Youth participation in gangs and other organised forms of urban violence has undoubtedly increased as a direct consequence of marginalisation; these offer an alternative form of social inclusion (“inclusion within exclusion”) (ECLAC, 2014). Specialists in youth issues have argued for decades that gangs are organisations that provide some Latin American youths with a form of social inclusion: when poverty is widespread, employment options are limited and the state and institutions are near absent, then many young people turn to their peer group in the barrio for a sense of inclusion. Gangs give them power, cash income, space and a feeling of belonging that no other social institution provides (Soto and Trucco, 2015).