ABSTRACT
The street-corner gang is a durable institution, deeply embedded in American lower-class culture. A technique known as "detached-group work," "street-corner work," or "gang work," has been evolved to discourage delinquency in these gangs. The workers are, in a sense, missionaries, entering an established culture with the avowed intent of changing not the culture itself, but the orientation of one of its institutions. The chapter attempts to provide further information on the variety of orientations and styles gang workers bring to their gangs. It describes the setting within which the project operated, presents a brief description of five worker styles, and illustrates two of the types through a more detailed examination of the interaction between particular workers and their gangs. In Midcity for many decades, corner groups—for males of all ages and for adolescent girls—was a distinctive and ubiquitous form of community. Urban lower-class communities and the lower-class culture are to a large extent adaptations to economic conditions.
