I used to be running with my friends. I'd go out and steal and do drugs, shoot at people but once I got locked up it was a different story.

Life within a gang includes two endemic features: violence and alcohol Yet, to date, most researchers studying gang behavior have focused on violence and its relationship to illicit drugs, largely neglecting the importance of alcohol in gang life. Because alcohol is an integral and regular part of socializing within gang life, drinking works as a social lubricant, or social glue, to maintain not only the cohesion and social solidarity of the gang, but also to affirm masculinity and male togetherness. In addition to its role as a cohesive mechanism, particular drinking styles within gangs may operate, as with other social groups, as a mechanism to maintain group boundaries, thereby demarcating one gang from another.

Most children get in gangs because they want money or protection or they want the notoriety. Eighty percent of the gang related crime is done by those who wanted to be a gang member. Some youth as young as nine years old are joining gangs.

They think that they've got no other choice

you get locked up — oh well; you get shot — oh, well. You've just got to deal with it