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Combining ten years of ethnographic observation with detailed quantitative data, we analyze the longrun educational, economic, criminal justice, and social outcomes of a cohort of young men who came of age in a Chicago housing project at the peak of the crack epidemic. Although gang members have had worse life outcomes across almost all dimensions, the data suggest that this is primarily because youths with worse family environments and lower school performance were more likely to join the gang. Once these other factors are controlled for, any causal impact of the gang on adult outcomes appears limited. The exception to this finding is that those who were active in the gang continue to derive a much larger fraction of their income from illegal sources later in life.