The earliest American street gangs emerged at the end of the
American Revolutionary War in the early 1780s. However, these early street gangs had questionable legitimacy, and more serious gangs did not form until at least the early 1800s.
Early street gangs in the Northeast: 1780–1870 and the
Bowery Boys, New York City, 1857 In the 18th century,
slaves living in New York formed two
paramilitary groups which could be seen as "gang" like,
Smith's Fly Boys and the
Long Bridge Boys. The Five Points Gang in particular became influential in recruiting membership to gangs and toward establishing gang relationships with politicians.
Herbert Asbury depicted some of these groups in
his history of Irish and American gangs in Manhattan, and his work was later used by
Martin Scorsese as the basis for the motion picture
Gangs of New York. However, these early gangs reached their peak in the years immediately prior to the Civil War, and gang activity largely dissipated by the 1870s. and the
Midwest. In New York after the Civil War, the most powerful gang to emerge was the
Whyos, which included reconstituted members of previous Five Points area gangs. The gangs of Chicago in the late 19th century were particularly powerful in the areas around the
Chicago Stockyards, and engaged in robbery and violent crime. Just as with the Midwest, the American West experienced gang growth during the late 19th century and early 20th century. By the 1920s, cholo subculture and
palomilla had merged to form the basis of the Los Angeles gangs. Although New York built large, urban
high-rise public housing in the 1940s, much of the public housing was built in
low-rise form and in outer areas during the 1950s and 1960s; the effect of this was to mitigate much of the gang-on-gang violence that other American cities suffered in that period. However, this only escalated gang conflict, as New York saw gangs nonetheless form among the youth of the Latino, black, and white population as neighborhoods became smaller and populations were pushed closer together, resulting in turf wars for the small amount of land they had left. Various pre-existing European gangs (Irish, Italian, Jewish, German, etc.) united under a "white" identity to combat the onset of Puerto Rican and black migration. In 1957 there were 11 murders perpetrated by gangs in Manhattan. The re-emergence of Midwestern gangs also occurred after the rapid increase in the black population of northern American cities. The significant and rapid migration created a large population of
delinquent black youth, forming a pool of potential gang members, while black youth athletic groups fueled rivalries that also encouraged gang formation. A final factor encouraging gang formation was the
Chicago race riot of 1919, in which gangs of white youth terrorized the black community, and in response black youth formed groups for self-protection. The two latter events served to unify the Mexican immigrant population and turned many youth into gang members, thus creating the
cholo subculture. Black gangs of Los Angeles began forming into territorial-based groups by the early 1970s, and two federations of black gangs, the
Bloods and the
Crips, emerged during that period. The practice of allying local street gangs together into federated alliances began during the 1960s and expanded rapidly across the United States during the 1970s and 1980s. Out of the prison system of
Illinois came two gang alliances by the late 1970s, the
Folk Nation and the
People Nation.
Vice Lords The Vice Lords Nation was established in 1958 in Chicago, Illinois, with the intention of assisting African Americans in overcoming poverty and discrimination within their local community. However, as time passed, the organization transformed into one of the largest criminal groups in the United States, expanding its presence to nearly every city and town across the country. Engaging in a range of illicit activities such as drug trafficking, robbery, extortion, and murder, the Vice Lords Nation has become notorious for its involvement in criminal endeavors. Primarily operating in the Midwest and southern regions of the United States, the gang boasts a substantial membership estimated to be between 30,000 and 35,000 regular and associate members. Despite being recognized as a criminal organization by the US government and witnessing numerous high-profile arrests, the Vice Lords Nation continues to maintain its significant influence and presence, particularly in Chicago.
Barrio Azteca Barrio Azteca, also known as Los Aztecas, originated as a prison gang in the El Paso prison system in Texas in 1986. With an estimated 3,000 members in the United States and around 5,000 in the Juarez region of Mexico, the gang has extended its reach to states such as Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New Mexico. Despite not being a large gang, Barrio Azteca distinguishes itself through the extreme level of violence that frequently crosses borders.
