Learning to become a 'gangster'?

The paper analyses the gangster subculture of boys aged 15 to 18 in a secure care unit in Denmark. By drawing on a specific case from a two-month field study, the paper demonstrates how three boys teach a new boy to become a ‘real gangster’. This learning process not only reveals central elements in what constitutes the gangster subculture in the secure care unit but also shows constituents of the subculture in which the boys live their everyday lives outside secure care. Learning to be a ‘gangster’ involves both short- and long-term learning processes. The short-term process is closely linked to learning the specific gangster style. The long-term learning is closely connected to the hyper-masculine ‘code of the street’ and values of respect, loyalty and crime, all subcultural values formed by the intersections of class, ethnicity and gender. The paper suggests that understanding the deviant gangster subculture calls for taking its cultural expressions seriously in terms of the intersection of class, ethnicity and gender, rather than viewing these young people’s cultural expressions as merely a fluid expression of consumption or fashion.