Chicano gang activities revolve primarily around the normal adolescent concerns of peer respect and approval, security and protection, group support and acceptance, and age and sex role identification. It is proposed that the gang be considered as "tropho-criminal," that is, permissive or supportive of individual deviance as an alternative to the perception of the gang as crimogenic. Gang membership interacts with certain family characteristics in the production of juvenile and adult criminality, but neither gang culture nor family structure and function provide an explanation for individual deviance. Most likely there are other interactions in which gang membership is an important yet not a determining factor in deviance. Gang membership emerges as only one in a complicated set of factors which leads to deviance. 28 notes