Mongols Motorcycle Club The
Mongols Motorcycle Club, established in Montebello, California during the 1970s, is widely recognized as an infamous outlaw motorcycle club. Their influence extends across the Pacific and southwestern regions of the United States, boasting chapters in California, Nevada, Arizona, and various other states. While the club primarily consists of Hispanic members, it also encompasses individuals from diverse ethnic backgrounds. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the Mongols garnered notoriety as a formidable and violent motorcycle club. Their involvement in criminal activities such as assault, intimidation, and murder is well-documented, including a highly publicized clash with members of the rival
Hells Angels gang in Las Vegas in 2002.
Contemporary activities: 1990–present By the 1990s, Northeastern gangs (white, black, and Latino) had come into conflict as a result of
urban renewal and ethnic migration.
unemployment rates of African-American men reached as high as 50% in several areas of
South Los Angeles, opening up large recruitment markets for the burgeoning gangs. The increasing social isolation felt by African-American communities across the nation continued unabated in the 1980s and 1990s, leading to higher rates of
social pathologies, including violence. Latino gang members interviewed in
Napa said they had moved to the valley either to join family or to find a job, or were motivated by other social pressures like release from a nearby
juvenile correctional facility. As gang violence accelerated in the West, so too did
police violence against African-American communities, which culminated in the arrest of
Rodney King that sparked the
1992 Los Angeles riots. In the aftermath of the riots, leaders of the Bloods and the Crips announced a truce (spearheaded by Compton's then-mayor
Walter R. Tucker, Jr.), and in May 1992, 1,600 rival gang members converged on
Imperial Courts, a main housing project of
Watts, Los Angeles, California to demonstrate their new-found companionship. But after only a few months of relative harmony, tensions between Los Angeles County's more than 100,000 gang members (in February 1993) began to raise the murder rates, rising to resemble previous levels.
Oakland, California saw 113 drug- and/or gang-related homicides in 2002 alone, and 2003 sported similar figures. ,
Houston During the 1990s, the American South saw an increase in gang activity that had not been seen previously. In 1994, Mary Beth Pelz, a
criminologist at the
University of Houston–Downtown, said that Texas lacked "a rich history of street gangs" compared to other parts of the United States. She said Houston area gangs began to branch out to newer developments in the 1980s. According to a 2006
Texas Monthly article by Skip Hollandsworth, many street gangs in Texas have no organized command structures. Individual "
cliques" of gangs, defined by streets, parts of streets, apartment complexes, or parts of apartment complexes, act as individual groups. Texas cliques tend to be headed by leaders called "OGs" ("
original gangsters"), and each clique performs a specific activity or set of activities in a given area, such as controlling trafficking of recreational drugs and managing prostitution. In 2009, David Kennedy, director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at
John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the
City University of New York, said that a lot of violence in
inner cities in the United States is mislabeled as "gang violence" when in fact it involves small, informal cliques of people. As gang members and factions continued to grow, the introduction of cheap
crack cocaine to American cities would prove fatal. Crack money now could be used to purchase unprecedented amounts of weaponry, and as newly armed gang members began to fight over "turf", or the territory in which gangs would run their lucrative drug-trades, violence soared, The targeted killing of the 9-year-old Tyshawn Lee, the son of a Chicago gang member who was lured into an alley and shot in 2015, marked a new low in gang violence, associated with the splintering of gangs into less organized factions often motivated by personal vendettas.
2020s Tren de Aragua began to extend its presence throughout the United States during this time.
Telemundo, citing cases against suspected members of the gang, wrote in March 2024 that it shows "an increasingly widespread presence of the band also in the United States." In January 2024, the
Federal Bureau of Investigation confirmed reports that the gang was operating in the United States. On July 11, 2024, the US Treasury Department and the White House announced sanctions against the gang and applied the "transnational criminal organization" designation. The State Department began offering a $12 million reward for information leading to the arrest of the organization's leaders. In 2024, U.S. officials at the U.S.-Mexico border began interrogation of single Venezuelan male migrants in order to screen for Tren de Aragua members. Tren de Aragua first appeared in
Chicago and its suburbs in October 2023. FBI agents in
El Paso, Texas reported that 41 suspected members of the Tren de Aragua were arrested in 2023. == Recruitment ==