent philosophy that
rejects drugs, alcohol, and
pre-marital sex and criminal
activity. The youths in the gang
described below simply adopted the
Straight Edge facade for their gang.
They also incorporated other
non-Straight Edge elements, such as a
neo-Nazi, fascist persona.
As noted in Chapter 11, youths can
adopt a facade, but not choose to
form a gang, such as youths who adopt
the skinhead persona but don't join
gangs and commit crimes. As noted above, the majority
of youths who call themselves
Straight Edge are not violent nor do
they identify with the neo-nazi
persona described in the following
example. The example below is a gang
hybrid and not representative of the
whole Straight Edge culture.
We first began tracking the
Straight Edge phenomenon in 1990. At
that time, it was mostly isolated to
the upper-income areas one the east
side of Salt Lake county. Recently,
however, it has spread to most of
Salt Lake County, predominantly
located in suburban and upper-income
areas. Additionally, Strait Edge has
been growing rapidly in Davis and
Weber counties in similar areas.
There appear to be 2 segments of
Straight Edge: the militant or
hard-core, and the straights. The
militant and hard-core Straight
Edgers are frequently
"vegan," who abstain from
eating or wearing any animal products
(i.e., dairy products, leather,
etc.). The militant Straight Edgers
locally have actively enforced their
belief system (no drugs, no alcohol,
no tobacco) on outsiders. The
militant Straight Edgers have been
involved in numerous assaults and
aggravated assaults. While they tend
to steer away from using guns
(apparently based on a belief that
guns are carried by "gang"
members), other weapons of choice may
be used, including knives, bats,
clubs, brass knuckles, chains and
mace. They have also been linked to
the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), an
animal-rights terrorist group which
has committed several local bombings
targeted against businesses who sell
meats or animal products (leather).
The Straights tend to make up the
majority of Straight Edge members.
While they may subscribe to the vegan
philosophy, they also appear to be
non-violent. Straight Edge
identifiers include big or baggy
clothes, shaved or dyed hair, long
sideburns, and X's tattooed or drawn
on hand, heads, necks or legs.
Straight Edgers in our area are
typically involved in body piercing
(tongues, lips, eyebrows, belly
buttons, genitals), and frequently
;have detailed and artistic tattoos.
They will frequently carry or wear
heavy silver chains, which can double
as a weapon. recently, they have been
lined to graffiti with racial
overtones, including swastikas, other
Nazi symbols, and slogans such as
"White pride" and
"Skins."
The Art of
Profiling
Reading People Right the First Time.
Reading people is a natural
reaction. Now learn how to profile
people like a trained
professional—with comprehensive
and systematic accuracy that extends
beyond just reading body language.
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