Opinion

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What exactly is a gang?

Tuesday 28 October 2008

It must be hard to be a teenage boy these days, when just hanging around on a street corner with your mates is likely to get you branded a gang member.

Today, RTL tv tells us that the Netherlands now has the very precise total of 1,828 street gangs - of whom the large majority are not involved in any crime.

They just cause a public nuisance and contribute to making the streets seem unsafe. You know the sort of thing. The unlucky folks of Rotterdam have to deal with the most gangs.

Drenthe is pretty well a gang-free zone. Obviously the place to live if you want to avoid teenage terror.

It would be wrong to pretend that the Netherlands does not have a problem with out-of-control young men who make up a group of persistent and dangerous offenders in some urban areas.

But quite what RTL defines as a gang is not very clear. Does it include the group of middle class youths who escape periodically from the local high school and take over a nearby playground to smoke joints in between lessons?

Or does it include the lads who noisly let off steam outside the local Albert Heijn supermarket having spent the afternoon stocking the shelves for less than €4 a hour.

1,828 gangs is a very nice statistic. But it would be equally nice to know exactly what RTL is talking about.