Gangs, Drugs and Youth Adversity: Continuity and Change 9781529210576

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GANGS, DRUGS AND YOUTH ADVERSITY Continuity and Change Ross Deuchar Robert McLean and Chris Holligan With a Foreword by James A. Densley

First published in Great Britain in 2022 by   Bristol University Press University of Bristol 1–​9 Old Park Hill Bristol BS2 8BB UK t: +44 (0)117 954 5940 e: bup-​[email protected]   Details of international sales and distribution partners are available at bristoluniversitypress.co.uk   © Bristol University Press 2022   British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library   ISBN 978-1-5292-1056-9 hardcover ISBN 978-1-5292-1058-3 ePub ISBN 978-1-5292-1057-6 ePdf   The right of Ross Deuchar, Robert McLean and Chris Holligan to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.   All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of Bristol University Press.   Every reasonable effort has been made to obtain permission to reproduce copyrighted material. If, however, anyone knows of an oversight, please contact the publisher.   The statements and opinions contained within this publication are solely those of the authors and not of the University of Bristol or Bristol University Press. The University of Bristol and Bristol University Press disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any material published in this publication.   Bristol University Press works to counter discrimination on grounds of gender, race, disability, age and sexuality.   Cover design: Namkwan Cho Front cover image: Shutterstock – Deliris Bristol University Press uses environmentally responsible print partners. Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

Contents Acknowledgements Foreword

iv v

PART I Gangs, Violence and Gang Evolution: History, Context and Methods 1 Introduction: Gangs and Violence in the UK 2 Violence and Gang Evolution: Scottish Perspectives

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PART II Continuity and Change in the West of Scotland: Empirical Insights 3 Transitional Journeys and Contemporary Adversity: Practitioner Insights 4 Moving In, Moving Up and Moving On: Reflections of Adults and Former Gang Members 5 Gang Organisation, Drug Markets and Supply Among Youth 6 Diverse Contemporary Youth Influences and Challenges

37 60 81 105

PART III Conclusion 7 Framing and Re-​Framing the Experiences of Youth in Disadvantaged Scottish Communities

129

Appendix Notes References Index

147 151 153 174

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Acknowledgements Ross Deuchar: I would like to dedicate this book to my wife, Karen, for her never-​ending love and support. I would also like to dedicate it to my son Alan, of whom I am so proud in every way; to my mum and my sister, Lyn, who have always been there for me throughout my whole life. Finally, I dedicate it to the memory of my late dad, Ian Deuchar, who taught me so much and whose important influence in shaping my personal values will always be with me. Robert McLean: 2020 was a difficult year, not only because of the pandemic and the turmoil it brought but also because of the pain and hurt caused by the passing of several friends, including Grant Henderson. Hendo, even as I write this dedication, my eyes start to well up with tears. I guess I just always took for granted that you would be here in some way, whenever we play elevens, fives or attend events. You are much loved and sorely missed. I am proud to say that we shared this life together. That is one thing that can never be taken. Wullie misses you, mate. Chris Holligan: I am forever in debt to my family and wife Teresa, who is an outstanding proofreader of my academic prose. It has been a very strange and unpleasant year, one that the prescient film Contagion just begins to capture. The kinds of risk and vulnerability that most experienced over this pandemic are commonplace in the lives of the young people in this book, whom it is our privilege to have met. In addition, as a team, we would like to thank all the young people who gave up their time to participate in the research outlined in this book. We found ourselves deeply inspired and moved by their life stories and by their resilience to overcome the adversities they faced. We are also grateful to the practitioners and adult community members who provided us with so much insight into the issues of continuity and change in the west of Scotland as well as the transformational practice they were engaged in. Furthermore, we are deeply indebted to Professor James Densley for writing an eloquent foreword, and for his support and friendship over the years. iv

Foreword James A. Densley Metropolitan State University, Minneapolis–St Paul, Minnesota

I first met Ross Deuchar in 2015 at an international conference on youth outreach organised by the City University of Hong Kong. Ross and I were invited plenary speakers and spent our days and nights being ushered between presentations, meetings, dinners –​and even a midnight outing on the streets to interview local gang members and observe social service providers in action. We had stunning vistas and gracious hosts, good food and great conversation, but with the jet lag (there is a 14-​hour time difference between Minneapolis and Hong Kong), much of that week remains a blur. One moment of clarity from my trip overseas was Ross’ plenary speech. In a talk titled ‘Scottish Youth Gangs, Territoriality and Street Violence’, Ross shared insights from a decade of working with young offenders. Two things stood out from that talk. First, Ross wasn’t one of those esoteric armchair theorists who claim to have all the answers about gang members despite never having asked them any questions. No, Ross was a true pracademic –​he’d paid his dues as a schoolteacher and was using that real-​world knowledge and experience to inform his scholarship, which was data-​driven and practice-​ and policy-​focused. Second, Ross really cared about the lives of the people he researched. They weren’t just his ‘participants’ and ‘subjects’; they were human beings with stories to tell. The talk was built on Ross’ 2009 book Gangs, Marginalised Youth and Social Capital and its 2011 sequel, Policing Youth Violence: Transatlantic Connections. I’d read both books, as most criminologists had, but it was only after hearing Ross speak and spending time with him that week that I truly came to appreciate them. There we were, 6,000 miles from home, and voices from the streets of Glasgow and West Scotland were resonating. I finally understood what made that great ‘city of gangs’ different from other places (Davies, 2013), but also the same –​how poverty, sectarianism and violence had shaped the city’s past and present. Well, here we are now in the future. And with Gangs, Drugs and Youth Adversity: Continuity and Change, Deuchar returns to the people and places he v

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went to before to discover what, if anything, has changed in the last decade. In this endeavour, he is joined by Robert McLean and Chris Holligan, prolific scholars who, like Ross, are not afraid to get their hands dirty and who, in collaboration with Ross, have advanced the field considerably in recent years. The trio learns that Glasgow and West Scotland are different now. By treating violence as a disease, police and community partners have presided over a miraculous decline in knife crime and territorial fighting that has significantly improved young people’s life chances and life expectancy. Add to this smart phones and social media, which removed the street imperative, and a modern celebrity and consumer culture, which redefined masculine distinction, and more youth today choose looking good over acting bad. Drugs are another big change. They are so abundant and accessible and affordable that using and/​or dealing them is now routine. For an entrepreneurial few, drugs are a route to riches, but for so many more they are the road to ruin. The book captures both sides of the equation, with careful consideration given to the catastrophic social and emotional consequences of offending and addiction. Mental health and trauma are new themes examined here that help broaden the appeal of this book to beyond just criminologists. Of course, some things never change. Sectarian conflict between Protestants and Catholics is still hiding in plain sight, shaping community norms and expectations. Social exclusion and structural disadvantages are still creating conditions conducive to crime by constraining life choices and incentivising self-​destructive behaviours. Who you are and where you are from still contribute to intergenerational continuity in gang participation. However, it’s the voices of the young people in this book that make even the old feel new again. Every chapter is fresh, the findings urgent. Since Thrasher’s (1927) sweeping, seminal work nearly 100 years ago, continuity and change have been key themes in gang research (for a review, see Decker et al, 2021). They are typically studied at the individual level, using longitudinal survey data to parse the onset, duration and termination of gang membership in the life-​course (eg Pyrooz, 2014). Today, studies of continuity and change at the group or community levels are few and far between (eg Valasik, 2014; Ouellet et al, 2019), especially qualitative studies (eg Densley, 2014). This really is the major contribution of the book and something to be celebrated. Gangs, Marginalised Youth and Social Capital (2009) and Policing Youth Violence: Transatlantic Connections (2011) now are less snapshots in time and more signs of what was coming. Like Whittaker et al’s (2020) recent ‘revisit’ of Pitts’ (2008) research in London, this book looks back to move forwards. It finds that many elements of gangs, gang members and gang crime present today were present years ago. Yet many of the characteristics of gangs, gang members and gang crime have vi

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Foreword

evolved or emerged over time and represent a new aspect of understanding our social world. If that tension between continuity and change is the heart of this book, then a steadfast commitment to actionable research anchored in lived experience is its soul. No surprise, because that’s the Ross I first met in Hong Kong and the Ross I’ve worked with every year since. Constant. Don’t change.

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PART I

Gangs, Violence and Gang Evolution: History, Context and Methods

1

Introduction: Gangs and Violence in the UK In this opening chapter, we begin by setting the stage for the remainder of the book by outlining the context for our research and by considering its unique contribution. Following this, we explore the ‘international turn’ that gave rise to the emergence of European gang research and how UK scholars remained resistant to the ‘gang’ label for a number of years. We delve into the great UK gang debate that has often been characterised by a subculture–​gang division, as well as the recent empirical insights that provide overwhelming evidence that the street gang is a real and (in some contexts) growing phenomenon in several parts of the country. We draw attention to recent issues of concern in England and Wales where 2018–​19 was a watershed period for street violence. We examine the nature of the government’s ‘Serious Violence Strategy’, the emerging focus on adopting a ‘public health’ approach to violence reduction and prevention, and how Glasgow, located in the west of Scotland, has increasingly been drawn upon as a site of interest in this regard.

Setting the stage: the context and contribution In recent years, much political and media attention has been placed on the issues of knife crime and violence across the UK (and particularly in its capital city, London). There has also been a great deal of emphasis on the recognised need for a public health approach to tackling these issues, and an ever-​growing interest in Glasgow and the wider west of Scotland’s transitional journey in relation to street gangs and knife crime. Given this, we believe that this book is extremely timely. Our qualitative data set (presented in Part II of the book), combining the perspectives of practitioners with those of contemporary young people and adults who have been involved in these issues in and around Glasgow, makes the book unique. 3

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In its pages, readers will learn more about the extent to which issues relating to street gangs and weapon-​carrying/​use have changed in the west of Scotland, as well as the more contemporary challenges. In particular, readers will gain insight into the nature and impact of gang intervention programmes and initiatives in and around Glasgow, and the impact of the public health approach that has been adopted there (see discussion in later chapters on the specifics of the public health approach). In the empirical chapters (in Part II), we present a rich qualitative exploration of the transitions and remaining challenges associated with a group of socially disadvantaged adults who have lived through a period of extreme austerity. We illustrate how their adverse childhood experiences and subsequent adolescent involvement in street gangs in some cases led to wider forms of criminality. In addition, we also provide comparative insights into the views and perspectives of contemporary disadvantaged youth in the west of Scotland. In some cases (at the time of our interviews) these young people were still involved in weapon-​carrying and violence, but many were increasingly caught up in drug distribution and experiencing wider influences and challenges, including football-​related bigotry and the mental health repercussions emerging from social media. The nature and prevalence of gang evolution in Scotland and the increasing involvement of young people in drug misuse and drug distribution tied to organised crime are important themes explored in our work. We believe that the book is a unique contribution to the growing lexicon of recommendations for preventing and reducing these and other troubling issues. In addition to the specific context of Scotland, many of the insights will be of intense interest to those currently working in related policy areas across the wider UK and internationally. Since the book presents empirical research, we believe that it will hold particular appeal to academics. Yet, given that knife crime, violence, drug distribution, football-​related bigotry and the mental health repercussions emerging from social media have all been deemed to be public health matters, the scope of the book goes beyond the disciplines of criminology, sociology and policing to include the realms of education, politics, social work and even medicine to some –​albeit lesser –​extent. We see the book as a key text for undergraduate and postgraduate students in colleges and universities, particularly as it is highly accessible and also reviews the key points from previous works. Given the drastic rise of knife crime across England and Wales in recent years and the fact that Scotland, particularly Glasgow, has experienced a significant decline, the book will hold interest for a secondary audience of practitioners within and beyond the UK. Specifically, we believe it will appeal to members of law enforcement, youth workers, outreach workers and third-​sector organisations, as well as wider political establishments, since such institutions are often searching for 4

Introduction: Gangs and Violence in the UK

ways to combat growing trends of knife crime, gang violence, and other types of social disadvantage and unrest. To set the scene for the remainder of the book, we now turn our attention to the scholarly journey that has characterised gang studies in Europe and, more specifically, in the UK.

Eurogang and the emergence of gang studies in Europe Despite some lulls, youth violence in the UK in the contemporary era has typically been attributed to, or has coincided with, an increase in gang activity. For many years, gangs were viewed as an exclusively American problem. However, at the beginning of the twenty-​first century, an ‘international turn’ in gang research occurred and ‘the study of gangs was no longer the study of gangs in the United States’ (Pyrooz and Mitchell, 2015, p 43). Following on from Malcolm Klein’s earlier extensive travels across Europe in the 1980s and ’90s, and his uncovering of what he believed to be the presence of street gangs in European cities, the Eurogang network was founded and an explosion of gang-​related literature followed (Pyrooz and Mitchell, 2015). Klein (2001, p 7) identified the existence of a ‘Eurogang Paradox’, which reflected the continued denial by some scholars that street gangs existed in Europe simply because the street-​oriented patterns there did not fit the US stereotype of ‘highly structured, cohesive, violent gangs’. However, as he argued, in earlier times, many US officials had also denied gangs in their cities simply because their groups did not resemble Los Angeles gangs. Klein highlighted that stereotypes of US gangs, based on the Crips, the Bloods and the Latin Kings, were not actually applicable to most street gangs in the United States (Klein et al, 2006). As Decker (2001) also argued, the concept of the gang had often been distorted by the dominant view that gangs were always well organised and highly structured. Accordingly, Klein (2001, p 7) drew attention to how a West Side Story or Colours image of urban gangs had emerged that was misleading; as he argued, ‘maybe if we learn that if American gangs really don’t fit their stereotypes, then gang-​like groups elsewhere should be more carefully scrutinised as well’. From relatively humble beginnings (Weerman et al, 2009), the Eurogang network evolved into a network of several hundred researchers and practitioners, disseminating research and information via edited volumes, academic papers and social media (see, for instance, Klein et al, 2001; Decker and Weerman, 2005; Van Gemert et al, 2008; Esbensen and Maxson, 2011). The network advanced a ‘consensus definition’ of a street gang as a ‘durable and street-​oriented youth group whose involvement in illegal activity is part of its group identity’ (Klein and Maxson, 2010, p 4). While a discussion of 5

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the nuances of the definition of a gang is beyond the scope of this book, suffice to say that while the Eurogang definition has been contested by many, it has also become highly influential. Klein (2001, p 10) argued that, as gangs amplify crime, they necessarily amplify violence –​but often engage in ‘cafeteria-​style’ offending patterns, including graffiti and vandalism, petty theft, minor fighting and threats, and ‘various vices’. But he also argued that some of the gangs that he claimed existed in Europe lacked what had often been thought of as a common feature of American gangs: territoriality. For instance, while gangs located in Berlin appeared highly territorial, those on the outskirts of Stockholm were not. Just as Thrasher (1927, p 5) had identified in the earliest gang study conducted in the United States that ‘no two gangs are just alike’, it began to be recognised that gangs in Europe differed both within and between countries. The Eurogang definition drew attention to the way street gangs in different parts of Europe tended to be ‘durable’, existing for at least several months; ‘street-​oriented’, with members spending a lot of group time outside home, work and school, often on the streets, in malls or parks. ‘Youth’, indicated that most members were in their adolescent years or early twenties, while ‘illegal activity’, pointed to delinquency or criminal behaviour. Klein et al (2006, p 419) have argued that the definition separates street gangs from other criminal groups such as ‘prison gangs, motorcycle gangs, terrorist groups and adult criminal cartels and organisations’. Although by the end of the first decade of the twenty-​first century, Eurogang had identified that street gangs existed in over 50 cities in 16 countries in Europe (Klein et al, 2006), it had also highlighted that the severity of violence among these groups was generally lower than in the US. However, echoing findings in many parts of the US (see, for instance, Decker, 1996; Decker et al, 2008; Melde and Esbensen, 2013; Melde et al, 2016), Klein et al (2006) argued that street gang members in Europe tended to be disproportionately involved in violence, weapon-​carrying and use. While firearms incidents were most frequently reported among US gangs, physical fighting was more common in many parts of Europe. Accordingly, violence, although generally less severe than in the US, often appeared to be an important vehicle for establishing an identity among disadvantaged young men in European cities (Klein et al, 2006). However, even against this backdrop of increasing interest in gang studies across Europe, UK researchers continued to be resistant to the ‘gang’ label for many years. Muncie’s (2014) observation that ‘America owns the street gang, while Britain has traditionally been the home of youth subcultures’ continued to be influential, even as a wider interest in and debate on the existence and possible nature of UK street gangs began to emerge (Densley et al, 2020). In the next section, we document this debate while presenting evidence of the growing presence of gangs in British cities that has emerged in the 2000s and 2010s. 6

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The great UK gang debate Over 50 years ago, researchers such as Mays (1954), Scott (1956) and Downes (1966) argued that there was no evidence of any form of structured gang culture on UK soil (Campbell and Muncer, 1989). However, the presence of subcultures among young people became well documented. The emergence of the Teddy Boys in the 1960s, which spread from London to the provinces, was synonymous with ‘rock and roll music, jitterbugging and beer drinking marathons’ and ultimately morphed into the emergence of the Mods and Rockers (Campbell and Muncer, 1989, p 274). Subsequently, Skinheads emerged in the late 1960s, adopting confrontational approaches and nationalistic ideology, followed in the 1970s by Punks, who were ‘nihilistic, anarchistic and disillusioned with the establishment’ (Campbell and Muncer, 1989, p 274). Youth subcultural expression dominated the thinking on young people’s group offending patterns within the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, founded at Birmingham University in 1964 (Harding, 2014). Stanley Cohen (1972) highlighted that subculture identity was largely constructed via media reporting and that such reporting created moral panics. Later, Hall et al (1978) argued that these ‘folk devils’ were often created in the guise of reinforcing longstanding illusions that young people were to blame for a whole range of social ills, thus allowing the political scapegoating of youth (McLean, 2019). The gradual and steady emergence of criminology as a discipline in its own right coincided with a decline in the focus on youth subcultures to explain youth and group delinquency (McLean, 2019). In terms of gang scholarship, the work of Eurogang helped in many ways to catapult criminology into a European context while identifying gangs as a source of youth delinquency (Klein, 2001; Weerman et al, 2009; McLean, 2019). However, perhaps the first seeds in this regard had been sown by James Patrick (1973) who documented the strong subcultural emphasis on ‘self-​assertion’, ‘rebellious independence against authority’ and the hallowing of violence as features of masculinity within street gangs in Glasgow, Scotland (for reviews, see Deuchar, 2009a, 2013). From the late 1990s, increased UK media discussion had begun to generate heightened political debate about the potential existence of street gangs elsewhere in the UK, and this coincided with the work of Stelfox (1998) who surveyed all UK police forces to explore the existence of gang activity across the country. Stelfox noted the presence of numerous gangs in urban environments, with an average age range of 25–​29 years and a predominantly male membership. Importantly, he identified that most forces reported violence as the main problem associated with gangs, with 60 per cent allegedly possessing firearms (Smithson et al, 2011). By 2001, Dennis 7

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Mares (2001) had identified emergent Black gangs in Moss Side, Manchester, and White gangs in Salford. This was followed by the work of Bullock and Tilley (2002) and Bennett and Holloway (2004), who observed the existence of gangs in England that closely resembled those found in some parts of the US (Deuchar, 2009a). For instance, Bullock and Tilley identified several loose turf-​based gangs in Manchester, a large proportion of whose members were Black and male, and that shared several characteristics with US gangs (McLean, 2019), including territorial violence and crime-​for-​profit ventures. Bennett and Holloway also found similarities between American and British gangs, with activity centred on drug supply and firearms crimes (Deuchar, 2009a; McLean, 2019). By 2008, John Pitts had identified that street gangs in London’s boroughs were defined by internal organisational hierarchies, engaged in extreme levels of violence as well as organised forms of criminality. Young people in Waltham Forest were often ‘reluctant gangsters’ who joined gangs as a means of negotiating the harsh realities of street life (Pitts, 2008). Gang activity within these US-​style ‘supergangs’ included theft, violence, racketeering and drug distribution (see also Pitts, 2012). However, coinciding with the emergence of these gang studies, renewed perspectives on gang denial also began to emerge. While ‘Left Realists’ such as Pitts (2012) argued that something not entirely subcultural was occurring on the streets of England and Wales, Hallsworth and Young (2008, p 188) claimed that the focus on gangs was exaggerated, that gangs had been brought into being as an opportunity for state agents to increase control through fear of crime and that academics, politicians and the media could be accused of ‘gang talking’. They argued that violent subcultures were not necessarily ‘gangs’ and called for an interpretative stance towards ‘violent street worlds’ (Hallsworth, 2013, p 6; see also Holligan et al, 2017). Accordingly, in the latter half of the 2000s, the Metropolitan Police Service initiated a dedicated gangs operation, the Home Office created a subgroup to discover new and innovative means of tackling gangs, and various think tanks commissioned new research in order to better understand the risks posed by gangs. Meanwhile, Hallsworth and Young claimed that there was ‘much ado about nothing’ (interpretation by Densley, 2011, p 13). Their arguments gained traction in the aftermath of England’s ‘summer of violent disorder’ in 2011 (Atkinson and Fraser, 2014, p 154). The then Prime Minister David Cameron proposed that street gangs were at the heart of the violent disorder that took place across English towns and cities in August 2011, and declared a ‘concerted, all-​out war on gangs’; subsequent evidence, however, suggested that only 13 per cent of those participating were gang members (Cottrell-​Boyce, 2013, p 193). Hallsworth and Brotherton (2011, p 3) were quick to retaliate, arguing that the UK found itself in the grip of

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‘gang fever’; by constructing the gang as a ‘suitable enemy’, they argued, other ‘complex social problems’ were being translated into problems of law and order to which ‘illiberal law and order solutions’ were then made to appear logical, most notably gang suppression initiatives that would fall most heavily on young Black men (Hallsworth and Brotherton (2011, p 5). The ideological differences in perspective between Left Idealists (such as Hallsworth) and Left Realists (such as Pitts) characterised the great UK gang debate that raged on for the best part of a decade (Densley et al, 2020; see also Harding, 2014; Andell, 2019). Other scholars took up Hallsworth’s stance, including Gunter, who argued that there is very little evidence to suggest that violent youth gangs have proliferated across urban neighbourhoods in the UK, but that ‘road-​based subcultures’ do exist and serve to provide young people with ‘camaraderie, entertainment, a sense of identity and attachment to neighbourhood life’ (2017, p 201). For Gunter, the very term ‘street gang’ is a racist and criminalising discourse used by right-​wing politicians to justify oppressive police tactics disproportionately against young Black men. While Bennett and Holloway’s (2004) research identified the existence of criminally-​oriented gangs in Manchester that had a tendency to carry weapons and guns, Aldridge and Medina (2008) were less convinced. The latter’s ethnographic research drew attention to how Manchester parents often denied the gang status of their children due to huge variations in terms of ‘on-​the-​g round definitions’ among police, other statutory agencies and community members (Aldridge et al, 2009, p 8). As such, Aldridge et al argued that interventions needed to focus on actual problem behaviour (such as delinquency and offending) rather than gang status. This contrasted with perspectives put forward by Bullock and Tilley (2002), and Bennett and Holloway (2004) that emphasised that over half of the drug supply and firearms crimes in Manchester were thought to be gang-​related, thus concurring with Pitts and others that intervention strategies needed to be focused on reversing the rising trend of gang culture within the UK (Centre for Social Justice, 2009). In recent years, some UK-​based researchers have continued to uphold the perspectives of Left Idealism. They have argued that that there is little evidence to suggest that violent youth gangs have proliferated in disadvantaged urban areas within the UK (Gunter, 2017) and that the ‘gang’ label has been appropriated by the state as an ‘ideological device that drives the hyper-​criminalisation of Black, mixed, Asian and other minority ethnic (BAME) communities’ (Williams and Clarke, 2018, p 1). However, in a wider sense, the subculture–​gang division that previously dominated academic discussion in the UK has begun to subside in the face of overwhelming evidence that suggests that the street gang is a real and (in some contexts) growing phenomenon in many parts of the country.

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Moving beyond the UK gang debate, gang evolution and organised crime As Densley et al (2020) argue, just because no gangs existed in the UK’s past (and some contest this too, see Davies, 2013), does not mean that no gangs exist in the UK’s present. Qualitative ethnographic studies by Densley (2012, 2013, 2014) and Harding (2014, 2020) in London and our own collective work in Scotland (Deuchar, 2009a, 2010, 2013; Deuchar and Holligan, 2010; Holligan, 2013, 2015; Holligan et al, 2017; McLean, 2017, 2019; McLean et al, 2019b) have brought to the forefront a more sustained, realistic perspective on gangs, while escalating patterns of homicide, knife and gun crime in England and Wales throughout 2018–​19 provided final confirmation that gang violence is a very real contemporary issue. Densley’s (2013) rich ethnographic data from almost 200 interviews carried out in London illustrate that complex processes of economic and cultural globalisation have resulted in the organisation of street gangs as a means for gang business. He argues that gangs in London exist on a spectrum ‘from the simple to the complex’ (Densley, 2013, p 172). Many evolve from ‘relatively disorganised neighbourhood groups’ into more ‘corporate entities’ in response to powerful incentives and a commitment to financial goals (Densley, 2013, p 66). Thus, recreation, crime, enterprise and governance do not represent distinct gang business categories but rather ‘actualisation stages through which gangs progress’ (Densley, 2014, p 538). Once they have reached their highest stage of development, gangs thus resemble not just ‘crime that is organised’ but ‘organised crime’ (Densley, 2013, p 66; see also Densley, 2014). Having effectively helped to validate some of Pitts’ earlier findings regarding the very real presence of violent and criminal street gangs in London that are often characterised by territorial rivalries, often between groups of Black and other minority ethnic men, Densley goes even further by suggesting that the evolutionary process he uncovered may not be unique to the UK’s capital city. However, he also recognises that the history and diversity of London may present greater organised crime influences and opportunities, ‘from Afghani and Pakistani heroin traffickers to Turkish and Albanian heroin distributors, Columbian cocaine suppliers to Cambodian cannabis growers, and Jamaican “Yardies” to Lithuanian small arms dealers’ (Densley, 2014, p 539). Harding (2014) has applied Bourdieu’s principles of social field analysis to urban street gangs in London to conclude that young street gang members survive and thrive by generating, trading and maintaining personal levels of ‘street capital’. Drawing on Sandberg and Pederson (2011), Harding (2014, p 6) views street capital as an amalgam of ‘street knowledge and skills (cultural capital); internalised behaviours and ways of being and thinking (habitus); local history, family connections and networks (social capital); 10

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relationships, reputation, status and local levels of recognition, honour and prestige (symbolic capital)’. Harding argues that young men in socially disadvantaged neighbourhoods quickly learn that hegemonic masculinity in the form of paid work will quickly pass them by, but that the gang offers them a chance to ‘do masculinity’ in alternative ways (p 6). The gang social field, for Harding, offers young men a place where they can gain ‘distinction’ through street capital, and by building and maintaining a reputation (p 6). Only by doing all of this within the context of the ‘street casino’ can they access the economic capital that they all strive towards, principally through drug dealing (p 6). Thus, again Harding identifies the links between London street gang culture and organised forms of criminality. Beyond Densley’s and Harding’s work, wider gang research in England and Wales has benefited from descriptive and multivariate inferential analyses of the Offending Crime and Justice Survey. Medina et al (2013) focused their analysis on a sample of young people aged 10–​16 years and examined how their behaviour changed over time, finding that joining a gang increased the likelihood of their spending time socialising in the street, expressing support for pro-​delinquency values and becoming more committed to delinquent friends. Hence, they concluded, ‘gangs operate as a social learning context in which negative values are transmitted and which favour a disengagement from pro-​social peers and commitments’ (Medina et al 2013, p 5). In addition, interdisciplinary approaches have enriched UK gang research, with Alleyne and Wood’s (2010) work focusing on gang members in London schools and their psychological and behavioural characteristics. Their findings provide clear evidence that youth gang members commit more overall crime than non-​gang youth and they conclude with the observation that gang membership is apparently ‘more prevalent in London than previously reported’ (Alleyne and Wood, 2010, p 433–​4). Further, Alleyne et al’s (2014, p 280) subsequent findings based on empirical work with gang members in custody confirm that participants involved in gangs engaged in significantly more ‘aggressive and violent crimes’ and that ‘hypermasculine values’ were endorsed more by self-​identified gang members than by non-​gang youth. In addition, Robinson et al (2019) have found that vulnerable young people in the Merseyside area are increasingly becoming susceptible to child criminal exploitation (CCE) in the form of drug supply, transportation of money and drugs, and possession of weapons on behalf of organised crime groups (OCGs). Further, their research indicates that they are not only being exploited for these activities in local neighbourhoods, but are commonly being transported to different locations –​some over 250 miles from their hometowns –​to participate in the supply of heroin and crack cocaine, a process that police have identified as County Lines (Robinson et al, 2019; McLean et al, 2020; see further discussion in Chapters 4 and 5). 11

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Alongside the insights emerging in England and Wales, a separate and unique body of literature on gangs has continued to emerge within the Scottish context. As we will explore more fully in the next chapter, our own research has focused on Glasgow, a city with a long-​recognised history of violence (Patrick, 1973; Deuchar, 2009a; Davies, 2013), as well as surrounding areas in the west of Scotland. From Deuchar’s (2009a) earlier pioneering fieldwork on street gangs and his observations that young men in Glasgow’s deprived housing schemes often drift into gangs, vie for territory and engage in recreational violence to help cope with social exclusion, more recent insights by McLean (2019) suggest that –​like Densley found in London –​contemporary gangs in the west of Scotland exist on an evolving continuum (see further discussion, Chapter 2). As some young men become more skilful within the social sphere of the street gang they begin to transition from expressive to instrumental forms of criminal activity, where the defence of physical turf gradually becomes replaced with a focus on entrepreneurial activity in the form of retail-​level drug supply and wholesaling practices. Similar to those insights emerging south of the border, the most vulnerable are sometimes exploited by OCGs as a result of debt bondage, while also at times working County Lines of their own volition to obtain financial and status rewards (Robinson et al, 2019; McLean et al, 2020) (for further discussion, see Chapters 4 and 5). In essence, recent research on both sides of the UK border indicates the very real presence of street gangs, their evolving nature and their links with organised crime in the contemporary era. In addition, a torrent of media coverage about rapidly increasing levels of violence in England and Wales has brought the issue of knife crime back to the foreground.

An epidemic of knife crime and the ‘Glasgow’ model By all accounts, 2018–​19 was a watershed period for serious violence in several parts of England and Wales (Densley et al, 2020). Following a decade of decline, homicide rates and reports of knife and gun crimes had begun to rise again in 2014, and in 2018–​19 they reached their highest point in over a decade, with reported increases across all police force areas in England and Wales (HM Government, 2018). In addition, these increases were accompanied by a shift towards younger victims and perpetrators. In particular, by the year ending March 2019, there had been 43,516 offences involving a knife or sharp instrument recorded by police in England and Wales (Office of National Statistics, 2019) –​the highest in the nine-​year series (from the year ending March 2011) (House of Commons Library, 2019). Further, in 2017–​18 285 homicides using a sharp instrument were recorded –​an increase from 212 recorded the previous year, while a 3 per cent increase in police reports involving firearms was also recorded (Office 12

Introduction: Gangs and Violence in the UK

of National Statistics, 2019). London recorded the highest rate, with 1,609 offences involving a knife per 100,000 population, an increase of one offence per 100,000 population from 2017–​18 (Office of National Statistics, 2019), with the majority of incidents involving young Black men (Torjesen, 2018). Across the country, young men aged 18–​24 were the most affected, but evidence also suggested that there had been a considerable increase in the number of homicides committed with knives by juveniles under the age of 18 (Brown et al, 2019). Discussion centred on identifying the root causes of this epidemic of violence, with some focusing on austerity and the huge reductions in spending on services for young people over the past decade (Gunter, 2017); the apparent lack of trust in the police to protect young people, combined with the cuts in police numbers; the growing presence and influence of ‘drill music’ (a subgenre of trap rap music that originated in Chicago, USA that, like gangster rap before it, glamorises violence and blurs the lines between realism, sensationalism and social commentary [Densley, 2020]); and the way social media may be playing a role in normalising the carrying of weapons (Brown et al, 2019). Even more important was the discussion and debate surrounding how best to resolve the escalating issues. On a number of occasions the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Cressida Dick, implied that a public health approach was needed to tackle knife-​related violence in London (Torjesen, 2018). At its heart, this involves developing insights into the deep-​rooted causes of violence, drawing on smart use of data and working across organisational boundaries (Catch 22, 2019; see Chapter 3 for further details). This focus subsequently became embedded within HM Government’s ‘Serious Violence Strategy’, published in April 2018, which argued that ‘tackling serious violence is not a law enforcement issue alone [but] requires a multiple strand approach involving a range of partners across different sectors’ (2018, p 9). Given the strong recognised link between drugs and serious violence, the government’s strategy was focused on four key themes: ‘tackling County Lines and misuse of drugs, early intervention and prevention, supporting communities and partnerships, and an effective law enforcement and criminal justice response’ (HM Government, 2018, p 9). Importantly, the strategy identified the need for Police and Crime Commissioners and Directors of Public Health to work together closely, particularly with regards to drug and alcohol treatment and prevention services. These principles drew largely from the model in place in Glasgow, where the issues of knife crime and gang violence have been treated as an epidemic or disease, and a focus on prevention through multi-​agency intervention work was pioneered by the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit (SVRU) over a decade prior to the emergence of the government’s strategy (Deuchar, 2013; Williams et al, 2014; Deuchar and Weide, 2019; see also 13

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Chapter 3). As Scotland’s largest city, Glasgow has reported issues of street gangs and of weapon-​carrying and use for over 150 years, with the majority of incidents (in contrast to those in cities like London and Manchester) traditionally involving young White men, reflecting the comparative lower ethnic diversity in the city (ethnic minority groups make up 12 per cent of Glasgow’s population, compared to 40 per cent in London and 30 per cent in Manchester) (Gov.uk, 2018). Since 2010, the city has experienced a considerable steady decline in reported incidents of street violence and knife crime, and many attribute this to the numerous intervention strategies that have been put in place, focused on the adoption of a public health perspective on violence. However, it is also true to say that while these somewhat reactive problem-​solving interventions have seen considerable recorded success, the underlying structural issues (including poverty, unemployment and social inequality) that often cause weapon-​carrying, gang membership and violence have in many ways remained unchallenged. Arguably, these prevailing underlying structural challenges have contributed to the recent title Scotland has gained as ‘drug capital of Europe’ (for further discussion, see Chapter 3). Accordingly, the focus of this book is to revisit the phenomena of gangs, weapon-​carrying and violence in Glasgow and its surrounding communities, more than a decade on from Deuchar’s (2009a) original fieldwork there. We explore –​through insights gained from new narrative interviews –​the transitional experiences of some members of Deuchar’s original empirical samples of young men, as well as of others in the same age bracket who grew up at the same time and in the same neighbourhoods (all of whom are now adults and several of whom are practitioners working in the field supporting disadvantaged youth). In so doing, we ascertain how and how much early exposure to gang culture, violence and weapon-​carrying (and/​ or to communities and neighbourhoods blighted by these issues) acted as a pathway to wider types of offending and what ultimately enabled these participants to desist. We also explore the reflections of these participants regarding the extent to which street-​oriented gang culture within the socially deprived housing estates of Glasgow (and the wider west of Scotland) may or may not have changed, and their perspectives on new, (re-​)emerging and continuing youth influences and adversities. In addition, we include insights from wider narrative interviews conducted with young men and women (aged 13–​20) in deprived locales in the west of Scotland. We explore their thoughts on street gang culture, weapon-​carrying and violence, what may still motivate this and the continuing impact it may have, as well as their experiences of wider, contemporary issues including substance misuse, drug supply, football-​related bigotry and the amalgam of issues relating to and emerging from social media engagement –​including poor mental health. Case study illustrations of public health-​related projects 14

Introduction: Gangs and Violence in the UK

and interventions that have made an apparent impact across the west of Scotland are included, drawing on the insights given to us by practitioners. We also engage in a critical analysis of the remaining issues associated with structural social inequality and the policy deficits that may perpetuate the problematic issues uncovered.

Overview of the book’s contents In Chapter 2, we critically examine recent statistical trends relating to the general issues of violent criminality and offensive weapon-​handling in Scotland. We also provide a brief history of street gangs in Glasgow, from their roots in sectarian rivalry to the territorial and recreational focus adopted in the post-​industrial era. We examine how knife crime has traditionally been a defining feature of street gangs in Glasgow and of street-​oriented violence governed by expectations around masculine honour. Insights into the recorded motivations for knife-​carrying and gang violence among young people are explored, drawing from previous research as well as emerging evidence suggesting that gangs may have evolved in the west of Scotland. The chapter concludes by outlining the methodological approaches that we drew upon for the current study, providing detail on sampling methods, access arrangements, geographical locations, ethical protocols adhered to and data analysis methods used. Following on from this, in Part II of the book, we present the insights from our qualitative research fieldwork. In so doing, we revisit the phenomena of gangs, weapon-​carrying and violence in communities in the west of Scotland, more than a decade after Deuchar’s original work, and explore wider contemporary challenges impacting young people. We begin in Chapter 3 by examining how a public health approach to violence prevention has been put in place in Scotland over the last 10–​15 years, with a particular focus on addressing the social determinants of gang violence and weapon-​carrying. We share initial insights from our interviews with practitioners in and around Glasgow to present case study illustrations of pioneering, high-​profile projects and initiatives associated with the SVRU as well as complementary educational and youth outreach initiatives. Drawing on these insights, and as a prelude to the wider discoveries from former gang members, adults and young people that we present in subsequent chapters, we suggest that these interventions have contributed to the decline in gang violence. However, we also draw on practitioners’ perspectives to begin to suggest that entrenched systemic issues such as poverty and social inequality may have thrown up an intersection of wider adversities for disadvantaged youth. In Chapter 4, we share the perspectives of adults from communities in the west of Scotland who participated in our fieldwork, most of whom were former gang members and some of whom were now working as practitioners. 15

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We share the interviewees’ recollections of lived experiences in the housing schemes at a time when territorial gang violence was particularly pronounced and the factors that enabled them to transition out of gang life, change and desist. We also share their viewpoints (like those outlined in the previous chapter) suggesting that, as territorial street gang violence has continued to decline in the west of Scotland, other pressing issues –​most prominently associated with drug use and drug distribution –​have come to the fore. One of our priorities in conducting the fieldwork for this book was to compare and contrast the insights emerging from younger and older participants in order to provide a clear illustration of the changing and evolving nature of the issues and influences young people face in the west of Scotland. Chapter 5, therefore, draws predominantly upon the voices of young people to explore the difficulties they face today. In accordance with emergent themes from the data, and given that the Scottish Government, Police Scotland and the National Crime Agency have all highlighted the significant threat posed by drug misuse and serious organised crime related to the illegal supply of narcotics, it was perhaps not surprising to find drug supply and harms at the forefront of the young people’s narratives. Therefore, the chapter explores drug supply and the impact on young people in Scotland, as well as their own described roles in it. Our extended discussions with young people during our fieldwork also threw up additional insights relating to (re-​)emerging or continuing influences that were impacting their lives. Chapter 6 outlines the remaining perspectives emerging from our interviews with young people in the west of Scotland, as well as some complementary insights from practitioners. In so doing, we consider their views on the continuing eclectic issues relating to street gang culture, weapon-​carrying and violence, the longstanding (and, to some extent, re-​emerging) issues associated with football bigotry, and the amalgam of newer issues relating to and emerging from social media engagement. Part III draws the discussion and analysis together. To serve the interests of clarity and consistency of treatment, Chapter 7 aims to offer a faithful and detailed synthesis of the research findings from earlier chapters. Following this, we explore implications for policy and practice. To conclude, we reflect on the limitations of our research work and propose directions for new research into the subjects addressed in the book. As each chapter has a distinct identity, our conclusion uses each one as a frame within which further analysis and synthesis are advanced. The bulk of the conclusion emphasises the framing of youth experience, then we re-​conceptualise perceptions through a more critical and less descriptive analysis.

