s the term "interstitial" to explain the process that takes place in the geographical and social setting of the slum. According to Thrasher:
In nature foreign matter tends to collect and cake in every crack, crevice, and cranny -- interstices. There are also fissures and breaks in the structures of social organization. The gang may be regarded as an interstitial element in the framework of society, and gangland as an interstitial region in the layout of the city (p. 20).
The gang is detached and free from the controls that hold society in check. The gang is not the cause of delinquency, though it is often the major component that makes delinquency possible. "Rather, the gang is only a possible but not a necessary link in a causal chain that begins with social disorganization, which leads to weak controls and then ganging, and ends in delinquency," states Kornhauser, in Social Sources of Delinquency (57). Kornhauser explains the theory of social disorganization as a general theory in which the standard values or norms of society have not
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