If you were the President, how would you eliminate gangs?

[Hwen Hoshino]

It's all about loyalty. If gangs can be the base board for your community's values there isn't much the state can do to counter act that, being a hostile entity as they are.

Bring back the old apprenticeship system so teens have money in their pockets way sooner.

[Okeefenokee]

Really, really bad idea. Do NOT let gang members into the armed forces, ever.

It's already a problem. Hood mentality in the Army is rife in support. In combat arms they fight it in TRADOC. You'll see it bubbling up in the first few weeks, but it seems drill sergeants are trained to recognize and counter it.

I saw it called out in front of the whole Troop in formation.

I'm in a gang too. Our color is green, and we're a whole lot bigger than you.

Isn't that exactly what boot camp is designed to get rid of? It's not as if gangs are a new thing. Plenty of gangsters would have been drafted into the WWs.

Boot camp's more geared toward breaking down the individual than the group.

And if you're gonna state that the Army drafted criminals, you should support that claim.

[SuburbanFarmer]

It's already a problem. Hood mentality in the Army is rife in support. In combat arms they fight it in TRADOC. You'll see it bubbling up in the first few weeks, but it seems drill sergeants are trained to recognize and counter it.

I saw it called out in front of the whole Troop in formation.

I'm in a gang too. Our color is green, and we're a whole lot bigger than you.

Isn't that exactly what boot camp is designed to get rid of? It's not as if gangs are a new thing. Plenty of gangsters would have been drafted into the WWs.

Boot camp's more geared toward breaking down the individual than the group.

And if you're gonna state that the Army drafted criminals, you should support that claim.

Uhhhhhh they randomly selected groups of men based on birthdate for 4 major wars. You think that no gangsters or underworld lowlifes were selected in that process?

[Okeefenokee]

Isn't that exactly what boot camp is designed to get rid of? It's not as if gangs are a new thing. Plenty of gangsters would have been drafted into the WWs.

Boot camp's more geared toward breaking down the individual than the group.

And if you're gonna state that the Army drafted criminals, you should support that claim.

Uhhhhhh they randomly selected groups of men based on birthdate for 4 major wars. You think that no gangsters or underworld lowlifes were selected in that process?

There is a thing called screening. You think they screened the volunteers, but not the draftees?

[SuburbanFarmer]

Boot camp's more geared toward breaking down the individual than the group.

And if you're gonna state that the Army drafted criminals, you should support that claim.

Uhhhhhh they randomly selected groups of men based on birthdate for 4 major wars. You think that no gangsters or underworld lowlifes were selected in that process?

There is a thing called screening. You think they screened the volunteers, but not the draftees?

Not after the first few thousand casualties, no. There's no shortage of stories from Vietnam concerning prisoner sentences commuted for military service, and former scumbags welcomed into the Great War Machine.

[Okeefenokee]

Uhhhhhh they randomly selected groups of men based on birthdate for 4 major wars. You think that no gangsters or underworld lowlifes were selected in that process?

There is a thing called screening. You think they screened the volunteers, but not the draftees?

Not after the first few thousand casualties, no. There's no shortage of stories from Vietnam concerning prisoner sentences commuted for military service, and former scumbags welcomed into the Great War Machine.

There have always been far more volunteers than draftees, and servicemen are screened. The time you saw an influx of criminals into the ranks was after the creation of the all volunteer force when the Pentagon had to drop it's bar to felons in the ranks to let in enough people to fight the WoT. In WW2, people were committing suicide for being rejected for service. They didn't have to let in anyone they didn't want to. Same thing happened after the economy collapsed eight years ago. Lines to join wrapped around the block, so the Pentagon dropped the bonuses, stopped admitting felons, and ever since has been trying to weed them out.

[The Conservative]

Gangs can't be eliminated, if anything they can be controlled through subversion and infiltration. Possibly reduced in power, the weak ones can be disassembled.

The best thing you could do is sit down with their leaders and lay down the rules. No violence against innocents, police, or government officials. No dealing drugs to children, no dealing guns to children. No peddling their way of life to children.

Break those rules, and their world will be destroyed.

[KerningChameleon]

To phrase another way what StA said on the first page, gangs are a free market solution to a government-caused shortage. Everyone who took Economics 101 knows the basics of supply and demand. Supply of a good or service will always rush in to fill a demand if it is at all possible to. If an artificial limit (like government regulations) is put on the incoming supply, then a Black Market will inevitably form to meet the demand.

Thing is, there exists a demand for the service of Law and Order. Every single person (statistical rounding errors aside) wants a level of protection and security to be provided, whether that be from police and military, local militia, or even just the silo town's local gun club. For the most people, this demand is satisfied by the governing body's police force and judicial system. But in communities that do not receive such a protection (or do not feel they are receiving adequate enough service), since they cannot satisfy their demand from the "legitimate" market, they will turn to the illegitimate market. Hence, the formation of gangs.

Gangs form, at their root, in communities that are "left behind" by the larger society. They may branch out into other ventures (drug dealing, kiddie porn hustling, etc) to increase their revenue stream and entice new hires to grow their organization, but that's what all good businesses in a capitalist system are supposed to. The leaders can and do become corrupt and self-serving, but you'd be hard pressed to find a legitimate corporation that hasn't happened to as well.

The way to kill gangs is to kill the need for gangs to exist: provide them with the level of Order and Security they feel would be a better product than the gangs currently provide, and then eliminate the revenue streams gangs need to survive by creating legitimate marketplaces for them.

...of course, anyone who tried to decriminalize heroin or kiddie porn would become an international pariah faster than you can blink, and as noted, the entrenched gangs exist in communities that have (perhaps irrevocably in any foreseeable timeframe) lost all faith in the rest of society to assist them, hence why the situation is so sticky. You might very well have to go full totalitarian and stay that way for at least a generation or two to get it to stick. China sure had to to finally break their nation's collective opium addiction.