''Reluctant Gansters'' provides an account of the emergence, nature and impact of armed youth gangs in an East London Borough over the last decade. This book: describes the challenges these armed young men and women pose to their communities, those charged with preventing crime and those struggling to vouchsafe 'community safety'. This book provides a 'local' focus whilst also outlining the effects it chronicles have both a national and international relevance. It argues that the main reasons behind the emergence of the armed youth gang has been the coalescence of two previously discreet socially deviant groups; the rowdy, episodically criminal, adolescent peer group on the one hand, and the locally-based organized criminal network on the other.This book analyses the impact of the globalisation of the drugs trade and the consequent shift in the focus of local organized crime from the 'blag' to the 'business'. It discusses how socio-economic and cultural factors, as well as family and neighbourhood histories and loyalties and localized racial antagonisms all play their part in the emergence of the armed youth gang.