Street gangs have exploded in popularity worldwide. Tattoos, baggy pants, tagging, gangsta style clothes -- this unspoken threat is always just around the corner in most of the world's major cities. In search of a sense of identity and belonging that their world has denied them, young people are pushed into gangs by a witch's brew of violence, guns, drugs, racism, poverty, families under pressure, and ever-widening slums. "Gangs" exposes the roots of the problem, from the "bidonvilles" of France to the "favelas" of Brazil. It offers a startling analysis of the complicity of the adult world, as well as hard-hitting reforms that might just undermine the appeal of gang life. Most of all, it shows that we fail to understand gangs at our peril.

Richard Swift is an internationally regarded journalist and a former editor of New Internationalist magazine. He has done stories from many parts of the world on issues as varied as famine and the plight of farmers, slums, the prison system and struggles for national liberation. Swift is author of S.O.S. Alternatives to Capitalism, now in its second edition; The No-Nonsense Guide to Democracy and Trigger Issues: Mosquito, and editor of Ties That Bind: Canada and the Third World. He is on the editorial board of Canadian Dimension magazine. He has also worked as a radio journalist.