Intriguing provocation, Stylianos! Tip: to activate links in your post, hit the Update Entry button up there on the right, then follow the instructions here: http://bit.ly/oi_link

Hm ... this reminds me of the book "Gang Leader For A Day." It's a fascinating read -- a sociology PhD student befriended a gang leader in the Chicago projects and really got an inside glimpse into gang life. His insights mirror yours, that gangs are a social organization and also, in a way, an economic organization (in those projects they controlled a large amount of economic activity, etc.)

From what I gather from the book, and others may read this differently, is that a major challenge is that many gang members feel disenfranched froom mainstream society and don't feel a large incentive to play by those rules, because they have an alternate mechanism for being profitable (and drugs and guns are very profitable). So I would push you a bit and ask if it is just contacts and knowledge that they are missing, or is there something else that ew need to address to leverage gangs into small businesses?

Fascinating insight - gang violence definitely is a problem in urban cities, and I think this is a great issue to look at how to address whether gangs can shift to a different type of collective.