16

2

Violence and Gang Evolution: Scottish Perspectives In this chapter, we critically examine recent statistical trends relating to the general issues of violent criminality and offensive weapon-​handling in Scotland. We also provide a brief history of street gangs in Scotland’s largest city, Glasgow, from their roots in sectarian rivalry to the territorial and recreational focus adopted in the post-​industrial era. We examine how knife crime has traditionally been a defining feature of street gangs in Glasgow and of street-​oriented violence governed by expectations around masculine honour. Insights into the recorded motivations for knife-​carrying and gang violence among young people are explored, drawing from previous research as well as the emerging evidence suggesting that gangs may have evolved in the west of Scotland. The chapter concludes by outlining the methodological approaches that we drew upon for the current study, detailing the sampling methods, access arrangements, geographical locations, ethical protocols and data analysis methods used.

Violent crime rates in Glasgow and wider Scotland Rates of crime, especially those against the person and, to a lesser degree, vandalism have historically (1950–​84) been considerably higher in Scotland than, for instance, in Sweden, which shares many of its population characteristics (McClintock and Wikström, 1990). It may be that feelings of shame and stigmatism among lower-​working-​class youth cultural groups are greater in areas of Scotland, and through gang membership and activity these feelings are transformed into pride and solidarity (Moran 2015). The youth street gang, Moran (2015) proposes, offers an esprit de corps through expressive violence and symbolic praxis factors that ward off threats such as injury and prison; possibly this phenomenon that transforms shame into pride helps to explain higher rates of violence in parts of Scotland with 17

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heightened criminality and youth gangs. Law and Mooney (2012) show how the experience of stigma marginalises working-​class youth in Scotland. McClintock and Wikström’s comparative data with Sweden for 1950–​84 are particularly striking for violent assaults reported to the police (per 100,000 population), which were found to be significantly higher in Scotland, including for lethal violence. Glasgow was found to have a significantly higher rate of recorded violent crime between 1950 and 1984 than Stockholm and other Scottish cities; unemployment increased more rapidly over this period in Scotland compared with Sweden, as did violent crime. Although not specifically gang-​related, these data form a wider canvas likely to sustain and promote criminal offending connected with territorial gang violence intergenerationally. However, across the three official sources of evidence –​police recorded crime, the Scottish Crime and Justice Survey (SCJS)1 and data on hospital admissions due to assault and assault with a sharp object –​the suggestion is that there has been a ‘significant reduction in non-​sexual violence’ over the period from 2008–​9 to 2018–​19 in Scotland (Batchelor et al, 2019, p 4). According to Police Scotland’s recorded crime statistics for 2018–​19 (the most recent recorded period prior to our research fieldwork), overall crime rose by 1 per cent, from 244,504 to 246,480 (Scottish Government, 2019b). In the same period, a much larger rise of 10 per cent took place in non-​sexual violent crimes: from 7,251 to 8,008. The latter again increased by 16 per cent in 2019–​20 (when we were out in the field), to reach 9,316 (Scottish Government, 2020c). However, this is still much lower than in previous decades. Glasgow city had the largest number of recorded crimes at 717 per 10,000 (2018–​19) and 680 per 10,000 (2019–​20). Non-​sexual violent crimes include attempted murder and serious assault (54 per cent in 2018–​19; 44 per cent in 2019–​20), robbery (23 per cent in 2018–​19, 19 per cent in 2019–​20), other violence (22 per cent in 2018–​19, 18 per cent in 2019–​20) and homicide (1 per cent in both years). From 2018, non-​sexual violent crime in Scotland rose to 15 per 10,000 population, with Glasgow having the highest rate: 27 per 10,000. In most cases, the victims were young males. Since 2002, there was a general downward trend in recorded serious assaults, stemming from a decline in the number of cases involving a weapon. However, in 2017–​18, Glasgow stood out for having a greater number of serious assaults involving the use of a knife or bladed weapon, an offence historically more common in the west of Scotland. Two points are clear from the official Scottish Government sources: first, over almost two decades, there has been a general trend of steady decline in crime and second, that there has been a recent increase in non-​sexual violent crimes, especially in the west of Scotland and specifically in Glasgow, which is home to 12 per cent of Scotland’s population. In a monthly bulletin for April 2020 (two months after we had completed our fieldwork) that omits data on age, the Scottish Government (2020b) 18

Violence and Gang Evolution

examined police recorded crime in the context of the COVID-​19 pandemic (and statutory lockdown measures enacted in Scotland at the time). In this bulletin, statistics compared crime statistics for April 2019 with April 2020, finding an 18 per cent decrease in overall crime in April 2020, with even non-​sexual violent crime dropping by 14 per cent, from 740 to 636. A total of 15,449 offences were recorded in April 2020, compared with 21,644 in April 2019. The main contributors to the decrease in violence at this point, the Scottish Government points out, were reductions in attempted murder and serious assault, which fell by 35 per cent. However, some types of violence rose, driven mainly by threats and extortion, which rose 35 per cent in April 2020 compared to April 2019. In contrast to this upward trajectory, drug crime fell by 11 per cent and, in Glasgow city, which was the largest contributor to the general trend in crime reduction nationally, drug crime dropped by 19 per cent in April 2020. These 2020 official statistics offer a mixed characterisation of the volume of violence, as on the one hand a general decline was reported, but on the other, in contexts such as threat and extortion, violence increased, and robbery also increased slightly (136 to 139). The COVID-​19 lockdown measures were likely to have impacted the availability of drugs and alcohol as well as mixing in public places, which are factors connected with violence. However, the volume of reported robberies was similar in 2019 and 2020. Rice (2013) discovered statistically significant associations in Scotland between alcohol outlet density, crime and deprivation. Besides alcohol abuse, illicit drug use presents challenges for Scottish communities under threat from drug-​related crime (Malloch and McIvor, 2013). Further pressure is reflected in the backgrounds of teenage males referred to the Children’s Hearing System for offending in Scotland, most of whom are from lone-​parent households, state-​benefit households and local authority tenancies –​all features interconnected with the demographics of deprivation and crime (Whyte, 2004). Whyte observed the established patterns behind youth offending by those aged 12–​15 years: Reviews of family factors associated with youth offending have found that poor parental supervision, harsh discipline, parental conflict and parental rejection were important predictors of offending; broken homes and early separations, both permanent and temporary, and criminality in the family are also commonly associated with delinquency. (Whyte, 2004, p 399) The Scottish Government (2019a) has drawn attention to the salience of weapon usage in and around Glasgow: It remains the case that the use of knives or other blades is much more prevalent in the west of Scotland than elsewhere, and a majority of 19

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all serious assaults committed in Scotland involved the consumption of alcohol prior to the incident. (Scottish Government, 2019a, p 29) The official statistics about Scotland suffer from the bias intrinsic to all recorded crime data, which is that for several reasons, actual crime levels are likely to be considerably greater than those reported. First, what is recorded is at the discretion of officers on the beat and the judgements of their seniors. And second, victims may not report attacks out of fear of retaliation, fear or mistrust of police authorities, or a combination of these and other undetermined reasons. Nevertheless, the likelihood is that these data are valid, as this official geographic emphasis triangulates with independent academic research and previous research funded by the Scottish Government on the subject of weapon-​carrying (Scottish Government, 2018). In the latter source, the narrative is positive; it describes a ‘substantial long-​term reduction in the handling of offensive weapons over the past decade’ (Scottish Government, p 3), supported by community perceptions and emergency hospital admissions (see also Batchelor et al, 2019).

Weapon-​carrying, signals and triggers Based on police recorded crime statistics (Scottish Government, 2018), trend data on offensive weapon crime show a similar downward trend over a ten-​year period to non-​sexual violent crime. Weapon crime took various expressions: threats, common assault and serious assault. Statistical trends over the past decade indicated ‘a substantial and a long-​term reduction in the handling of offensive weapons in Scotland’ (Scottish Government); hospital admissions and residents’ perceptions confirmed this decline. Of those included in these official statistics, most (89 per cent) were male: in 2016–​17, these offending males had an average age of 29. Ten years earlier, by contrast, those involved in this criminality were significantly younger, being aged around 19. Teenagers were nevertheless impacted: one-​fifth of victims of weapon-​related crime (17 per cent) were teenagers –​aged 13–​19 –​ others from the age groups 20–​29, 30–​39 and 40 and over made up roughly 25 per cent of victims, with the majority of those over 20 encountering this violence in public settings (75 per cent). Most perpetrators and victims knew each other (59 per cent) and lived in urban areas of high deprivation (see further discussion, Chapter 3). The handling of offensive weapons fell by 68 per cent between 2006 and 2017, paralleling declines in violent crimes over the past two decades. These data illustrate that community spaces are dangerous for a proportion of teenage male youth and that their familiarity with one another implies that they live in relatively close proximity in areas of disadvantage. While these official data indicate a decline in violence with weapons, this is not 20

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equivalent to concluding general violence has decreased, nor should it be concluded that recorded crime is a reliable measure of actual offending or that declining crime patterns are known by those in communities. Holligan’s (2015) theorisation of street violence pulls together several forms of agency, including the individual’s. It uses actor-​network theory to explain how street violence involves cognitive scripts representing historic and contemporary networks of influence, feuds, neighbourhood expectations, norms of masculinity and the immediate triggers whose collective efficacy underpins a person’s recourse to violent action and the narrowing scope for individual agency. Holligan et al’s (2017) research into weapon-​carrying in Glasgow found that a symbolic construction of social space by young men informed their perceptions of landscapes of violence. Following a signal crime perspective, youth reacted to news of crimes, signalled by incidents they heard about; weapons or other strategies for protection were adopted as a reaction to these signals, as they sought to safeguard themselves from victimisation (see further discussion, ­Chapters 3 and 6). The Home Affairs Committee overlooked the issue of signalling in communities by narrowing their focus upon facts about weapon-​carrying and use (House of Commons, 2009). Knife crime in neighbourhoods communicates messages that street-​ oriented young people ignore at their peril. As far back as 1970, a multi-​agency Glasgow Working Group explored the carrying of offensive weapons in the prestigious British Journal of Criminology.2 In total, 860 cases of weapon-​carrying were recorded by the police in Glasgow in 1965 and then mapped onto areas of residence in the city where the ranking differed, some districts being more prominent and by implication more dangerous. The peak age for violent offences rose from 14 to 17 years in 1965, and most of those sampled had criminal records in this classic research. The research team concluded that: In general terms the social background material suggests a recurrent pattern of disturbed relationships, unemployment, truancy, drinking and gambling, although this latter is mentioned less frequently. Reports from the various institutions indicate frequent poor contact by families. There are frequent comments such as ‘cooperates well in institution but staff have doubts that good intentions will be fulfilled’. (ISTD Scottish Branch: Glasgow Working Party, 1970, p 260) The above investigation illuminates the intimate contexts in which a culture of violence and weapon-​carrying emerges. Many of the offenders’ family members (44) had criminal records. Of these, in 37 cases it was siblings who had the criminal record. It was estimated that at least 19 of the sample were connected with gang activity. In 47 cases, the weapon judged offensive was a knife, others were knuckledusters, kukris, razors, sharpened steel combs, 21

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hammers, axes, swords, metal bars, a garden fork, scissors, belts and chisels. Some of the large group conflict incidents took place on the main streets of Glasgow and alcohol was associated with 48 incidents. These often took place between 9 pm and 12 pm. On arrest, some claimed they carried the weapon for ‘protection’ only; determining whether or not there is reason for us to accept this self-​report data is notoriously difficult. Echoing today’s language of marginality, the researchers concluded: On leaving school there is a void in many young people’s lives which was previously filled by National Service. We could not recommend the return of National Service, but it is clear that society must find some way of involving this section of the community who are clearly not attracted by the facilities currently available. (ISTD Scottish Branch: Glasgow Working Party, 1970, p 269) We see here a gap developing between the period of in locus parentis being given by schools and the transition of these youth beyond schooling and into uncertain adulthoods in terms of training and employment as well as their status within a family economy. The reference to National Service is suggestive of mentoring and directed support being required, but now no longer available. Youths with shared social characteristics to the Glasgow 1965 sample are, Holligan et al (2019) found, now more likely to be involved in illegal drug distribution in Scotland (see further discussion on this in subsequent chapters). Similar studies in England demonstrate urban gangs are extending their violent criminality into rural dispersed communities and across police jurisdictions (Harding, 2020; McLean et al, 2020). The interconnected theme of gangs, violence and drugs pervade recent studies in England and Wales (Bennett and Holloway, 2004; Densley, 2013; Smithson et al, 2013; Harding, 2014; see further discussion in ­Chapters 4 and 5). However, the history of gang culture in Glasgow can be traced back to at least 150 years ago.

Gangs and the challenges of marginalised youth The earliest recorded gangs in Glasgow date back to the late nineteenth century. Davies (2013) documents the rise in the city’s gang culture that led on from the mass Irish migration following the famines of the mid-​nineteenth century. Widespread sectarian disturbances emerged in the 1870s and 1880s, coinciding with Protestant Irish migrants establishing the Orange Order and the annual ‘Orange Walks’ (see Chapter 6 for further discussion). Some have argued that the sectarian rivalry was further fuelled by the formation of the two main football clubs in Glasgow: Celtic and Rangers. The founding father of Celtic FC, Brother Walfrid, had a vision to create a football team 22

Violence and Gang Evolution

that would ‘integrate young Scottish Catholics into Scottish society’ and the club was formally founded in 1887 (Murray, 2003, p 139). Conversely, Rangers FC, founded in 1872, always had a firm Protestant Unionist identity (see also Deuchar and Holligan, 2010; Deuchar, 2016). The ‘Muldoons’ and the ‘Penny Mob’ were sectarian-​oriented gangs supporting Catholicism and Protestantism respectively, and they were seen as creating a reign of terror around the turn of the century (Davies, 2013). By the early twentieth century, the notorious gang known as the ‘Brigton Billy Boys’ had emerged, taking its name from William of Orange, whose victory at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 had secured Protestant rule in England and Scotland as well as Ireland. Protestant youths were recruited from the poorer areas of the east end of Glasgow (such as Brigton, though Bridgeton is the formal name of the area) and they engaged in ‘bitter, long-​running feuds with half-​a-​dozen Catholic gangs across the east end’, including the equally notorious ‘Norman Conks’, a large Catholic street gang from Norman Street, Dalmarnock (Davies, 2013, p 198; see also Deuchar, 2016). By the 1920s and 1930s, these young male gang members fought with razors and were instantly recognised by their swagger, as they enjoyed the prestige and kudos that went along with the ability to instil fear in local communities where they hung out (Davies, 2013). Glasgow subsequently acquired a reputation as the most violent city in the UK, as gang conflicts gained increasing momentum against the backdrop of overcrowding in the inner-​city areas and mass unemployment following the decline of the shipbuilding and heavy engineering sectors (Deuchar, 2016). Sir Percy Sillitoe (1956), the eminent Glasgow police officer, provided one of the few intimate accounts of the inner workings of the Glasgow razor gangs. In doing so, Sillitoe identified the gang as comprising two units: those who were core members and those who were on the periphery of the gang. While core members were normally hardened criminals specialising in a range of criminal activities, those on the periphery were considered loose associates who attached themselves to the gang primarily for its fighting function and for sociable purposes. Those on the periphery of this criminal culture appeared to rarely be involved in more organised crime (Davies, 1998). Glasgow’s reputation for violence was somewhat romanticised in the fictional publication of McArthur and Kingsley Long’s (1935) No Mean City, depicting gang warfare in the city (Craig, 2010). Set in the poorest communities of the city, the iconic text cemented Glasgow’s image as a city comprising uncompromising and violent individuals. However, the issue of gang culture in Glasgow was rarely mentioned in the popular press in the immediate years following World War II (Davies, 2013; Deuchar, 2016). From the early 1960s an increasing number of articles on juvenile crime subsequently began to focus once again on the subject of gangs and 23

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violence, and it was reported that Glasgow had the worst gang problem in the UK (Bartie, 2010). Much of the gang violence emerged within the context of Glasgow’s post-​war peripheral housing estates (or ‘schemes’ as they are commonly known in the west of Scotland), which suffered from unemployment, a lack of local facilities and inherent boredom among local youth. Thus, the gang culture that had been so prevalent in the inner-​city areas of Glasgow in the 1930s had relocated to the new housing schemes, with a particular emphasis on territorial divisions emerging in communities such as Easterhouse on the eastern periphery of Glasgow (Deuchar, 2009a, 2016). Alongside reports of a new proliferation of Glasgow gangs in the late 1960s, ethnographic research carried out by James Patrick (1973) identified the presence of numerous territorial gangs in Glasgow’s east end that were centred primarily on violence. For young Glaswegian boys, the lure of the gang was seen to be driven by the Glasgow culture of ‘self-​assertion and rebellious independence against authority as a means of attaining masculinity’ (Patrick, 1973, p 170). Indeed, it has been argued that Glasgow has often been seen as the template for the ‘archetypal macho city’ (Craig, 2010, p 144). Hegemonic masculine values, focused on the need to act tough and to place an emphasis on strength, physical skill and endurance, have consistently been to the fore (Connell, 2005; Craig, 2010). Against the historical backdrop of a city that was once dominated by heavy industry and overcrowded tenements, many working-​class men from deprived neighbourhoods in Glasgow have traditionally been driven by a ‘culture of honour’. In the housing schemes, projecting a tough masculine image has often been associated with young men defending their public reputation for valour and virility against any perceived slight or transgression (Craig, 2010; Deuchar, 2016). Over the past 50 years, deindustrialisation, and the widespread unemployment that emerged as a result, has meant that the social construction of masculinity characterised by violent identities has come even further to the fore in disadvantaged areas of Glasgow (Deuchar, 2009a, 2013, 2016). The celebrity Frankie Vaughan’s 1960s appeal to gang members on the notorious Easterhouse estate publicly highlighted the issue and foregrounded a negative aspect of this youth working-​class culture (Bartie, 2010). In 2009, more than 40 years after the research by Patrick (1973), Deuchar (2009a) conducted a groundbreaking study that privileged the voices of those whose lives were inflected with gangs, territoriality and violence. Gang-​affiliated youth living in socially disadvantaged areas of Glasgow were examined through the explanatory framework of social capital theory –​based around the work of Robert Putnam (2000) and Pierre Bourdieu (1986, 1990) –​within the political notion descriptive of their disenfranchisement and worrying potential trajectories of ‘criminal careers’ within organised crime. In the book Gangs, Marginalised Youth and Social Capital, its sequel Policing Youth Violence and related academic articles, Deuchar (2009a, 2009b, 24

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2010, 2011, 2013) has argued that it is the sense of an absent meaningful social identity that contributes to the young people’s (predominantly young men’s) entrapment in this dangerously volatile cosmos (see also Winton, 2005). Through association with gang culture, the youths in Deuchar’s (2009a, 2009b, 2010) early studies experienced the social capital that was difficult to embrace or access elsewhere as family, education and employment had become problematic areas of their biographies. Deuchar argued that what drove young people from socially disadvantaged areas of Glasgow into a negative future was the stigma of their wider demonisation by the mass media’s projections about working-​class teenage youth coupled with a generalised fear caused by neoliberal policies that eroded community cohesion. This policy assault impacted de-​industrial landscapes with ferocity and intersected with the then recent immigration of traumatised asylum seekers into Glasgow, some fleeing armed conflict and political repression (Fraser and Piacentini, 2013). The arrival of this impoverished demography into White Scottish community spaces struggling to retain social capital served to increase the challenges faced by each group (Deuchar, 2009a). Deuchar also argued that processes of the negative ‘othering’ of these youth by over-​controlling police and official surveillance, including criminal justice sanctions, contributed to a daily feeling of ghettoisation. Deuchar explained the recourse to illegal drugs and alcohol excess as escapism from their bleak social conditions (Deuchar, 2009a). Their voices, he argued, were not those of generalised political rebellion, but rather of struggle through coping strategies such as substance abuse. During the hours of darkness, young people witnessed police officers interrupting criminal activity and rather than this creating a calming sense of safety, it intensified their feelings of a pervasive culture of violence capital and feelings of being under siege. The loss of adequate recreational provision in these areas confirmed their sense of their communities not mattering to those in power. Those that ‘cared’ about them were peers of a similar age, whose sense of belonging to a gang’s turf meant they also limited the movement of youth from different turfs who were judged as a threat to their wellbeing and the progression of local youth into positive futures (Holligan and Deuchar, 2015). This dynamic of oppositional thinking and being restrained through an enforced conformity bordered on the expression of a collective paranoia fuelled by inflated negative media reports that confirmed the territorial gang cognitive script mentality. The perceptions of these youth were found to be steeped in the belief that gangs were an ever-​present danger that at any moment might damage their fragile social and mental wellbeing. Their voices, Deuchar found, were not surprisingly replete with fear, anxiety and resentment (Deuchar, 2009a, 2009b, 2010, 2011, 2013). The young people in Deuchar’s studies displayed distinctive cultural markers projected by a choice of dress code, signalling threat and accordingly 25

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stigmatising them as ‘others’ by wider society. Deuchar’s (2009a, 2013) ethnographic fieldwork, in particular, jibed with reports about territorial gang violence by Patrick (1973) in his insightful peregrinations into the Glasgow street corners of the 1960s. While involvement in gang-​related street violence had a recreational appeal in early adolescence, as these youths aged Deuchar (2009a) discovered regret for impulsive and instrumental violent behaviour. Winning bonding social capital through joint criminal activities brought these youths into conflict with the law. The purposefulness and hegemonic masculine identity, inherited through male family members and achieved through street conflicts, diminished with time (Holligan and Deuchar, 2009; Deuchar, 2013). This complex array of overlapping factors formed the context for weapon-​carrying and violence. The statistics about knife crime described earlier in the chapter have therefore to be seen in terms of community, peer group, employment and political dynamics shaping the lives of communities and street cultures. Knife crime and weapon-​carrying in this vein are cultural ‘adaptations’ to this unpleasant world, rather than a reflection of class or individual pathology. The makings of this culture pre-​ date the insights of Deuchar (2009a) in his textual synthesis.

Moving on: evolving gang culture Since the early 2000s, there have been wider notable studies on gangs in Scotland, particularly Glasgow. Yet this revisiting of the contemporary Glasgow gang has taken a unique form, different from what has taken place in the wider Anglo-​British context. This development guided the conclusion that gangs in Glasgow, and Scotland more broadly, always have been and perhaps always will be inherently different from those in major English cities. Cutting edge research by Deuchar (2009a, 2013), Fraser (2013, 2015), Holligan (2013), Lawson (2013) and Miller (2015), and insights by the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit (SVRU) (SVRU, 2011), supported by wider work on youth and criminality (eg Bradshaw, 2005; Smith, 2006; McAra and McVie, 2007), have found Scottish gangs to be recreational youth groups, territorial in nature, with flexible structures, no fixed organisational hierarchy and no intent to exclusively engage in serious criminal activities for the purpose of financial gain. Regarding gang organisation in Scotland, Squires et al (2008) provide a good summary of the overall argument about how Scottish gangs have traditionally been perceived. They suggest that the weapon of choice in Glasgow has traditionally been the knife and not the gun, and that violence is inherently tied up in issues related to a masculinised territoriality among youth groups, as opposed to being directly related to drug distribution and supply by late adolescents and young men in gangs (Bullock and Tilley, 2003; Pitts, 2008; Deuchar, 2009a; Densley, 2012; Palasinski and Riggs, 2012; Densley, 2013; Miller, 2015). 26

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However, recent research by McLean (2017, 2019) suggests that gangs in the west of Scotland may increasingly exist on an evolving continuum. McLean outlines how ‘young street gangs’ (YSGs) are predominantly recreational outfits in which youths that share local history, proximity and existing friendships associate with loose peer groups. While the YSG is at times delinquent, it is nonetheless far from being inherently criminal. In the recreational stage, the gang retains the potential to evolve towards criminality. ‘Young crime gangs’ (YCGs) are comprised predominantly of the core members of YSGs who participated in the vast majority of criminal activity. These members eventually break away from the larger and more fluid YSG and instead begin to solidify and become more cohesive. This process occurs in response to both natural maturities associated with the ageing process and the introduction of external threats or pressures. As criminality is intrinsic to such individuals’ own personalities, it consequently becomes an integral feature of wider YCG identity. This procedure is aided by disproportionate delinquent association. In attempting to engage in organised crime, YCGs lose their territorial nature. However, while YCGs engage in organised crime, or crime that is organised, gang existence is primarily for social purposes (Mares, 1999). The gang’s criminal activities are a consequence or by-​product of group existence. Ultimately, gang activities are hybrid in nature, and lie between the social and economic factors. Yet, as YCGs continue to engage successfully in increasingly serious and organised crime, eventually the purpose for group existence undergoes a drastic change. As members become adults and financial gains increase, the purpose for group existence becomes one of purely business. Membership may expand at this stage to incorporate wider criminal partnerships. At this stage, the YCG has effectively become an OCG and thus enters into the syndicate stage of the provided model (McLean, 2017, 2019; see also Harding et al, 2019; McLean et al, 2019b). Importantly, McLean (2017) notes that not all YSGs will evolve into YCGs in Glasgow. Nor is it a given that YCGs will evolve into OCGs. Rather, gang evolution is a potential and requires ‘not only the right blend of individuals being brought together but also the right conditions’ (McLean, 2017, p 319). However, wider, related research has highlighted the transitional and fluid nature of young gang members’ activity within Glasgow’s housing estates in recent years, and the way street gang membership can, and does on occasion, lead on to participation in organised crime (Harding et al, 2019; McLean et al, 2019b). From having a strong focus on public performance of masculinity and the defence of physical turf as YSG members, through the gradual adoption of a business orientation and the viewing of territory as flexible and fluid as YCGs, to the ultimate manipulation of territorial knowledge and street capital to create entrepreneurial forms of social control as OCGs, young men 27

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in Glasgow may often have an evolving relationship with territory over time (McLean, 2019; McLean et al, 2019b). Recent research (Storrod and Densley, 2017) has illustrated the role of the internet and social media in enhancing the instrumental business of gangs –​including illicit drug distribution and County Lines activity –​in London, however to date there remains a paucity of research into these issues in the west of Scotland, as well as into the influence of social media on wider youth behaviour, mental health and contemporary delinquency there. The remainder of this book focuses on these and other issues. In the empirical chapters, we explore the combined perceptions of contemporary teenagers, young people, adults and practitioners who work with youth about the current issues relating to gang culture and violence in and around Glasgow. We explore and examine the extent to which youth and street-​ oriented culture within the west of Scotland’s deprived housing estates may have changed, the impact of public health-​related interventions and our participants’ views in relation to wider contemporary challenges in the west of Scotland, including the issues connected to drug distribution, organised crime, football-​related bigotry, mental health and the role and impact of social media.

Research methods Sampling, participants and data collection In the qualitative data collection fieldwork for the book, we aimed –​through the use of multiple in-​depth, semi-​structured interviews –​to first gain initial insights from a range of practitioners in and around Glasgow regarding their perceptions of current issues relating to gang culture and violence; the nature and perceived impact of interventions they were connected with; and their views about the lingering and emerging challenges facing young people in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Even more importantly, we also set out to gain follow-​up insights from some members of previous samples of young people who participated in Deuchar’s earlier fieldwork in and around Glasgow; from wider samples of adult men and women (aged 25+) who had grown up in the same communities and during the same time period as those young people and were (for the most part) former gang members; and from teenagers and young people in socially disadvantaged neighbourhoods in the west of Scotland in relation to the contemporary nature and impact of gang culture, and the wider adversities impacting on youth. Accordingly, in the winter months of 2019–​20, we first arranged to meet with a diverse range of west of Scotland practitioners, all of whom were connected in some way to the delivery of interventions and initiatives that sought to engage disadvantaged young people through the use of a public 28

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health approach to reducing and preventing violence (for a full discussion on this approach, see Chapter 3). The sampling strategy for this part of the research was purposive, and included elements of convenience-​led, opportunistic and snowballing approaches (Palinkas et al, 2015). Initial potential participants (such as those within organisations like the SVRU) were identified because of their particularly rich experience of and involvement in the public health approach to violence prevention in Scotland (see Chapter 3 for details). Thereafter, through a shared process of snowballing, opportunistic and convenience-​led approaches, other practitioners were approached based on our existing professional contacts in the west of Scotland (and the practitioners’ previous involvement in Deuchar’s [2009a, 2013] research) and/​or as a result of recommendations made by other research participants. As an example, as authors, we had a range of existing contacts within youth work, community learning and development, and sport-​related organisations in and around Glasgow, whose projects had been interconnected with the work of the SVRU and the public health approach. However, practitioners in these and other contexts also made recommendations for further useful contacts in the police, in schools and in other youth work settings for us to follow up on and to approach for potential participation. Participant information sheets were issued to all practitioners to provide full details of the study and the focus for the interviews, and we subsequently arranged to meet again with those who indicated a willingness to participate, when formal consent forms were issued and one-​to-​one, semi-​structured interviews of up to 60 minutes conducted with each participant (with 22 participants in total). The purpose of the practitioner interviews was to explore and examine their personal and professional perspectives on the current issues relating to gang culture and violence in and around Glasgow. We sought to explore the views of those connected to public health-​related initiatives that could be regarded as creative and pioneering, having in some cases attracted much public, political and media attention nationally and, in some cases internationally, as well as wider, complementary, youth-​and  community-​based interventions. We wanted to examine the nature and perceived impact of these interventions and how they may have evolved against the backdrop of the potentially changing landscape of territorial violence in the west of Scotland. Finally, we also briefly explored the practitioners’ views on the wider challenges facing young people in disadvantaged neighbourhoods in the west of Scotland, a theme that we intended to explore more deeply with young people, as well as adults and former gang members, from these locations. The sampling strategy for the second part of the fieldwork was again purposive, and included elements of convenience-​led, opportunistic and snowballing approaches (Palinkas et al, 2015). Firstly, we attempted to reconnect with some of the young people who had participated in Deuchar’s 29

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earlier interviews between 2008 and 2012 (who had mostly been street gang members and were now adults, aged 25+) (see, for instance, Deuchar, 2009a, 2009b, 2013). Since many of Deuchar’s original samples of youth participants had been attached to and accessed via the organisations where our participating practitioners were located, we drew on the support of some of our more senior practitioners to potentially act as key gatekeepers, to make contact with these individuals and to seek their willingness to be interviewed again. However, locating and/​or securing the participation of members of Deuchar’s earlier samples proved challenging for a number of reasons. For example, some organisations had completely lost contact with the previous research participants and in some cases, practitioners were aware that the particular individuals in question had moved away from Scotland or –​in one or two cases –​were known to be in prison for undisclosed offences. In a few other cases, members of the gatekeeping organisations were able to locate the individuals in question, but they declined to participate. During follow-​on conversations with gatekeepers, they revealed to us that these young adults felt that too much time had passed and that they were reluctant to discuss and revisit some of the gang-​related issues that had been prevalent in their lives as young people. In the end, we were able to access just three male participants from Deuchar’s earlier fieldwork involving young people (for specific details, see Chapter 4). During initial meetings with these adult men, participant information sheets were issued to provide full details of the study and the focus for the interviews, and once they had confirmed their willingness to participate, formal consent forms were issued and one-​ to-​one, semi-​structured interviews of up to 60 minutes conducted with each participant. In order to complement and further enrich the insights gained from these participants, we again approached our gatekeeping organisations to potentially seek to conduct extended, follow-​on interview discussions with three of their practitioners (all male) who had themselves grown up in the housing schemes in and around Glasgow during the late 1990s and 2000s, and in most cases had been involved in gang culture and violence themselves (for further details, see Chapter 4). In addition, members of our gatekeeping organisations also provided access to two other young adult participants (one male, one female) who had been involved in gang culture and/​or violent offending and had subsequently become attached to their interventions. Finally, drawing upon a snowball sampling approach, several of the interviewees also provided access to four other adult men who were known to them, had grown up in socially deprived housing schemes during the time when territorial gang culture was at its height, had in most cases been actively involved in gang violence and were willing to participate in an interview with us. In total, this brought the size of the sample for this 30

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part of the research to 12 participants (11 males and 1 female). The purpose of the interviews with the adult members of our sample (who were mostly former gang members and, in several cases, now practitioners) was to briefly explore their experiences of growing up in socially deprived west of Scotland neighbourhoods, what had stimulated their gang-​related offending history (where relevant), the extent to which involvement in territorial street gang culture had stimulated wider, more serious criminal involvement for them and/​or how they had reached the point where they had begun to desist. We also explored the participants’ views on how the housing schemes they had grown up may have changed and the wider contemporary challenges and adversities facing young people in disadvantaged neighbourhoods in the west of Scotland –​a theme that we had first begun to explore with practitioners during initial interview discussions. In the third and final part of the fieldwork, we again used a purposive sampling approach to negotiate with our gatekeeping organisations to gain access to groups of contemporary teenagers and young people from deprived locales in the west of Scotland (see details on these geographical areas below and in the book’s Appendix). We specifically sought to gain access to young people who may have had recent experience of gang culture, weapon-​carrying, drug use/​distribution or wider forms of anti-​ social activity, and/​or who lived in specific neighbourhoods impacted by these issues. During the winter of 2019–​20, we arranged to meet and hold initial consultation meetings with groups of young people on the premises of the gatekeeping organisations to explain the focus for the research, to distribute relevant participant information sheets and seek their potential willingness to participate in the study. For the young people under the age of 16 who were willing to participate, parental or carer consent was then sought. We subsequently revisited the gatekeeping organisations on several other occasions to meet with those who had indicated a willingness to participate. Formal consent forms were issued and for, young people under the age of 16, parental or carer consent forms were also collected. Semi-​ structured interviews of up to 60 minutes each were then conducted with 24 young people. They were given the option to participate individually, in friendship pairs or in small peer groups. Drawing again on a snowball sampling method, some young people recommended others whom they knew who were willing to participate, but who were not regularly attached in any way to the gatekeeping organisations. All of these (10 people) were over the age of 16, and we arranged to meet them, seek their informed consent and conduct semi-​ structured interviews with them. This brought the size of our sample for this part of the research to 34 (28 males and 6 females, all falling within the age range of 13–​20 years) (see Chapter 5 for more specific details). During these interviews, we explored the young people’s views on and experiences 31

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of gang culture, weapon-​carrying and violence, what may continue to motivate these phenomena and the impact they had. We also uncovered their views on wider issues impacting teenagers and young people, including drug misuse and drug distribution, social media, and its impact on youth behaviour and mental health.

Geographical areas and socio-​economic profiles Many of the districts and suburbs of Glasgow and towns in the wider west of Scotland where our participants grew up and/​or spent their teenage years had longstanding characteristics in common. Given that they could be regarded as vulnerable, hard-​to-​reach groups, in order to fully protect the identities of the participants (including those who were now practitioners but who had offending backgrounds), we do not name the towns and city districts where they were from.3 In the empirical chapters in Part II, we describe them using pseudonyms. We provide brief descriptions of each of the locations in order to partly illuminate the contexts for our fieldwork (while still maintaining anonymity).4 For ease of reference, these geographical descriptions are located in the book’s Appendix.

Ethical issues and data analysis The information gathered through all of the interviews we conducted with our practitioners, the young people and adults from the above geographical locations was treated as confidential, and interviewees were informed of this. The young people and adults/​reformed offenders were also informed of the limitations to confidentiality, whereby information would be required to be passed on to the police should serious criminal activity that was currently being planned or that had not been formally resolved through the criminal justice system be disclosed during interviews (ultimately, no such disclosures were ever made). Audio recordings were made of each interview and transcribed for ease of data analysis. As a collaborative academic team, we then coded the data manually and carried out a thematic analysis (Strauss and Corbin, 1998). As stated, all participant details and geographical areas (see above and Appendix) were anonymised. Pseudonyms were created to protect participants’ identities in the subsequent reporting of findings, although (with the permission of our research participants) some of the real names of the organisations that practitioners were attached to were maintained. Some more nuanced details regarding data collection processes, the specificities associated with individual research participants and the combined insights from the data can be found in the empirical chapters in Parts II of the book.

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Chapter summary In this chapter, we critically explored some of the official statistics relating to recorded violent crime in Scotland and the evidence that suggests that crime rates, including violent offences and weapon-​carrying, have fallen over the past 10–​15 years. We have traced the origins of gang culture in Glasgow and the way sectarian rivalry defined the earliest recorded gangs in the city. In considering the territorial nature of gang activity during the second half of the twentieth century in the west of Scotland and against the backdrop of deindustrialisation, we have also considered some of the recent research evidence suggesting that gangs may have evolved, that young gang members’ activity was transitional and fluid in nature, and that street gang membership may on occasion lead on to participation in organised crime. However, we have noted the paucity of research exploring the role of the digital environment in influencing gang and drug activity as well as wider youth behaviour, mental health and contemporary delinquency in the west of Scotland. The chapter concluded by detailing the sampling methods, access arrangements, geographical locations, ethical protocols adhered to and data analysis methods used in the current research, leading in to the empirical sections of the book. In the next section of the book, we present the empirical insights from our fieldwork. Chapter 3 examines the public health approach to violence prevention put in place in Scotland over the last 15 years, which has had a particular focus on addressing the social determinants of gang violence and weapon-​carrying in and around Glasgow. We share initial insights from our interviews with practitioners to present case study illustrations of some of the pioneering, influential projects and initiatives. However, while providing an empirical analysis of the positive impact of these interventions, we also highlight the practitioners’ views on some of the remaining underlying structural challenges and the wider adversities facing young people.

