Crime Lab Want to Quit the Gang Life? Try This Job On

New York Times / May 15, 2018
By Tina Rosenberg

CHICAGO — What makes people leave the gang life for good?

The conventional wisdom is that a young man who is part of the gang life in a violent community, standing on a corner, perhaps selling drugs, does so out of choice. On the corner he makes money. He’s respected and feared. A minimum-wage job picking up trash in the park? That’s for chumps and losers.

That conventional wisdom might be wrong. The reasons the young man stays on the corner might be completely different from what we imagine. He might, after all, want that park job, and want to get off the corner, but not know how.

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15 May 2018