Crime in the Streets

After a rumble between New York City street gangs, the Hornets and Dukes, a youth is taken captive and threatened with a zip gun by Lenny Daniels, one of the Hornets. The act is witnessed by a neighbor, McAllister, who tells the cops.

Lenny is arrested and sentenced to a year in jail. Hornets leader Frankie Dane decides to get even. Seemingly incorrigible, 18-year-old Frankie resists all efforts to get through to him by social worker Ben Wagner or his worried mother, who was abandoned by Frankie's father when he was eight.