At any time, you had better have an explanation for why you're not at home or not working. A second example also comes from Boston. Pioneered by David Kennedy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, it is called the Boston Gun Project. Aimed at people in gangs, the project represents a reversal of the conventional thinking that the purpose of society is to prevent gangs from forming or, if they do form, to ensure that people in gangs will do harmless things, like playing midnight basketball. The effect of such interventions has largely been to make the gangs more legitimate in the eyes of young people thinking of joining them.
People join gangs in Boston for the same reason they join gangs in most other large cities.
It is not primarily to deal in drugs, though some gangs engage in that. They engage in gang activity because they lack a family structure or because the gang makes life on the street so difficult and so dangerous that unless they join, they lack protection against others. Joining gangs is the norm all over urban America today. Where we will draw the line is whether they commit a violent crime. Being in a gang makes life much more dangerous than it was for combat infantrymen in Vietnam, even if it may make it safer than living in the same neighborhoods without being part of a gang.