33

PART II

Continuity and Change in the West of Scotland: Empirical Insights

3

Transitional Journeys and Contemporary Adversity: Practitioner Insights In this part of the book, we present the insights from our qualitative research fieldwork. In so doing, we revisit the phenomena of street gangs, weapon-​ carrying and violence in communities in the west of Scotland, more than a decade on from Deuchar’s original work, and explore wider contemporary challenges impacting young people. We begin in this chapter by examining the way a public health approach to violence prevention has been put in place in Scotland over the last 10–​15 years and has had a particular focus on addressing the social determinants of gang violence and weapon-​carrying. We share initial insights from our interviews with practitioners in and around Glasgow to present case study illustrations of pioneering and high-​profile projects and initiatives associated with the SVRU as well as complementary educational and youth outreach initiatives. Drawing on these insights, and as a prelude to the wider discoveries from former gang members, adults and young people that we present in subsequent chapters in this section of the book, we suggest that these interventions have contributed to the alleged decline in gang violence. However, we also draw on practitioners’ perspectives to begin to suggest that entrenched systemic issues such as poverty and social inequality may be throwing up an intersection of wider adversities for disadvantaged youth.

A public health approach to violence prevention The public health approach to violence and its prevention was set out by the World Health Organization (WHO), a specialised agency of the United Nations responsible for promoting international health and wellbeing, in 2002 in its ‘World report on violence and health’ (Conaglen and Gallimore, 2014). The approach moves the focus from dealing with the consequences 37

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of violence to preventing violence through ‘addressing its causes’ (Conaglen and Gallimore, 2014, p 15). Key elements of the approach are: defining and monitoring of the extent of the problem; identification of its causes; developing and testing means of dealing with or resolving the problem; and wider-​scale implementation of measures that are found to work (Conaglen and Gallimore, 2014; Batchelor et al, 2019). One important public health approach to conceptualising risk factors is the ‘highly influential’ Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) study, which was undertaken in partnership with the Centre for Disease Control in the United States (Batchelor et al, 2019, p 14). ACEs commonly refer to ten specific abuse, neglect and household dysfunction exposures, including physical and emotional neglect, domestic violence, household substance abuse, parental separation and having family members with an incarceration history (Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, 2018). Building on our earlier, brief discussion on the stimulants for youth gang culture in the previous chapter, Wolff et al (2020) draw attention to the fact that many of the risk factors identified in previous gang research are related to ACEs, although not always described using that terminology (for a review, see Deuchar et al, 2021). In Wolff et al’s own research, drawing on a sample of over 100,000 juvenile offenders in Florida, they observed a ‘positive and significant association between ACE scores and gang involvement’ (2020, p 42). Scottish research has also confirmed the prevalence of ACEs across the youth offender population and especially among (predominantly male) gang-​related violent offenders (see, for instance, McAra and McVie, 2016; Vaswani, 2018). Given the evidence suggesting a variety of negative social determinants experienced by young Scottish men in socially deprived communities and their increased risk of joining street gangs and engaging in territorial violence (Deuchar, 2009a; Fraser, 2015), the public health approach has been enthusiastically applied in the west of Scotland. It emphasises the importance of ‘implementing interventions that address such social determinants’ (Williams et al, 2014, p 689). It focuses on primary prevention, which is distinctive in its focus on attempting to ‘forestall the initiation of violent behaviour’, while also working in tandem with the criminal justice system, which emphasises the secondary and tertiary levels of prevention, thus reducing recidivism and ameliorating the ‘short and long-​term effects of violence perpetration and victimisation’ (Reidy et al, 2015, p 215; see also Arnot and Mackie, 2019). Importantly, the approach has acknowledged that a sustained reduction in violence is only possible through a ‘shared agenda’, defined as promoting active and sustained collaboration among diverse sectors and public service organisations (Carnochan, 2015, p 53; see also Batchelor et al, 2019). The SVRU has pioneered this approach. The SVRU is a national centre of expertise on violence created in 2005. Attached to Police Scotland, the 38

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national police force of Scotland, and supported by the Scottish Government, it was formed to tackle the significant issue with violence that had been identified in Scotland at the time, particularly in and around Glasgow (see discussion in Chapter 2). Originally falling under the auspices of Strathclyde Police (which took responsibility for policing the west of Scotland) prior to expanding into a national service following the founding of Police Scotland in 2013, the SVRU was the first police unit to sit on the WHO’s Violence Prevention Alliance. It took as its lead the WHO’s public health approach to violence prevention (Goodall et al, 2016), and has thus treated violence as an ‘infection which can be cured’ if the right types of interventions are put in place to address its root causes (http://​www.svru.co.uk). Alongside the focus on primary prevention, there have also been many wider initiatives in Scotland focused on secondary and tertiary levels of prevention. These include those based on enforcement, detection and weapons-​related legislation (such as police use of stop and search, Ferroguard poles to detect weapons), measures such as banning glassware from nightclubs and injury surveillance to identify violence hotspots (Goodall et al, 2015; see also Deuchar et al, 2019). Drawing on international evidence, the WHO suggests that education programmes framed within the public health approach can make a significant contribution to the prevention of youth violence. For example, it has been argued that life and social skills school programmes may help to reduce aggression among young people, while after-​school or structured extra-​ curricular leisure programmes, and/​or youth and community learning and development activities may help to generate positive social behaviours and contribute to a reduction in violence (Deuchar, 2013; Arnot and Mackie, 2019). Accordingly, in the west of Scotland educational strategies have been recognised as being vital in preventing and reducing gang violence by addressing its root causes, and in many cases these strategies have sat alongside or become actively embedded in the public health approach initiated by the SVRU. For instance, the No Knives, Better Lives (NKBL) project has sought to educate young people, particularly young men, about the risks and consequences of knife-​carrying and to complement the work of the SVRU by supporting them in positive decision-​making processes (NKBL, 2019; see further discussion below). Wider youth work and sports-​oriented initiatives have also been important means of promoting the prevention of and desistance from gang violence in Glasgow (Deuchar, 2009a, 2013). To date, there has been very little in the way of robust, formal evaluations of violence prevention and reduction initiatives spearheaded by the SVRU or schools, and youth and community organisations in the west of Scotland. However, as we alluded to in Chapter 2 and as Goodall et al (2016, p 865–​ 6) highlight, ‘levels of violence, and in particular homicide, serious assaults and weapons offences, have reduced considerably’ over the lifespan of the SVRU, its focus on public health, and the corresponding focus on wider, 39

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complementary and interrelated measures. That said, as we also outlined in the previous chapter, many challenges still remain in relation to violent crime statistics in Scotland. Young men are still considerably more likely to experience emergency hospital admission due to assault (Skott and McVie, 2019) and evidence suggests that (against the backdrop of an overall decline in violent crime over the 2010s), some communities still experience a disproportionate level of violence –​namely those with higher levels of social deprivation (Batchelor et al, 2019). In relation to the latter point, it is relevant to note that over 40 per cent of Glasgow’s data zones are among the 20 per cent most deprived areas in Scotland, according to the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) (Scottish Government, 2020e; see geographical descriptors in the Appendix).1 In addition, while levels of violence involving youth and intertwined with gang culture have appeared to decline steadily over the last decade, statistics also suggest that, following a lengthy period of decline, the number of violent incidents has stabilised or even risen slightly in more recent years (Batchelor et al, 2019; Scottish Government, 2019a, 2019b, 2020b, 2020c).

Practitioner perspectives on gangs, violence and prevention Although we have some, albeit limited, indications of the possible changing nature of gang-​related violence in the west of Scotland via publicly available statistics, we recognised the need to capture the lived reality of this and any wider contemporary challenges through qualitative research. The remainder of this chapter, therefore, focuses on the initial insights we gained from semi-​ structured interviews conducted with practitioners in the field, the majority of whom were connected in some way to the delivery of interventions and initiatives in and around Glasgow that sought to engage disadvantaged young people, and prevent and reduce violence within the context of the public health approach outlined above. As we alluded to in Chapter 2, interviews were conducted with a total of 22 practitioners for this part of the research (19 males and three females): specifically, four members of the SVRU (two senior police officers and two senior mentors, one of whom had been a participant in Deuchar [2013] as a young, reforming gang member); two senior development officers within the NKBL team; five members of youth and community learning and development teams (one of whom had been interviewed in the role of practitioner in Deuchar [2013]); three developmental youth sports coaches and coordinators; two teachers; and six community police officers (see Table 3.1 for a listing of practitioners, their ages and specific roles).2 In presenting the insights from the practitioner interviews in this chapter, we of course recognise that many other public health-​related initiatives and 40

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Table 3.1: Interview participant description: practitioners Name

Professional role

Age

Organisation

Alan

Senior mentor

28

SVRU

Daniel

Senior police officer

51

SVRU

Jack

Senior mentor*

42

SVRU

Michael

Senior police officer

56

SVRU

Patricia

Senior development officer

37

NKBL

Wendy

Senior development officer

50

NKBL

Brian

Senior manager

38

FARE Scotland

Lewis

Senior manager*

47

FARE Scotland

Nigel

Family support worker

26

FARE Scotland

Rob

Employability manager

41

FARE Scotland

Ben

Youth worker

65

Youthpoint Aberlour

Laura

Youth programme coordinator

28

SSF

Peter

Youth coach/​development coordinator

43

SSF

William

Youth coach/​programmer manager

35

SSF

Steven

Senior manager and teacher

38

Parkside School

Thomas

Teacher

25

Parkside School

Charlie

Community constable

33

Police Scotland

Gordon

Community constable

30

Police Scotland

Harry

Community constable

34

Police Scotland

Jim

Community constable

42

Police Scotland

Max

Community constable

35

Police Scotland

Ryan

Community constable

50

Police Scotland

* Previous research participants (Deuchar, 2013)

interventions may also have played a role in the prevention and reduction of gang violence and weapon-​carrying in the west of Scotland. We also accept that enforcement-​led initiatives that are beyond the scope of this chapter (other than those alluded to briefly by our participating police officers) may have had an impact. However, what we seek to do here is to zero in on micro-​sociological case study illustrations of what could be regarded as creative, pioneering and, in some cases, high-​profile interventions, projects and initiatives (some of which also featured in Deuchar’s earlier work [2009a, 2009b, 2013]), their perceived impact and evolving nature. Further, we explore the practitioners’ perspectives on current issues relating to gangs and violence, as well as wider (and, in some cases, new and [re-​]emerging) challenges. This provides a useful prelude to the wider, 41

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‘on-​the-​g round’ insights we present from adults, former gang members and youth in subsequent chapters. In the following sections, subthemes are explored through extracts from practitioner interview transcriptions.

Diminishing gang violence and lingering issues Reflecting the insights into Glasgow’s gang history outlined in the previous chapter, many practitioners recalled vividly either living or working in housing schemes where violent street incidents regularly took place and where young people felt unsafe crossing territorial boundaries (see Deuchar, 2009a; Fraser, 2015). However, across the sample, there was a strong view that the issue of territorial gang violence had reduced greatly across Glasgow and the wider west of Scotland over the past 10–​15 years. That said, some highlighted that remnants of the territorial culture still remained. For instance, in some of the housing schemes, territorial names were still regularly mentioned in conversations among local people, associated tagging was still occasionally visible and a sense of antagonism among some young people towards those from neighbouring schemes lingered: ‘Years ago, everybody addressed those [neighbourhood] areas as the names of gangs, it didn’t matter what age or generation … you hear it now and again, but no’ as much.’ (Lewis, age 47, senior manager: FARE Scotland) ‘You still get the odd “tag”, some of them still consider themselves [gang members] …, but generally they don’t come and fight with [rival area]. They’re all pals, all part of one bigger real gang as such.’ (Ben, age 65, youth worker: Youthpoint Aberlour) ‘We were dealing with a young boy, maybe 17/​18, a few weeks ago and were just speaking about different people from different areas, and he was still saying, “I don’t like them, we don’t talk to them, we fight wi’ them”. But there’s never any actual evidence they fight wi’ them, there’s not any calls but just because that’s historic –​what used to happen.’ (Gordon, age 30, community constable: Police Scotland) As we touched on in Chapter 2, some research (Palasinski and Riggs, 2012, p 466) has suggested that knife-​carrying among young men is often linked to the social construction of masculinity and the demonstration of ‘heroic posturing’ (see also Wetherell and Edley, 1999). Others have argued that ‘fear signals’ projected across street culture may be picked up on by young men and used to justify weapon-​carrying as representing ‘not fashion but a need’ (Holligan et al, 2017, p 147). Generally, our interviewees noted a 42

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considerable reduction in the number of weapons being carried and used, and some believed that this was because there was less fear about stepping into rival gang territories. However, some practitioners noted that there had been a recent small resurgence of young men carrying lock-​back knives (which can fold and are therefore easily concealed) in some of the neighbourhoods where they worked. They believed that this was a perceived means of projecting an image of toughness as a form of hegemonic masculinity that was still deeply engrained in some neighbourhoods in the west of Scotland (Connell, 2005; Palasinski and Riggs, 2012) or as protection against a continuing awareness of ‘fear signals’: ‘I’ve noticed in the last year or so, the ones I’m working with have started carrying. Fourteen upwards. A lot of bravado stuff, but the problem wi’ that is that it might start off the bravado side of it but, backed into a corner, they would probably use it and they’re probably no’ intending to use it but they tend to … it’s beginning to grow again, I think.’ (Ben, age 65, youth worker: Youthpoint Aberlour) ‘It’s come to the fore a wee bit because of the work we’re going to start in [housing scheme]. There have been instances of knife-​carrying over there … there was someone who was slashed … there’s the feeling of the need to protect yourself … they hear about other people carrying so they take one.’ (William, age 35, youth coach/programme manager: SSF) In terms of wider issues relating to enforcement, others briefly alluded to the changes in legislation that had been introduced regarding police use of stop and search in recent years. In 2017, following a full review of Police Scotland’s policy and practice in the use of this tactic, a new code of practice on stop and search was approved by the Scottish Parliament meaning that there was a presumption against non-​statutory (or ‘consensual’) searching by officers (Deuchar et al, 2019). As Deuchar et al (2019, p 440) previously highlighted, some Glasgow-​based officers believed that consensual searching had hitherto been an essential tool for detecting knife-​carrying because weapons of this kind are so easily concealed and ‘not immediately detectable via statutory powers’. Some of our police interviewees in this study also suggested that this policy change may have led to some young people carrying knives again in some communities due to their awareness of the reduced threat of being searched: ‘We can’t just go searching people unless we’ve got reasonable cause to believe they’ve got a knife or weapon on them. The reality is that someone could be walking down the street right now in front of this officer with something on their person they shouldn’t have 43

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and unless we’ve received a report that there’s something wrong with their behaviour, it’s actually not easy to say, “we believe you could be carrying a weapon.”’ (Harry, age 34, community constable: Police Scotland) ‘There was a period where Police Scotland were obviously doing stop and search. It was well highlighted and it was more of a tactic, so we’d be using that and weapon-​carrying in my opinion was reduced significantly … but what you’re seeing now is, by the new guidelines, new political stances on these things … legislation … I would say the incidents of weapon-​carrying is starting to rise up.’ (Ryan, age 50, and Charlie, age 33, community constables: Police Scotland) However, many of the other practitioners expressed the opinion that knife-​ carrying and street violence among the young men they worked with had reduced markedly in comparison to what had been the case a decade or more ago. In part, this may be due to the changes to legislation whereby the Scottish Government increased the maximum prison sentence for knife-​ carrying to five years (Deuchar et al, 2019). However, in a wider sense, Muggah (2012) draws attention to the promotion of social capital within local neighbourhoods as a means of fostering the conditions for security. Recognised indicators of social capital include social interaction, social networking, reciprocity, trust and social cohesion (for a review, see Deuchar, 2009a). The tightening of social bonds has been shown to prevent certain forms of urban violence (Deuchar, 2009a). As a reformed gang member turned senior mentor within the SVRU, Alan recognised that the housing regeneration policies in the east end of Glasgow had enabled local young people to have more pride in their neighbourhoods. Further, Lewis believed that the collapsing of rigid urban school boundaries whereby young people could now travel through different schemes to go to school, combined with housing regeneration policies, had helped to reduce neighbourhood tension and build significant local cohesion: ‘It’s no’ as territorial as it was … we’ve made huge improvements to reduce violence –​the regeneration of the housing schemes in [the east end of Glasgow] has been massive, ’cause if you grow up in a shithole, why are you gonna respect a shithole?’ (Alan, age 28, senior mentor: SVRU) ‘A lot of it is down to hard work by organisations. The councils choosing correctly to amalgamate the schools [in the east end of Glasgow]. I think the housing [association] have done a remarkable job 44

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at getting rid of full tenements and most people are now living in back and front doors [houses with their own entranceways and own gardens] and that eradicates tension … nowadays it’s spread out, they’ve got their own space and therefore they can look after their own space so the housing [association] needs to be given great credit for the development of the area.’ (Lewis, age 47, senior manager: FARE Scotland) Peter was a sports coach and youth development coordinator with Scottish Sports Futures (SSF), a charitable community outreach organisation that uses the power of sport and physical activity to ‘engage with vulnerable and disadvantaged young people and empower them to be confident, healthy and happy’ (https://​scottishsportsfutures.org.uk; see further insights below). He regularly worked with young people from socially disadvantaged communities across Glasgow. He summed up the views of many when he spoke of the huge reductions in territorial gang fights across the city. Although occasional fights may take place among young men, he noted that knife crime had vastly reduced: ‘I don’t know if the kids just now have ever seen or heard of knife crime … I don’t think it’s talked about as much … I think in some areas, some young people, they meet the boys, they get stoned, get drunk and they fight … and it’s more alcohol, drugs, fighting than it is knife crime.’ (Peter, age 43, youth coach/development coordinator: SSF) Community police officers Jim and Max also noted how previously engrained borders between housing schemes and different ends of the same housing schemes in Glasgow had broken down, leading to a new tendency for young people from all different areas to congregate together. Although there was the odd ‘flare up’ in terms of anti-​social behaviour and also the abuse of alcohol and drugs, they believed that gang culture had very much reduced: ‘Those kind of borders have been kind of broken down, you’ve got youths from different schemes, or even in different areas completely, coming in to certain areas, certain kind of hotspots, I supposed they’d be classed as. And it’s all just get together, get as drunk as I can, and [use] drugs, quite a prevalent thing just now as well.’ (Jim, age 42, community constable: Police Scotland) ‘You get the odd wee flare up with individuals, but not in terms of gangs. They don’t have their own gang names or gang tags anymore.’ (Max, age 35, community constable: Police Scotland) Accordingly, the practitioners generally believed territorial gang violence had diminished considerably, knife-​carrying was no longer as prevalent, and there 45

GANGS, DRUGS AND YOUTH ADVERSITY

was less fear and greater community pride within disadvantaged communities. However, as Jim touched on and we will expand upon in later chapters, drug misuse had perhaps become more prevalent. In the following sections, we zero in on the work of the SVRU and subsequently on the wider role of education, youth and outreach work in and around Glasgow in relation to some of the organisations to which our sample practitioners were attached.

The SVRU, public health approach and social inclusion As highlighted earlier, since its inception in 2005, the SVRU has adopted a public health approach to violence prevention. From the outset, the unit sought to respond differently to violence and adopt the WHO’s recommended focus on prevention through tackling the root causes such as ACEs, while also supporting the continuing use of enforcement (Goodall et al, 2015). It adopted a partnership approach that recognised that sustained reduction in street violence was only possible through a ‘shared agenda’ (Batchelor et al, 2019, p 13). Accordingly, in 2008, the SVRU established the Community Initiative to Reduce Violence (CIRV). Based on a model that was used in Cincinnati, Ohio, CIRV created a partnership among police, social, education, housing and community safety services, along with local communities, and delivered the clear message that ‘the violence must stop’ (Deuchar, 2013; Graham, 2016; Deuchar and Weide, 2019; Graham and Robertson, 2021). The initiative was implemented in areas of social and economic disadvantage in the east end and north of Glasgow, targeting approximately 1,000 young people (mainly young males in the age range of 12–​19 years) who were consistently on the police radar because of their involvement in gang violence. Following a process of mapping and surveillance, young offenders attended ‘call-​in’ sessions in Glasgow Sheriff Court and were literally warned that, if they continued to involve themselves in violence, then criminal justice repercussions would ensue (Deuchar, 2013; Graham and Robertson, 2021). Alongside the message of enforcement was a softer message of empathy and the offer of support, where former offenders spoke about their own experiences of making positive changes in their lives and mothers of offenders appealed to them to make alternative choices. The sessions ended with messages of hope, where a range of agencies aligned to CIRV made a variety of services and programmes available to young men who agreed to change their lifestyles (Deuchar, 2013). The initiative thus drew upon a range of existing services in Glasgow together with some new programmes that were tailor-​made to meet the needs of the young clients and which in some cases benefited from targeted Scottish Government funding (Deuchar 2013; Deuchar and Weide, 2019; Graham and Robertson, 2021). Across the period of implementation 46

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(2008–​11), just under 500 clients (predominantly young men) participated in ten ‘call-​in’ sessions, and many went on to engage in follow-​up services within a range of statutory, voluntary and third-​sector agencies (for further details, see Deuchar, 2013; Graham, 2016; Deuchar and Weide, 2019; Graham and Robertson, 2021). Deuchar (2013, p 183) draws attention to the way CIRV complemented and supported many young men who had been involved in gangs in their journeys towards desistance by providing them with ‘positive institutional influences, supportive human relationships’ and an opportunity to take on ‘generative activities’ by becoming positive role models to others with backgrounds of offending and addiction, in turn increasing their own opportunities to increase social capital (see Deuchar, 2009a). A reported 46 per cent reduction in violent offending was recorded in the areas of Glasgow targeted by CIRV, with significant decreases in weapon-​carrying and gang fighting (Deuchar, 2013; Williams et al, 2014). Senior members of the SVRU thus attributed the early successes in tackling territorial street violence and weapon-​carrying and use in areas of Glasgow mainly to the CIRV initiative, in combination with wider enforcement measures (Goodall et al, 2015). Not only did they believe CIRV had had an impact on participants in the east end and north of the city at the time, but also on subsequent generations of young people from these and other areas of the west of Scotland due to messages being passed on: ‘I think to a certain extent the gangs task force was the stick and there was a lot of apprehension activity, enforcement activity, happening across the city in relation to gang violence. It coincided with the SVRU’s launch of CIRV where there was a carrot offered and people who were involved in violence were given an alternative opportunity … we shouldn’t lose sight of them working in parallel because I don’t think one would have particularly worked without the other, and to me that joint activity between 2008–​12 broke the back of gang violence in Glasgow.’ (Michael, age 56, senior officer: SVRU) ‘At the time I don’t think we kind of knew the longer-​term effect [CIRV] was gonna have. I don’t think we really knew that dealing with Jimmy from [east end], the impact that was gonna have on his younger brothers and sisters and the generations after … the knock-​on effect, the ripple effect … but certainly the work we’ve done then must have had a knock-​on effect for future generations.’ (Daniel, age 51, senior officer: SVRU) In their research with male violent offenders in Scotland (many of whom had been street gang members), Holligan and Deuchar (2015) identify clear links between the young men’s participation in street violence and their earlier 47

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experiences of psychological distress, loss and attachment traumas stemming from ACEs. Jack was one of Deuchar’s previous research participants from 2011–​12 who had been an active participant in CIRV following a gang-​ involved lifestyle during his younger years. His involvement in gang violence had been a result of exposure to ACEs, including domestic violence and emotional detachment within the family home (for a detailed case study, see Deuchar, 2013). Following a period of volunteering for the SVRU within CIRV, Jack had become a mentor and subsequently senior mentor within the unit and an advocate for ACE-​aware, trauma-​informed approaches, having studied these issues extensively and reflected deeply on his own personal experiences. He highlighted how CIRV and wider initiatives within the SVRU had helped to raise awareness of the root causes of street violence in the public sector, and that criminal desistance was not only about stopping individuals from offending but also about preventing the passing on of dysfunctional attitudes: ‘The more [we] researched attachment, the attachment theory and the science of toxic stress and looked at the trauma research and the ACEs research, the penny started dropping … it’s had a massive impact at a service level. When you look at the stats you see in the third sector, a lot of them have woke[n]‌up to this concept of the trauma that’s in their culture … Desistance is about the cessation of offending primarily and that’s found as a success and it is a success if you stop offending … it’s not just about stopping offending yourself, it’s about how do I stop transferring the attitudes and beliefs and behaviours associated with that particular lifestyle down into the people coming behind you?’ (Jack, age 42, senior mentor: SVRU) Following on from CIRV, the SVRU launched a wide range of other strategies and initiatives aimed at preventing and reducing gang-​related street violence by addressing its root causes. For example, the Street & Arrow project is a social enterprise based in a café in the Glasgow Dental Hospital, serving food and drink to NHS staff and members of the public. However, beyond the work of the café itself, Street & Arrow is a pioneering rehabilitation programme that is modelled to some extent on Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles. The latter provides stable employment and job training but also a plethora of services and education programmes for reforming gang members in L.A. (see Deuchar, 2018). Similarly, Street & Arrow hires former convicts for 12-​month blocks, during which time workers are paired with mentors who help them develop employment skills and sort out relationship issues (Deuchar, 2018). Referrals to the programme come via criminal justice social work, with reforming offenders being signposted from community payback orders (court orders imposed 48

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as an alternative to imprisonment, involving, for example, unpaid work, mental health, drug or alcohol treatment requirements) or increasingly through word of mouth. Practitioners involved in Street & Arrow, such as Daniel, drew attention to the importance of having mentors with lived experience combined with police involvement as an added layer of credibility and means of enhancing participants’ employability and employment opportunities: ‘When they go for a job interview –​whereas before the employer might have liked the person sitting in front of them but their record was putting them off –​after doing 12 months with us that same employer might go, “I know you’ve got a record but I see you’ve been on that programme and I also see there’s been police involvement in that programme.” That might be that bit of reassurance that that employer needs just to give them the chance.’ (Daniel, age 51, senior officer: SVRU) Links between the presence of dysphoric feelings, substance use and offending behaviour have been identified in much previous research (for a review, see Day, 2009). Day (2009) has drawn attention to the need for a more central role for mental health interventions in supporting offender rehabilitation than has hitherto been the case. Interest in and recognition of the place of acceptance-​based approaches has grown in recent years, with a focus on teaching participants to feel emotions and bodily sensations more fully and without avoidance, and to ‘notice fully the presence of thoughts without following, resisting, believing or disbelieving them’ (Day, 2009, p 125). Alongside this, it has also been argued that engagement in holistic spiritual practices such as mindfulness meditation can increase psychological wellbeing and in turn enhance reforming offenders’ ability to engage in rehabilitation and wider treatments (for reviews, see Deuchar, 2018, 2020). Beyond the mainstream public-​facing work within the Street & Arrow café, the structure of the day within the project comprised a range of ‘check-​ in’ and ‘check-​out’ sessions. The predominantly male trainees shared their feelings and emotions in a group, and also gained regular access to mentoring, counselling and mindfulness meditation: ‘Monday mornings … we start off the check-​in as a feelings check-​ in, [exploring] “where you’re at”, and I lead that. So, what ends up happening is, if I’m willing to speak about my vulnerabilities then they will be as well … then 9 o’clock we have a counsellor, so we have person-​centred counselling … at the end of the day we have to check out. So, “how’s the day [gone], are you still feeling the way you felt this morning or has that changed in any way, shape or form? … are you worried about anything?” … and we have [an external coach] 49

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coming in doing stress management with the guys … mindfulness techniques.’ (Alan, age 28, senior mentor: SVRU) Further insight into the positive impact of SVRU initiatives on former gang members can be found in the next chapter, including an in-​depth case study of Alan’s own personal journey. However, as a caveat to these positive illustrations, it is important to highlight the limitations of initiatives such as Street & Arrow. A recurring critique of the strategy of using intervention programmes to address gang violence as a public policy is that such programmes can only facilitate gang disengagement, and violence reduction and prevention for the limited number of participants that the initiatives can employ and provide support to (Deuchar and Weide, 2019). Although Street & Arrow has evidently supported small groups of young people to reform, move into positive destinations and become socially included, to date no full evaluation with structured academic input has been conducted to formally assess its impact. During an interview, Michael voiced frustrations regarding the way the projects can only support a limited number of young people at a time, the risks associated with passing leadership over to other agencies and the limited statutory funding to support them: ‘It’s a huge frustration of mine, people tend to think the [S]‌VRU’s a lot bigger than the [S]VRU actually is … there’s a hard core of about a dozen [people] … the problem is either the [S]VRU run one of these big projects and we do nothing else, or we pass it on to other people … we only have half a dozen people at a time going through Street & Arrow … and I would rather it was 600, but to have 600 going through somebody’s going to have to pay for it, you’re going to have to have a whole big industry round it to support it … we need to look for external funding for some of that … and I just think it’ll not work as well when it’s not got the band of policing round it.’ (Michael, age 56, senior officer: SVRU) Projects such as CIRV and Street & Arrow have emphasised inclusion, relationship-​building, social, emotional and economic support, and the provision of life-​enhancing opportunities to those most at risk of violent offending. However, limitations exist in terms of the capacity for interventions like Street & Arrow to grow and develop, including budget constraints and the risks associated with the projects being contracted out from the limited resources that the SVRU has available to it. In the spirit of the shared agenda inherent within the public health approach, education, youth and outreach work has also played a valuable role in tackling territorial gang violence issues in the west of Scotland, as the next section outlines. 50

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Education, youth work, empowerment and inclusion As mentioned earlier, NKBL is a national capacity-​building programme that supports prevention work relating to knife-​carrying. It was established in Scotland in 2009 and is fully funded on an annual basis by the Scottish Government. At its inception, the delivery team supported partners in 11 selected local authority areas to implement the NKBL programme but subsequently it became available to all local authorities (NKBL, 2019). Within the wider context of the public health approach to violence prevention, the delivery team’s approach is informed by the principles and values of youth work. These tend to be holistic and bottom-​up in design and ‘typically emerge from the construction of young people as capable, autonomous agents’ (McPherson, 2020, p 309) who are actively consulted as participants in the design and delivery of services (Batsleer and Davies, 2010): ‘We look at violence from the perspective of a public health model, in that it is a disease that can have a cure … I think that the youth work approach cannot be emphasised enough. You can enforce your way out of this issue or that, but with young people, you need to work with them and you need to work with local partners.’ (Patricia, age 37, senior development officer: NKBL) The programme began mostly as a Scottish Government-​funded marketing campaign, designed to raise awareness of the risks associated with knife-​ carrying. However, in time, the NKBL team partnered with YouthLink Scotland, the national agency for youth work that represents over 100 voluntary and statutory youth organisation members across Scotland. Accordingly, it became increasingly focused on capacity-​building with key partners to support the delivery of ‘local prevention work with young people’ (NKBL, 2019, p 5). It thus provides training, networking events and resources to support local practitioners, including youth workers, teachers, sports coaches and community police officers (NKBL, 2019). An important element is the focus on peer education, where young people themselves are trained to work in their communities to raise awareness of the risks and consequences of knife crime among other young people. Accordingly, the active involvement of young people in helping to design and deliver the service reflects the bottom-​up approach associated with youth work ideology that frames young people in positive terms as ‘individuals with agency and power’ (McPherson, 2020, p 317). As a senior development officer with NKBL, Wendy described how the content of NKBL’s toolkits was always focused on the use of the four R’s –​reassurance, risk, resilience and responsibility: 51

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‘Reassurance, so as knife-​carrying has decreased we want to reinforce that [it’s] not as common as you’re led to believe in the media. Although some people still carry, we know in fact that most knife use now is from people picking up kitchen knives and not from carrying … risk, that is about harm reduction. How you can protect yourself from risk, also how you can reduce risk if prevention has not worked, and the other one is resilience, which I think is about a long-​term approach, about the community. It’s about, are there people in the community that can act as good role models, been through it? … Then there is responsibility as well.’ (Wendy, age 50, senior development officer: NKBL) In its 2019 report, NKBL highlighted that to date it had trained over 1,300 practitioners and over 400 peer educators in the previous five years, and had reached over 100,000 Scottish young people over the last 10 years (NKBL, 2019). However, during an interview, Patricia indicated that the priority now was for the project to extend its engagement and reach by ensuring that prevention messaging around knife-​carrying was increasingly projected through social media, thus again drawing on peer education approaches and the responsive, empowering nature of youth work approaches (Coburn, 2010): ‘For the coming year it’s about us re-​evaluating and making sure our message is relevant. We know peer education still works, and … young people hang out on social media, so we are looking at that and saying, “Can we go to the young people with these messages?” … We try to engage with the young people rather than just telling them or preaching to them … so we try and get the messages across by acting and thinking like youth workers.’ (Patricia, age 37, senior development officer: NKBL) In Deuchar’s (2009a, 2013) earlier work, he drew attention to the important role that youth work can play in a wider sense in terms of re-​engaging the most disadvantaged and marginalised and supporting them in moving away from gang culture and street violence. In particular, detached street work has often been a means of youth workers engaging with young people, building relationships with them, foregrounding young people’s interests, priorities and voices (Coburn and Wallace, 2011). Where appropriate, and within the context of trusting and respectful relationships (McPherson, 2020), detached youth workers may encourage young people to reflect on the consequences of their risk-​taking and law-​breaking behaviour and potentially lead them towards positive outcomes, against the backdrop of a context for learning that is conversational, critical and informal (Deuchar, 2013; Gormally and Coburn, 2014). 52

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Deuchar (2009a, 2013) placed a spotlight on FARE (Family Action in Rogerfield and Easterhouse), a registered charity established in 1989 to support families in the east end of Glasgow and introduce them to social and educational youth services. Now renamed FARE Scotland, the organisation has been involved in designing and implementing educational interventions to address and reduce gang violence for many years in and beyond the east end of the city. It was an active partner agency that provided diversionary activities for gang-​involved young people (including sports, arts and cultural activities in neighbourhoods prone to gang violence) within the CIRV project, and within the broad context of the public health approach to violence prevention (Deuchar, 2009a, 2013). As senior managers within the initiative, Lewis (who was also referred to in earlier work by Deuchar, 2013) and Brian drew attention to the importance of the way they had consistently recruited local young people with gang-​related histories to work with them. This enabled a strong focus on committing to the ‘Freirian notion … of remedying social inequality’ (Corney, 2004, p 522, cited in Gormally and Coburn, 2014; see also Davidson, 2020) by ensuring that the most disadvantaged young people were engaged as the primary clients in their own social contexts (Sercombe, 2010): ‘I think recruiting people at a local level. If you’ve got a local issue then it needs to be dealt with … at a local level, but approaches 20–​ 30 years ago were a top-​down approach, agencies coming in, “we know better, this is how you need to do it”. You need to get the local people in. Every single area we went into, we recruited local workers from there.’ (Lewis, age 47, senior manager: FARE Scotland) ‘FARE is one of the biggest employers in [the east end of Glasgow]. We now have 55 key staff and 25–​30 volunteers at any one time, and 90 per cent of these are local [young] people so, by giving them jobs, opportunities, aspirations, [this] ripples into the community we’re working in.’ (Brian, age 38, senior manager: FARE Scotland) Through interviews conducted with youth workers during his original gang studies in Glasgow, Deuchar (2009a, 2009b) highlighted the way approaches like the above helped to generate social capital among participating young people, which in turn replaced the compensatory forms of social capital offered by gangs. Over a decade later, staff members in FARE Scotland drew attention to how the organisation had had to adapt and place less emphasis on detached street work and youth clubs, and more on liaison work in schools as young people’s pastimes had gradually changed and territorial gang violence had become less prevalent. The organisation now focused on striving to reduce poverty and wider social 53

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exclusion by offering employability programmes to improve future life options, breakfast and lunch clubs to nourish the most deprived, and even meditation programmes to support young people with anxiety-​ related issues: ‘So, my role is as a family support and liaison worker … right now, the main thing I have been doing is focusing on getting young people qualifications –​working with people who haven’t done so well at school … we also run breakfast clubs and lunch clubs … we still do … anti-​violence and anti-​gang work –​we do it inside secondary schools. We do drug and alcohol workshops, internet safety workshops. It develops all the time, we develop all the time.’ (Nigel, age 26, family support worker: FARE Scotland) ‘We do meditation, we call it “medit-ate” because we also give (young people) something to eat, as well to address the poverty issues. as well as addressing the attainment gap … The kids will come during certain sessions and breaks, they will get something to eat and then do some meditation … We have feedback from the teachers that the kids then do better in the following sessions.’ (Rob, age 41, employability manager: FARE Scotland) In addition, other youth and community-​based organisations like Youthpoint Aberlour (which does youth work in various socially disadvantaged communities in the west of Scotland) had for many years played an active role in supporting the public health approach to reducing gang violence. During our fieldwork, we found that it too had gradually shifted focus away from gang-​related violence prevention work. It had come to concentrate on employability initiatives, teaching young people life skills, educating them about alcohol, drugs and even basic hygiene issues against the backdrop of widespread ACEs and trauma: ‘We’ve got a new project coming up, a partnership with Woodland Housing [Association] … This is going to be a project to get them ready for work, employment … It’s [for] kids who at the moment aren’t even getting an interview … We [also] do a lot of residential work. We take them away and, boy that’s when we see poverty –​ some are pulling out a case and you see that’s all they’ve got for the weekend, some of them don’t know how to brush their teeth … just basic hygiene issues … We work in partnership with various [drug and alcohol] agencies We’ll do a lot of intervention work, but a lot more needs to be done because these kids are so badly damaged.’ (Ben, age 65, youth worker: Youthpoint Aberlour) 54

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Ben (above) also recognised that working closely with parents and wider families was becoming an increasing priority, since many parents tended to pass on stress, anxiety and also troubling attitudes that normalised drug intake to their children, thus at times increasing young people’s exposure to ACEs and trauma. On the latter point, Steven was a teacher and senior manager in a registered independent school that caters to young people with additional support needs associated with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties from disadvantaged communities all over the west of Scotland. He had observed that ‘parents are quite open, so “he smokes a joint before he goes to school, it’s got medicinal purposes don’t you know?” ’. It has been suggested that the pervasiveness of ACEs can be reduced through the development of service structures that support healthy parenting through effective interventions (Larkin et al, 2014). Aside from youth work and the growing recognised importance of active collaboration involving education, parents and families, other organisations focused on physical activity and sport as a potential engagement tool with young people. In 2009, Deuchar featured a case study on the work of SSF, highlighting how the organisation’s twilight basketball sessions in various parts of Glasgow helped to increase social capital, by strengthening trust and reciprocity among young men from rival territories and diverse ethnic backgrounds. In turn, this helped to reduce gang violence (Deuchar, 2009a). As with FARE Scotland, SSF’s focus on integrating young people through sport had helped to complement the ongoing work of the SVRU and the shared agenda focusing on public health approaches to violence prevention (Basketball APPG, 2014). A decade or more on, our follow-​up interviews with SSF staff members shed light on how, like other organisations discussed above, it had now become increasingly focused on equipping young people with employability skills and the tools to be able to manage mental health difficulties. The organisation still used sport as a context for this and again focussed on promoting youth agency and empowerment (Coburn, 2010; Davidson, 2020): ‘We came up with “Chance To Be”, where we do qualifications, personal development, and sport and physical activity –​we do it during the day so we get referrals from schools, social work, pastoral care … It’s a 16-​week programme, and [we’re] trying to take [young people] to the next place in life.’ (Laura, age 28, youth programme coordinator: SSF) ‘Young people are telling us that mental health is important and very relevant in their lives so the ambassadors we have on other programmes, we put 20 of them together and we had a residential and the leaders in consultation with young people came up with four key areas that are relevant with regard to mental health. So, it was stress, motivation, pressure and social interaction. For 55

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each of them they’re looking at what are the implications and what they can do to try and help the young people. … It’s our young people that deliver these projects … They’ve been able to let them know numbers they can phone if they have suicidal thoughts … The way we do it is through physical activity and sport.’ (Peter, age 43, youth coach/development coordinator: SSF) Accordingly, over a decade after Deuchar’s (2009a) original research on gangs, these practitioners provided us with an insight into the role that educational interventions had played in helping to reduce and prevent gang violence and knife-​carrying in and around Glasgow. As territorial violence slowly declined, the agencies’ focus evolved as wider social issues came strongly to the fore. We now begin to examine the latter in more detail.

