Youngbloods
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The Youngbloods are a group of up-and-coming leaders within the Pègre criminal organization in the North American League and surrounding nations. They vied with the Old Guard and won positions of power in the 1980s.
Background
The Famille structure of the Pègre allowed considerable stability for decades and made them a serious problem for law enforcement. During the Second Great War the Pègre consolidated a lot of its control over the NAL crimeworld simply because the entire country had its attention on other things, namely winning the war. The generation of Charles-Luc Gambeaux and their immediate successors were difficult to touch all during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s because they offered substantial rewards for loyalty while punishing betrayal with inexorable violence. Yet they also maintained something of a code, which isolated to some extent innocent bystanders. Family members who were not part of the "business" were generally consider 'hands off.' The same was true in terms of law enforcement officials. When possible, deaths became disappearances. This created an aura of mysterious and sinister power, but not of random violence. As a result, public pressure to do something about the Pègre was not so intense.
But a problem developed as the same group of increasingly elderly crimelords remained in the top spots. First was that the world itself began to change and they found it increasingly more difficult to change with it. Second was the rise of the Youngbloods, a new generation of criminal leaders who were in their prime but relegated to secondary positions or middle management.
Conflict
The skirmishes began in the 1980s and continue to this day. Sometimes the Youngbloods have succeeded in wresting authority from their elders, or even supplanting them altogether. Sometimes these younger gangsters have died or vanished (the Pègre old guard are anything but defenseless). Yet only in the Gambeaux Famille have the "old men" as they are called remained in absolute control. Given the extreme age of the Gambeaux Cardinals, this simply cannot last much longer.
The Signoret famille in New Castreleon was in the total control of the Youngbloods with the ascension of Peter Dale.
So the amount of public violence has increased steadily for twenty years, along with the expansion of organized crime into areas like video piracy. "Law and order" have become an increasing demand from the electorate in provinces with a heavy Pègre presence. At the same time the Jean-François Young administration proved to be a major enemy of the Pègre and its allies within Louisianne.
Tensions between the Old Guard and Youngbloods are believed to be fuel behind the Signoret Crime War which erupted in 2008.
