This study will provide a review of Carl S. Taylor's Dangerous Society, an investigation into youth gangs in Detroit. Taylor is eminently qualified to conduct such an investigation, coming from a "disadvantaged background in Detroit" (p. xi) himself, and advancing later to win three degrees from Michigan State University. He achieved success in private business as well.
Taylor paints a dark portrait of gang reality in Detroit specifically, and in the United States in general. Despite the fact that the author offers a number of hopeful breakthroughs in the fight against gangs and their destructive consequences for individuals and society as a whole, the overall picture is not a hopeful one. Perhaps Taylor is aware of this when, in the final chapter, after offering a number of community-oriented methods for countering the power of gangs, he concludes his book with these words: "A 19-year-old gang member commented on the life of drug trafficking: 'I'd probably be doing something if I wasn't rolling. But you know it's just part of life. You don't see nobody trying to stop us from selling dope? If people don't want it, they shouldn't buy it!'" (p. 125).
One of the solutions, says Taylor, is to be found in the home, which he calls "the starting point" in any struggle against the drug culture, "Parents and guardians must teach young people that gangs, drugs and money are not the solution to economic and social problems. Society must reinforce that message" (p. 124). Does Taylor truly believe that society is about to reinforce this message --- that money is not the answer to economic problems? That gangs, for a young person with little or no connection to the society at large, are not the answer to that young person's "social" problems? The fact is that this is a society in which money is God, and the views of gang members surveyed by Taylor reflect this attitude precisely. Interviewing forty gang members and asking them ...