Poverty, inequality and an emerging ‘perfect storm’ Recent research funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation highlighted that poverty in Scotland is rising from an already unacceptably high level. Specifically, almost one in five adults and one in four children in Scotland live in poverty, and this issue is at the root of many of the country’s ‘deepest-​ set issues’, including the attainment gap in schools, health inequalities and declining life expectancy (Congreve, 2019, p 1). In our interviews, practitioners indicated that they had become increasingly aware of rising poverty, the multi-​faceted public health repercussions emerging from this that now appeared to move beyond gang violence, and the need for broader, diverse approaches to address these issues: ‘Syndemic is a medical term that means that four or five illnesses can present themselves –​different illnesses, but underlying it’s the same condition that’s causing that –​and the syndemic we’re talking about here is poverty … A disproportionate amount of violence still remains in our more deprived communities … and it is also true that in these areas, there are higher levels of drug abuse, alcohol abuse, gambling addiction and higher levels of suicide, particularly around young men … They’re all being driven by poverty.’ (Michael, age 56, senior officer: SVRU) ‘Poverty is … rife in the area, massive, massive poverty … It took us a generation to eradicate [gang violence] and our priority now is to eradicate poverty within the areas we serve.’ (Lewis, age 47, senior manager: FARE Scotland) The provision of food parcels and food aid has grown significantly across Scotland, and much of the demand for this has been linked to 56

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the introduction of Universal Credit as a replacement for means-​tested benefits. This has brought about a six-​week delay before the first payment, with payments being made in arrears and the introduction of new forms of conditionality for both out-​of-​work and in-​work claimants (Armour, 2019; Understanding Glasgow, 2020). Youth workers like Ben noted that the young people he worked with were often unable to access ‘three square meals’ a day. Further, Laura (who worked for SSF) had seen first-​hand how food poverty in SIMD areas had made young people desperate for nourishment. Aside from the issue of food shortages, links between rising poverty rates in urban contexts and increased adolescent involvement in drug distribution networks have been documented (as Jim, a community police officer, alluded to earlier in this chapter) (Little and Steinberg, 2006). Thomas, a teacher, attributed the root causes of poverty and increasing prevalence of drug distribution to the process of deindustrialisation whereby many young people he worked with no longer had realistic opportunities for employment: ‘There is nothing out there for them, like no jobs … Employers are wanting kids but with 20 years’ experience … I think it’s also who you know as opposed to what you’ve done, isn’t it? If you have this rich family that knows X, Y or Z then you have this kid coming from the high rises … they are not going to get the job, are they?’ (Thomas, age 25, teacher: Parkside School) Evidence suggests there are strong associations between unemployment, low socio-​economic status and higher levels of poor mental health among adolescents (Mowat, 2019). It has been estimated that 10 per cent of children and adolescents in Scotland now have a diagnosable mental health disorder, with a 13.5 per cent increase in referrals to Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) over the two-​year period from 2013 to 2015 (Mowat, 2019). As Michael (see above) noted, suicide rates have increased across the country in recent years (with Scotland now having the highest rates in the UK), with males accounting for the highest proportion of those taking their own lives in 2019 and 2020 (ScotPHO, 2021). Further, there is (at the time of writing) growing concern and emerging evidence regarding the way young people’s mental health has been adversely affected even more by social isolation as a result of the global COVID-​19 pandemic and related lockdown restrictions put in place throughout 2020–​1 (Scottish Government, 2020a).3 As we made initial reference to earlier, and as we will explore more fully in subsequent chapters, many of the practitioners we interviewed had observed a huge increase in drug use and organised crime in the form of drug distribution, as well as in mental health issues among young people, 57

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particularly young men. Some also referred to the escalating numbers of drug-​related deaths within communities: ‘A lot of [young people] smoke kind of herbal cannabis, that’s still quite prevalent, but the street valium … and kind of MDMA kind of crystals, they’re snorting that, which is pretty dangerous just now. There’s been a couple of overdoses recently in relation to that, just because of the different mixtures, it changes from time to time, whatever’s available to do the mixing. Same with the street valium … Street valium’s quite bad as well. We’re seeing a lot of, you know, drug deaths and what not … Probably from over the last year to two years, most of the drug deaths that I’ve been aware of and involved in have been because of street valium.’ (Jim, age 42, and Max, age 35, community officers: Police Scotland) In Scotland, there was a 27 per cent recorded increase in drug-​related deaths in 2018 from the previous year, and subsequently further increases occurred in 2019 and 2020 to reach a total of 1,264 deaths and 1,339 deaths respectively (the largest numbers ever recorded in Scotland and higher than that reported for any other EU country) (National Records of Scotland, 2019, 2020, 2021). In relation to young people, the drug-​related death rate among 15–​24-​year-​ olds has risen in recent years; for example, in 2019 an increase of 13 additional deaths was reported for this age group compared with the previous year (64 in 2018 compared with 76 in 2019) with a further marginal increase in 2020 (National Records of Scotland, 2019, 2020, 2021). In particular, drug-​related deaths where benzodiazepine-​type tablets such as etizolam (often dealt as ‘street valium’, to which the officers quoted above referred) were implicated, in conjunction with other substances such as opiates, have risen sharply (BBC News, 2019; Scottish Drugs Forum, 2019; National Records of Scotland, 2021). Jack observed the way poverty, stress, drug use and drug-​related deaths were ultimately intertwined within the context of a ‘perfect storm’: ‘You only need to look at the current drug death crisis to know that it’s getting worse… There’s more drugs in society and more people using them. Poverty and inequality has got worse and austerity’s got something to do with that as well. So the more stress there is in a community, in the deprived wards, the higher the likelihood there to people being vulnerable to [drug distribution] … It’s the perfect storm.’ (Jack, age 42, senior mentor SVRU) As we delved further into the emerging data from practitioners and began to extend our fieldwork by visiting communities in the west of Scotland where gang violence had once been so prevalent, a finer analysis of these and wider issues began to emerge. 58

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Chapter summary In this chapter, we outlined the principles underpinning the public health approach to violence prevention and how it emphasises dealing with the consequences of violence by addressing its root causes. We have documented how, over the past 10–​15 years, the west of Scotland has been a site of intense focus for implementing interventions that seek to address the social determinants that have been linked to gang violence and knife-​carrying, including ACEs and trauma (Williams et al, 2014; Batchelor et al, 2019). Drawing upon initial insights gained from semi-​structured interviews with a range of practitioners, we have explored their perspectives on the current issues relating to gangs, violence and knife-​carrying in the west of Scotland. Through micro-​case study analysis, we have illustrated how the work of the SVRU and its embracing of the ACE-​aware, trauma-​informed public health approach has enabled projects to emerge that have provided life-​enhancing opportunities to those most at risk of violent offending, albeit within the constraints of limited budgets and related issues associated with relative limited reach and impact (Deuchar and Weide, 2019). We have described the way particular educational and outreach organisations, and their embedded initiatives and projects have actively promoted agency and empowerment among the most marginalised young people in the west of Scotland. Finally, we have considered how, as gang-​related violence has continued to decline (but has not necessarily disappeared), the focus within these organisations has in some cases evolved to include interventions relating to employability, the provision of healthy eating, and physical and psychological wellbeing. In digging deeper into the practitioner insights, we have begun to uncover the contextual backdrop to this. We identified it as being characterised by rising poverty rates, and an increased prevalence of ACEs and trauma. The collateral consequences of this, such as poor mental health and increasing levels of drug use, drug distribution, suicide and drug-​related deaths, have clearly become apparent. The intersection of continuing and wider, emerging challenges piqued our interest, and our subsequent data gathering phase took us into the housing schemes of Glasgow and beyond, some of which had first been explored by Deuchar (2009a) over a decade earlier. In doing so, we engaged with young people as well as adults who had grown up during the period in which street violence had been particularly intense (in the 1990s and early 2000s). In the next chapter, we explore the perspectives of the adults (who, in most cases, were former gang members) in relation to their own lived experiences in the housing schemes, their transitional journeys, and their perceptions about how youth and street-​oriented culture may have changed and evolved, as well as about wider social challenges.

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4

Moving In, Moving Up and Moving On: Reflections of Adults and Former Gang Members Building on the initial insights from practitioners outlined in the last chapter, in this chapter we share the perspectives of adult members of communities in the west of Scotland who participated in our fieldwork, most of whom were former gang members and some of whom were now working as practitioners. We share the interviewees’ recollections of lived experiences in the housing schemes at a time when territorial gang violence was particularly pronounced, and the factors that enabled them to transition, change and desist. We also share their viewpoints that suggested (like those outlined in the previous chapter) that, as territorial street gang violence has continued to decline in the west of Scotland, other pressing issues –​most prominently associated with drug use and drug distribution –​have come to the fore.

Adults’ reflections on gangs, turning points and contemporary challenges In the last chapter, we documented how discussions with members of our practitioner sample had drawn our attention to the changing and evolving nature of their organisations’ services in recent years. We began to uncover the contextual backdrop to this in the form of rising poverty rates, an increased prevalence of ACEs and trauma, escalating issues relating to mental ill-​health, and increasing levels of drug use, drug distribution, suicide and drug-​related deaths. As we referred to in Chapter 2, in our desire to explore these issues further we revisited some of Glasgow’s housing schemes that had been explored by Deuchar (2009a) over a decade earlier, as well as other socially disadvantaged neighbourhoods in the west of Scotland. We were keen not only to gain insights from young people, but also adults and former gang members who had grown up in socially deprived districts and 60

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the suburbs of Glasgow and other west of Scotland towns during a period when street violence had been particularly intense (in the 1990s and early 2000s). We were interested in exploring their perceptions about how street-​oriented gang culture may have changed and evolved and the wider contemporary challenges. As we alluded to in Chapter 2, we were able to gain access to three participants from Deuchar’s earlier fieldwork involving youth gang members and those who lived in gang-​affected neighbourhoods. Specifically, Joe (aged 28), who had grown up in Yewstone,1 in the east end of Glasgow, was first interviewed by Deuchar in 2008 for a study of urban youth cultures and gang violence, which was published in A Journal of Youth Work (Deuchar, 2009b). Joe had subsequently become attached to FARE Scotland as a sessional youth worker for several years before moving on to other destinations. Further, Adem (aged 28), had come to Scotland as a young asylum seeker, had grown up with his family during his adolescent years in Oakford, on the south side of Glasgow (see Appendix), and had for a short while become a basketball coach with SSF. Adem had also taken part in an interview with Deuchar in 2008 as part of the fieldwork for the 2009 book Gangs, Marginalised Youth and Social Capital. In addition, through the support of the SVRU, we gained further access to Jack (a senior mentor aged 42, referred to in Chapter 3) for follow-​up interview discussions. Jack had grown up in Sprucehill, a town eight miles northeast of Glasgow (see details in Appendix). He had participated in Deuchar’s research in 2012, with his insights featured in the 2013 book, Policing Youth Violence: Transatlantic Connections. As we mentioned in Chapter 2, in order to complement and further enrich the insights gained from members of Deuchar’s past samples (Joe, Adem and Jack), we again approached our gatekeeping organisations, seeking to conduct extended follow-​up interview discussions with three of their practitioners (featured already in the previous chapter) who had themselves grown up in the housing schemes in and around Glasgow during the 1990s and early 2000s, and had been involved in gang culture and violence themselves. The latter group comprised Alan (aged 28, from the SVRU, who had spent his youth in Mapleville in the east end of Glasgow) and Nigel and Rob (both from FARE Scotland and aged 26 and 41 respectively, who had also grown up in Mapleville). In addition, members of our gatekeeping organisations also provided access to two other adult participants who had been involved in gangs and/​or violent offending and had subsequently become attached to their interventions: one (Samantha, aged 26) was a trainee within the SVRU’s Street & Arrow programme and had spent her youth in Birchend in the north of Glasgow, and another (Nick, aged 29) was a former sports coach with SSF who had grown up in Ashbank, in the east of Glasgow. Finally, drawing upon a snowball sampling approach, several of the interviewees also provided access to other adult men who were known 61

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to them, had grown up in socially deprived housing schemes during the period when territorial gang culture was at its height, had in most cases been actively involved in gang violence in the west of Scotland housing schemes and were willing to participate in an interview with us. These four new participants were 32-​year-​old Gerry, from Oakford in the south side of Glasgow, Scott (age 32) and 40-​year-​old Hamza, both from the large town of Hazelend to the east of Glasgow, and 28-​year-​old Simon from Hawthornbank, a medium-​sized town located in the west-​central lowlands, 18 miles north-​west of Glasgow. This brought the total size of the sample for this part of the research to 12 participants. Of these 11 were male and one was female, two (Adem and Hamza) were from ethnic minority groups and the remaining nine were White. Table 4.1 provides a full listing of the participants’ pseudonyms, ages, the pseudonyms for the geographical areas where they grew up,2 and, in the cases of those who were current or former practitioners in gatekeeping organisations, their specific professional roles. As touched on in Chapter 2, during our semi-​structured interviews in this part of the fieldwork we explored the participants’ experiences of growing up in socially deprived neighbourhoods in Glasgow and beyond; what had stimulated them to ‘move in’ to gang-​related offending (where relevant); Table 4.1: Interview participant description: adults and former gang members Name

Age

Geographical area

Professional role [where relevant]

Alan

28

Mapleville [Glasgow city suburb]**

Senior mentor [SVRU]

Jack

42

Sprucehill [medium town]*/​**

Senior mentor [SVRU]

Samantha 26

Birchend [Glasgow city district]

Trainee [SVRU]

Joe Nigel

28 26

Yewstone [Glasgow city district]* Former sessional youth worker Mapleville [Glasgow city worker [FARE Scotland] suburb]** Family support worker [FARE Scotland]

Rob

41

Mapleville [Glasgow city suburb]**

Adem

28

Oakford [Glasgow city district]* Former basketball coach [SSF]

Nick

29

Ashbank [Glasgow city district]

Gerry

32

Oakford [Glasgow city district]

Hamza

40

Hazelend [large town]

Scott

32

Hazelend [large town]

Simon

28

Hawthornbank [medium town]

Employability manager [FARE Scotland] Former youth coach [SSF]

* Previous research participant (Deuchar, 2009a, 2009b, 2013) ** Previously interviewed for this study (see Chapter 3)

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the extent to and ways in which involvement in territorial street gang culture had led some to ‘move up’ into more serious and organised crime; and how they had reached the point where they had begun to desist and ‘move on’. We also explored the participants’ reflections on the extent to which gang-​related issues within the geographical areas they had grown up in had ‘moved on’ since they were teenagers, and the wider contemporary challenges and adversities facing young people –​a theme that we had first begun to explore with our wider practitioner sample during initial interview discussions and continued to explore with young people later on. In the following sections, subthemes are explored using extracts from interview transcriptions and short vignettes.

Moving in and moving up: ACEs, gangs and organised crime The majority of the participants recalled how they had been exposed to a range of ACEs during their formative years and how this had stimulated their involvement in street gangs. For example, Nick had grown up in Ashbank, one of the most socially deprived districts in the east end of Glasgow (see details in Chapter 2 and in the Appendix). He came from a single-​parent household and was also bullied at school: ‘My mum was trying to work a job and bring up five kids, over a wide age-​range … When I was going out, I was seeking the attention I maybe wanted in the household … I was bullied a lot in primary school … I struggled to deal with that. It was every single day. Then when I went to secondary school, I thought “enough is enough” and I kind of joined a gang –​and I wasn’t bullied anymore … That gave me a lot of confidence, where bullies wanted to now hang about with me. I thrived off that reputation –​like, going from the quiet boy who was bullied, to being feared … I think I found acceptance with that.’ (Nick, age 29, Ashbank, Glasgow city district, former youth coach: SSF) In the previous chapter, we described the research into ACEs (Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, 2018), and how some evidence suggests a ‘positive and significant association’ between ACE scores, gang involvement and violent offending (Wolff et al, 2020, p 42). The ACEs scale has become a popular tool among researchers to explore the long-​term effects of childhood trauma and focuses particularly on the impact of physical abuse, neglect and sexual abuse (Finkelhor et al, 2015). However, Finkelhor et al (2015, p 13) argue that there is strong evidence that other common adversities missing from this list also have a negative impact, including ‘bullying and peer victimisation, isolation and peer rejection’ (see also Holligan and Deuchar, 2015). In addition to growing up with a missing father figure, 63

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Nick’s rejection from and bullying by his peer group evidently led him to experience psychological distress relating to a lack of positive attachment. Underlying issues of vulnerability led to him seeking out gang membership as a means of enacting amplified forms of hegemonic masculinity to gain a sense of belonging, acceptance and power (Connell, 2005; Messerschmidt, 2005; Baird, 2012). This was a common theme that emerged among our participants. For instance, Joe had participated in Deuchar’s early fieldwork (Deuchar, 2009b); his parents had divorced when he was an infant and he lived in Yewstone, an inner-​city district in the east end of Glasgow (see details, Chapter 2), where he was surrounded by poverty and lack of youth opportunities. In Box 4.1, his experiences are illustrated in the form of a short vignette, told in his own words. Box 4.1:  Joe’s story I was about 13 when I moved into [Yewstone] … Ma’ ma’ and da’ split up obviously when I was young … My ma’ had four weans [children] … in a one-​bedroom house, so you can imagine quite cramped. There was me, my two brothers, my wee sister … I would always see my da’ … I was about half and half between my ma’ and my da’ … My da’ was a bit of a nut case back in the day. He’s quite known in the [neighbouring scheme], believe it or no’. So, although we used to fight wi’ the [neighbouring scheme], when we went doon [there] to see ma da’ there was never any hassle … He had a wee bit of a reputation maybe himself … He’s done quite a bit. So … he was quite well known, I would say. He could fight as well … Even still the now, he’s close to 70 and you’re like, ‘fuck’. So, he’s still got that look about him … I was sort of 14/​15 when I started doin’ gang fightin’ … We found a buzz, there wasnae really much for us to dae in the [scheme] … I wasnae aware at the time, but lookin’ back now it was very deprived, I think … No facilities at all, there was nothin’ … When I moved into the [scheme] … there was a bit a’ commotion wi’ the young team … They were tryin’ to sort of suss oot who we were and tryin’ to bully me and my young brother … I don’t know if it was tryin’ to show … a bit of masculinity. Tryin’ to show ‘I’m the top dog here’ or somethin’ … The gang fightin’, I don’t know, it was just somethin’ aboot it that done it for me –​it was just a buzz I was chasin’ all the time that you never really got wi’ playin’ fitba [football] or dain anythin’ else … Chasin’ them aboot, you felt so hard. I dunno how to describe it, that feeling of …we’d feel like the big men, if you like. [I carried] a few times … but I wasnae one for carryin’ [a knife] every day. Just when I knew somethin’ was gonnae kick off … I was always a good thrower. I always had a good throw so I could be far away, I didnae need to get this close … bricks, bottles, you name it … [When I did carry] I would say it was more protection as in like you knew you were gonna fight … You know you’ve got the upper hand sort of thing … The way I saw it is if I had a knife, I felt –​no’ invincible, but you knew like you’ve got the upper hand … You’re no’ wantin’ to back down … to be known as a ‘shite bag’ … I picked up a lot 64

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of charges, like I’ve been charged wi’ assault, serious assault, permanent disfigurement … I mean, they [other gang members] spur you on to dae more daft shit … competing to be the big man, if you like … this ‘top guy’.    

Baird (2012, p 179) argues that, in socially and economically excluded contexts, the gang becomes an attractive vehicle for ‘doing masculinity’ for boys and young men, while wider research has noted that the ‘ganging process’ provides symbolic evidence of the ‘urge for manhood’ (Bloch and Niederhoffer, 1958, cited in Yablonsky, 1997, pp 171–​2; see also Baird, 2012). As Box 4.1 illustrates, Joe gained an adrenalin rush from gang fighting; the feeling of being the ‘big man’ or the ‘top guy’ was evidently a means of compensating for his sense of socio-​economic marginality and (as was the case with Nick, above) the suggested gender insecurity that emerged from being bullied when he first moved into the scheme (Pitts, 2008; Deuchar, 2009a, 2009b, 2018). Although his parents divorced when Joe was young, he continued to have contact with his father and arguably lived in the shadow of his tough-​guy image. Accordingly, the combined impact of poverty, lack of opportunity, difficult family life and the experience of being bullied and victimised when he first arrived in the scheme evidently heightened Joe’s propensity towards weapon-​carrying and violence as masculine identity markers. As Hallsworth (2011, p 189) has argued, within the context of deprived and stigmatised neighbourhoods, violence is a competence that has to be learned where ‘street survival is literally the name of the game’. Other adult males who grew up with a sense of marginalisation in the housing schemes (and who we accessed via snowball sampling) confirmed that gang violence had been a prominent feature of street culture that sometimes had tragic consequences: ‘I grew up in [Oakford] … across from [the] high school. Was a right bad bit. There was the local young team, a few bad bastards that would have stabbed you in a second for being from [the other scheme].’ (Gerry, age 32, Oakford, Glasgow city district) ‘There was a lot of gang fightin’ in [the scheme] … a couple of the boys got killed through it all growing up.’ (Scott, age 32, Hazelend, large town) However, a strong sense of marginalisation did not always lead our participants to become involved in gangs. In his early work, Deuchar (2009a) drew attention to evidence that suggested a high incidence of racial discrimination and harassment experienced by asylum seekers and refugees 65

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in Glasgow at the time (see Netto et al, 2001; Sim and Bowes, 2007). He highlighted that, because asylum seekers tended to be housed in deprived housing schemes, there were perceptions among some local people that ‘problems of deprivation were being compounded by the arrival of other vulnerable households’ (Sim and Bowes, 2007, p 734). One of Deuchar’s early research participants was Adem, a young 17-​year-​old asylum seeker from Kosovo, who described in detail his experiences of racial abuse at the hands of young White men while living in Oakford, on the south side of Glasgow (see Deuchar, 2009a). Now aged 28, Adem reflected on this difficult period of his life. Despite being victimised and ‘unable to cross the road for fear of violence’ (Deuchar, 2009a, p 43), Adem had avoided the temptation to retaliate by forming a gang with other asylum-​seeking youths in his neighbourhood due to fear of causing his family’s deportation: ‘We lived in … high-​rise flats. This was at a time when the flats were a very difficult place to live in … There [was] racism, because they still see us coming from a different part of the world … [It] was chaotic … There was a group of them you had to deal with and it was a huge disadvantage … I never went out alone, really … They would attack you, throw stones, spit on you … I saw the result of people joining the gangs, getting scars and getting beaten up, the hassle. I couldn’t think about even wanting to get involved, it seemed cool but … we lived in a time of fear of deportation … They can come and deport you at any time –​so it is never a relaxed mind … the fear of deporting my family because of my actions, it was the biggest fear.’ (Adem, age 28, Oakford, Glasgow city district, former basketball coach: SSF) Bloch (2014) highlights that asylum seekers can suffer panic attacks, recurrent nightmares and the inability to sleep because of possible Border Agency visits and the threat of deportation. During extended discussions with him, Adem described how his family had escaped from a war zone in Kosovo. Despite becoming aggressive on occasions towards local youths who grouped together in gangs and subjected him, his family and friends to unprovoked violence (see Deuchar, 2009a), his fear of government repercussions prevented him from becoming involved in a gang himself as a means of protection, status and empowerment. Further insights into the impact of racism emerged during our discussions with Hamza, a 40-​year-​old whose family was of Pakistani origin. Having grown up in Hazelend, a town that borders Glasgow to the east (see Chapter 2), Hamza recalled experiences of being called a ‘Paki bastard’, even by his friends, when an argument broke out. However, both Adem and Hamza articulated a strong perception that this type of racism had now largely diminished in the west of Scotland, with Hamza admitting that 66

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‘most people are sound’ and Adem asserting that ‘people are more accepting, they know that [racist] stuff is wrong to say.’ The only young adult woman in our sample, Samantha, grew up in Birchend, an extremely socially deprived district in north Glasgow (see details in Appendix). She described how she had suffered from a whole range of ACEs; she identified a clear link between this and her later involvement in violent offending: ‘When I was six, my dad died with cancer, and I had to watch that … watch him deteriorate … Then when he passed away, my mum was takin’ drugs, taking heroin, crack cocaine. The house was a disaster. It was really, really untidy … I grew up with my mum being violent … I seen her fightin’ wi’ boyfriends and other females, and using baseball bats and all that … I just felt like I grew up wi’ nothin’, grew up being neglected physically, emotionally … [In] secondary [school] I got picked on a wee bit, but I was gettin’ suspended all the time. I was smashin’ windows and throwin’ tables on top of people … I left my mum’s house when I was 15 and I met my boyfriend at the time. But he turned out to be very violent towards me … I had a child to him, and then I lost my child through domestic violence … That’s when I became really seriously violent … I dragged a girl in a bath one time and stabbed her … One time, a boy asked me to leave his hoose so I tried to slash him as well … Nobody was stopping me.’ (Samantha, age 26, Birchend, Glasgow city district, trainee: SVRU) As we have highlighted, ACEs commonly refer to abuse and household dysfunction exposures, including physical and emotional neglect, domestic violence and household substance abuse (Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, 2018). Samantha experienced all of this, and later losing her child as a result of exposure to domestic violence was seen as a major turning point that tipped her over the edge into serious violence and knife-​carrying. Although not specifically involved in a gang, Samantha evidently adopted what has been described in previous literature as ‘bad girl femininity’ (Messerschmidt, 2002, p 463), whereby young women may attempt to gain a form of status through resorting to violence to defend their sense of honour (Young and Trickett, 2017; Deuchar et al, 2020). In Chapter 2, we referred to recent research that suggests the transitional and fluid nature of young gang members’ activity in and around Glasgow, and the way street gang membership can and does on occasion lead to participating in organised crime (McLean, 2017; McLean et al, 2019a, 2019b). Told in his own words, the short vignette in Box 4.2 outlines the multiple forms of marginality that Alan experienced early in life while growing up in Mapleville, a suburb to the east of Glasgow, and how this 67

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led to street gang membership and violence. However, it also illustrates his transitional journey from expressive to instrumental gang-​related organised crime (McLean et al, 2019b).

Box 4.2:  Alan’s story I was brought up with my mum and my sister in the family home [in Mapleville]. My father was serving life for murder, and he went inside when my mother was six and a half months pregnant, so I never met him. He wasnae there, wasn’t a figure in the family home … My mother was heroin addicted … [There was] a lot of violence in my family home. Domestic stuff, stepfathers and stuff to my sisters, my mother and myself, and obviously with the prevalence of heroin addiction in the family home, overdoses happening regularly so … chaotic really, from birth … From seven years of age, I was finding my mother overdosed behind the door convulsing. I actually knew what do in that situation –​she had taught me that. But she had also taught me the code of silence, ‘you don’t tell anyone anything. What goes on in this house stays in this house. And if it does go anywhere else, you will suffer violence.’ When I was going to school I became aggressive, disruptive, violent. Because that was how I had been taught you deal with situations … Obviously at that time [my housing scheme] was synonymous with territorialism … There were seven gangs in that area. I wouldn’t have seen it as a gang at that time, I would have seen it as a group of individuals who accepted me. I actually felt safe when I was with them, because I was nine or 10, and they were 16/​17. I felt like, I suppose you could say I was always searchin’ for a father figure in some shape or form. And that came with the gang figures. … At 14, I horrifically injured another gang member and that’s what I was secured for –​I went into secure care. I spent two year in there and then got secured again … I went from secure to Polmont [Young Offenders’ Institution] because of the nature of the crime … [After my release] I wore it like a badge of honour … I had arrived and I had my own young team below us. I never committed a crime in sobriety so it was always motivated through alcohol or drugs, always. Valium and alcohol were my mixture … I was movin’ on to higher, stronger drugs and the stuff I was gettin’ involved with was the distribution of drugs. When I was 18, I was approached by a crime family in Glasgow to do running for them. That came off the back of the reputation I had carved out in the gang … I was approached off a member of this family and basically said, ‘Why are you runnin’ about killing each other over nothin’, when you could be dain’ it for paper?’ I said ‘that makes sense’, and he gave me a mobile phone and said ‘when this rings, go’ … When the mobile rang, I had to go to a destination, pick whatever it was up and was to take it to the other destination. So that’s what I done all around the east end of Glasgow … I recruited members who were in a gang with me. They were distributin’ drugs for me; I was distributin’ for the

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other ones. So it was a chain, man. And see the person at the top, they’re the ones that are winning. See the ones at our level, we’re the ones goin’ to the jail; we’re the ones that are goin’ to get murdered; we’re the ones doin’ all the dirty work and at the centre of this there’s a wee boy who just wants his dad in all of this and sufferin’ huge amounts of adversity … Three years ago, I was seriously assaulted. There was a certain quantity of drugs that were stolen from another family … just a group who were distributin’ drugs, and a sim card. And the sim card came in contact with myself, and I took the sim card –​the sim card was worth more than the drugs were because it was one of these sim cards that you put into a mobile phone and you had a run, because you had addicts constantly phoning it. So you were able to feed their habit and make lots of money. But little did I know that this sim card belonged to a very serious individual within Glasgow. And they told me, I got a phone call that night sayin’ to me ‘we want the sim card back, no’ bothered about the drugs. We want the sim card back.’ I told them to fuck off, because I’ve drugs in my system, I’ve got a family behind me, I feel like I’m invincible … I came home one night and there’s a car parked right outside my door … a black Audi … walks into my path and four guys get out of the car and they stab me nine times … My son witnessed all that, seven years of age. I nearly died …    

As with others in our sample, Alan’s story illustrates the links between experiences of ACEs and trauma, and subsequent involvement in gang membership and recreational violence (Deuchar, 2009a; Fraser, 2015). Alan’s experiences also once again illustrate how gang culture can become a vehicle for masculine identity expression, particularly within the context of paternal absence (Deuchar, 2018). As we discussed in Chapter 1, evidence has suggested that YSG members thrive by generating street capital (Harding, 2014). Unlike the others in our sample who had been involved in street gangs and violence, Alan’s experiences illustrate how accumulating high levels of street capital through building a reputation for violence, gaining rich knowledge of local street culture and the right type of networking skills enabled him to transition from being a local member of a YSG to forming his own YCG, which was evidently linked to an OCG (Densley et al, 2019; McLean, 2019; McLean et al, 2019b). The imperative for publicly performing masculinity and defending physical turf in Alan’s case gradually became replaced by more business orientations and the creation of entrepreneurial forms of social control (McLean et al, 2019b; see further discussion in Chapter 5). However, Alan’s involvement in drug-​related organised crime clearly led to tragic violent consequences as he ultimately became a victim of gang-​ related retaliation, an incident that was witnessed by his own son. Alan went on to describe how this incident had brought him to a point where he was 69

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ready to make a change and move away from the gang lifestyle. For him and others, transitional journeys subsequently opened up as a result of the support from public health-​focused interventions.

