International Journal on Criminology Volume 2, Number 1, Spring 2014 | Page 76

International Journal on Criminology
This form of organized criminality
obviously exists in the United States and
elsewhere in the world: in South Africa,
in the Philippines, in Thailand, in South
America; in Central America, it has attained
unimaginable proportions.
What is the recipe for a criminal
gang? Its essential ingredients are three in
number. Two of them are symptomatic of
the existence of the phenomenon, whereas
the third is pathological:
– A territory that is claimed and dominated,
with all that follows from this;
– Specific manifestations and forms of
expression, only certain aspects of which
are found in France;
– A criminogenic behavior that the English-speaking
world calls gangbanging,
a word that has no equivalent in French.
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dominates. The territory is the initiating
and federative element of the street gang, in
the United States and in France alike. This
territory is the geographical extent of the
gang’s physical and “commercial” grip. In
France, this territory is generally a “town”
or a “neighborhood.”
On “its” territory, the gang makes
sure that an atmosphere of fear and intimidation
reigns. This is what Americans
call, and what we should also call, “street
terrorism:” terror, in the primary sense of
the word—exactly what the prosecutor deplored
during the Shitland trial.
Not only is this domination cruelly
felt by the inhabitants of the zone, but it is
often visible, and thus symptomatic of the
appearance or of the existence of a gang.
The territory is delimited by graffiti: this
trait is common to all gangs in the world,
thus making this visibility symptomatic.
The appropriation of a territory
brings about the behavior of the gang, its
“rules of engagement” on the street. As
it is the foundation of the constitution of
the gang, it is theoretically sacred: territory
must be respected. This means that the
gang has to respond to all provocations of
which it or its members might be the object,
and is thus led into violent confrontations
whose causes are rarely clear, and which are
becoming ever more numerous in France,
with Marseilles only one case among others.
The “value” of territory—that is to
say how much it can yield, through all forms
of criminal activity, can be one of these
causes, but it is far from being the only one;
sometimes these reasons for conflict can
seem pointless, like a “sketchy look” or a
lack of “respect.”
Still, this “sacred” character does
not prevent criminal gangs from preying on
their own territory; it is this behavior that
leads to the street terrorism to which residents
are subjected.
It is they, living in this atmosphere
of fear and intimidation, who undergo this
terror that plagues a territory materially delimited
by a gang, having to pay the homies
to take the elevator in their own building.
Hence the importance of listening to these
residents, and maintaining ongoing intelligence
and informant operations among
them. For it is often only through this criminal
intelligence that one can get to know
a gang, its importance, its practices, its
‘bangers, and really fight against it.
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and characteristic modes of expression.
The gang members are visible, just
like the territory. Homies most often have
a “high profile”—that is to say, they do not
hide their affiliation with the group, unlike
most criminal societies; on the contrary,
they are proud to be part of it, and show this
through codified modes of dress, or tattoos
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