Since the time of the Ancien Regime, the state has tried to defuse neighbourhood wars through penal law. Criminal justice has progressively tried to insert itself in place of community strife and to be the principal mechanism for revenge. The success of penal state mechanisms has been considerable, but not complete. Confrontations between gangs have made visible the continuance of neighbourhood conflict and minor forms of revenge in the urban environment, which remain outside the ambit of criminal justice. It is conflict which is part of local life, deep rooted within informal social relationships, relying on values such as honour and virility and sustained through an intense search for acknowledgement and respect. Taking the work beyond normative means, this article proposes to look at the practical aspects of these phenomena, starting from ethnographic research undertaken as close as possible to these gangs in two towns in the Paris region.