alone had more than 1,300 street gangs, catering to every ethnic, politi- cal, and criminal leaning imaginable. As a rule, gangs would prove much better at making mayhem than money. Some fancied them- selves commercial enterprises, and a few-the Mafia, most notably- actually did make money (at least for the higher-ups). But most gangsters were, as the cliché assures us, two-bit gangsters. Black street gangs in particular flourished in Chicago, with mem- bership in the tens of thousands by the 1970s. They constituted the sort of criminals, petty and otherwise, who sucked the life out of urban areas. Part of the problem was that these criminals never seemed to get locked up. The 1960s and 1970s were, in retrospect, a great time to be a street criminal in most American cities. The likeli- hood of punishment was so low-this was the heyday of a liberal jus- tice system and the criminals rights movement-that it simply didnt cost very much to commit a crime. By the 1980s, however, the courts had begun to radically reverse that trend. Criminals rights were curtailed and stricter sentencing guidelines put in place. More and more of Chicagos black gangsters were getting sent to federal prisons. By happy coincidence, some of their fellow inmates were Mexican gang members with close ties to Colombian drug dealers. In the past, the black gangsters had bought their drugs from a middleman, the Mafia-which, as it happened, was then being pummeled by the federal governments new anti- racketeering laws. But by the time crack came to Chicago, the black gangsters had made the connections to buy their cocaine directly from Colombian dealers. Cocaine had never been a big seller in the ghetto: it was too expen- sive. But that was before the invention of crack. This new product was   ideal for a low-income, street-level customer. Because it required such a tiny amount of pure cocaine, one hit of crack cost only a few dollars. Its powerful high reached the brain in just a few seconds-and then