Moving on: turning points and the impact of interventions In the previous chapter, we described how the SVRU has adopted the WHO’s focus on violence prevention through tackling its root causes. The SVRU’s ‘Navigators’ programme was launched at Glasgow Royal Infirmary Hospital in 2015 and subsequently expanded to include the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Glasgow as well as two other Scottish hospitals outwith the city. Working in Accident and Emergency (A&E) departments, those employed as ‘Navigators’ engage with patients who have been affected by violence and, using a range of contacts with wider services, offer to support them in changing their lives as a means of breaking the cycle of violence (http://​ www.svru.co.uk). Alan described how meeting representatives from the Navigators programme while in A&E after being stabbed represented a salient turning point for him that built upon his emerging motivation to make a change in his life: ‘They knew me by name in the Royal [hospital] … 17 times in 18 month[s]‌I was admitted for knife injuries; really once a month I was going in there … I had a desire to change my life and then … [the] Violence Reduction Unit –​the Navigators –​done an intervention wi’ me. What I loved about them, they didn’t even ask me about my injuries … I just spoke to them about how I felt, how I was mentally, how I didnae want to live like that anymore. And they said they could help me … So I went and got involved in recovery … I met Alex [the Navigator] mair times … He told me about his lived experience and his life. He started explainin’ the Violence Reduction Unit … and I was blown away … And so I was about three months sober and the hardest thing I had to do at that point was I had to sit members of that crime family down and told them that I was … detaching … I’m out.’ (Alan, age 28, Mapleville, Glasgow city suburb, senior mentor: SVRU) The focus on compassion over violence and recognition that social support can ultimately reduce criminogenic factors (Cullen, 1994; Deuchar, 2018) was clearly at the heart of the Navigators programme; Alan subsequently became a trainee on the Street & Arrow programme (for programme details, see Chapter 3): ‘I met the inspector at the Violence Reduction Unit who was the project lead at this point wi’ Street & Arrow. And I sits doon wi’ him 70

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… he tells me all about this … the wraparound support was in the form of mentors, counsellors and all that and that appealed to me. And then he told me there was a wage you could be makin’ … The opportunity was amazing … I really was blown away that this guy was a polis [police] and he was speakin’ to me like this. And there was a building full of guys just like him who were proactive in this work. Knowin’ warts and all about me, they still believed in me. They seen the goodness in me … and I started on the Monday … We done a check-​in in the morning, and it’s goin’ round all these boys and I know some of them from other gangs and stuff … boys from [the schemes] who used to run about like cut-​throat pirates and they’re talking about their feelings and emotions and all that. And I’m like, ‘What is this place, man?!’ … And then I felt a sense of purpose … I felt acceptance and then I felt purpose in my life.’ (Alan, age 28, Mapleville, Glasgow city suburb, senior mentor: SVRU) Stefanakis (2008, p 658) argues that interventions for violent male offenders based on compassion help to build ‘therapeutic alliances’, while Leap (2012, p 212) observes that a community-​based approach represents the ‘best of all the “answers” ’ for the prevention of reoffending (see also Deuchar, 2018). Alan’s previously entrenched views of the police were evidently challenged by his experiences of being offered social support and inclusion by a police-​ led organisation. Therapeutic alliances between agents of social control and the most disadvantaged and misunderstood were therefore built. In doing so, Alan was introduced to a community-​based approach that offered him and others a sense of purpose and acceptance, and supported him in problematising caustic subcultural constructions of masculinity whereby he and the other male participants no longer felt the need to regulate and suppress emotionality (Weaver, 2016; Deuchar, 2018; Deuchar and Weide, 2019). He revealed to us that, after completing the programme, his deepened skill-​set and capacity for supporting and helping others led the project leader to offer him a permanent post as a lead mentor. In this role, he gained the opportunity to guide and support other reforming gang members and offenders (see further details, Chapter 3). Other participants also drew attention to how the SVRU’s Street & Arrow project had been the main conduit for supporting them through the process of change, following initial trigger events. For Samantha, after gaining a sense of readiness for change as a result of becoming a parent for the second time, the opportunity to get a job enhanced her self-​esteem. However, even more than that, the supportive community ethos enabled her to feel acceptance and comfort in expressing her emotions, while the humanity of the police leadership within the project meant that she built trusting, supportive relationships with those from whom she had previously been alienated. This 71

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accumulated sense of support enabled her to develop her innate desire to be able to move away from offending behaviour and embrace her role as a mother and carer in order to support her son and her brother: ‘I’d lost my first son, I went off the rails [and offended again] … found out I was pregnant … and I really didn’t want to live like that any mair. I want[ed] my son, I want[ed] this baby more than whatever else … [Now] my brother who’s 15 lives wi’ me, I’ve got him in my care, he’s in my full care … I’ve got him and my two-​year-​old [son] … You just gain confidence. I remember looking at lassies and guys, and seeing them going to work and going, ‘I wish I could go, “oh I’m going to work, I’ve got work.” ’ Something so normal in some people’s lives … and [now] I’m dead proud to go, ‘oh, I’m working in the morning.’ Such a normal thing for a normal person that I never had … I find it comfortable in [Street & Arrow] … if I’m in here and I need to be upset, I’ll be upset and cry at the table … All the trainees support each other … I never knew at first [when I met] Daniel and then they told me he was police … I would never have suspected.’ (Samantha, age 26, Birchend, Glasgow city district, trainee: SVRU) Jack, a senior mentor who himself had drawn on the support offered by the SVRU in his own change journey (see Deuchar, 2013 and Chapter 3 of this book), explained how mentors ultimately went above and beyond the support offered during the normal nine-​to-​five working day within Street & Arrow, assisting trainees 24/​7 out of a sense of endless compassion and unconditional love (Deuchar, 2018): ‘Their discretionary effort comes from a compassion and empathy … like, for example, if one of the trainees was struggling and they phoned Alan at 8 o’clock at night and Alan was walking past his phone and saw that they were phoning him, he wouldnae say to himself, “It’s 8 o’clock at night, I don’t get paid to answer the phone at this time.’’ His compassion would compel him to say, “that’s unusual that he phones me at this time, I’m gonna see what the sketch is,” and pick up the phone, and they might spend an hour on that phone ’cause [the trainee] might be struggling.’ (Jack, age 42, Sprucehill, medium town, senior mentor: SVRU) Research on desistance from crime has traditionally been dominated by life-​ course perspectives and an interest in how changes in life stages such as entry into marriage, employment or parenthood can function as drivers in desistance processes (Laub and Sampson, 1993; Sampson and Laub, 2005). More recently, however, criminologists have convincingly argued that desistance is best 72

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understood as a gradual or ‘drifting’ process, involving progression and relapse (Søgaard et al, 2016), as well as (inter)subjective processes such as willpower, cognitive transformations and desisters’ narrative reconstructions of selves and identities (Maruna, 2001; Giordano et al, 2002; Gadd and Farrall, 2004). Giordano et al (2002, p 1002) argue that offenders’ cognitive transformations are crucial to successful desistance and that such transformations involve an openness to change as well as the ability to envision a new identity or a ‘replacement self ’ without a criminal lifestyle. Other researchers have noted that hope also plays a key role in sustaining desistance (see Farrall and Calverley, 2006). Importantly, such perspectives, at times referred to as ‘a phenomenology of desistance’, hold that while structural factors and life events can act as triggers for individuals’ decisions to change, structural changes will only be influential if a person considers these desirable (Søgaard et al, 2016, p 101). For the reformed offenders we interviewed, such as Alan and Samantha, the trigger events and turning points they experienced were complemented by support from public health-​oriented interventions with a focus on inclusion, support and compassion, which evidently accelerated their desistance journeys by providing them with a sense of meaning and hope for the future. Thus, structure and agency appeared to combine to support their continuing desistance journeys (Healy, 2012). For some, the support that followed the initial trigger events emerged as a result of involvement in the youth work, community learning and development, and sport-​related initiatives in and around Glasgow, as described in the previous chapter. For instance, seeing his gang-​related mates turn to harder drugs had triggered an emotional reaction in Nick, who had witnessed drug abuse within his own family during his formative years. Having engaged in the sports clubs offered by SSF, Nick subsequently gained the opportunity to become a coach and ‘give back’ to other young people who had grown up experiencing similar disadvantages to himself: ‘A lot of my friends were gettin’ into harder drugs, and I think that’s when we drifted apart. The ones that were drug dealin’ at the time, we just drifted. I had seen family members and that involved in drugs … and I was like, “What are you doing?” … When I seen friends and stuff actively wanted to do it all the time, I grew to hate them a little bit … I then done sports coaching … SSF … said they had some coaching for me [in the schemes] … We were gettin’ 50 kids through the doors each week … I just seen myself so much in these young people.’ (Nick, age 29, Ashbank, Glasgow city district, former youth coach: SSF) Further, Joe had begun to witness and experience too many violent incidents and to question his own motivation for gang membership; an intervention 73

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from FARE Scotland subsequently enabled Joe to gain a sense of belonging, acceptance and power as masculine identity markers in alternative ways (Messerschmidt, 2005; Baird, 2012; Deuchar, 2018): ‘I think I was just gettin’ a wee bit older and realisin’, “What the fuck are we dain’ really?” … I was like “What the fuck was I dain’? Why did I get my tooth knocked oot wi’ a brick?” … FARE had a massive part to play … comin’ in just at the right time … told us that they want us to stop gang fightin’. They wanted to give us somethin’ else to do … I think the very first trip they took us was mountain biking … and they says, “If I can give you ten consent forms, can you get me ten bodies?” and I said, “Give me 20 and I’ll get you 20.” … So we had 20 forms and filled up the minibus … It’s the same idea as the sort of power you’re lookin’ for in the gang –​I had the power when I was dishin’ out they forms … deciding who was goin’ and … everybody crowding round me and I felt like the man again, although [now] it was a different setting … [Then] I was going to talk … [in] the police college. I don’t know if it had an influence on anybody else, but it had an influence on me … I expected [prison] ten years ago to be honest’ (Joe, age 28, Yewstone, Glasgow city district, former sessional youth worker: FARE Scotland) Previous research (Maruna, 2001; Barry, 2006; Deuchar, 2009a, 2013, 2018) has identified how enmeshing gang-​related offenders in compassionate, trusting and reciprocal relationships characterised by unconditional support can ultimately enable them to develop an impulse towards generative motivations where they begin to support others. For both Nick and Joe, the support they received from community organisations like SSF and FARE Scotland stimulated their motivation to give back to other young people. Nick built upon his involvement as a youth participant in SSF to ultimately begin coaching other disadvantaged young people. Joe initially began to find alternative ways of expressing masculinity through the status he gained from coordinating local youth outreach initiatives in his own housing scheme for the benefit of young people; gradually, he moved on to share his personal experiences of moving away from gang culture during presentations given within police training initiatives. In a wider sense, Adem believed educational initiatives coordinated and delivered by organisations like SSF had helped not only to support gang members to move away from violence but also to reduce racism in Glasgow through ‘educating people as to what is acceptable’. As outlined in Deuchar (2009a), the twilight basketball sessions that Adem had become involved in through SSF had had a major impact on breaking down cultural barriers in the housing schemes in Glasgow, generating social capital and 74

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promoting shared cultural values (Bourdieu, 1986; Putnam, 2000). Twelve years on, during our follow-​up discussion with him, Adem reflected upon the confidence he had gained through the work of SSF. Being involved in an inclusive organisation where he no longer felt harassed, stigmatised and marginalised had ultimately provided him with the focus and impetus to apply to go to university: ‘The basketball was a good escape and helped free me up mentally … [I carried on] to the end when I was 21. I did some coaching … I was one of the first ones from the group to go to university and I think we motivated each other … 100 per cent, the youth workers [at SSF] have had a huge impact … These guys do a lot to help [young] people.’ (Adem, age 28, Oakford, Glasgow city district, former basketball coach: SSF) Some former gang members turned youth practitioners also reflected on personal accounts of how the ‘shared agenda’ encouraged collaboration between the SVRU and agencies like FARE Scotland (see previous discussion, Chapter 3). This ultimately led to the accumulation of honour and prestige (or what Bourdieu [1986] might term ‘symbolic capital’) in the form of successive further and higher education qualifications that replaced the ‘street capital’ previously accumulated through gang violence and criminality (Harding, 2014, p 6): ‘I got involved with the [S]‌VRU … the youth workers at the CIRV group asked me to get involved. Basically they said, “if you go to [a CIRV ‘call-​in’ session], then we will take you go-​kartin’ … [FARE] encouraged us … They targeted me as someone who could do youth work. I took part, went through my SVQ [Scottish Vocational Qualification], got that … took the position with FARE and went to an introduction session. I gave it a try and passed it, got a qualification in youth work, then they said, ‘Next stage is you go to college.’ … Next thing you know, I got an HNC [Higher National Certificate] [in] working with communities. Then they said, ‘We ain’t finished with you yet. How about university?” They could get me into second year of university, next thing I walked out with a degree!’ (Nigel, age 26, Mapleville, Glasgow city suburb, family support worker: FARE Scotland) Accordingly, our insights from those who had grown up in disadvantaged neighbourhoods in the west of Scotland (some of whom had now become practitioners) provided us with several illustrations of how organisations focused on promoting the public health approach to violence reduction had 75

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surrounded them with compassion, communal ties and inclusion (Deuchar, 2018). Multi-​faceted benefits emerged, including the provision of jobs and qualifications, but also the building of confidence, emotional engagement, cognitive transformations and the reconstruction of personal identities that were conducive to criminal desistance (Giordano et al, 2002; Søgaard et al, 2016; Deuchar, 2018). In some cases, the participants reflected on how initial ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors that were beginning to influence gang disengagement had become strengthened through the compassionate relationships that were formed, and in many cases social and symbolic capital enabled positive destinations for the interviewees to emerge –​either within or outwith the intervening agencies themselves (Pyrooz and Decker, 2011; Deuchar, 2018). However, as we highlighted in the previous chapter, as gang-​related violence has continued to decline in the west of Scotland, other pressing issues have come to the fore.

The schemes ‘moving on’: continuing and wider issues As those who had grown up in the communities in the west of Scotland that had been most prone to street gang violence, our participants acknowledged that some neighbourhoods still occasionally suffered from these issues. For instance, Gerry recognised that the streets in many of the housing schemes in and around Glasgow were ‘safer now from when we were jumping about the scheme’ but also indicated that he still heard about stabbings taking place periodically. Additionally, Scott acknowledged that there were ‘still gangs, just less of them’ within the schemes in the town of Hazelend, and that ‘guys are still carrying [knives] but just not to the same extent now’. Samantha also referred to the housing schemes in Birchend on the north side of Glasgow that is recognised as one of the most deprived areas in the whole of the UK, with high rates of crime (see descriptor in Appendix). In her opinion, street gang members still tended to congregate on the streets there: ‘I mean, I don’t stay there now but I drive through [the scheme] every day going to work and coming back. And they all still sit about and everybody I talk to, they go, “That’s the only scheme that I see everybody standing about in a gang.”’ (Samantha, age 26, Birchend, Glasgow city district, trainee: SVRU) However, the majority of our participants in this part of the research believed that things had ‘moved on’ in the housing schemes, particularly in relation to young people’s social pastimes. While they had been heavily involved in territorial street violence as teenagers and would always avoid travelling into other schemes, now they recognised that young people from all over 76

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Glasgow and beyond (including those from areas that had traditionally positioned themselves as territorial rivals) tended to meet each other on social media and congregate together in open spaces. This generally reinforced the messages that practitioners had also given us during our interviews with them (see Chapter 3). Most prominently, our adult participants had become aware that the emphasis on illegal drug use and drug distribution among young people had very much deepened (see further insights in the next chapter). In their view, young people often distributed on behalf of older dealers, and sometimes this carried with it the threat of violence as a result of debt bondage (Robinson et al, 2019), and the need for knife-​carrying for protection: ‘When I was younger, there was no Class A stuff about … It was hash back then … [and] drink was my thing at the weekend … The big change I’ve seen is the drugs … They’re [young people] too interested in making money … They’re gettin’ paid off this guy, whoever’s payin’ them … They’ve took more than what they’re due to get paid … fuckin’ takin’ what they’re servin’ … It’s organised crime … I’ve seen a few people gettin’ leathered in the street and it’s purely because like they’re no’ payin’ their debt … The boys I know [in the scheme] who are drug dealin’ have always got a knife on them, all the time –​the younger ones as well.’ (Joe, age 28, Yewstone, Glasgow city district, former sessional youth worker: FARE Scotland) ‘[There’s] too many main dealers now …Wee guys ain’t puntin’ their own gear in the schemes, they are doin’ it for others … they might punt green [cannabis] to mates, but I can assure you if it’s gear or smack [heroin] then it’s comin’ from somewhere else –​a main player in the scheme.’ (Scott, age 32, Hazelend, large town) ‘It’s no’ as territorial as it was. [But] gangs’ll always bubble under the surface, in some shape or form … It’s a fact that you can get drugs faster than you can get a pizza … [Violence] is still bubbling under the surface or it’s still manifesting in other areas motivated wi’ other things.’ (Alan, age 28, Mapleville, Glasgow city suburb, senior mentor: SVRU) Building on this, Simon had observed that more young people tended now to ‘work together to make cash’, while Scott drew attention to the fact that young men were now very conscious of ‘looking pristine’ and were motivated by the need to make money to purchase clothes with designer labels (see further discussion in c­ hapters 5 and 6). The views of our adult participants were consistent on this. Drug use and distribution were seen as 77

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a common pastime among increasingly younger members of the housing schemes, who were often influenced by images of celebrities: ‘Drugs is the big thing. There has been a growth in cocaine, and that’s because of affordability, where [before] no one could afford it and now anyone can.’ (Rob, age 41, Mapleville, Glasgow city suburb, employability manager: FARE Scotland) ‘The shows like “Geordie Shore” [a British reality television series] and that has influenced a lot. Young people see these guys getting out their faces and always mad wi’ it. I see young ones now, like in Mercs, in Mercedes motors and all livin’ this high lifestyle. But it’s all on debt –​like, designer clothes now. Everybody wants to be like the celebrities … So how are they payin’ these payments? Drugs.’ (Nigel, age 26, Mapleville, Glasgow city suburb, family support worker: FARE Scotland) Accounts of CCE have risen across the UK in recent years, as has the phenomenon of County Lines drug supply (Robinson, 2019; McLean et al, 2020). County Lines has been described as the migration across borders to sell illicit drugs and often involves the exploitative techniques of manipulation, coercion, force and violence, and predominantly involves children and young people as victims (Robinson, 2019; see Chapter 5 for further detail). The County Lines supply model (NCA, 2015; Windle and Briggs, 2015; Storrod and Densley, 2017) thus challenges the traditional ‘national’ wholesale and ‘local’ street dealing dichotomy because it involves dealers in hub cities ‘commuting’ to provincial markets to both wholesale and retail their product (Coomber and Moyle, 2012). Andell and Pitts (2018) note such distribution methods have arisen due to saturation of big city markets, dangerous levels of competition in big cities, dealers being too well known to police and gangs anticipating less resistance in provincial areas (Densley et al, 2018). Some have claimed that County Lines most frequently affects large English cities like London, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool that have traditionally acted as national drug supply ‘hubs’. Where ‘growing number of dealers is not accompanied by a growing number of users’ (Ruggiero, 2010, p 51), dealers send suppliers to ‘provincial towns and cities within a wide radius of their home turf ’ to deliver their products and also to retail it there (Coomber and Moyle, 2018, p 1324). However, Jack summed up the views of several of the former gang members-​turned-​practitioners when he talked about how some young people from the most socially disadvantaged communities in the west of Scotland were also increasingly becoming susceptible to becoming involved in distributing drugs for dealers in contexts beyond their own schemes. Further, Joe confirmed that he knew of young 78

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men who were actively travelling to other Scottish cities to distribute drugs and double their earnings: ‘Poverty and inequality has got worse, and austerity’s got something to do with that as well. So, the more stress there is in a community, in the deprived wards, the higher the likelihood there is to people being vulnerable to that cross-​County Line stuff.’ (Jack, age 42, Sprucehill, medium town, senior mentor: SVRU) ‘Some of the boys that I know, some of them are goin’ to Edinburgh and selling whatever they sell because they can make more money on it … It’s just aboot gettin’ the top money for what you’ve got. You can stay here and sell it and it’s easy enough, but if you are doubling or tripling your money, then you are gonna go through there.’ (Joe, age 28, Yewstone, Glasgow city district, former sessional youth worker: FARE Scotland) Alan also made comments (reiterated by several other participants) that indicated social media was playing a very prominent role in supporting the drug supply networks that young people were involved in, while Rob indicated that social media was having a detrimental impact on young people’s mental health: ‘People think [County Lines] is an English thing, it absolutely isnae. There’s boys who’ll have been getting sent from [Hazelend] to Glasgow in taxis for years … There’s lots of money to be made … [via] the internet, social media.’ (Alan, age 28, Mapleville, Glasgow city suburb, senior mentor: SVRU) ‘Social media is impacting on [young] people’s mental health, because people are always putting good things on social media like they are going on holiday to Florida, and you’re thinking, “It’s always the good things.” I am desperate for someone to put up a post like, “I can’t wait to get paid ’cause I am struggling to put food on the table,” so I can comment under it, because that’s real.’ (Rob, age 41, Mapleville, Glasgow city suburb, employability manager: FARE Scotland) Accordingly, as we will also explore further in the next two chapters, the risks, dangers and economic opportunities associated with the phenomena of drug use, localised drug distribution and County Lines were also increasingly accompanied by the wider detrimental impact of social media on young people’s mental health (Glazzard and Stones, 2019; Robinson, 2019; McLean et al, 2020). 79

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Chapter summary In this chapter, we have explored the insights emerging from our interviews with adults and former street gang members in the west of Scotland, some of whom had been –​or were currently –​practitioners supporting disadvantaged young people within the context of public health-​focused organisations. We have illustrated how, during their youth, violence had been a competence that had to be learned to enable street survival against the backdrop of highly territorial urban landscapes and following exposure to a range of ACEs (Hallsworth, 2011). We have illustrated that gang violence had often been viewed as a means of expressing hegemonic masculinity (Connell, 2005) or, to a lesser degree ‘bad girl femininity’ (Messerschmidt, 2002, p 463), while at the same time racist attitudes had also been a feature of the housing schemes they grew up in (Deuchar, 2009a). We have shown how street gang membership could (for some) become a means to transition to organised crime through the building of street capital (Harding, 2014). Participants also drew attention to their gradual immersion in the public health-​focused and community-​based organisations, and how this led to enhanced confidence, emotional engagement, cognitive transformations and personal identity reconstruction conducive to criminal desistance. Thus, ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors that were beginning to have an influence on gang disengagement appeared to be strengthened through the compassionate relationships that were formed within these organisations and positive destinations emerged for the participants. However, as was the case with our wider sample of practitioners, our interviewees alluded to the spiralling issues associated with drug use and drug distribution networks among young people, while also referring loosely to the detrimental impact of social media. It is to these issues that we now turn in more depth. In the next two chapters, we share the insights that emerged from our interviews with teenagers and young people currently growing up in disadvantaged neighbourhoods in the west of Scotland. The next chapter explores their perspectives on and lived experiences of drug consumption, drug supply and organised crime.

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5

Gang Organisation, Drug Markets and Supply Among Youth The previous two chapters sought to provide a reflective account of gang and youth violence at the turn of the twentieth century, exploring how interventionist strategies, cultural and political changes, contributed to tackling knife crime and violence in Scotland. Drawing predominantly upon the voices of teenagers and young people, this chapter explores the difficulties they face today. In accordance with emergent themes from the data, and given that the Scottish Government, Police Scotland and the National Crime Agency have all highlighted the significant threat posed by drug abuse and serious organised crime related to the illegal supply of narcotics, it was perhaps not surprising to find drug supply, and drug misuse, at the forefront of the young people’s narratives. Therefore, this chapter explores drug supply and the impact on young people, as well as their own descriptions of their roles in drug distribution networks.

Introduction Building upon insights that looked at the implantation of the public health approach as a means of effectively tackling Scotland’s gang problem, the previous two chapters drew upon the voices of ex-​offenders and practitioners. Doing so enabled a periodic comparative analysis that explored the true impact from the perspectives of those involved in and addressing gang and youth violence in the west of Scotland. Discussing what life was like prior to, during and immediately after the implementation of the public health approach to violence prevention, Chapter 4 demonstrated the way immersion in interventions with a focus on inclusion, support and compassion supported desistance journeys. We also noted adult participants’ views on the significant shift in gang structure and organisation in the west of Scotland, from activities rooted in primarily territorial issues to ones 81

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based on drug distribution, supply and use. Whereas in 2004, Scotland was infamously dubbed the ‘murder capital of Europe’ (McEachran, 2003), by 2015 the media declared that Scotland had beaten the gangs as violence and knife crime had declined. However, in 2019 Scotland was named the ‘drug capital of Europe’ (BBC News, 2019), with more drug-​related deaths than any other European country (BBC News, 2019), with these numbers growing still further in 2020 (National Records of Scotland, 2020, 2021; see discussion, Chapter 3). Thus, while the nation had apparently ‘beaten’ territorial street gangs, drugs were seen as the new battlefront. This chapter seeks to explore this shift by drawing on the voices of teenagers and young people (aged 13–​20) in the most disadvantaged areas of the west of Scotland. We begin by providing an up-​to-​date picture of Scotland’s illegal drugs markets, and the main players, gangs and groups involved. We track the overarching changes since the heroin boom of the 1980s, as events that unfolded during and since this period shaped today’s drugs market. This, in turn, has of course affected the youth gangs and groups and has influenced their behaviour. This has been most evident in the growth of the cocaine market, which now rivals the heroin trade, and the recent spate of deaths, particularly among youths, because of the consumption of ‘street’ or ‘fake’ valium (Wade et al, 2020). The chapter then looks directly at the role drugs play in contemporary youth culture itself, before focusing on the role that youngsters and street gangs play in supply and distribution. We then explore in more depth the phenomenon of County Lines drug dealing from the supply perspective, given the prominence of the activity in England and Wales. The conclusion summarises the chapter’s findings presented.

The gang is dead, long live the gang Scotland, and in particular the greater Glasgow conurbation, has long been synonymous with violence, poor health and bad lifestyle choices. Indeed the consistently low life expectancy in the city even has its own term in medical circles, ‘the Glasgow effect’, whereby the combination of, and complex relationship with, a variety of variables means that men tend to die at a much younger age in Glasgow than anywhere else in Britain (Reid, 2009). Alongside historian Davies (1998; 2013) and crime commentator Findlay (2012), criminologists Holligan and Deuchar (2009) argue that historically prevalent and persistent social ills have become embedded in the cultural fabric of Glasgow. Reproducing itself means that any effort to address social ills with quick-​fix strategies may only produce short-​lived results. As discussed in Chapter 3, it is undeniable that the intense gaze placed upon the Glasgow conurbation by the adoption of the public health model by the SVRU and partner organisations had an immediate impact on levels of violence. However, whether such changes can be sustained remains to 82

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be seen. Indeed, violence in Glasgow is still among the highest in the UK and Europe (Scottish Government, 2019b). In addition, the last decade has seen a spate of gun-​related incidents, resulting in a number of high-​profile gangland executions, perhaps most notably the assassination of Kevin ‘Gerbil’ Carroll in broad daylight in a packed Asda car park during peak business hours.1 Yet, despite violence gradually rising again in recent years, arguably the more worrying trend in Scotland has been the rise in drug misuse and related deaths. These are now the highest in Europe, with Glasgow currently second only to Dundee (Wade et al, 2020). Around about the same period as increased political and media attention was given to street gang violence in and around Glasgow (Deuchar, 2009a), under the radar,2 it was recognised that serious and organised crime was also having a substantial impact on communities. The growing rivalry between the now infamous Daniels and Lyons OCGs, in particular, resulted in gangland attacks. The Daniels’ OCG was a largely family-​oriented criminal group, originating from the rough housing estate of Possil Park, that rose through the ranks following the heroin boom of the 1980s. The Lyons’ OCG, on the other hand, comprises a combination of a) a family-​based OCG from a community neighbouring the Daniels’, and b) the surviving remnants of a decade-​long drugs war that raged throughout the 1990s in the south of the city and the neighbouring town of Paisley.3 Both outfits have since developed into quasi-​OCGs, as independent OCGs across the west coast and central belt of the country have gradually become engulfed in the feud. Resultantly, the ranks of both OCG have swelled and in 2019 a number of the ring leaders of the Lyons’ OCG were incarcerated for systematically targeting high-​ranking Daniel members in an effort to completely eliminate their longstanding rivals (McLean and Densley, 2020). Imprisonment has done little to stem their influence –​they still disproportionately exercise extra-​legal governance over much of Scotland’s drug trade. In 2009, the ‘Letting our communities flourish’ report (Scottish Government, 2009) was published and revealed that organised crime had steadily been on the rise, with an increase in active OCGs (Scottish Government, 2009). Only a few years later, in 2015, the ‘Serious organised crime strategy’ emerged (Scottish Government, 2015), suggesting that while street gangs and knife crime were in decline, organised crime and OCGs were on the rise. The report indicated that 70 per cent of organised crime in Scotland was located on the west coast, with 65 per cent directly related to drug supply. Drug distribution has proved quite lucrative. In 2018, Scotland’s most sophisticated OCG was dismantled, initially resulting in the arrest of nine individuals (McLean and Densley, 2020).4 The Daniels’ quasi-​OCG had amassed a range of sophisticated firearms, including Skorpion machine guns, hand grenades and a fleet of modified supercars to conceal contraband and evade detection (McLean and Densley, 2020). The OCG was estimated 83

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to have been making £2 million per month while active and had been operating at the pinnacle of the illegal drugs trade throughout Scotland and northern England (Findlay, 2019). Although the gang has been dismantled, the key figures who supplied it from overseas, the Gillespie brothers,5 along with their own group’s ‘hitman’ (see Rahman et al, 2020), remain at large. Annual police reports since 2016 have found that currently most organised crime continues to be located in the west of Scotland (Scottish Government, 2019d). There has been a decline in the amount of active OCGs overall, yet for those that remain they have become more refined and resilient, and pose a greater threat level (Scottish Government, 2019d). However, territorial street gangs have become all but a distant memory, with only small, largely isolated pockets of street gang presence being found, limited to the most marginalised communities (see further detail in Chapter 6). As we alluded to in Chapter 2, given that along with kinships ties, some evidence has suggested that YSGs have to some extent acted as a supply chain for OCGs, with the decline of YSGs and an increase in supply networks, there is a need to review what gangs now look like, and how people are brought into the fold of (dis)organised crime (McLean, 2019). YSGs did not feature in the 2009 report on organised crime (Scottish Government, 2009) and were thought to play no role in the distribution of drugs according to police reports. Those involved in drug supply were thought to be adults, involved in planned and coordinated efforts using skills and resources for gains, particular financial gains (Scottish Government, 2009). The only role that YSGs played in this was that occasionally youngsters, particularly those with kinship ties to existing OCGs, may have been gradually brought into the fold of OCGs. Similarly, the Scottish Government (2015, 2016) reports likewise failed to identify youth and YSGs as having any role in organised crime or drug distribution. However, contrary to such reports, McLean’s (2017, 2019) research specifically identified that YSGs were and do play an active role in drug supply, and that since around the time of the implementation of the SVRU’s CIRV, this had become a more prominent feature of YSG activity. As issues of territoriality were being broken down and knife crime was in decline, against the backdrop of consumerism and advanced capitalism, youths were being brought into the fold of existing organised criminal structures and used to peddle drugs. On some occasions, youths were also now actively seeking to develop their own YCGs (see earlier discussion in Chapter 2 and Box 4.2) and to engage in drug supply as a means to move up the criminal ladder, much like the trailblazers within the Lyons’ OCG.6 The point of this chapter, therefore, is not only to provide some background about the existing drug markets in Scotland but also to explore the role that youths and YSGs may play in drug supply directly. As YSG violence had gradually declined, we were interested to explore whether 84

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(as some of our practitioners and ex-​offenders suggested in the previous chapters) there had been a simultaneous and subsequent upsurge in youths involved in drug supply. This is something we explored during our extensive interviews with young people in housing schemes in the west of Scotland.

Lived experiences of drug consumption, supply and organised crime As we made initial reference to in Chapter 2, in this part of our fieldwork we focused specifically on accessing those young people who had had recent experience of gang culture, weapon-​carrying, drug use, drug distribution or wider forms of anti-​social activity, and/​or who lived in specific neighbourhoods impacted by these issues. We were initially keen to meet and conduct semi-​structured interviews with young men and women between the ages of 14–​18, but also were open to having discussions with some young people slightly older or younger than this. The gatekeeping organisations we drew upon were regularly working with a wide range of young people who met our criteria, but given the higher prevalence of young males involved in such issues our sample inevitably became male-​dominated. Semi-​structured interviews of up to 60 minutes each were conducted with 24 young people, mostly individually, but on some occasions in friendship pairs or small peer groups. All these interviews were conducted on organisation premises. Additionally (as we referred to in Chapter 2), some young people also recommended others they knew who were willing to participate, but who were not regularly attached in any way to the gatekeeping organisations. All of the latter (n=10) were over the age of 16, and we subsequently arranged to meet them. This brought the size of our sample for this part of the research to 34 (28 males and six females, aged between 13–​20). Table 5.1 provides a full listing of these young people, specifying pseudonyms, ages and pseudonyms for the specific districts/​suburbs of Glasgow and towns in the west of Scotland where they resided.7 During interviews, we explored the young people’s views on and experiences of gang culture, weapon-​carrying and violence. We also explored their views on wider issues impacting teenagers and young people, including drug misuse and distribution, and the potential relationship between the latter and organised crime; social media and its impact on youth behaviour and mental health; and their general perceptions about what tended to influence young people in the housing schemes and on existing social barriers. In this and the next chapter, we share their insights. In this chapter, we begin by focusing on the young people’s perceptions and lived experiences of drug consumption, drug distribution and organised crime. In the following sections, subthemes are explored through sharing salient extracts from youth 85

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Table 5.1: Interview participant descriptions: young people Name

Age

Geographical area

Bobby

15

Juniperville (medium town)

Brad

18

Hazelend (large town)

Cammy

15

Chestnuthill (small town)

Carol

18

Hazelend (large town)

Connor

13

Elderland (Glasgow city district)

Del

15

Limegate (medium town)

Donny

15

Mapleville (Glasgow city suburb)

Eddie

15

Mapleville (Glasgow city suburb)

Ethan

15

Limegate (medium town)

Fergus

16

Hollyburn (medium town)

Garry

16

Chestnuthill (small town)

Ged

16

Mapleville (Glasgow city suburb)

Gemma

20

Hazelend (large town)

Jason

15

Oakford (Glasgow city district)

Joel

13

Hornbeam (medium town)

Johnny

18

Hazelend (large town)

Josh

17

Pineview (Glasgow city district)

Kevin

18

Mapleville (Glasgow city suburb)

Larry

16

Hollyburn (medium town)

Lenny

15

Willowburn (Glasgow city district)

Lynda

20

Hazelend (large town)

Mandy

19

Oakford (Glasgow city district)

Mick

18

Hazelend (large town)

Rory

17

Chestnuthill (small town)

Ross

18

Oakford (Glasgow city district)

Rowan

20

Oakford (Glasgow city district)

Sam

18

Hazelend (large town)

Sharon

18

Oakford (Glasgow city district)

Shaun

15

Mapleville (Glasgow city suburb)

Stevie

15

Mapleville (Glasgow city suburb)

Stuart

14

Mapleville (Glasgow city suburb)

Tommy

15

Yewstone (Glasgow city district)

Tracey

17

Hazelend (large town)

Willie

16

Hazelend (large town)

86

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interview transcriptions, along with some additional complementary insights from the practitioners we referred to in earlier chapters.

The normalisation of drugs At the turn of the twenty-​first century, Parker et al (2002) found that drug use was increasingly becoming ‘normalised’ in contemporary youth culture. The normalisation was identified within the context of a gradual acceptance that drug use was no longer the taboo subject it once had been and as such its use carried less social sanctioning through verbal and physical cues. The authors were not suggesting that all drugs were being accepted, nor were they stating that all young people would consider the consumption of drugs or particular drug types. Rather the practice of consuming certain drugs was seen to be less deviant than in prior years and as such was increasingly viewed as part of growing up and part of society, and was gaining mainstream acceptance to a degree. Cannabis was identified as the prime drug type being normalised among youth groups of the period in question. Of course, the claim that some drugs such as cannabis were becoming normalised did not go without its critiques. However, since the 1990s the use of cannabis and other drugs such as cocaine, ecstasy and amphetamines has increased (Measham and Shiner, 2009). This has been accompanied by a growth in supply avenues, and a range of ‘new drugs’8 such as legal highs, meow meow, Subutex and various performance-​enhancing drugs. In addition, the number of drug-​related harms and drug-​related deaths has steadily increased, albeit with some lulls, year-​on-​year (Wade et al, 2020). The normalisation of drug use is no longer a mere suggestion –​it is largely taken as a given (Casey et al, 2009; Irwin-​Rogers, 2019). This normalisation of drugs, or at least of certain drugs, was evident in our interviews. Senior school practitioner, Steven, stated: ‘It’s not common [in relation to the whole population] or accepted [by the school] but I think people are a lot more open now that they smoke cannabis. It’s normalised…. [Furthermore] a lot more of our young people are also into different drugs, whether it’s tablets, cocaine, things like that. They get access to a lot of stuff. Pretty much, [they] can get their hands on anything, but cannabis is the bog [standard] one.’ (Steven, age 38, senior manager and teacher: Parkside School) As Steven stated, the normalisation of drugs does not inevitably mean that larger proportions of the population are now consuming drugs, nor is drug use simply accepted. Rather, Steven indicated that the view of drug use as an outright deviant action had significantly diminished and as such, the use of drugs was more accepted as something in which certain groups or people 87

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may engage (McPhee et al, 2019). Furthermore, practitioners indicated that this normalisation meant that access had become much more readily available, arguably with more sellers than in previous years. In Chapter 3, we highlighted how Jack (a reformed offender and senior mentor within the SVRU) observed the correlation between the recent surge in drug-​related deaths and the apparently increased quantity of drugs being consumed. Of course, this could equally be the result of stronger drugs emerging, more unskilled illegitimate ‘chemists’ making drugs or ‘bad batches’ coming into circulation. Yet the steady increase of drug-​related deaths over a sustained number of years in Scotland, alongside the increasingly young age of these victims (see Wade et al, 2020) and the variation of drug types used that result in death or harm, would suggest that there are more drugs, more drug types, and more usage occurring within the system. The young age of users would likewise suggest that gradual acceptance and normalisation processes are at work. The general trend was captured by 19-​year-​old Mandy: ‘I feel like alcohol has stayed the same from back then –​young people are still goin’ out and gettin’ drunk –​but drugs have got worse. I feel like they (drugs) are more hardcore and a daily thing.’ (Mandy, age 19, Oakford, Glasgow city district) This perception that there are more drugs in society being used by more people was generally accepted among the young people we interviewed. This was true for youngsters across different areas, towns and backgrounds within the west of Scotland: ‘All the boys I hang around with take drugs. My cousin sometimes sells weed … I think [young people] do use drugs more now than in the past, like the older generation.’ (Sam, age 18, Hazelend, large town) ‘[Drugs are] common. You get like weed, prop, gear, eccies, CB2’s, ketamine [in about] last ten years. Or, like “Mandy” [Ecstasy], like they can die from it, but if I [want it] I go down the town and ask for it. Someone would pull a line out and I would get it. It would be prop. Basically, if you want anything, they will get you it straight away. You can get it dropped off.’ (Cammy, age 15, Chestnuthill, small town) ‘I think [there is more] coke and eccies [being taken] maybe, but weed [has] always been [common in the community].’ (Eddie, age 15, Mapleville, Glasgow city suburb) ‘There is a lot of people runnin’ about doin’ it [taking and selling cannabis]. I was always warned by my family to never go near them … 88

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[but] I have [consumed cannabis before]. When I was about 13. I just went oot with one of my mates one night and there was nothin’ to do so … [It] makes me calm down [and] helps with my ADHD. If there is a bong, I will do that.’ (Larry, age 16, Hollyburn, medium town) The finding that drug use had become increasingly normalised was thus consistent. Cannabis, it would seem, was by far the most frequently used drug among the sample and likewise, as the three participants above noted, it was common to see, or know of others who regularly consumed it. Yet the use of other drug types, primarily ecstasy and cocaine, was also mentioned by many of the young people, while others knew of members of their peer group who consumed them regularly. When asked whether or not harder drugs were common in his area (the town of Hollyburn, to the west of Glasgow), Larry replied ‘plenty’, indicating that not only was cannabis common but that other drugs were not far behind. The findings here are consistent with those of Casey et al (2009) that cannabis use was fairly widespread and that cocaine was common among certain groups in particular age ranges. A practitioner –​ ​who worked in FARE Scotland and supported young people from various disadvantaged areas –​reiterated this claim and argued that the cocaine use was starting at younger ages: ‘I think the last 10 years, the big difference has been young people that are smoking a lot of hash. Now it’s readily available for them to get cocaine so cheap as well. It used to be they would chip in to get bits of green … Now they’re chipping in to get cocaine. Which is a big difference. A lot of them start smoking hash then go onto coke, then something else and eventually get there –​they don’t just jump at 16/​17 and start taking heroin. There’s always been a drug issue, it’s just that over the generations it’s “what’s the in-drug” and I would say at the moment it’s cocaine.’ (Brian, age 38, senior manager: FARE Scotland) However, youth participant Bobby, who had recently relocated to the town of Juniperville (south-​east of Glasgow) from the north-​west of England following a gang-​related dispute, stated that there remained some notable differences in drug use, particularly in terms of the norms around acceptance, in Scotland compared with England: ‘I am not sure [if more drugs are used in Scotland or England]. I have only been here a year. [Drugs are] about, but I’ve not seen it [as much]. In Manchester, it’s everywhere, but I’ve not seen people walking about here smoking it [cannabis].’ (Bobby, age 15, Juniperville, medium town) 89

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While using terminology that would discuss drugs in the general sense, Bobby was in fact making specific reference to cannabis. As he noted, while people speak of using cannabis regularly, or of knowing of users, there still remains some sense of constraint on it being acceptable to smoke it openly in the street in full view of the general public –​at least outside of certain communities. It was evident from the research data that drug use had indeed become somewhat normalised, and as such become embedded in contemporary youth culture, even if only taken, as opposed to accepted, by some. Yet the reasons for this may vary. Of course, duration will be a factor and undoubtedly the legalisation or acceptance of cannabis use overseas in places such as Canada and the Netherlands may play some part –​more so, given that a large number of the drug tourists in the Netherlands are travelling Brits (Wright, 2019). This view is further supported by the acceptance and indeed promotion of cannabis use in popular films. Furthermore, as evident in the insights shared by practitioners and young people alike, cannabis was seen to have medicinal properties that helped counteract negative portrayals and images. Yet, of course, other circumstances were also at play, more so when considering the increasingly frequent use of other drug types. In Chapter 3, senior mentor Jack made a direct link between increased poverty, inequality, ACEs and rising levels of drug distribution among young people forming a ‘perfect storm’ (Frisher et al, 2007).

