Birth Of Fire By Jerry Purcell

The book starts out in a year sometime between 2000 and 2050. It begins with Garrett Pittson, a respected gang member who has not found his path in life, caught in the middle of a gang war and then caught by the police. He is sentenced to prison for twenty years but takes up his lawyer's offer of being shipped out to a colony on Mars where the conditions are rough and the pay unfair.