The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework for understanding the growth in youth gangs and gang behaviour. The paper builds on a youth theory perspective and describes how the social conditions work with or are against the young individual in such a way that gangs seem to be an option or an answer for some young people when faced with today's youth life situation. In this study, it focuses on the development of social vs. societal gangs, and on the late modern challenges of individualised social responsibility and the use of social relations in managing individualisation problems. (Contains 1 footnote.)