Drug supply and gang affiliations Exploring drug use patterns among the young people we interviewed suggested to us that there were more drugs, and more drug types, around (see, for instance, Cammy’s comments above). This in turn affects, and is affected by, drug supply and distribution patterns. Methods of supply and who is doing the distribution has also steadily changed, even over the past few years (McLean, 2019). Historically and in terms of volume, scholarly work on the role of gangs in illicit markets comes mainly from the US. Traditionally, gangs have been seen as the main direct suppliers to customers. Alonso (2004) argues that given the role of street gangs in controlling and occupying turfs, they are the obvious choice for becoming the shop floor of drug supply –​more so with regards to open market policies whereby any passerby is a potential customer. In closed networks, this can be run by gang members or independent retail-​level dealers. Essentially, gangs rule the local population through fear, numbers and public displays of violence, thus they are the perfect linchpin between importers and/​or wholesalers and local customers (Alonso, 2004). In the UK, this role has been seen as somewhat different, with primarily independent retail-​level dealers operating as interfaces between the wholesaler and customer (McLean, 2019). This is arguably because gangs 90

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tend to be less organised and less instrumental, especially because drug dealing is primarily conducted in closed networks, meaning customers are referred to the dealer by trusted connections and affiliations (McLean et al, 2019a). The open market policy of drug dealing is more likely to encourage gang involvement, because drugs are sold faster to anyone in the public who seeks to buy them and this requires a number of roles to be fulfilled for quick and safe transactions. For example, McLean and Densley (2020) found these roles may include providing muscle, weapon carriers, look outs, a point of contact and a runner to fetch the drugs. This was seen in the drug wars of the 1990s in Paisley, Scotland, when a number of different gangs emerged to fight for control of the notorious Ferguslie Park estate, and the wider town. As such, in the UK, criminally oriented gangs such as YCGs and OCGs have tended to operate at the wholesale and importation levels. YSGs, on the other hand, have traditionally been inclined to be young, recreational and have little role in drug markets directly other than the occasional recruitment of key members into existing OCG structures or selling drugs socially to other youths in the area. However, over the 2010s, particularly since around 2017, supply itself has begun to evolve (McLean, 2019). Drug dealing has become more oriented towards an open market policy and to maximise profits OCGs have gradually begun to recruit vulnerable, highly disposable individuals to sell drugs on their behalf, at times sending them hundreds of miles from their local estate, town or city to sell in provincial markets (Coomber and Moyle, 2018, see also Chapter 4). Using non-​gang members to sell directly reduces the chance of apprehension, as such individuals may know little about the OCG beyond their own points of contact since they are not taken into the gang fold but are very much kept at the fringe of the group (Robinson et al, 2019). Drug supply has thus moved from a staggered approach, where product moves independently from importers to wholesalers to retail-​level dealers, to a more comprehensive supply chain where importers or wholesalers look to control the whole line (Robinson et al, 2019). This means that the true price of drugs flows back up the chain and maximises profit (McLean et al, 2019a). As such, older members target youths to sell on their behalf, as our youth participants explained: ‘Some people have to get into it. Maybe their family needs help, money and they get it that way.’ (Larry, age 16, Hollyburn, medium town) ‘[I sold drugs for] an older guy … You will get the jail … [However] I was 13 when I did it.’ (Cammy, age 15, Chestnuthill, small town) McLean (2019) suggests that youths in Glasgow and the wider west of Scotland have traditionally sold drugs independently of any other person/​ 91

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group, but supply drugs socially to friends or purchase them outright and sell to peers. Yet the statements above illustrated to us a slight, but significant, change in supply practices, whereby youths may now be selling on behalf of older individuals and being paid a fee or taking a cut for doing so. On many occasions it was drug debt, by getting drugs ‘on tick’,9 that resulted in young people unwittingly and, initially at least, unintentionally working for older dealers as a means of paying off what they owed. This meant that youth were more engaged in, or part of, an existing supply chain. This allows more control over them.10 Regarding the entrapment in such processes, during a group interview in the south side of Glasgow, Jason, Sharon and Rowan (ages 15, 18 and 20 respectively, all from Oakford) described the potential consequences of getting into drug debt: Jason:

Sharon: Rowan:

Jason:

It was somebody that [sold drugs] that asked me [to] do it. I did it for about 2–​3 weeks and then I just fucked my bill [own debt] and I just gave the guy stuff back … I was smokin’ my [own] profit. If [cannabis is] just there, sittin’ in a bag, you’re just like ‘I want to smoke it’. You’re sittin’ thinkin’ to yourself, my pals will pay me it back [because I would smoke it with them] … No, see once you ‘tick’ them, they’re like that, ‘see you after!’ Never see them again and don’t get the money off them, and then if you don’t have the bill money people will say they’re smashin’ you and they probably will smash you. That’s where all the violence is nowadays, it’s all drug-​related [debts]. I don’t remember how long ago it was, it was a stash house that was down here and a boy found it … and literally emptied everythin’. They were cuttin’ all sorts of bags, kilos of it everywhere … and I went to the shop for my mum then went up to my pal’s two minutes after it and the boys who’s it was, the biggest guy came … said ‘I’m takin’ the knee caps away fae you’ … I showed him where the bag was and it was[n’t] there … Guys from [this scheme] were holding it for a mob from [north of England]. One boy had to leave [the scheme] because of this.

As noted from the participants above, each of them had been drawn deeper into drugs and subsequently supply, at least, by incurring greater degrees of drug debt. Many youths begin on pathways to dealing through incurring drug-​ related debt. On some occasions, our participants even felt, much like Rowan, that some scenarios might have been ‘set up’ to specifically trap people in debt. 92

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In previous years, older individuals were not as interested in using youth to sell on their behalf in the west of Scotland, largely because, due to issues of staunch territoriality and the lack of widespread social media, young people were not particularly good outlets for drug sales. Young people would only have been able to move freely in their own territories, and housing schemes could comprise as little as 200 yards of housing (see Kintrea et al, 2008). As such, young people would only know of other youth in their own areas or their schools. Therefore, their reach would mainly have been limited to similar age groups (Deuchar, 2009a). Of course, they would have known of youth beyond their own territory, but extensive reach and contact with them outside of school would be difficult because of restrictions in social mobility (Deuchar, 2009a). Similarly, each territory would usually have had existing dealers who would use territoriality to make efforts to monopolise their own customer pools through fear and intimidation. However, two factors have impacted this process, making youth now appear to be valuable commodities to older dealers in the west of Scotland. One factor is the decline in territorial issues among young people. Young people in Glasgow and the west can, and do, move about much more freely, without fear of attack, robbery, reprisal and assault, than was previously possible (see Chapter 3 for practitioner insights). The second factor has been the rise of social media, through which young people can now connect and meet up with other youth, not only locallybut from all over the country (Shabir et al, 2014). Of course, social media has been around for more than the past ten years, but its adoption and the variety of applications and devices available have increased considerably during this time frame (see Chapter 6 for further discussion). In our sample, many young people confirmed earlier perceptions shared by practitioners, claiming that territorial street fighting was now very rare (although, as we will explore again in Chapter 6, it is not completely eradicated): ‘I am [probably] too old to hang [around on the streets now]. A few guys sell drugs in the pub down the road from here. I don’t drink but, so don’t go there. I know them because of old schoolmates. Say “hi” if I pass … I don’t really think there [are] gang[s]‌. [You have] boys from [area v] and [area w]. They had a [young] team. We [are in Scheme D], but [there aren’t] any [youth gangs] in our place.’ (Rory, age 17, Chestnuthill, small town) ‘There is a wee bit of trouble between the boys from [neighbouring towns]. I don’t think it is gang [related] and that stuff. [It’s more to do with] people no[t]‌liking one another.’ (Garry, age 16, Chestnuthill, small town) 93

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‘[Violence today is really] just debts that had not been paid. “Tick”. Nothing to do with “you’re from here; you’re from there”. Stupid wains [children] try and do that. A few that make a deal of it but not a lot.’ (Fergus, age 16, Hollyburn, medium town) The participants suggested that, while some issues of territoriality remained, the presence of visible ‘young teams’ patrolling the streets, primed to attack any would-​be outsider who entered the area, was now quite rare. As such, youth –​especially those unaffiliated with gangs, violence and trouble –​were able to move around much more freely than in past years. As mentioned earlier, the second issue that potentially contributes to the older dealers deciding to target youths for drug distribution is the increasing influence and use of social media. The rise of social media –​ especially the range of messaging apps such as Snapchat, Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger –​has meant that young people can now not only talk with other youth of various ages from other areas, schools and geographical locations but can also arrange to meet without fear of reprisal for entering other areas. Furthermore, apps such as Snapchat or WhatsApp are encrypted and allow group chats, and messages on them can be made temporary or be permanently deleted from either side of the conversation, so young people can talk much more freely about drugs and other illegal products/​activities with much less fear of being apprehended by police or caught by adults like parents and carers. A group interview with young people aged 18–​20 from Oakford in Glasgow illustrated this point: Ross: Rowan: Sharon:

Jason: Rowan:

There’s Snapchat and Instagram accounts and all that. [Drug dealers] post pictures of [drugs] and promote … what they’re sellin’. You can click your fingers and you get it from social media. You don’t go to people’s doors anymore. It’s no[t]‌a thing you dae. You don’t go and chap somebody’s door … You text them [and] you’ll meet them somewhere or they’ll drop [drugs off] in the motor … [You text them] on Whatsapp, Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram. Instagram is the best thing for it. Instagram stuff is gettin’ leaked just now, the polis are gettin’ it. I know a boy who was payin’ £100 for a half ounce of cannabis and he got 14 bags … Literally the dealer gave him 14 plastic bags and just made it smell like cannabis, but he literally burned £100 down the drain –​he thought it was cannabis but it was just a plain bag.

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Either directly or often through burner phones (untraceable, disposable, pay-​ as-​you-​go-​phones) (Dodd, 2020), dealers advertise their products on social media applications for customers to contact them directly, at which point ‘drop-​offs’ are arranged, exchanging drugs for money. Of course, as noted above, open market purchases can be fraught with fraudsters and carry the risk of ‘being bumped’. In addition, the use of emojis as a widely understood code language means that youth are able to talk to one another about drugs without having to have had prior discussion as to what such codes mean. McLean (2019) and McLean and Densley (2020) discuss how criminal groups involved in drug supply, robbery and other illicit activities tend to develop and refine their skills over time by working in close association with peers, forging their own unique code language. However, the introduction of such apps and the use of the internet to give young people instant access to such codes has resulted in youth becoming an indispensable feature in the arsenal of OCGs and older drug dealers. Fergus emphasised the growth of encrypted social media apps for ‘organising’ drug dealing via a business model, and how the combination of emojis and burner phones also provided protection for both suppliers and users: ‘You can see what everybody has got [online] … on Snapchat, Instagram. Like an online shop. … [using emoji’s] like a star and a dog, for the strength of the stuff –​different kinds of weed, like the potency … Somebody might be doing you six grams for 50 quid but somebody might be doing seven grams for that as well, because they have more to get rid of. Better deals. Shopping around [and it can be delivered]. They [dealers] will post their number on social media. The number they post is the burner phone.’ (Fergus, age 16, Hollyburn, medium town) This online engagement of young people is significant considering the relatively low levels of maturity and limited understanding of economics that some may have. Our participants suggested that many older drug dealers now use youth to pick up, transport, store and sell drugs, because young people are easily exploited and manipulated; indeed, in some cases, they are forced to do so: ‘Aye, travellin’ … droppin’, that’s what it’s called. Drop-​offs in a car, doin’ drops. Can charge [customers] travel distance [as well], so that’s extra money. I’ll show you an actual example. If you were in [scheme name], then you’d probably drop to the areas around [scheme name], so like … basically the areas in a circle surrounding it … basically like a bus timetable.’ (Ethan, age 15, Limegate, medium town)

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‘I remember [one] wee guy was refusin’ to [store drugs for the older dealer], and the guy gave him the stuff, and he chucked it. So, he got [assaulted] for chuckin’ it. He was 12, and this guy at 19 was hittin’ him.’ (Cammy, age 15, Chestnuthill, small town) As the above statements suggest, older drug dealers use young people not only because of their newfound reach to potential clientele, largely because of social media, but because they can be used as ‘fall guys’ –​if caught it may not be possible to prosecute them, or they may be given lighter or more lenient sentences by the court –​and can provide cheap labour. In addition, youth can be exploited because they believe such behaviour will give them support, status and reputation. Yet, they often do not realise until it’s too late that the older dealers are exploiting them and will inevitably cut off all ties should unwanted attention or trouble come their way (Robinson et al, 2019). Regarding the actual practice of drug dealing, many young people in our sample spoke of older dealers picking them up and taxiing them about the city, town or district or to neighbouring towns and suburbs to sell drugs. Occasionally, dealers who lacked a vehicle or didn’t have a driving licence would also ask young people of driving age to drive them about so they could sell. Ethan discussed this process with us: ‘Maybe, sometimes if you’re gettin’ [a drop] off, the dealer has somebody with him [as a] driver, because the dealer can’t drive. So the driver get[s]‌paid for drivin’, like £200 or 300 a night. Like, I’ve seen stuff on people’s stories [on Snapchat advertising], “Who can drive? £300-er”, for just a few hours. It’s mental because they can make easily thousands in a night.’ (Ethan, age 15, Limegate, medium town) Some dealers, though, use the more traditional methods of hiring private taxis to drive them from place to place, as one practitioner confirmed: ‘My mate’s a taxi driver, and taxi drivers are gettin’ it every day. Every day he’s gettin’ people doin’ drop offs. They’ll ask him to wait 10 minutes, five minutes. They know it’s happenin’. They just turn a blind eye.’ (Ben, age 65, youth worker: Youthpoint Aberlour) In addition, some young people indicated that they would be asked to use their bodies as mechanisms for drug transport. Cammy, who travelled hundreds of miles with an older individual, discussed how he was asked to place drugs inside himself for transportation. He likewise discussed how he was asked to store and sell drugs on behalf of his older dealer. In this way, the older drug dealer was able to distance himself from illegal activities while 96

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reaping the financial rewards. Given his young age (15), Cammy only had to be paid relatively small amounts relative to the overall revenue –​a further benefit for the older dealer: ‘See when we got to London, you ever heard what they do with the balloon? You put it in the balloon and swallow it. We used to do that. So if we got pulled over and they searched the car for drugs, then they aren’t going to find any. But if they scanned us they would find it. If you get pulled [over] on the road in a motor then the polis [police] are just going to search the car. We both swallowed the balloons. He said, “we need to do this or we are fucked, ’cause you would probably be fine ’cause your age, but I would get the jail and it would fuck my life but then I would be comin’ for you after it.” So, I was scared into doin’ it … There was one time, I had an ounce of weed in my room. The polis came in and took it off me. That was all down to [the older individual] trying to convince me … “You can get all this respect and money.” But I wasn’t gettin’ respect or money. [Because I was a] wee guy [I didn’t] know what’s good and not good. I was gettin’ £100 to [sell drugs] all day. See after a week, that would only be £700. But the [older dealer I sold for], he would be makin’ probably thousands. Basically, [because of this older guy] I sold drugs to a guy and he sold it and it killed a lassie. It’s not something you want to do.’ (Cammy, age 15, Chestnuthill, small town) McLean et al (2019a) note that, historically in Scotland, drug dealing was only for those who had gained a criminal reputation (or ‘street capital’, as per Harding, 2014, p 6), often through YSG violence and criminal activities in their late adolescent and early adult years (see, for instance, the case study of Alan in Box 4.2). This reputation for being a ‘hardman’ put them in a position in the local community to sell drugs and monopolise the market through extra-​legal governance (Densley et al, 2019). However, the decline in territoriality, rise of social media, improvements in transportation, access to drugs through the internet and the increase in drug diversity have all contributed to drug dealing becoming a much more readily available option for young people to make money, without the need to have established a prior reputation as a tough fighter or ‘hardman’. Drug dealing is no longer only for gangsters, but rather for anyone wishing to make a ‘quick buck’, as Jack, a reformed offender and practitioner, reflected: ‘It [is about] drugs … It [is] no[t]‌about being the hardest guy in the village [anymore], or the most violent, or the head of the gang … [A] lot of it’s about how much money I can make. So the adversity’s still out there, just the symptoms change.’ (Jack, age 42, senior mentor: SVRU) 97

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As Jack noted, drug dealing is essentially about making money, and as such it has become a more accessible source of income. Irwin-​Rogers (2019) highlights that social media has played a huge part in this process, particularly against the backdrop of advanced consumerism and a neoliberal society. The need to consume and have ‘the best gear’, or clothing, places a never-​ceasing pressure on youths to be consumers with an insatiable appetite (see further discussion, Chapter 6). The need to have more, and want more, cannot be fulfilled given that fashion always changes, products come and go, and technology is constantly advancing: ‘[It is] greed. That sense of lack as well. Organised crime groups sell a wee bit of this, and then they sell a wee bit of that, and that becomes like their God. They always say, “If money’s your God, it’s always five mair pound than you’ve got.” You’re always chasin’ it. And that’s like the drug. It’s a form of addiction in its own right. Then it becomes about the status, the power, the money. Then it’s that pay-​as you-​go-​ lifestyle.’ (Jack, age 42, senior mentor: SVRU) In reality, there is never enough money to consume, especially as tastes get more expensive, and poverty and spending habits are always relevant to social position. What is designer gear for one is unfashionable for another, depending on social position. In a social setting in which acceptable employment and wages are below par, drug dealing has become an acceptable, and in some cases the only, source of income for many. Several of the young people spoke about their parents taking on extensive debt simply to purchase their children the latest fashion, trainers and clothing (see further discussion in Chapter 6). McLean et al (2019a) write that, in some of the most marginalised communities, drugs have become a commodity to be traded, sold and purchased, and even at times used to gain material goods rather than money.

‘County Lines’, travelling dealers and wholesale collecting While the topic of County Lines drug dealing was touched upon briefly in the last chapter, that was in relation to the level of exploitation as opposed to the actual practice of dealing itself. Therefore, it is perhaps important to revisit the County Lines phenomenon, given the political and media attention it has drawn, particularly in England and Wales. Robinson et al’s (2019) comparative study on County Lines drug dealing practices identified that the County Lines drug deal image projected by the press in England does not apply to Scotland. Although dealers there do still travel to collect and drop off drugs, some relocate to operate elsewhere outside saturated markets, and exploitation and victimisation are often at the heart of the operation. Therefore, while we touched on some of these points in a general sense 98

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in the last section, it is worth further exploring the differences in County Lines, travelling dealers and wholesale collection from locations around the UK, drawing on some of the insights from young people. Building upon the earlier insights of Robinson et al’s (2019) study, McLean et al (2019c) carried out a more comprehensive comparative analysis of the evolution of the drug market and of County Lines drug dealing in Scotland and Northern England. Findings suggested that, while drug dealing practices that fit the County Lines criteria existed in both settings, how this behaviour was perceived by those involved could be quite different, largely due to media perceptions, simplistic National Crime Agency (NCA, 2015) criteria and particular terminology used in reporting. Practitioners Lewis and Steven worked with some of the most marginalised and vulnerable youth in the west of Scotland, yet both had different ideas as to what County Lines is: ‘I don’t think Scotland has any of the same issues that England has with County Lines, with young people getting utilised –​I don’t think that’s happening … What you’re talking about down south is young people in London, for example, being given a package which is worth hundreds and thousands of pounds and potentially more, and being told to jump on a train up to Manchester to drop it off. That’s not happening in Scotland.’ (Lewis, age 47, senior manager: FARE Scotland) ‘Yes, the nature of social media and certainly smart phones is they’re capable of planning things now –​a trip to Carlisle. I can think of one or two young people who have been brought home by the police from Carlisle and things like that. You’ve got the whole internet, the cybercrime element to it as well. Young people have been caught up in that as well, who have a lot of inherent skills because of their IT awareness … then targeted because they think “well they can be used”.’ (Steven, age 38, senior manager and teacher: Parkside School) The contradictory statements from the above practitioners can largely be attributed to perceptions of what County Lines is and how it differs from pre-​existing practices. As we saw in the insights shared by Cammy, it was not uncommon for youth in Scotland to speak about travelling back and forth to England to collect drugs, or, more rarely, to also drop them off. It was also common for the young people to be accompanied by older individuals: ‘I know a boy, he’s just out the jail just there. He went down to Birmingham nine times in the one weekend just to pick up money from doing drop offs. Nine times in the one weekend, and that was Friday, Saturday and the Sunday. Taking [drugs] 99

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down there and bringing money back up. He’s about 40 [years old] … but I know [the] young boy who goes wi’ him and sits wi’ him.’ (Rowan, age 20, Oakford, Glasgow city district) Cammy also discussed how he would at times sell drugs on the streets of London while in the city with the older individual with whom he travelled to collect drugs (see also previous section): ‘I have seen guys go like to London or the whole way to Aberdeen to get like what they want. The guy I did it for, he would go to London. He would drive down and up the same day. I went three times with him … He went in and bought the stuff. He would sit with the guy and be like, “The next time I come up will be [this date] and this is how much it will be.” When he is sittin’ wi’ the guy, [I]‌am round the corner dealin’ [drugs in London streets] for [him]. The guy [is about] 20 year[s] old.’ (Cammy, age 15, Chestnuthill, small town) However, while it seemed that some young people we interviewed would travel to England to collect drugs, on most occasions such individuals would return home before moving onto selling practices. Thus, in England, young people are sent out from their own towns with drugs to be sold in provincial markets (Harding, 2020); in Scotland, youngsters collect drugs from afar, bring them back to Scotland and sell them in or around their home town, village or city. Given that social media has come to play a significant role in contemporary drug dealing, it appeared that the use of burner phones and drug lines had become a common and widespread presence in the process, whether County Lines or not. Cammy discussed how the older individual he sold drugs for would supply him and other young people with burner phones which were not registered to any individual. However, Cammy was aware that his fingerprints would still be on the disposable phone should it be ‘chucked’ prior to being ‘wiped’: ‘Yeah, he would supply them. He would buy like 20 phones and hand them out to everyone that helped him. But see if you chucked it, it’s your fingerprints that are on it.’ (Cammy, age 15, Chestnuthill, small town) Young people were also aware that dealers could continue to use burner phones to coordinate drop-​offs even from prison: ‘I know somebody that has a [burner] phone that’s literally about that size [makes small gesture]. [So] even when they’re in [prison] … they just wrap it up [inside plastic bags or cellophane] and they bank it [by placing it in their rectal cavity] … so obviously 100

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if they’re one of the main drug dealers, they’re still tellin’ their pals where to drop [drugs] offs and where to go [to collect] and all that. So they’re still basically makin’ their money while they’re inside.’ (Jason, age 15, Oakford, Glasgow city district) While McLean et al (2020) found some evidence of County Lines in Scotland that fitted media perceptions, these were few and far between, largely confined to the northern region of the country, with English dealers travelling to provincial towns like Peterhead and Fraserburgh to sell drugs. The west coast and the city of Glasgow, however, have longstanding historical and cultural practices that have resulted in a heavily saturated and somewhat stagnant drugs market (McLean, 2019). As such, County Lines is not practised much, although there has been evidence of some smaller, upcoming OCGs looking to break away from this limited market and begin to distribute drugs further afield, in the cities of Dundee and Inverness (Evening Telegraph, 2019; Holligan et al, 2020). Furthermore, while a substantial amount of drugs being sold in smaller towns and villages may originate from the west coast, youth are not sent out on behalf of OCGs to sell in these areas; instead, mostly locals with kinship ties are used (McLean, 2019). This is a significant, and arguably the main, difference between County Lines drug dealing in Scotland and England. It creates a very different outlook and perception, as young people are not exploited as obviously, such as being sent hundreds of miles to distribute drugs on behalf of the OCG in the city, but rather kinship networks in these areas are normally drawn upon (McLean et al, 2020). As such, these small family-​based dealers in the towns and villages operate almost completely independently, and the city-​based OCGs are generally only a source for purchasing drugs and occasionally as muscle, supporting the family if required. Given the location of Glasgow, most of this activity tends to occur along the west coast and to the south of the country. Of course, a similar process occurs on the east coast, mainly through Edinburgh-​based OCGs (see Holligan et al, 2020). Yet exploitation, which is a key feature of County Lines drug dealing, was evident throughout our interviews and was inherent in drug dealing practices more generally. Practitioner Steven stated: ‘[Exploitation has] probably always been there, but it’s probably more understood now. It’s social media –​kids get drawn into it, they think they’re streetwise, untouchable, but they’re not…. Girls are slightly different. They’re more at risk of the criminal sexual exploitation element where they’re probably young pretty girls and they’re getting taken to parties, getting alcohol. It’s really disturbing. [Our school has] had a few pupils getting picked up in cars and taken places [and] 101

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going missing for 24/​48 hours at a time … So a lot of dangers out there.’ (Steven, age 38, senior manager and teacher: Parkside School) As Steven highlighted, exploitation is an inherent and ingrained feature of most illicit activity, and in reality has most likely ‘always been there’ but has fortunately become a more recognised topic in recent years. However, exploitation is not always obvious or even present. In our sample, we found some evidence to suggest that some youth may ask to deal drugs in order to acquire, or at least have the potential for, social mobility. Although young, Jason stated: ‘I was the one that asked them … I wanted to make money so I just said, “Want to give us it so I can make a bit of money?”’ (Jason, age 15, Oakford, Glasgow city district) As Steven pointed out, often CCE is more hidden and less obvious. When we think of exploitation, we are more likely to draw upon clear-​cut perceptions of victim and offender. This is more common when thinking about young females being victimised by older males. As Steven highlighted, females are more at risk of sexual exploitation. This remains a consistent feature of criminal trends, regardless of the context (Batchelor et al, 2019). Again, concurring with wider research on the position of young females and the trouble they may get into, some of the young women (aged 18) we interviewed from the large west of Scotland town of Hazelend indicated that conflict among young men could emerge as a result of their relationships with potential partners: Gemma: A few of the boys that we go out with don’t all get on with other groups. Interviewer: What’s that over? Tracey: Lassies [females] mostly. Yeah. Gemma: Guys want to fight over me. I can’t help that (laughs). Interviewer: What about lassies? Lynda: Lassies don’t fight with each other. They bitch like heck, but. Gemma: A lot of the lassies don’t like me. Think I’m goin’ to steal their men or something. One interesting trend to emerge from the data, however, was the fact that Scottish youth were using some terminology that had originated in London. The young people would refer to the older dealers for whom they worked as ‘olders’ and themselves as ‘youngers’. Speaking about territoriality, Fergus demonstrated that this type of lexicon was emerging in the Scottish context: 102

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‘If you were from [scheme A] and you were seen in [scheme B] then the youngers in [scheme B] would try and [fight] you.’ (Fergus, age 16, Hollyburn, medium town) Fergus also used such terminology when discussing drug dealing practices: ‘Instead of the olders selling to the youngers, it’s the youngers selling to the olders. [Olders] are 19, 20. They are more recognised than the youngers.’ (Fergus, age 16, Hollyburn, medium town) The term ‘younger’ is used widely in London within certain sections of youth culture or what Harding (2014) calls ‘the street casino’. The age range of the young people we worked with in Scotland was similar to that of the participants in Harding’s fieldwork in the London context. Yet unlike in London, the term ‘older’ as opposed to ‘elder’ was being applied as a means of indicating more recognised and established dealers in the area. These terms, up to only five years ago, were almost non-​existent on the Scottish scene. The extent to which such terms have come to be used, applied and, of course, adapted is debatable, yet one area in which this is perhaps notable is within the context of drill music (Pinkney and Robinson-​Edwards, 2018). McLean (2019) and McLean and Densley (2020) note that older people –​in their 30s or even mid-​20s and above –​ do not use such terms, thus it would seem to have emerged directly from contemporary young people. Yet only one participant, Cammy, mentioned having actively travelled to London to purchase and sell drugs, and ironically, he never used such terms. It was, therefore, difficult for us to ascertain the extent to which these terms may have been adopted by contemporary youth in Scotland and the deeper meanings behind them. It is also important to note, that while such terms may be used, they are highly limited and future research is needed to adequately identify the influence of wider London-​centric subculture.

Chapter summary In this chapter, we began by outlining some of the nuances associated with Scotland’s illegal drugs markets and the main players, gangs and groups involved. We tracked the overarching changes that have emerged since the heroin boom of the 1980s and how they have shaped the drugs market of today. Through the voices of the young people from our sample, we have considered the role drugs play in contemporary youth culture and the role that young people and street gangs may play in drug supply and distribution. We have also explored County Lines drug dealing and the devastating impact it has upon vulnerable youngsters in more depth. 103

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It would seem that sustained efforts by interventionist agencies, police and the SVRU to tear down long-​held territorial barriers in the west of Scotland may have had unforeseen consequences in that this has allowed youth to move about more freely and thus develop, or at least engage in, existing drug supply networks. The young people’s insights suggested to us that increased social mobility means that young people can now participate in drug supply across geographical areas, whereas in the past this may have been more difficult. McLean (2019) identified that when youth became involved in drug supply in the early years of the twenty-​first century, it was mostly among peers and within the territories in which they lived. This was largely due to existing barriers –​only those who could put past gang rivalries to bed, over time, or tap into existing organised criminal networks –​ were able to deal drugs. However, now most young people can do so as territory is no longer a barrier (McLean et al, 2019b). That is by no means to suggest that public health interventions associated with organisations like the SVRU, such as CIRV, have been negative or detrimental, but rather that, instead of eliminating street gangs they allowed them to become an extension of existing criminal structures and thus evolve as they become part of the existing supply chain. There have thus been some unforeseen, but arguably unavoidable consequences. Drug dealing has replaced gang violence and, against a backdrop of consumerism, the impact of decreased territoriality and the rise of social media, many young people are perhaps serving as useful points of contact for dealers looking to reach new clientele. In addition to the issues associated with drug use, distribution and supply networks, our interviews with young people threw up insights relating to the wider detrimental impact of social media, as well as other diverse influences and challenges impacting their lives. It is to these wider issues that we shall turn our attention in the next chapter.

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6

Diverse Contemporary Youth Influences and Challenges In the previous chapter, we drew on insights from interviews with our sample of young people to shed light on the role that drugs play in contemporary youth culture in the west of Scotland and young people’s involvement in drug supply and distribution. However, our extended discussions with young people also threw up additional insights relating to an array of wider influences and challenges impacting their lives. This chapter, therefore, outlines the remaining perspectives emerging from our interviews with young people in the west of Scotland, as well as some complementary insights from practitioners. We examine their views on the continuing issues relating to street-​gang culture, weapon-​carrying and violence; the longstanding (and, to some extent, re-​emerging) issues associated with football bigotry; and the amalgam of newer issues relating to and emerging from social media engagement.

Introduction In Chapter 5 we suggested that, by helping to break down territorial barriers, public health interventions have on the one hand helped to reduce street gang violence while at the same time allowing increased social mobility and thus perhaps unwittingly allowing gangs to evolve and become part of existing drug supply chains. However, throughout the book, we have also made intermittent reference to the evidence suggesting that reported numbers of violent incidents have plateaued (or even increased slightly) in recent years (particularly in socially disadvantaged communities in the west of Scotland), following a lengthy period of decline (Batchelor et al, 2019; Scottish Government, 2019b, 2020b, 2020c). It is evident that, to some extent, street gang violence may still have a presence in some geographical locations, alongside wider contemporary challenges facing youth. 105

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The sections that follow draw on the final stage of our thematic analysis, presenting the remaining lived experiences described by our young participants (as listed in Table 5.1), as well as some complementary perceptions given to us by practitioners (see Tables 3.1 and 4.1).

Young people’s wider lived experiences and contemporary challenges Lingering territorial boundaries, violence and knife-​carrying In Chapter 2, we drew attention to the research that has consistently suggested that street gangs in the west of Scotland have tended to be recreational youth groups with flexible structures and no fixed organisational hierarchies, and have inherently been tied up in issues related to masculinised territoriality (Deuchar, 2009a, 2013; Fraser, 2013, 2015). However, both the insights in Chapter 5, combined with previous ones shared by McLean (2017, 2019) have suggested that drug dealing has largely replaced territorial street gang violence in and around Glasgow. That said, building on some of our earlier insights gained from practitioners outlined in earlier chapters, several of the young people we interviewed drew attention to other lingering issues associated with territorial street gang rivalries and violence in their housing schemes: ‘It’s alright living in Limegate, but sometimes if you’re no’ from that scheme, you just end up gettin’ battered. I don’t like people from Hollyburn personally, and if they come up and I’m wi’ all my pals and we see them, we’ll just end up fightin’ wi’ them … They think they pure run the scheme and they don’t … It’s like trespassing … I mind one time, I was with all my pals and about 40 people came up wi’ baseball bats, weapons, hammers … If my pal was gettin’ a doin’ I’d jump in … I know that he would do it for me if I was gettin’ a doin’.’ (Joel, age 13, Hornbeam, medium town) ‘Most of the [schemes] talk now … Back then, people would plan to go into other schemes and start somethin’ but now it’s like, if they cross paths, it is more territorial if you’re goin’ into their scheme.’ (Sharon, age 18, Oakford, Glasgow city district) At the time when territorial violence was rife in the west of Scotland, Deuchar (2009a, p 56) conceptualised a street gang within this context as a group of young people who relied on each other to support them in their engagement in ‘conflict’ associated with ‘attachment to local territories’ or cultures and characterised by violence. For young men with no legitimate 106

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masculine outlets in a deindustrialised context, territorial violence provided alternative masculine expression (McLean and Holligan, 2018; McLean, 2019). In particular, authors such as Deuchar (2009a) and Fraser (2015) have shown how territorial violence was often planned among young people in the context of strong claims over geographical space and the need to be seen to actively defend their turf (see also Pitts, 2008; Densley, 2013; Harding, 2014). In earlier chapters, we highlighted how members of our wider sample generally confirmed the oft-​reported decline in territorial behaviour among young people in the housing schemes. However, Joel and Sharon clearly identified that there were still some pockets of these behaviour patterns evident in some housing schemes in the west of Scotland. Importantly, though, they indicated a reduction in pre-​planned gang fights but a lingering inclination for spontaneous territorial flashpoints to emerge if young people drifted into rival neighbourhoods. This links well with the classic insights of Thrasher (1927), who found that street gangs in Chicago were often spontaneous groupings and that delinquency was often unplanned. Similarly, Matza (1967) suggested that delinquency within gangs was often a result of both drifting and boredom (see also McLean, 2019). As illustrated by Joel’s experiences, the lingering issues with territorial violence were by no means confined to the housing schemes in the city of Glasgow, but still emerged in outlying towns. The young people in our sample who came from a range of other small, medium and large towns also described how territorial rivalries between neighbouring areas could still emerge. In Chapter 2, we referred to Holligan et al’s (2017) empirical research into weapon-​carrying in Glasgow and the insights that suggested that youth reacted to news of crime by carrying weapons for protection, seeking to safeguard themselves from victimisation. The young people in our current sample in Glasgow and outlying towns told us how knife-​carrying still occurred, often driven by fear, and that gang fights and weapon-​carrying could emerge as a direct result of animosity created by social media posts: ‘My brother used to fight for the local gang … He got jailed for [carrying] a knife.’ (Carol, age 20, Hazelend, large town) ‘See if it’s someone from [neighbouring area], we would go and hit them … Some folk get pressured into using weapons. This big boy, Gavin, he got pressured into stabbing somebody. This guy was hittin’ him and hittin’ him, and the full team went for him and started stabbin’ and hittin’ him … The fear takes over. See if they stab like the biggest guy, then the other guys are going to go away because the big guy’s taken down … If you go about and there is like the young team, about 60 per cent of them will be carryin’ blades.’ (Cammy, age 15, Chestnuthill, small town) 107

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‘It usually starts on social media … like, if you’re arguin’ wi’ somebody from a different part of the city, then they [their mates] can go, “I don’t like them n’all”, That group doesnae like them and then it can lead to, like if you see them you fight wi’ them kinda thing … Sometimes [they might have] lockbacks and spring coshes, bats and things like that.’ (Ged, age 16, and Stevie, age 15, Mapleville, Glasgow city suburb) The links between gangs, claims over geographical space, the salience of ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’, and the active defence of turf are well established (Pitts, 2008; Densley, 2013; Harding, 2014; McLean et al, 2019b). The collective insights of Carol, Cammy, Ged and Stevie suggest that some young men in the west of Scotland were still inclined to carry and use weapons to exert their sense of hegemonic masculinity by defending territorial space (Deuchar, 2009a, 2013; Fraser, 2013, 2015). However, although there was clearly still an issue with territorial gang rivalries and violence (albeit to a lesser extent than before), Bobby, a young man who had recently moved from the north of England to the west of Scotland, believed that Glasgow and its surrounding towns were ‘calmer and a lot safer’ when compared to the gun culture he had witnessed in street gangs in the north of England. That said, like Cammy, Ged and Stevie, many of the young people referred to an ongoing culture of knife-​carrying driven by a perceived need for protection. For instance, Johnny (aged 18 from the large town of Hazelend) admitted carrying a knife after his girlfriend’s ex-​partner declared on social media that he was ‘after’ Johnny, although in the end he concluded that ‘fuck all happened’. Further, Brad and Mick (both aged 18, and also from Hazelend) described how knife-​carrying had become necessary after Brad had been robbed following his involvement in a drug drop-​off, and said he still carried as a result: Interviewer: Brad: Mick

Brad: Mick:

Do you still carry [a knife]? Aye, just for protection, know? People know I sell. They might want to try and take it, jump me. I got jumped in [scheme name]. Aye, a guy ran up and fuckin’ gubbed him … The cunt was a big guy; we were only in school … [He] was fast as well. [By the] time we turned round, you were on the deck and they were makin’ off. Aye, was about £100 he took off me. Aye … you had just done a drop [-​off] … was dropping some gear off to a guy we knew from school.

This echoes insights by Eades et al (2007), who suggest that young people who carry knives are more likely to do so if they have been victims (or 108

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predict they may become victims) of crime. Others in the sample, however, believed that it was mainly adults who tended to carry knives now, but also referred to other weapons being used for spontaneous violence: ‘Nowadays people wouldn’t take weapons with them. Maybe if they are arguin’ and there’s a pole on the ground or somethin’ … People might carry, but it’s mainly older people who have been brought up in it, like in their 20s.’ (Lenny, age 15, Willowburn, Glasgow city district) In Chapter 2, we discussed how the west of Scotland’s street gang culture and violence originally emerged following the mass Irish migration subsequent to the famines of the mid-​nineteenth century; accordingly, the earliest recorded gangs were characterised by religious sectarian rivalries (Davies, 2013). Alongside the remaining pockets of territorial street violence and weapon-​carrying that our young people alluded to, we also uncovered their perceptions regarding lingering and resurfacing issues associated with the age-​old problem of football bigotry in the west of Scotland, as the next section outlines.

