Gangs have long been associated with big cities like Los Angeles and Chicago, but their reach is farther-and closer-than you might expect.

Gang activity in New Jersey has flourished over the last five years, according to state police, and not only in urban settings such as Newark and Elizabeth. Here, and across the nation, gangs are finding new homes away from rugged cities.

Now, you can find them in Arkansas, Arizona, Indian reservations and, increasingly, the suburbs-places such as Edison and Highland Park.

When looking for gang members you can look for white, black, Hispanic, Chinese, even Asian Indian. You can look for girls. You can find them even in law schools and police departments, according to experts who have studied gang history and sociology.

It's not confined to the cities, and it's not exclusively about turf, money and violence, although those elements make up a significant part of gang culture. What it starts with, the experts say, is alienation

SEEKING RESPECT

Gangs offer alternatives to disillusioned youths, allowing them to come together like a surrogate family. "Kids that get into gangs are seeking identity and recognition," said Steve Nawojczyk, a gang expert from Little Rock, Ark., who helped create the HBO documentary "Bangin' in Little Rock" and speaks on gangs around the country.

Members of what Nawojczyk calls the "5H Club"-hopeless, helpless, hugless, hungry and homeless-are the youths most likely to join a gang, regardless of race, economic situation or setting. Gangs offer young people a chance to feel accepted and bond with others like them.

Members of what Nawojczyk calls the "5H Club"-hopeless, helpless, hugless, hungry and homeless-are the youths most likely to join a gang, regardless of race, economic situation or setting. Gangs offer young people a chance to feel accepted and bond with others like them.

"The key pitch on the street from gangs (worldwide) is, 'We will protect you,'" said Dan Korem, author of "Suburban Gangs: The Affluent Rebels."

"Naturally a gang is like a safehouse. It's like a brotherhood," a member of a Newark based gang said in a telephone interview. "You don't want nobody selling (drugs) at the corner of your street, and, if somebody is going to sell, you would want it to be you or somebody from your street. You don't want no stranger."

Protecting a gang's reputation and territory is vital to the gang and is the source of much of gang violence, and it isn't limited to inner cities.

TOUCHING THE 'BURBS

Across the United States and Europe, suburban gangs are growing as never before, Korem said. He estimates that in a typical "noninner city" American community of 50,000 or more, there are 200 to 500 gang members.

In Middlesex County, super gangs, which have more than 1,000 members spread over several states, have been known to operate in Perth Amboy and New Brunswick.

State Police also had reports in 2000 of a gang presence in more suburban settings such as East Brunswick, Edison, Highland Park, Sayreville, South Brunswick, South River and Woodbridge.

"We don't consider that any community is insulated from this activity," said New Jersey State Police Captain Rick Fuentes, whose Intelligence Bureau includes the state police's Street Gang Unit. "There's no restriction on where gang members can live."

Gang members living in the suburbs share traits with recruits in the cities, and many of those factors have been exacerbated by tough economic times, Nawojczyk said.

Korem's list of factors include divorce, separation, physical abuse, sexual abuse and having a parent with "a severe dysfunction," situations that can be found anywhere.

The factor that can push a child over the top and into a gang is a "missing protector," someone the youth can count on in emergencies, Korem said.

"If you come from an at-risk home, and you don't feel you have someone to turn to in a crisis, there are three things these kids are looking for: a mask to deal with their pain, a distraction device to divert them from what they're experiencing or an overpowering device to overpower that's hurting them," Korem said. A gang, he added, can provide all three.

Of 64 million youths in the United States, Korem estimates that 40 million meet at least one of his risk criteria, although both he and Nawojczyk emphasize that "at-risk" traits do not automatically translate into gang activity. They simply create a fertile ground, in cities, rural areas and suburbs.

TAKING ROOT

Gang growth in the suburbs occurs in one of three ways, Nawojczyk said.

Sometimes established gangs move into new communities to expand their drug dealing through new recruits. Other times, parents send their troubled children to live with families in the suburbs and, instead of curing the problem, the gang members will build up a new crew in their new homes, often exaggerating their rank and reputation.

Then there are what Nawojczyk calls "teenage mutant gangs," groups of what he terms "5H Club" individuals who coalesce on their own. They sometimes imitate big-city gangs, he said, but often make up their own rules.

"A lot of the people in the business call them 'wannabes,' or imitators. I call them gonnabes,'" Nawojczyk said. "It doesn't matter how much money a kid's got in his pockets. If there's not positive activities for a young person to pursue, they'll follow the negative route."

In Boca Raton, Fla., Korem found youths from million-dollar homes forming gangs to protect themselves from other nearby gangs. Many of those youths had what he lists as one of the more recent risk factors.

"Both parents work full-time jobs. But both parents don't have to work full-time jobs," Korem said. "Money is more important than raising the kids. Or, you have parents who are working full-time jobs but don't realize the impact on their child."

In some cases the youth feel abandoned and angry, and in other situations they simply do whatever they want with no daytime supervision.

Suburban gangs tend to sell different drugs-such as Ecstacy, as opposed to crack-cocaine offered in the cities-and begin with lower levels of violence, Nawojczyk said. But as their drug trade grows, so do the levels of conflict.

While suburban gangs tend to be less structured, allowing law enforcement to sometimes dismiss their threat, Nawojczyk and Korem agree that suburban gangs can be more dangerous because of their desire to prove themselves as hardcore.

Korem cites school shootings in Pearl, Miss., and Littleton, Colo., as examples of gang violence. "We consider these new suburban gangs more dangerous pound for pound. They're far more dangerous," he said.

FISTS TO GUNS

Pirates may have been the original gangs, according to Nawojczyk, but the precursors to modern street gangs were formed by ethnic groups sticking together to protect their neighborhoods.

Some of the hard-core groups resembling the ones active today formed in the 1950s in the Midwest, and the Crips and Bloods were born in Los Angeles in the late '60s and '70s.

Turf battles with fists and knives escalated to gunfights with the introduction of crack cocaine in the 1980s, Nawojczyk said. "Territory had less to do with where you lived but had to do with where your sale zone was. That's when the homicide rate went out of control," Nawojczyk said.

With profit as the motive, some racial and gender barriers have come down, creating mixed, even all-female, gangs.

Some gangs see themselves as community protectors, and some communities welcome this aspect.

"A community will value gangs over police protection because they feel disenfranchised by police," said Dr. Jon A. Meyer, an assistant professor of sociology at Rutgers University-Camden.

Gangs may host community events, barbecues or basketball tournaments, and some even set up scholarships to send their members to law school or into police departments. The actions may benefit the community, but gangs also use them to create respect among possible recruits and "buy off" community silence, Meyer said.

Once gangs cement their position in a community, it makes joining more enticing. "In some areas the gangs are not the outcasts-it's the rest," Meyer said. "If you don't belong to a gang, you literally are on the fringes of society."

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