Culture shift as bikie gang recruitment focuses on money, violence, and status

What do bikie clubs look for in a recruit? Ex-bikies reveal the traits prioritised in modern gangs that often put rookies at odds with older members.

New recruitment trends are causing friction within bikie gangs.

Bikie clubs are recruiting younger men with a thirst for violence and gangs are increasingly becoming fractured with internal conflicts rife, a landmark new study into outlaw motorcycle gangs has found.

Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) researchers interviewed 39 former bikies leading to never before seen insights into the changing nature of bikie clubs.

The research, led by the AIC’s Serious and Organised Crime Research Laboratory, found significant changes in recruitment and how clubs are managed, as well as the values and relationships within the gangs.

Cultural changes within some OMCGs are leading many former bikies, some who have been members for decades, to question their involvement in club life.

AIC Deputy Director Dr Rick Brown said: “This study has provided first hand insights from former members that show how some clubs are changing.

“They described how their former clubs were recruiting younger men who are more prone to violence, attracted by the gangster image, and who are looking to join clubs to get rich quick.

“There is a real culture change in some clubs, with more conflict and less loyalty between members. And this is having a real impact on the members who are leaving.”

The research found that conflict in gangs is on the rise between older members who want to preserve the original outlaw values and practices of OMCGs and younger members, aged 30 and under, who use OMCG membership to obtain status and money, sometimes by taking part in high-level criminal enterprises.

The study also found that younger members are becoming dominant in OMCGs across

Australia, both in numbers and in authority.

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During the course of the study numerous former bikies told researchers OMCGs were becoming increasingly influenced by younger, violent criminals.

One former bikie, who joined his club in the late 1990s, said: “I mean, [name omitted], that’s what he’s done, he’s created this gangster image … they’ll [new members] just get brought in, they’ll be put on the ground, and used as foot soldiers to sell the dope.”

Another former member, who joined his club in the mid-2000s, said: “Some of the younger, newer faces starting to get positions of authority down there think they’re bloody Al Capone.”

The research concluded that bikie clubs have now come to mirror organised crime groups.

Whereas in the past bikies would stick with one club, the younger breed of bikie is open to moving between clubs.

“Recruitment efforts increasingly focus on the violent and money-making credentials of recruits, a growing number of members join and switch clubs for self-serving reasons, and relationships between members become more exploitative and contentious,” the report said.