Football bigotry, marching and nuanced perceptions about sectarianism Sectarianism involves bigotry, discrimination, prejudice or hatred towards others and is notorious for legitimating complex territory, particularly in Ireland (Anderson and Shuttleworth, 1998; Holligan and Deuchar, 2009). It has been argued that, in Scotland, sectarianism is a product of ‘the relationship between groups whose exteriority with respect to Scotland reflects an ambivalence between their extra-​Scottish origins and loyalties’ (Clayton, 2005, p 110). The roots of sectarianism in Scotland go back to the Union of the Crowns in 1603, when James VI of Scotland became James I of England ‘to ensure a Protestant succession after the death of Elizabeth I’ (McMenemy et al, 2005, p 491). The annual celebration of William of Orange’s victory over the Catholic James II at the River Boyne in 1690 led to the founding of the Orange Order in 1795 in Ireland and the first Orange Walks in Scotland between 1821 and 1822 (Murray, 2000). Following the Great Famine in Ireland in the mid-​nineteenth century, there was a large influx of Irish Catholic workers to the west of Scotland and tensions heightened between Protestants and Catholics (McMenemy et al, 2005; Deuchar and Holligan, 2010). As we touched on in Chapter 2, the rivalry between the fans of Rangers FC and Celtic FC (officially and collectively known as the ‘Old Firm’) has often been interpreted as ‘a symptom of deep and enduring sectarianism’ (Bruce et al, 2004, p 128). While Rangers fans have traditionally sung songs associated with Orange battle anthems such as The Sash and No Pope 109

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of Rome, Celtic supporters have sung Irish folk or rebel political songs such as The Fields of Athenry (Bruce et al, 2004; Deuchar and Holligan, 2010). Goodall et al (2015, p 288) highlight that ‘ethno-​religious offence’ can be transmitted and received, even in the absence of overtly sectarian language; for instance, their research participants referred to The Fields of Athenry as a sectarian song, despite its lack of religious references. There are conflicting views on the nature of sectarianism in Scotland and the extent to which it can be genuinely said to still be prevalent (NFO Social Research, 2003). For instance, some have argued that the country continues to harbour deep-​rooted anti-​Catholic prejudices and institutionalised bigotry (Bradley, 2000; Finn, 2000; MacMillan, 2000; Reilly, 2000; Conroy, 2001; Walls and Williams, 2003). However, the sociologist Steve Bruce has dismissed sectarianism in contemporary Scotland as simply a ‘boy’s game’ played out at Old Firm matches (see Deuchar and Holligan, 2010, p 17). Still others have argued that sectarianism is experienced like a ‘cobweb’ in Scotland, running through generations and across masculine culture (Goodall, 2015, p 288). Holligan and Deuchar (2009) cite the results of an ongoing statistical study of 146,242 married couples emerging from 2001 Scottish census data (Holligan and Raab, 2010), identifying a steep increase in Catholics marrying partners outside their religion of upbringing since the 1960s. In addition, Holligan and Deuchar recognise that the proportion of the population with no religious upbringing has significantly increased across Scotland over the last few decades, particularly among younger age groups. Accordingly, they argue that these indicators support the thesis of a breakdown of sectarianism in Scotland. In Deuchar and Holligan’s (2010) interviews with young people in Glasgow over a decade ago, they found that members of their sample generally had no interest in religion. However, at the same time, many were conscious of issues related to religious divisions through family and football influences, and participation in Orange Walks and singing of sectarian songs during football matches still appeared popular among some. Further, a study conducted seven years earlier (NFO Social Research, 2003) identified that the most common vehicles for expressing sectarian attitudes were jokes between friends and the use of names such as ‘hun’ (a derogatory word for a Protestant/​Rangers supporter, which originated in Northern Ireland) and ‘tim’ (a derogatory word used to describe a Catholic/​Celtic supporter, which has origins in a Protestant gang of the 1930s) (Deuchar and Holligan, 2010). Deuchar and Holligan (2010) identified that young people in their Glasgow sample were influenced by Old Firm football tribalism and that overt bigotry was mostly confined to the supporter terraces (see also Holligan and Deuchar, 2009). However, although the activity associated with street gangs was largely seen as territorial rather than sectarian, ‘flashpoints’ could result in bigotry being

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used for the expression of masculine aggression, particularly in the aftermath of an Old Firm game (Holligan and Deuchar, 2009). Over ten years on, during our interviews with contemporary young people, many expressed an awareness of the continuing issue of football bigotry. For instance, 13-​year-​old Connor (from the north of Glasgow) recalled an incident where he had witnessed a Rangers fan attack a young man on the street and leave him ‘almost dead’. Josh and Kevin (both from the east end of Glasgow) also indicated that football rivalry and bigotry could sometimes be used as the stimulus for spontaneous gang fights, following exchanges on social media: Josh: Kevin: Josh: Kevin: Josh: Kevin: Josh:

If you’re no’ liked by one person, by one scheme, you’re no’ liked by any of them. So if you see them, somebody phones and they all come down and fight … [Could be if] somebody was talkin’ shit [on social media]. Like somebody said ‘fuck [this scheme]’ to somebody. Or else if you’re a Rangers fan and you say, ‘Fuck the Pope.’ Aye, that can start somethin’ bad. There’s quite a lot of that. Cunts get stabbed for sayin’, ‘Fuck Rangers, fuck Celtic.’ Even the sectarian stuff, man, it can happen in the same scheme … Say a Rangers supporter lives here [and] a Celtic supporter lives here; things can start and they start fightin’.

Josh and Kevin had evidently witnessed the way bigotry could lead to gang violence and stabbings in the east end of Glasgow and, importantly, they clearly linked Old Firm rivalry to religious prejudice and ascribed this to ‘sectarian stuff’, running counter to Raab and Holligan’s (2012) differentiation between the ‘myth of sectarianism’ and the ‘reality of football-​ related violence’ in Scotland. Importantly, Goodall et al (2015) draw attention to how the presence or absence of sectarianism relies as much on individual perception as it does on performers’ intent. While Josh and Kevin perceived the football-​related bigotry and violence they had witnessed as representing sectarianism, others evidently did not. In Deuchar and Holligan’s qualitative research in Glasgow (2010, p 26), it was found that many young people viewed the name-​calling and singing of songs related to Old Firm rivalry (both of which have historical links to religious divisions) as harmless ‘banter’. Over a decade later, it seemed that many contemporary youth still held this same view. Some believed that the ‘banter’ may have been heightened on social media as a result of Rangers returning to the Scottish Premier League (SPL) in recent years and the corresponding re-​emergence of the Old Firm fixture there:1

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‘I would say it’s more banter at football games, both sides do it –​but it’s not as bad as police think. They might get into it and argue but wouldn’t fight.’ (Lenny, age 15, Willowburn, Glasgow city district) ‘You get people saying stuff on Facebook but it’s mostly a joke, mostly during games and after, but it doesn’t spill into nothin’ … It could be related to Rangers coming back up [the league]. Three or four years ago it wasn’t as much, but with Rangers being back up there are more games.’ (Del, age 15, Limegate, medium town) Raab and Holligan (2012, p 1951) draw attention to the long-​term presence of the football-​related rivalry in the west of Scotland, but also cite Bruce et al’s (2005) view that this behaviour ‘may have little to do with religious conflict, but is simply part of group identification’. On the latter point, none of the young people we interviewed made references to religious interests or faith, but it very much seemed that there was a prevalence of football rivalry and what could even be described as bigotry. Practitioners elaborated on this and further nuanced perceptions emerged. Some believed that a sectarian culture had gained strength again since Rangers had returned to the SPL and the Old Firm fixture had re-​emerged, while others downplayed this and felt that they had simply observed football ‘banter’ among young people on match days –​but that this did not represent sectarianism per se: ‘[Football bigotry] is on the rise again. When Rangers went down to the Third Division, it meant they were at a distance but they are coming back and you see it coming again … I would say it’s evolving into violence again. There is a sectarian culture coming back again.’ (Nigel, age 26, Mapleville, Glasgow city district, family support worker: FARE Scotland) ‘You have people not talking with mates during football games but after it they all talk again … It’s more banter. [They] have a laugh about it.’ (Rob, age 41, Mapleville, Glasgow city district, employability manager: FARE Scotland) ‘We have banter and disappointment, all that stuff. But there’s never … a divide –​“they’re Catholics or Protestants and we don’t mix” –​or anything like that. It’s certainly no’ the case. Even with young people, on Old Firm day, you’ll see them going about, whole strips, Celtic and Rangers, going about together, hanging about. Aye, there’s banter and at times there’s a bit of rage, but it’s no’ like, “that’s it, and we’re no’ mates”, and all that type of stuff … If we had sectarian issues, I would suggest we’d have these issues all the time –​we’d have them 112

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on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday –​but we don’t have them all the time. It increases on [Old Firm] day, but it’s all to do with the consumption and the volume of alcohol and the passion that people in this city have for the clubs and what it means to them.’ (Brian, age 38, senior manager: FARE Scotland) Some who claim that overt religious sectarian divisions continue to be present in Scottish society cite the existence of ritualistic marching in Scottish towns (Raab and Holligan, 2012). It has been found that Loyalist organisations (including the Orange Order, Apprentice Boys of Derry and Royal Black Institution) tend to define themselves on a religious basis, with processions forming ‘an important tradition within their organisation and continuing a celebration of the Protestant identity’ (Hamilton-​Smith et al, 2015, p vi). Irish Republicans, in contrast, have been found to identify themselves as organisations that campaign on behalf of, and support, the Irish community in Scotland, with events being viewed as having the aims of ‘challenging racism, notably anti-​Irish racism, and sectarianism in Scottish society’ (Hamilton-​Smith et al, 2015, p vii). Many of the young people we interviewed admitted to taking an interest in the organisations associated with Loyalists and/​or Republicans, and talked about either participating or routinely going to observe the processions when they marched through the city centre of Glasgow: ‘I’d go to both of them [Orange and Republican]. The reason I go to the Orange Walk is because my family are Rangers fans and all of them go to the walk, but basically I’m the only Celtic fan in my family and just to annoy my dad … My dad used to call me a “Fenian” and it used to hurt me and so I was a Rangers fan and I just turned into a Celtic fan oot of spite and now I enjoy watching Celtic winning.’ (Jason, age 15, Oakford, Glasgow city district) Jason’s comments illustrated how Old Firm rivalry, characterised by bigotry linked to historic religious divides, is still deeply entrenched in Glasgow and can divide families (Deuchar and Holligan, 2010). Jason had been on the receiving end of this bigotry from his own father, who called him a ‘Fenian’ (a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, a nineteenth-​century revolutionary nationalist organisation, and widely viewed as a derogatory term for a Catholic or Irish nationalist) simply because he supported Celtic. This had clearly evoked a sense of rebellion in Jason, but while he had evolved from a supporter of Rangers to a Celtic fan, he evidently still hung on to some of the family-​oriented Protestant Unionist loyalty and now participated in both sets of marches –​perhaps as a result of the pressure he felt from his father’s influence. This illustration arguably reflects Goodall et al’s (2015) 113

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metaphor of sectarianism as a ‘cobweb’ in some parts of Scotland, running strong through the generations and across masculine culture particularly. Other young people in Glasgow and beyond also talked about observing or participating in the marches: ‘I wouldn’t take part, but I would go and watch [the marches] … Nothin’ really would happen, people might shout about somethin.’ (Del, age 15, Limegate, medium town) ‘I go and play the drums. I get a buzz, but basically free booze!’ (Donny, age 15, Mapleville, Glasgow city district) In Goodall et al’s (2015) research, adult participants from local communities across Scotland were clearly found to associate the presence of Loyalist and Irish Republican marches with sectarianism. Several of their participants in Glasgow described sectarian violence associated with marches, including ‘street fights, bottles being thrown towards parades and chairs being used as weapons inside public houses in close proximity to the marches’ (Goodall et al, 2015, p 295). Others, however, while not in favour of the marches, also defended their right to march on liberal grounds (Goodall et al, 2015, see also NFO Social Research, 2003). Hamilton-​Smith et al’s (2015) mixed methods research in Scotland identified a range of impacts of these public processions on local communities, from excitement and enjoyment among participants and spectators to serious concern and upset arising as a result of confrontations and clashes between rival bands or between bands and supporters. Although young people like Del and Donny noted only that some minor aggravation might arise within the context of the marches and that alcohol might be involved, others were conscious of having witnessed more serious violent incidents emerging: Mandy: Jason:

Like, recently there was a big, massive riot in [the scheme] … That’s the first time that’s happened in ages. See the tall cranes, it was the worst for it. People would walk past the tall cranes and people would try and throw [stuff] at the people marchin’. (Mandy, age 19, and Jason, age 15, Oakford, Glasgow city district)

Mandy and Jason made reference to witnessing a full-​scale riot that took place in the south side of Glasgow in the autumn of 2019, when a march by a Republican flute band was met by hundreds of Loyalist demonstrators. Several months later (early in 2020), a Republican parade had been arranged in Glasgow city centre to commemorate the anniversary of Bloody Sunday 114

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(when 14 people died after British soldiers opened fire on demonstrators in Derry, Northern Ireland, in 1972). This too was met by a counter-​protest Loyalist group, sparking renewed safety concerns around the marches (BBC News, 2020). Stevie made reference to these types of incidents and how there was often a tendency for protests and counter-​protests to spark violence, while Eddie talked about how scheme fights could emerge on the sidelines of marches: ‘There was a lot of people there from the Rangers Union Bears [fan group] trying to stop the Republican marches, giving out flyers to try and stop the Republican march … and vice versa, with the Orange Walks –​they’ve wanted them banned for years now and I think the Republican ones now, it’s just, “if you parade through the city then we’ll parade through the city” kind of thing … When you think about it, it’s a bit daft celebrating something from [hundreds] of years ago, but I think if they want to celebrate a culture then they should feel free to celebrate that culture … But when it results in violence, that’s a different story. If you want to sing your songs, parade, play in the band then that’s fair enough … But it kinda brings violence with it, doesn’t it?’ (Stevie, age 15, Mapleville, Glasgow city district) ‘When it comes to parades n’ that, you get all the fightin’ … [Different schemes in the east end] will meet up and fight around it.’ (Eddie, age 15, Mapleville, Glasgow city district) Hamilton-​Smith et al identified that confrontations emerging during Loyalist and Republican marches were not always organised along sectarian lines but were more commonly ‘territorial or were between competing processing organisations, typically clashes between rival bands or between bands and supporters’ (2015, p vii). Further, the dominant concern of residents of areas where marches commonly took place was less related to the behaviour of procession participants and more to the behaviour of procession supporters, counter-​demonstrators, other bystanders and ‘hangers on’ who caused trouble around the processions (Hamilton-​Smith et al, 2015, p viii). Stevie’s descriptions of the counter-​protests in Glasgow in early 2020 combined with Eddie’s wider observations seemed to corroborate this. Although no direct references to religious interests or preferences were made by young people in the interviews, Willie declared a belief that strong associations still existed between religious identity and football fandom in the west of Scotland. He described how many young people (and young men in particular) were very committed to their association with either Rangers or Celtic and how this was also often linked to abusing opposing fans or participants in marches and parades: 115

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‘If you’re a Catholic, you’re a Celtic fan. If you’re a Protestant, you’re a Rangers fan. Like, see the Green Brigade [Celtic fan group] and the Union Bears [Rangers fan group], most people makin’ that atmosphere [at the games] are 17-​year-​olds. Aye, obviously they must be really into it –​they have season tickets, go to all the away games, they spend all their money on it … People don’t like hearin’ [insults] about their own club … If it was an Orange Walk, I would be sittin’ at the side givin’ them pelters, but if it was to do with the Green Brigade, I would obviously join in … Some people are really die-​hard about it –​like my dad and my uncle Joe. They used to go to all the games.’ (Willie, age 16, Hazelend, large town) Importantly, Willie’s insights again suggested that football allegiance and identifying with one side of the Old Firm or the other tended to be influenced by men in the family, a theme that was previously identified by Deuchar and Holligan (2010). Overall, then, there seemed to be no doubt among members of our sample that football-​related bigotry was still very much present and that football tribalism was accompanied for some by interest and participation in Loyalist and Republican marches. However, there were also nuanced perceptions about the relationship between this presence, interest and involvement, and the existence of religious sectarianism, perhaps to some extent reinforcing Goodall et al’s (2015) assertion that sectarianism relies as much on individual perception as on performers’ intent. Having explored and examined the surface issues impacting young people relating to drug use, drug distribution, territorial violence and football-​ related bigotry (whether or not the latter could be thought to relate to the wider issue of sectarianism), we were also interested in going deeper. Globally, at the time of writing, evidence suggests that adolescent mental health issues are becoming more common and those living in poverty are feeling less optimistic and less useful, and have more of a sense of failure than their peers (Mowat, 2019). During our conversations with young people, many references were made to issues that had a negative impact on mental health and the relationship between these and social media use, which we will now explore more fully.

Mental health and the amalgam of social media influences As mentioned in Chapter 3, it has been estimated that 10 per cent of children and adolescents in Scotland have a diagnosable mental health disorder (Mowat, 2019). Furthermore, recent survey data from the Mental Health Foundation (2020) suggest that the COVID-​19 pandemic may have impacted young people’s mental health more than most. Findings from the summer of 2020 suggested that teenagers and young adults (aged 18–​24) 116

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were more likely than any other age group to report loneliness, not coping well and suicidal thoughts or feelings during the pandemic. Talking just before the pandemic broke out, 15-​year-​olds Shaun and Donny (both from Mapleville in Glasgow’s east end) referred to their awareness that over 70 per cent of those who took their own lives in Scotland were men. They believed that young men often felt reluctant to open up about their feelings because they believed ‘they will be slagged, like called gay n’ that’. Messerschmidt (1994, p 82) argues that ‘young men experience life from a particular position in society and differentially construct cultural ideals of hegemonic masculinity’, with the latter often becoming associated with the display of toughness, fearlessness, and heterosexual power and authority (Connell, 2005). Holligan and Deuchar (2015) have identified how putatively detached emotionality among many young men in Glasgow is associated with a macho identity that emerges against the backdrop of both the traditional class culture in the most deprived housing schemes and the strains that often characterise young men’s lives there. Shaun and Donny’s perspectives on how young men’s performances of masculinity were often policed and monitored by peers provides an example of this, and it is evident that this could potentially prevent these types of young men from opening up emotionally and receiving help with their mental health if needed (see also Deuchar, 2018). Previous research has drawn attention to how experiences with anxiety in adolescence can predict the onset of cannabis use (Wittchen et al, 2007; Crippa et al, 2009). In our sample, several of the young men’s self-​narratives suggested that rather than opening up and talking to someone, they often used cannabis as a form of self-​medication for the symptoms of stress, anxiety and depression: ‘I smoke [cannabis] every day … I’ve been smokin’ about a year or two, from age 13/​14 … I get stressed easily and I feel like, if I don’t smoke this, I’d end up temper at anythin’ anyone said bad to me. I feel as if it down.’ (Jason, age 15, Oakford, Glasgow city district)

weed for out fairly losin’ my calms me

‘[I’ve smoked] every day since I was nine years old … About two year ago, I hit it even harder because my father passed away … It calms me doon. I was gonna commit suicide, that’s how bad I felt … I didane want to be here … On that day, I smoked … and I felt … I just calm[ed] doon.’ (Rowan, age 20, Oakford, Glasgow city district) Research has also identified the links between gang involvement and the emergence of poor mental health among young people. For instance, Kennedy and Ceballo (2016) provide evidence that exposure to violence 117

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can be associated with symptoms of anxiety and depression in young people. Additionally, Frisby-​Osman and Wood’s (2020) analysis of survey results from 91 adolescents in England revealed that gang-​involved youth had higher levels of anxiety, depression and rumination when compared with non-​gang-​ involved youth. In our own sample, Bobby discussed at length how he had become hyper-​vigilant due to the constant threat of retaliation by rival gang members while living in the north-​west of England, how this had impacted his mental health and how images of gang violence could still trigger him: ‘People [were] trying to kill me 24/​7 … Maybe someone you’ve got beef with, someone after you … It can cause anxiety, even when you’re sleeping … so I would usually sleep with a knife or something under my pillow. Sometimes I wouldn’t sleep, my mind always working … If it’s like a video of people fighting, it can remind you of something. You do get a lot of people on social media depressed as fuck … If you like message someone you can trust and that, then it does help. But if you stick it on your fuckin’ Facebook page then it’s stupid … People don’t fuckin’ care.’ (Bobby, age 15, Juniperville, medium town) Those who had spent their adolescence in the west of Scotland also reported anxiety-​related issues; for instance, Larry had had a reputation for fire-​ raising when he was a child, and now found himself constantly blamed and threatened for things he did not do: ‘See, everybody in my area, everybody wants to stab me … I used to have a past for setting fires and stuff, when I was about 10 … Like, I can’t go anywhere, even if I’m out with my family, people try and start somethin’ … I’ve been diagnosed with anxiety … I used to go to CAMHS [Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services] but stopped –​it didn’t help. Nothing that makes it better or worse, constantly paranoid.’ (Larry, age 16, Hollyburn, medium town) These insights correlate with earlier findings about how past involvement in offending behaviour both in and outwith gangs can lead to a prolonged fear of retaliation, hyper-​vigilance and trauma (see Deuchar, 2018, 2020). Importantly, Bobby (as well as Jason, Rowan and Larry) all referred to experiencing feelings of anxiety, depression and rumination. Bobby, in particular, suggested that young people sometimes projected signals of mental suffering on social media –​but he believed that expressing these emotions on sites like Facebook had little benefit. Others in the sample also talked about how interaction on social media could often simply fuel more tension and anxiety. For instance, 15-​year-​old Shaun (from the east end of Glasgow) believed that ‘you’ll get loads of people 118

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that will say stuff over social media but not to your face’. Connor (age 13 from Elderland, in the north of Glasgow) commented that ‘on social media … everybody nowadays is afraid to do anything in case they get made fun of ’. In the previous chapter, we mentioned how the rise of social media has meant that young people can now connect and meet up with other youth from all over the country and can talk freely about drugs with less fear of reprisal thanks to encrypted messaging on apps such as Snapchat and Whatsapp. The use of social networking sites is, indeed, a normative part of western adolescent development, with young people’s social relationships in large part becoming digital, and it has been estimated that nine in ten teenagers and young people use social media, with a large majority using it daily (Best et al, 2014; Rideout and Fox, 2018; Coyne et al, 2020). Indeed, data from the ‘EU Kids Online’ survey estimates that an average 15–​16-​year-​ old spends at least 118 minutes per day online (Best et al, 2014). The anonymous nature of young people’s engagement in ‘virtual hangouts’ frees them from ‘normative social constraints of behaviour’ and evidence suggests that this can lead to increased hostile, aggressive or inappropriate conduct (Patton et al, 2013, p A55). As a result, in addition to the issues we have already considered relating to the growth of social media facilitating young people’s involvement in drug distribution, social media has also regularly been blamed for the rise in poor mental health among young people. Coyne et al (2020) cite several studies that report associations between increased time spent on social media and heightened levels of depression (see, for instance, Banjanin et al, 2015; Woods and Scott, 2016; Barry et al, 2017). Results from Rideout and Fox’s (2018) survey of over 1,300 young Americans indicated that more than half of the respondents reported experiencing some degree of social comparison pressure from social media. Many also indicating a belief that they always had to show the best version of themselves online. In Kelly et al’s (2018) survey of 14-​year-​olds living in the UK, they found an association between social media use and depressive symptoms, with experiences of online harassment, poor sleep quality, self-​ esteem issues and negative perceptions about body image being prevalent. The presence of cyberbullying has been found to be distinct from traditional bullying in that humiliating texts of visual materials sent to social media can be permanent and available to the public (Patton et al, 2013). Reflecting the earlier insights into social media’s impact on mental health given to us by practitioners such as Rob (see Chapter 4), some young people in our sample referred to instances of cyberbullying and how issues of self-​ harm can sometimes come about as a result of the image-​conscious culture promoted by sites such as Instagram: ‘You see a lot of people that harm themselves n’all that. Young people from the area, I know a lot of people who have been cyberbullied and 119

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been slagged online about their pictures and they’ve harmed themselves … usually … young girls. Instagram’s about the worst one for it. You always see pictures of all these lassies online, just standin’ in front of a mirror, and wi’ all the filters n’that.’ (Stuart, age 14, Mapleville, Glasgow city district) Some studies have contested connections between adolescent social media use, anxiety and depression (for reviews, see Best et al, 2014; Coyne et al, 2020). In their eight-​year longitudinal study of 500 adolescents, Coyne et al (2020, p 157) identified that time spent using social networking sites was ‘moderately related to anxiety and depression’, thus only partly corroborating wider studies suggesting a link between frequent social media use and poor mental health. However, Kelly et al (2018) refer to the ‘abundance of manipulated images of idealised “beauty” online’ and the way this can be linked to young people’s perceptions of body image and self-​esteem, which in turn are associated with poor mental health. In wider research, Allen and Mendrick (2015, p 15) have identified growing concerns within the UK that celebrity culture is having a negative impact on young people’s aspirations, encouraging them to value ‘fame, fortune and “quick wins” overachievement based on hard work or skill’. Others have drawn attention to how social media can furnish users with highly visible metrics of popularity and endorsement, which are very closely tied to ‘self-​branding’, whereby a following may or may not evolve into a fan base, thus possibly pressuring ordinary users to try and find online fame (Khamis et al, 2017, p 201). Practitioners in our sample had noted a huge change in young people’s social skills in recent years due to the time they tended to spend on social media, the influence image-​conscious culture had had on them and how metrics of popularity often could reduce self-​confidence: ‘One of the things that is becoming apparent because of social media is that mental health issues are on the rise. I think it’s a ticking time bomb … When a young person comes into my office … in years gone by, five to 10 years ago, they would have come in here like “Jack the lad”, tried to take the piss out of me and have a bit of a laugh or a joke. When a young person comes in here now, and I’m talking about the vast majority of them, they’ll try and look at me, but they can’t even look at me in the eye. I then try to speak to them, and you can’t even get a conversation. Whereas, you stick a headset on them and stick them in front a PlayStation or on an X-​Box and they’ll chat quite the thing to whoever they want to around the world … Also, I remember being at school and you probably saw one or two girls with makeup on. Now you go through schools and every girl is covered in makeup. And I think it’s because of the social media thing … All these wannabe 120

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models and stuff like that, and they think that’s what everybody looks like –​six packs for males and girls with perfect bikins n’that, and it’s no’ the case.’ (Lewis, age 47, senior manager: FARE Scotland) ‘You look at kids’ phones and they will have like 10 hours a day of phone time … If you look at Instagram, they recently changed their set-​up. The amount of likes you got, it’s like people see people and think, “he got this many likes and I only got this, so am I not as popular?”’ (Thomas, age 25, teacher: Parkside School) Although the 14-​year-​old Stuart referred specifically to the experiences of young women in relation to the image-​conscious culture, Lewis suggested that it also impacted young males. In our youth sample, young men like Stevie admitted to us that he too engaged in social comparison, referring specifically to celebrity footballer Cristiano Ronaldo, whose clothes and image he admired. Other young men like Lenny and Tommy (from Willowburn and Yewstone, both in the east end of Glasgow, respectively) also indicated that image was very important to them and that social media had influenced this: Lenny: Tommy: Lenny: Tommy:

Your appearance is important. It makes you different from some people n’that, it can show a bit of your personality n’that. I think maybe because of social media n’that. Everybody wants to … look their best.

The above perceptions were reinforced by Thomas, a practitioner, who observed that ‘kids nowadays cut about in Hugo Boss and Stone Island jumpers … [and] 150 quid shoes’. Building on the insights given to us by other practitioners like Nigel (see Chapter 4) and other young people (see Chapter 5), Sharon indicated that selling drugs was the only means for some young people to be able to acquire and maintain the public image they desired: ‘I think when [young people] start selling [drugs] and they’ve got the money there, they’ll go oot and get themselves a new jacket and say “I can dae this now” so they’ll keep goin’ and they’ll get themselves the shoes … and it becomes a habit. And then if they’ve no’ got it, they don’t feel the same, ’cos they’re so used to gettin’ it.’ (Sharon, age 18, Oakford, Glasgow city district) Recent international research has explored the ways gang members may use social media to facilitate violence and crime (see, for instance, Decker and Pyrooz, 2011; Pyrooz et al, 2013; Lauger and Densley, 2018). In a qualitative 121

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sample in California, Decker and Pyrooz’s (2011) found that gang members reported using social media to brag about violence, make threats and display gang symbols. Further, Pyrooz et al’s later (2013) insights from a sample of 585 current and former gang members identified that a sizeable number had engaged in online offending –​not only selling drugs, but also harassing and threatening people, and uploading violent videos (for further discussion, see Patton et al, 2013). Research within England has also focused on the use of drill and underground rap music by street gang members, and the way it can help members perform gang identities that emphasise their capacities for violence, promote specific threats to rival gang members and flaunt illegal substances (Irwin-​Rogers et al, 2018; Lauger and Densley, 2018; Pinkney and Robinson-​Edwards, 2018). Our data suggested that the influence of drill and underground rap music on promoting such activity in the west of Scotland may be minimal. Only three young people mentioned it, and they appeared to believe that young people may simply engage with it to make money from the music itself rather than to promote any type of gang culture, or that it had become completely discredited among the youth: ‘There are a few people up the town who are doin’ that [drill] music … but it’s more … the fact that they can make money off the music itself. [In Scotland] the music does not make a difference.’ (Fergus, age 16, Hollyburn, medium town) Stevie:

Ged: Stevie:

You see some of the problems that come from celebrities … Some of the young people who look up to the rappers who have the gang presence wi’ them. Especially the now, wi’ some of the London grime … I like drill music. You might call yourself MC and put music on Facebook. But you’d probably get laughed at for that … You get [rap] music here that talk about … carryin’ knives n’all that … but not a lot of people listen to it any mair –​a lot of people think it’s quite embarrassing music now.

Although the influence of drill music appeared to be less prominent than in English urban contexts, among the wider amalgam of influences associated with the online environment, some of our practitioners indicated that young people may have increasingly become drawn into online gambling. They noted that this had emerged as a result of advertisements and sponsorship by Bookmakers linked to football and sports channels: ‘Gambling is also one of the big issues. I speak to them in the school and they are 13 and 14, putting a coupon on –​for a lot of them, it’s online. The seniors can have a bank account at 16, but they will get 122

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their brothers to put it on … Bookmakers, and even Sky Sports, are making it glamorous … Gambling issues are rife at this moment and it impacts on mental health.’ (Rob, age 41, Mapleville, Glasgow city suburb, employability manager: FARE Scotland) ‘Gambling is the worst. Young males and young girls … social media is causing that. Rangers are sponsored by 32-​Red, Celtic are sponsored by Dafabet. You have the William Hill Scottish Cup. An advert, every Bookmaker out there.’ (Nigel, age 26, Mapleville, Glasgow city suburb, family support worker: FARE Scotland) King et al (2010) describe how gambling has entered the digital age, with individuals able to connect to internet casinos using a personal computer or gamble using a mobile phone. Given adolescents’ strong familiarity and competence with digital technologies, these authors suggest that this places them at risk of exposure to many types of gambling services (King et al, 2010). In particular, King et al (2010) point out that many young people engage in non-​monetary forms of online gambling, and cite the links between this and a dependency on gambling and gambling-​related problems later in life. Rob and Nigel both had noted that football clubs and sports channels were glamourising gambling and that young adolescents were being drawn into this. During our interviews, some of the young men mentioned that they had engaged in non-​monetary forms of gambling during gaming, where they attempted to win simulated coins. Some also said that they might engage in betting with their mates while playing Fifa 20 (a football simulation video game), how Youtubers may influence young people to gamble and how some progressed from online gambling to buying scratch cards or even gambling using cannabis as credit: ‘When I’m with my mates we do all these stupid bets … Say we’re on Fifa and we’re playin’ against each other … we’ll say, “I bet you a fiver you can’t win this game by five goals.” So if you only score three, because it was a pound a goal, you get £3 … you have some of these Youtubers going, “Well, if you want to know how I got all these coins, check out this website.” … and you have these kids stealing their parents’ credit cards.’ (Stuart, age 14, Mapleville, Glasgow city suburb) ‘I’ve bought scratch cards n’that. I am only 16 so I’ve not been to the bookie’s [bookmakers] … need to be 18. I heard a story about people gambling bits of hash.’ (Willie, age 16, Hazelend, large town) Accordingly, in addition to the continuing influences associated with territoriality, football-​related rivalry and bigotry, a range of more 123

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contemporary social issues were clearly impacting the young people we interviewed. Mental health issues were evidently stimulated by a continuing hegemonic masculine culture for young men combined (for some) with lingering issues associated with previous gang involvement or offending behaviour that still triggered them. Social media was clearly leading to social comparison pressure for both young women and men, and for some this could lead to the use of recreational drugs for self-​medication and the distribution of drugs to fund purchases of designer goods to maintain a desired image. It also seemed that the vulnerability of some of the younger members of our sample may have been placing them at risk of potentially problematic involvement in gambling. However, the insights on this within our sample were limited and additional research is needed to explore whether involvement in online gaming and/​or exposure to Youtubers may be having a wider impact on adolescent gambling.

Chapter summary In this chapter, we have outlined the remaining insights from our interviews with young people, as well as some complementary ones from practitioners, in relation to gang culture, weapon-​carrying and violence, football bigotry, and the challenges associated with social media engagement and mental health. We have noted the way some young men in different parts of the west of Scotland were still inclined to draw upon geographical space as a resource for identity and to use the borders between territories as sites in which to ‘test individual and collective mettle’ through the enactment of ‘tough masculinity’ (Fraser, 2013, p 982). Although we have established that this phenomenon was evidently much lesser than it was over a decade ago in the west of Scotland (Deuchar, 2009a), there was also a suggestion that knife-​ carrying still had a presence among youth, and was related to a perceived need for protection in some neighbourhoods. Our insights also revealed young people’s perceptions that football-​related bigotry was still very much present in the west of Scotland and some indications that it had grown in strength again in recent years. There were many illustrations of young people’s continuing active interest and involvement in football tribalism and Loyalist and Republican marches. However, there were also nuanced perceptions about the relationship between this presence, interest and involvement, and the existence of religious sectarianism per se. We have also drawn attention to how mental health issues were evidently impacting young people in our sample. A continuing hegemonic masculine culture among young men played a role here. Further, social media was clearly leading to intense pressures associated with social comparison and the need for self-​branding. This had evidently emerged against the broader context of society’s organisation now being firmly situated within the discourse 124

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of capitalism, with a rise in neoliberal ideology, increased emphasis on individualism and the pressure to not only develop the physical self but also the digital self (McLean, 2019). On occasion, it appeared that this could lead to the use of recreational drugs for self-​medication and the distribution of drugs in order to fund the purchasing of designer goods to gain credibility among peers. It also seemed that the vulnerability of some of the younger members of our sample may have been placing them at risk of potentially problematic involvement in gambling. Having reached the end of the empirical section of the book, we believe that our in-​depth qualitative data have served to spotlight a number of important issues. We have illuminated young people’s contemporary experiences of gang culture, weapon-​carrying and violence, as well as wider influences and adversities relating to substance misuse, drug supply networks, and the amalgam of issues emerging from social media engagement. In the final chapter, we consider again the unique insights we have uncovered and, while acknowledging the limitations of our study, ponder on the implications for policy, practice and future research.

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PART III

Conclusion

7

Framing and Re-​Framing the Experiences of Youth in Disadvantaged Scottish Communities In the interest of clarity and consistency of treatment, this concluding chapter aims to offer a faithful and detailed synthesis of the research findings from earlier chapters. Following this, we explore implications for policy and practice. We then conclude by reflecting on the limitations of our research work and propose directions for new research into the subjects addressed in the book. As each chapter has a distinct identity, our conclusion uses each one as a frame within which further analysis and synthesis are advanced. The bulk of the conclusion emphasises the framing of youth experience, after which we re-​conceptualise perceptions through a more critical and less descriptive analysis.

