In May, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention released a report in its National Gang Center Bulletin entitled: History of Street Gangs in the United States.
Here is an interesting fact about Georgia and the South:
The states with the largest number of gang counties in 1998 were Texas (82), Georgia (61), California (50), Illinois (42), and Florida (40), with the South replacing the Northeast as the region with the most top-ranking states. Hence, the Southern region appeared to catch up with other regions in the prevalence of gang activity just before the turn of the century.