Orientation, context and backdrop We begin with a recap and further synthesis of the granularity of our empirical contribution against the scholarly context set out in the introductory chapter. The purpose of a conclusion is not to introduce substantially new material into the landscapes examined. There is, however, legitimate space for originality as we draw out and reinforce observations made in the book’s chapters, individually and across them. It could not be doubted that the landscape of criminality associated with young people (and particularly young men) typically domiciled in areas of intergenerational disadvantage evolves with such speed that it often eludes the capacity of criminologists to keep pace (Girling et al, 2013). Seen as an intervention into the contemporary world of gangs, violence, illegal drugs and their contested interconnection with organised crime, this book, 129

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based on research conducted in Scotland, has devoted its gaze to change and continuity in the lives of those who have first-​hand experience of troubled urban landscapes. Homicide, serious assault, territoriality, County Lines, debt burden and imprisonment often haunt childhoods that are full of trauma, loss and regret (Coomber and Moyle, 2018; Harding, 2020). While recognising the merits of official policy interventions, our analysis throughout has recognised that poverty, unemployment and stigma remain a feature of the continuity in the factors that are globally associated with the criminogenic environment. Scotland is no exception to this generalisation. Chapter 1 characterised the multi-​layered threads that feed into this overview of contested criminality, including the question of the existence of gangs, definitions of the gang and its origins in expressions of delinquent youth culture. Chapter 1 was devoted to setting the stage for the empirical foundation of the book, which lay in extensive narrative interviews with individuals who had ‘moved on’ and who were enthusiastic in sharing their rooted understanding and knowledge about what, if anything, had changed in the west of Scotland, as well as those young people who were still fully immersed in contemporary urban challenges (Samara, 2005; Goldson, 2011). So, the opening chapter set out the range of themes that criminologists, youth organisations, the police, schools and policy have pursued over decades giving, in the process, invaluable insights. Our tentative exploration of social context began by dwelling on the controversial notion of the ‘gang’, pursuing that issue through the literature and policy on street gangs in British cities during the last two decades (Palmer, 2009; White, 2013). The connection of the urban and the gang has an esteemed history; the work of the US scholar Elijah Anderson (1999), renowned for introducing in his classic text the seminal concept of the ‘code of the street’, foregrounded the importance of ‘fearsomeness’ in navigating the urban street and focusing attention on forms of capital –​social, cultural and economic –​and how their acquisition mediates ‘careers’ outside the mainstream. Returning from the mean streets of Philadelphia’s ghettos studied by Anderson to the urban territories of Scotland and England, we also described debates about youth subcultures, proposing that they overlap in the analysis of some criminologists with the fraught notion of the territorial youth gang, typically a working-​class male phenomenon (Brookman et al, 2010; Holligan, 2015). The concept of the gang is often understood in terms of its expressive and instrumental criminal violence coalesced with ‘doing masculinity’, a vehicle for reputation building and accumulating street capital. ‘Respect’ has emerged from within the US and the UK as a moral boundary that, if unrecognised or slighted, provokes violence. Black gangs in English cities are portrayed as typified by knife crime and illegal drug distribution, behind which there are inevitably coded logics known to those on the inside of this ‘underworld’ 130

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(Grund and Densley, 2012; Pitts, 2020). Our introductory chapter drew out international comparisons with the US and UK in areas of celebrity culture and its mediation through musical lyrics. The propensity towards earning through the sale of drugs and the preparedness to carry and use weapons also connects cultures separated by the Atlantic. In a globalised world, we would have been surprised if we had found no overlap of criminal, gang and delinquent youth ‘lifestyles’ in the UK and US (Taylor et al, 2008). Researching London, John Pitts (2008) drew attention to neighbourhood dynamics that compel a drift into criminality and gang association. Other scholars of youth crime argued that the gang was in fact a narrative construct serving the interest of law enforcement, which sought the eradication of criminal violence not through public health interventions, but more narrowly through criminal justice and policing. Our opening chapter examined divergences in the two conceptualisations: of the gang as a supposed nest of criminality and of the gang as largely a fiction of a right-​wing agenda pushed by the establishment press to demonise boys of a certain class. Those denying the validity of the gang concept argued persuasively in favour of treating a collective of street-​based youth as essentially a subculture that, from time to time, expressed itself through acts of delinquency (Oatley and Crick, 2015; McLean, 2019). Positions taken about the form and nature of a criminal entity, therefore, impact models of how that entity is most effectively tackled and how the issues it causes are settled. Our analyses observed that, co-​existing with policing strategies were the sources of the origins of criminality, namely disaffection arising from endemic disadvantage and its negative effects on esteem and self-​worth. We remarked that families in communities rife with gangs would sometimes deny that their children were part of that anti-​social milieu and even reject the idea that gangs exist. While we chose not to pursue that theme of the family, US criminological literature has explored this deeply interesting conundrum, especially R.J. Sampson’s (2011) highly respected book, Great American City: Chicago and Enduring Neighbourhood Effect. According to Sampson, the persistence of segregation and territoriality in city areas is proof of a neighbourhood effect; its sources are low economic status, ethnic heterogeneity and residential instability, each factor giving rise to a compromised sense of wellbeing. Community efficacy is compromised by this demographic and spatial etching of endemic deprivation. In a not dissimilar urban setting, we touched on the theme of the targeting of vulnerable young males, sometimes still children, for the purposes of drug distribution from urban hubs into a surrounding conurbation of towns and other residential areas. Once committed to this County Lines activity and immersed in exploitative ties, these youth find they become entrapped by debt-​burden tactics that force greater dependency on the organised crime network. So, criminality, vulnerability, gangs, organised crime and monetary 131

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gain are a toxic concatenation sketched out in Chapter 1. Studies by Deuchar (2009a, 2013) and McLean (2017, 2019) in the Scottish setting, especially the west of Scotland, traced how processes of criminal drift arose from participation in territoriality moving on into associations with organised crime groupings. The chapter then penetrated the fluid nature of these lives as they morph with a certain degree of opportunism along a spectrum of exclusion from convention and the mainstream. Finally, our opening chapter returned to the theme of an ‘epidemic of knife crime’, drawing attention to this phenomenon among Black, English youths and its seeming demise in recent years in Glasgow, largely as a result of the public health model adopted by the SVRU. In the period since our fieldwork was completed, that model and the lives of those in the communities where our samples were domiciled have evidently come under elevated levels of strain: a Scottish Government (2020a) research synthesis about COVID-​19 describes it as having a highly detrimental effect, especially on families living in what it terms ‘high poverty communities’ whose financial security is precarious and where many rely upon social security. Online bullying has increased as young people spend more time being exposed to online risks in a quest to counter loneliness. Their anxiety, anger, self-​harm and behaviour have been areas of major concern throughout the COVID-​19 lockdowns that have evidently resulted in heightened levels of sexual and domestic abuse (Scottish Government, 2020a).

The empirical focus (Glasgow and the west of Scotland) In Chapter 2, our narrative connected with Glasgow and its environs, which include the social housing schemes that emerged after the end of World War II, when urban slums were demolished on a massive scale. The occupants were re-​housed in newly built, often high-​r ise apartment blocks based in areas with inadequate amenities, disrupting their family and social ties. Glasgow’s reputation for violence and knife crime remained, extending beyond the narrower confines of Glasgow city into these ‘schemes’, which were to become sources of troubled identification and bases for gangs and territoriality. We suggested that the Glasgow ‘hard man’ image continues to haunt the contemporary landscape of Glasgow housing schemes (and, indeed, that of the more disadvantaged, traditionally working-​class west of Scotland towns) (Jeffrey, 2002; Young, 2007). We argued that the presence of the many gangs that identified with certain social geographies reflected the lack of support that young people in these localities had experienced. The gang offered a sense of belonging, an opportunity for achievement and a place where damaged esteem could be repaired through camaraderie, despite the cost of gang association. Besides neighbourhood deprivation, we also 132

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alluded to family traditions of criminality and withdrawal from supportive nurturing as further sources of disaffection and retreat into the gang world. Without probing the issue of mental health and stress, the chapter drew attention to a cultural milieu of ever-​present serious violence evidenced by medical intervention and hospitalisation. In common with similar landscapes of marginality across the world, we discovered that young men were the perpetrators and victims, reflecting the established finding that, in many conflicts, perpetrators and their victims knew one another. The chapter noted that a diminution in weapon-​carrying did not bring a broader decline in violence, indicating that perhaps changes in criminal law leading to intensified sanctions, such as immediate and significant prison sentences for weapon-​carrying, may have impacted this specific behaviour. Like other criminologists, we recognised that official statistics inevitably underestimate the actual levels of crime due to underreporting combined with insufficient witnesses to prosecute suspects. This chapter, by introducing the concept of ‘signals’, helped to elaborate why readiness for violence continues: once incidents take place they serve to alert others of danger and individuals take precautions designed to protect themselves. We noted that the range of weapons selected for self-​protection went beyond only knives and included everyday, otherwise harmless, domestic implements that carriers could claim had an innocent purpose. Items such as golf clubs and steel combs are known to have been involved in violent incidents in the past (see Deuchar, 2009a). Without documenting facts about substance abuse levels in these communities, we noted the presence of alcohol in many violent incidents, especially during the hours of darkness and as part of the night-​time economy. Across Scotland and England, alcohol is widely attributed as being a contextual stimulus for violent assault (Shepard et al, 1989; Forsyth, 2008; Bellis and Hughes, 2011; Fileborn, 2016). Interacting with and giving identities to gangs and to general assault is of football-​associated bigotry connected with the Glasgow teams Celtic and Rangers, which are associated with Roman Catholicism and Protestantism respectively (Bradley, 2015). Historians of Scotland describe the export of a sectarian habitus into Scotland from Northern Ireland, beginning principally with Irish immigration as a result of the potato famine in Ireland in the mid-​nineteenth century (Coleman, 2014; Devine, 2017). While sectarian associations were taken over by certain gangs in Protestant or Catholic areas of Glasgow, studies have found that the links of these associations with claims of religious commitments have diminished in recent decades (Raab and Holligan, 2012; Walker, 2016). It should be clear from our analysis that we identified both historical change and continuity; one important area of continuity connects with the trope of the ‘hard man’. The demise of manually operated, all-​male industries, such as shipbuilding in the yards of the River Clyde, in proximity to some of 133

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the geographical areas we connected with in Glasgow, meant opportunities for developing a masculine identity through arduous physical toil among likeminded working-​class men were also lost. Our chapter theorised that the concept of hegemonic masculinity and the notion of masculinity as a performance meant that in the post-​industrial landscape, young men sought alternative ways to forge their masculinity. Gangs and violence were a context for the performance of masculinity, where courageous physicality was of primary importance. Rather than through honest hard toil on long shifts in the workplace, a new generation of young men sought alternative ways of winning status among their peers and within their community. We proposed that Pierre Bourdieu’s forms of capital accumulation could help to explain the processes of gaining recognition and status: cultural, social and economic capitals all played into this reputational nexus of power and desire for high regard. The advent of political neoliberalism, we suggested, intensified an individualistic narrative struggling with the impact of austerity and state retrenchment around welfare support. In tandem with pressure, a de facto siege mentality developed within communities of disadvantaged youth, with the demise of trust in police authorities and a sense that their policing was unacceptably oppressive. Deuchar and colleagues traced the complex origins of alienation and stigmatisation (see Deuchar, 2009a, 2010, 2013; Deuchar and Holligan, 2010), but with the passage of time, we could not be certain whether realities on the ground remained largely unchanged. The purpose of the new multi-​layered fieldwork instituted was to determine if there had been an evolution in the west of Scotland’s social and criminal issues described in Chapter 2. The amount of time it took to build a sample for our array of data collection strategies to elicit the narratives of teenagers and adults with direct knowledge of the issues was itself a testimony to the fractured social fabric that our studies sought to re-​illuminate in the present. By sampling different age groups with overlapping knowledge, the new research in this book tapped the perspectives of youth, community professionals, schools, the police and organisations operating local interventions.

Contemporary gains and remaining challenges: practitioner perspectives Practitioner data constituted the evidence base of Chapter 3. Our style of narrative reporting of the results was designed to allow readers to directly hear the voices of insightful practitioners, some of whom had also grown up in the areas under discussion. We ended Chapter 3 by drawing attention to the continued poverty in the communities studied. We noted that weapon and gang violence had reduced, but that manifestations of violence remained, suggesting it had become a deeper, less tractable characteristic 134

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of these communities over time. Our contribution of knowledge and applied policy recognises the co-​existence of these deep within the fabric of intergenerational patterns of unemployment and associated hopelessness. This hopelessness emerged in the chapter’s analysis, taking the form of mental health disorders and the suicides of young Scottish men. So, these understandings were gained through qualitative fieldwork with individuals and organisations working under the philosophy of the public health model designed to extirpate the many forms of anti-​social behaviours. The public health approach encapsulates concepts connected with an array of symptoms of adversity: substance abuse, physical and mental ill-​health, family dysfunction and risk-​seeking escapist behaviours by the young. By modelling violence as akin to disease pathology and recognising the WHO’s ideas about public health as well as Police Scotland’s expertise, the SVRU enabled the implementation of many intervention strategies. The NKBL campaign was underpinned by this wider model of violence reduction. It was found that territoriality had declined, although animosities remained between people from different areas. Hateful othering had not declined with gang-​ associated territoriality. We suspect this othering illustrates the performance of a hegemonic masculinity. Unemployment remains, heavy industries have yet to be replaced by sectors of employment accessible to the many whose school careers end with exclusion or few, if any, formal qualifications. Although it was found that policing was less invasive on the street and that courts had adopted a more paternalistic approach to offending through the ‘caution’, people interviewed in our sample were still undecided about whether these changes were enough to address the ongoing issues. Nevertheless, we described how regeneration initiatives had a positive impact on wellbeing. Social cohesion was further improved by the policy of schools admitting students from different areas and faiths. The desistence trajectory was evident in the willingness of young people to take part in community-​ based projects. Clearly, social capital had been strengthened by the overall public health model. The Street & Arrow project was exemplary in terms of the participation it mobilised. The NKBL’s partnerships with many local authorities cemented the flourishing of inclusion. The agency of young persons, through being more respected, played out positively to embed change at the grassroots. Young persons trained as mentors transferred to peers their lived experience of offending and violence. The chapter alluded to social media, which began to be used to engage and communicate anti-​ violence journeys and choices for positive futures. FARE Scotland has been a significant player in these impactful public health model interventions, with a focus on growing social capital from the grassroots by engaging with communities; healthy eating, substance abuse prevention, desistence workshops and employability support were part of its social offerings. Utilising the value of sporting activities, other 135

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organisations inculcated social ties, building mental health and teamwork values: Youthpoint Aberlour and SSF were examples that we spotlighted. The chapter then drew attention to many initiatives aimed at improving the lives of young people and communities. We noted the limited amount of evaluation conducted on these interventions and in that respect our research methodology had to rely on the testimonies of those who helped bring these initiatives to life. We accept that conflicts of interest may have limited practitioners’ willingness to critically evaluate programmes. Our sample advised that, despite policy interventions, social issues, including drug abuse, drug deaths, organised crime and violence, still remained.

Continuity and change: the views of adults and former offenders Chapter 4 focused on insights from adult members of communities in the west of Scotland, the majority of whom were former gang members and offenders. We presented their lived knowledge of the communities that cultivated their identities and behaviours during their formative years. What was it like then, we asked? Had things changed now, and in what ways? During their upbringings, territorial-​based violence had still been significant according to the former gang members and others with intimate knowledge of this historical period. This sample of participants typically had undergone ACEs, which coalesced with a drift into the gang setting. That context was to some degree reparative in terms of the attachments and sense of belonging it secured for their disrupted early lives. Many spoke of living in single-​parent families, with mothers who were trapped in substance abuse and fathers who were incarcerated or serving as violent role models. It was within that framework that ACEs were assimilated, setting off a drift into offending and struggles with mental health. Schooling was undermined as bullying behaviours impaired integration into school life. Thus members of the sample identified processes leading to victimisation followed by perpetration. Limited opportunity for mobility or rewarding recreation and the absence of a nurturing domestic space exposed the young people to risk-​ taking behaviours and to ‘alternative careers’ linked with monetising their street capital in the areas of drug selling and distribution. In tandem with the notoriety accumulated were the rewards of gang membership that compensated to some extent for domestic ACEs. Masculinity and (to a much lesser degree) ‘bad girl femininity’ (Messerschmidt, 2002, p 463) were still being performed in terms of class notions of fighting street capital, but without, as yet, that shifting more deeply into the habitus of celebrity culture materialism and the quest for money as a fuel for image-​making in a designer label culture of respect. Abuse of ethnic minorities on the streets was 136

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perceived to have declined since the earlier decade. Cocktails of valium and alcohol ‘motivated’ violent encounters in the past, and presumably amounted to self-​medication in view of the mental health needs arising from ACEs. One of the chapter’s contributions is its reinforcement of the findings in the literature linking traumatic adversity in childhood to violent pathology and criminal risk-​taking (see, for instance, Wolff et al, 2020). The findings reported in Chapter 4 reiterate the efficacy of the public health model of intervention. That model offered a deep immersion in social and emotional support coupled with mentoring about employment pathways. The Navigators programme initiated by the SVRU used the opportunity to connect with teenagers at the point where they required medical help in a hospital setting as a result of stab wounds. Our sample described it as changing lives through processes akin to family nurturing and emotional reassurance. We described how that programme was complemented by the Street & Arrow programme. Across our informants, they reported observing a reduction of alienation in the communities. Connected with that was a more positive regard for conventional pathways to achievement and gaining livelihood. Desistence journeys included actual journeys that we believe provided pro-​social opportunities for doing masculinity: mountain biking and basketball competitions were organised and enjoyed. Besides being the beneficiaries of sport, many teenagers found esteem by receiving training and mentoring, and subsequently training their peers in the framework of partnerships with the police and third-​sector actors. Amid this optimism and constructive nexus of opportunity, there remained what our informants perceived as more enduring darker currents in the life of the community. In recent years, occasional stabbings continued. Gangs and weapon-​carrying, while reduced, were still present in certain areas. Territoriality on the street had been replaced with a softer form through social media, but with that transition into a technology-​bound social life, new types of ‘distinction’ developed (Deuchar, 2018). As noted, values drifted into an uncritical embrace of materialism. The funding of this aspiration to a commercialised habitus meant a greater tendency to work in the illegal drug trade, where organised crime set violent, retaliatory parameters. Mental health concerns remained, but their triggers had changed into this more monetised universe of criminality. Policies designed to repair and re-​energise the lives of teenagers and families in these areas did work, we found, but they were insufficient as a panacea; given the longevity of intergenerational transmission of adversity, that provisional success was not surprising.

Drug worlds: teenage and youth perceptions What challenges do teenagers and young people perceive in their contemporary lives? We asked that question in Chapter 5. Our insights 137

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characterised these challenges in relation to illegal drugs and organised crime, both being supported by vestigial gangs in some areas. Although the west of Scotland (Glasgow in particular) had lost its status as the ‘hard man’ capital of Europe, it had been replaced by the label of ‘Europe’s drug capital’, by 2019. Interview data described cocaine, cannabis and ecstasy (among others) typifying the drug menu. Illegal drug consumption had become normalised in the west of Scotland, with cannabis being the most widely accepted and leading some users into more dangerous territory, both in terms of consumption, and dealing and distribution. Since the apparent demise of the dominance of family-​based drug lords prepared to use weapons such as guns to control markets, during the last decade this life-​world appeared to have become more diffuse and fluid. We identified that youth street cultures were being exploited by older males to develop markets by selling drugs in other areas where they could conceal themselves by recruiting disadvantaged young people who were anonymous. The average age of the respondents providing these insights was 16, ranging from 13–​20. For these youths, there had been an apparent demise of the stigma of drug consumption. Nevertheless, they could do masculinity if they carried and distributed drugs within and beyond Scotland for older criminals. Chapter 5 hypothesised that the circulation of illegal drugs had grown in recent years and that younger teenagers were participating in drug consumption. For context, the chapter referred to the US, where gangs are at the core of drug selling and distribution. Through projection of violence capital, they dominate markets by injecting fear into communities. As noted by McLean (2019), street gangs in the west of Scotland are also increasingly becoming connected with the illegal drug trade through their capacity to protect and secure markets. McLean has identified that the latter have become less enclosed with extended distribution and criminal agents operating over a wider canvas beyond areas that are proximate to their home addresses. This transition has given rise to a skeletal form of the County Lines practice that is predominant in and around London and other large English cities. Teenagers without gang associations may therefore be recruited by older males to facilitate drug distribution and, in the process, become exploited and made dependent through complicity in crime coupled with debt burdens (McLean, 2019; McLean et al, 2020). In our own fieldwork, we identified that the decline of territoriality had apparently lubricated ease of movement across local areas, intensifying drug circulation on a larger community scale. Recourse to social media to share and recruit persons added to the density of networks and increased drug circulation. Our respondents mentioned Facebook, Snapchat, WhatsApp and Instagram. Within the virtual world, a new and coded language had developed to secure and convey secrets. McLean (2019) previously described 138

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the value of exploiting younger recruits as they were easier to dispense with if the police investigated. In the past, it was gang membership that fostered belonging and hegemonic masculine status, now these experiences had evolved into the world of illegal drugs. We found that consumerist lifestyles had increased in importance as ways to mark ‘distinction’ from others in the peer network. Capitalist practices of buying and selling in competitive drug markets brought additions to lifestyles that required money to sustain them. Building on McLean’s (2019) and McLean et al’s (2020) previous work in this area, in Chapter 5 we examined the practice of County Lines drug distribution networks. County Lines continues its trajectory in England (Harding, 2020) and respondents identified basic forms of it in the west of Scotland. Those forms included ad hoc and opportunistic incidents of taking drugs into a few English cities, collecting the money from sales and returning to Glasgow. Such episodes tended to involve a young teenager with an older male accomplice who organised the journeys and contacts. The majority of drug deals still often took place in relative proximity to the home areas of the dealers. On some occasions, though, networks of kith and kin helped the criminal process expand into outlying areas. Linguistic codes used in London and other English areas were found to be catching on in Scotland, suggestive of a shared construct of drug market labour. Finally, we found that public health-​led initiatives had not extirpated the criminality described in this section, leading us to conclude that the opportunity cost of departing from criminality in drug practices was too great and so such initiatives had no impact on this form of lucrative criminality that is known to be connected with serious organised criminal networks on a national and international scale.

Young people’s wider ‘lived experience’ This final section summarises Chapter 6 of the book. As noted before, there was continuity and discontinuity in the issues our research identified, compared with previous insights captured over a decade ago in the west of Scotland. In Chapter 6, it was found that the ‘lived experience’ of our sampled young people continued to include the following strands: street gangs (and violence); weapon-​carrying (knives); football bigotry; social media disruption (mental health); and drug dealing. Admittedly, as noted in earlier chapters, the aforementioned themes coloured the lives of some teenagers and young people, but their impact had diminished over the years –​with the exception of the role of social media and of drug dealing and its role in personal income generation. Our research uncovered continued poverty and widespread deprivation that we suggested helped explain the seemingly intractable nature of the issues listed in the section, especially drugs and violence. Our sample described drug dealing as largely replacing territorial 139

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violence, although some conflict and oppositional thinking continued between different housing scheme areas. Doing masculinity continued in that vein within those areas, combined with weapon-​carrying and the fear associated with expectations of retaliation. Social media posts had clearly intensified these elements of their lives. Football culture continued as a context for conflict, as it was found to be associated with bigotry connected with the Old Firm clubs. Alcohol’s presence straddled these contexts and fuelled violence. Celebratory historical, religious and commemorative marching continued to provoke intercommunity conflict between Catholic and Protestant groups. With such fear and tension in the areas where they lived, it was not surprising that we uncovered mental health issues among young people. On the one hand, there was the ideal of a hegemonically masculine boy whose identity impeded him from expressing emotions perceived as effeminate or unmanly; on the other hand, the suppression of emotions such as depression and anxiety undermined mental wellbeing. We described, in the literature and within the sample, anxiety being associated with gang membership and fear of victimisation. Childhoods affected by trauma contributed to a sense of paranoia in daily life against the backdrop of the issues described. Social media was seen to have a negative influence on the wellbeing of both young men and women for the following reasons: social comparisons that damaged esteem; consumerism that makes them easy targets for abuse; popularity-​seeking; the growing significance of money and consumption; and (for some young men) the glamour of online gambling. These five themes were projected through social media, influencing mindsets, values and social behaviour, and drug usage grew as a result. Self-​ medication with drugs was designed to counter feelings of alienation, loss and demoralisation. The internet had become drawn into the social world of marginality and was being ‘twisted’ to reinforce existing trends towards states of often undiagnosed mental illness.

Research limitations While our samples (and sites of research) were rich and varied in the knowledge and experiences they brought to the interviews and subsequent insights offered, their recruitment and representativeness hold limitations. Practitioners are professionally and emotionally invested in the subject matter. In a context where funding is typically based on short-​term sources, they may not have the wider view available to those on the outside of this world. In some cases, associations with the police in terms of interventions and partnership were also likely to have slanted our studies to some extent towards a model of criminal behaviour and its eradication, a model which is inherently conservative regarding the status quo and its hierarchies of power. 140

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We also cannot be sure that those who took part were representative of their colleagues, of various ethnicities, genders and ages. Our research practice in interviews also did not seek to tap their knowledge of the literature regarding gangs, violence, territoriality or criminal drug dealing. Without awareness of the results and debates in these areas, our practitioners’ capacity to frame their experiences conceptually was inevitably impacted. While we sought in the book to offer a degree of triangulation by setting out contexts using the literature, it cannot be assumed that addition was enough to counter the limitations identified in our methodology. Moving onto the other dimensions of our sample, the young persons familiar with gangs, violence and the geographical areas under study were selected by means of stratified samples, but using processes of opportunity and snowballing methods of sample recruitment. For this reason, these samples were statistically unrepresentative and their voices cannot be assumed to be typical of those of a similar age, social history and neighbourhood setting. That said, these limitations are characteristic of qualitative research practices; had a quantitative methodology been exercised, research limitations would still exist, only different in nature. Related to these limitations is the subject matter under examination, with its inherent anti-​social nature in the setting of social class structures. It is arguable that the sample, through being largely a homogenous working-​ class demography, may have been unprepared or unwilling to judge the phenomenon through the lens of class and criminality. Criminologists have theorised violence, for example, as inherent in the culture of certain social classes, such that the label ‘criminality’ is misapplied to this life-​world, whose culture has intrinsic ‘criminal’ dynamics. Although the adults and former offenders we accessed may have ‘moved on’, we saw no evidence among the younger people we interviewed of accessing such a different perspective on their peers, families and communities, and if they had, they may have thought such a view was unfair and stigmatising of others within this class who were not connected with crime. Loyalty to their culture and social ties within that culture could have lessened the depth of their recognition of the social and psychological harms connected with gangs, debt, substance abuse and organised crime. Besides this issue, the practices of doing masculinity could have shaped how they constructed the world during interviews, as most of the young sample consisted of teenage males. A larger sample of female teenagers would have helped triangulate this source of potential bias. Sampling limitations aside, our studies employed largely semi-​structured interviews to gather the data reported in the book and on which the book relies. This data collection process offers scope to the individual to express views within a broad rubric, but the width of that rubric means certain areas that are important are omitted from the interview transaction. Equally, as the research team set the parameters from the thematic rubric in the interview 141

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schedule, their choices could have led to some issues being foregrounded and others being marginalised or overlooked. In addition, the flexible nature of the data collection tool allowed individuals to impose interpretations that were possibly unique to them and their construction of social reality. For this reason, it cannot be assumed that the apparent consensus we present reflects realities on the ground, as subjective readings may have coloured responses to each interview. Although we triangulated our methodology through a selection of different samples and sites as well as by reference to the literature, we did not utilise other methodologies, such as survey questionnaires, field experiments or other structured data gathering models. For this reason, we cannot claim to have reliably measured change over time in connection with the issues of drugs, gangs or violence. The closest research paradigm to our approach is ethnography suggestive of immersion and respect for a social constructivist account of the world. Such qualitative research strategies do not yield data sets that measure drug dealing, illegal drug consumption, the impact of social media, changes in mental health status or violence levels within and across communities over time.

Methodological research recommendations We believe that it would be useful for future research studies to utilise a wider range of research designs and data collection processes to ensure stronger methodological triangulation. Researchers exploring the evolving dynamics of gangs, drugs, violence and wider youth adversities in the west of Scotland could pursue case studies of family units to explore, from this intimate aspect of the community, their perceptions of their own teenagers, including ‘pathological’ aspects that undermine community efficacy. It would also be helpful to engage with case studies of education and training providers to determine their understandings and solutions for those they exclude or otherwise help to make disaffected. Researchers could create case studies of the frontline policing of these communities to identify ‘what works’, including residents’ constructions of law-​and-​order practices. It may be important to carry out quantitative, longitudinal surveys to explore change over time in terms of violence and other forms of criminal behaviour. At the same time, it would be helpful to implement focus groups with local neighbourhood residents to participate in the development of research questions and designs on issues that directly impact their lives in communities. Finally, we believe that it would be enlightening to pursue research with ‘hardened criminals’ in the west of Scotland to identify ‘turning points’ or transitions in their lives that led to a ‘criminal career’, and to seek their views about how that might have been prevented as well as what facilitated their trajectory. 142

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Policy (and related practice) recommendations Our recommendations cannot be made without recognising the deeper insights that the findings collectively convey to us. While the chapters offer a comparatively discrete demarcation of themes, it would be misleading to arrest the analysis at that point. Our classifications based around the topics of gangs, violence, weapons, drugs, mental health, social media and youth cultures hold the risk of fragmenting the communities into stigmatising parcels of behaviour. In fact, the perceptions captured and examined refer to snapshots of actual lives in complex communities whose wider existence our book does not probe and which, by overlooking subject matter beyond a criminological imagination, we arguably misrepresent. Our study being ‘from above’, signalled by retrospective analysis, partnerships of an official to quasi-​official type and perhaps insufficient respondent validation from the samples and other sources, leads us to be cautious about the nature and validity of any recommendations that we set out. Above all, our aim is to support social justice for those in these communities and others experiencing the kinds of adversity described. With these caveats, we propose the following recommendations followed by suggestions for further research. By looking at the body of research data set out in the book, a range of themes of a wider nature emerge from the results described in each chapter that are analytically summarised in this concluding chapter. We mentioned throughout the book the deeply engrained factors impacting lives in the areas in which the fieldwork took place. Each of these overarching themes is an area for potentially greater policy intervention. Our final subsections around policy offer a certain degree of problematisation of our approach and conceptualisation.

Poverty The areas from which the samples were recruited had been impacted by consistently high levels of intergenerational unemployment. The latter is associated with poor outcomes for those in education, which ensures that issues of immobility and employability linger. Poverty affects the functioning of families by undermining their capacity to nurture through the stress and anxiety it creates. Mental health is notoriously interdependent with the experience of social and economic inclusion. Fears about social movement were experienced by those living in communities marginalised by poverty. Family functioning was eroded by the effect of poverty, which meant children became exposed to risk and criminal role models. The Scottish Government ought to intensify efforts to address employability levels by working with and funding employers to engage those on the margins of labour markets to gain skills and in the process boost esteem, while encountering positive and 143

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inspiring role models. Growing social capital with its known mental health benefits through free access for community residents to sports, swimming and leisure facilities is another policy that would deliver an environment where individuals feel empowered to be and feel more socially mobile.

Violence The literature and empirical data identified that endemic poverty ultimately limited opportunities for achievement and for a sense of belonging and esteem. There was also an undermined sense of efficacy to change situations for the better. Throughout, our empirical study’s uncovering of violent practices and illegal opportunities for monetary gain, along with gang membership associated with the provision of social and psychological support, dominated young people’s perceptions and daily planning. However, those benefits came at a cost to individuals and communities in the short and longer terms. Practices of developing masculinity as an identity connected with violence capital intensified the seemingly intractable nature of the violence among many of the young men we interviewed. Scottish Government policy might encourage more community-​based sanctions whereby the status that can associate with crime and imprisonment is replaced not by damaging retributive justice but by giving offenders a constructive and supervised role in the areas where they had been involved in criminal violence. Intervention programmes that are already practised in schools, whereby medics and former offenders present talks and workshops (see Deuchar, 2013, 2018), could be intensified and better funded. Onlookers in communities that are not currently drawn into crime and violence need this support as the knowledge it provides gives them a ‘conversational platform’ on which to resist the pressure of peer groups who have drifted into criminal associations.

Substance abuse Drug taking and dealing, gang membership, and violence were interconnected in the narratives that grew out of the empirical findings. Alcohol, although represented as a commodity to buy and sell in a street or more organised criminal market, nevertheless featured as a contributor to street violence. In common with the monetisation of criminal drug work, alcohol consumption in conjunction with drug-​taking was used to manage mental health. Socio-​economic inequality is inseparable from seeking escape from depressing realities through self-​medication. Whether with drugs or alcohol, developing status (and particularly masculine status as a hegemonic male) was connected: dealing drugs or consuming them helped form the social and cultural capital with which certain esteemed forms of manliness could flourish. 144

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Scottish Government policies might intervene more to tackle the sale and accessibility of alcohol through the outlets utilised by youth and consider introducing greater penalties for breaches of the law around the sale of alcohol. Besides policy interventions at the point of sale of alcohol, the Scottish Government could pursue more educational policies in school. As visits by former prisoners and gang-​associated youth have been proven to have a positive impact (Deuchar, 2013), these policies could address alcoholism to a greater extent by placing alcohol’s destructive effects in public view throughout the curriculum. The Scottish Government should consider offering more funding for theatre groups to tour schools and communities to draw attention to this range of issues in a non-​didactic way, and through drama develop community self-​confidence to challenge trends that risk normalising substance abuse.

Summary: deeper policy values First, Scottish Government policy-​based interventions in the interests of social justice and inclusion must arise from greater degrees of immersion in the communities described, so that the complexity of voices in those areas may be respected and incorporated into policy development and implementation. There should be more attention given to motivating a wider range of those community voices and to methodologies for sampling them. Second, the human damage that is attendant on communities surrounded by apparently endemic poverty requires more attention to interventions biased towards therapeutic mental health as opposed to policing practices that misdiagnose the real sources of criminal expression in violence and illegal drug consumption. The provision to communities of services that take cognitive behaviour therapy approaches to dealing with depression, anxiety and drug addiction, and making these services more easily accessible is likely to form part of any impactful solutions. Third, the fractured nature of the communities, evidenced by territoriality, indicates that the design and organisation of housing must be prioritised. Rather than simply giving people a ‘roof over their heads’, policymakers need to recognise social capital-​building processes that relate to the physical layout and amenities in communities. The Scottish Government should enact more interventionist regulations for house-​building and health-​ promoting community design architecture that arise from consultations with communities. We certainly do not subscribe to the stigmatising view that the anti-​social behaviour described in these pages is caused primarily by pathological psychology. Instead, the origins of the disharmonious circumstances we attempted to sketch and understand are inherent in the social and material structures, and housing and leisure facilities that deny the potential of humans 145

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to flourish. Policies must represent early interventions before processes of disenchantment and cynicism take hold of individuals and their social settings. Finally, books and televisual accounts about this subject matter inadvertently risk fetishising weapons, drugs, violence and territoriality, as we find in aspects of celebrity culture and (mass) cinematic portrayals of crime and violence. There are opportunities to develop counter-​narratives that deny space for any romantic vision of crime and highlight the gains associated with positive choices. Positive future counter-​narratives projected in the media and the written word could and should involve representations depicting the attractiveness of pro-​social lifestyles, engagement in schooling, sporting success and community support. Counter-​narratives include the use of role models who have left behind criminal or violent life choices and who now run organisations in the community to encourage at-​r isk youth to desist from offending and re-​engage with lifestyles that do not damage the social fabric. In the pages of this book, in addition to highlighting the continuing adversities associated with youth in troubled urban landscapes, we believe we have partly spotlighted the types of counter-​narratives we allude to above by drawing attention to the transitional experiences of young adults within local communities in and around Glasgow. As a follow-​up to this, we strongly encourage these and other reformed offenders to write their own testimonial narratives and construct documentary illustrations of their transformation and change as a means of helping to influence current and future generations of young people to make alternative life choices.

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APPENDIX

Geographical Areas and Socio-economic Profiles Glasgow city districts and suburbs Note: all geographical areas have been given pseudonyms. Ashbank is a mainly residential district in Glasgow’s east end. It has recently been subject to gentrification with many of the existing three-​and four-​ story tenements being refurbished rather than being replaced by high-​ rise flat developments as has happened in nearby areas. Its population is around 11,000. Male and female life expectancy is lower than the Glasgow average, with 40 per cent of children living in poverty. One-​fifth of young people are not in education, training or employment (GIP, 2021). Birchend is a district situated to the north of the River Clyde, with a population of just over 10,000. Historically, its main source of employment came from a prominent foundry company that was the biggest manufacturer of ornamental ironwork in Scotland. Since its closure in the late 1960s, Birchend has become one of the poorest areas in the UK, and also has high crime rates and levels of drug addiction. It has been reported that the area has the lowest life expectancy of all neighbourhoods in Glasgow and the proportion of children living in poverty is considerably higher than the city’s average (GIP, 2021). Elderland, an inner-​city district in the north of Glasgow, has a population of around 12,000, consisting of predominantly working-​class households. Male and female life expectancy is below that of other parts of Glasgow, and it has high numbers of unemployment benefit claimants. Almost 20 per cent of young people are not in education, training or employment, and child poverty is almost 50 per cent (GIP, 2021). Its economic development has strong historical links to heavy industrial manufacturing, especially in railways and locomotives. During the 1970s and ’80s, under 147

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Glasgow’s Comprehensive Development Areas initiative, most of its housing areas were demolished and replaced by sequences of new housing estates, through which a major road carriageway was developed (Paice, 2008). The vision of regeneration being unsuccessful led to the district’s housing falling into decay and a lack of major employers. Poverty, crime and drug addiction have impacted the district for decades. In 2012, the Scottish Government’s (2012) SIMD analysis identified it as the third most deprived area in Scotland. Mapleville is a 1950s social housing estate bordering Glasgow, approximately six miles east of the city centre. Male and female life expectancy is lower than the Glasgow average, which itself is significantly lower than the Scottish and UK national averages. In a population of just under 9,000, single-​parent households, according to the Glasgow Indicators Project (GIP, 2021), account for 51 per cent of all households with dependent children. Levels of deprivation and child poverty are above the national average. Over the last 50 years, there have been strong associations between alcohol and drug abuse fuelling violence, territoriality and domestic abuse. Oakford, with a population of just under 6,000, is an inner-​city district located 2.5 miles southwest of Glasgow’s city centre. It was once a shipbuilding centre of international repute, but in the post-​industrial era, it has developed a reputation for deprivation and poverty, and has for many years had a widespread problem with unemployment, alcohol and drug abuse (GIP, 2021). The area has more referrals (25 per cent higher) to the Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration and offenders (33 per cent higher), more victims of crime (17 per cent higher) and more overcrowding (9 per cent higher) than in Glasgow overall (GIP, 2021). Pineview is an inner-​city district with a population of over 7,000 and is situated in the northeast of Glasgow, close to Mapleville (above). Single-​ parent households make up 51 per cent of all households with dependent children in this district and 31 per cent of adults are reported to be claiming out of work benefits (GIP, 2021). Life expectancy in this area is also significantly lower than the Scottish average (GIP, 2021). A residents survey by Glasgow Community Planning Partnership in December 2007 found that the most prevalent issues of concern to the security and community safety of residents were youth disorder, vandalism, drug abuse, street drinking and drug dealing (ODS Consulting, 2008). Willowburn is an inner-​city district that lies in the east end of Glasgow, with a population of just under 7,000. In a recent survey conducted by the Glasgow City Council (2021), alcohol was identified as having effects beyond individuals and families, significantly affecting many aspects of community life. This survey of residents noted that alcohol abuse was associated with territoriality, anti-​social behaviour, street crime, noise, depression and suicides while sustaining a poverty cycle. Pupil attainment 148

Appendix

in the district is lower than the Glasgow average, as are the obesity levels of young children (GIP, 2021). Finally, Yewstone is a district that lies to the east of the city centre. During the 1960s, it became notorious because of the presence of a prominent and formidable teenage street gang. UK Crime Statistics for this district suggest that violent and sexual offences are especially prominent here, followed by shoplifting, public disorder, and possession of weapons and drugs (UK Crime Statistics, 2020).

Small, medium and large towns Chestnuthill is a small town in southwest Scotland (approximately 27 miles from Glasgow) and has a population of around 5,000. Its industrial heritage revolved around carpet yarn weaving. Over the twentieth century, coal mining developed to fuel the blast furnaces of the local ironworks. Male and female life expectancy for the local authority area where Chestnuthill is located is lower than for Scotland as a whole. It is predicted that by 2028 single-​adult households will become the most common. Hawthornbank is the second largest town in one of the smallest local authority areas in Scotland, located in the west-​central lowlands, with a population of around 19,000. Poverty and deprivation impact communities across this council area. According to SIMD 2020, Hawthornbank is among the 20 per cent most deprived areas in Scotland (Scottish Government, 2020e). Shipbuilding was its key industry, but as a result of deindustrialisation unemployment is now at a high level, educational attainment is low and low car ownership limits social mobility (https://​ www.scotlandstowns.org/​). Hazelend is a large town south of Glasgow to the east, with a population of over 77,000. With a rich history of being at the centre of the weaving and textile industries, since deindustrialisation it has suffered from economic hardship and in recent years. one of its districts has on several occasions been identified as the most socially deprived area in Scotland, within the context of the SIMD (OCSI, 2016). In the second quarter of 2020, violent incidents and sexual offences were more frequently reported in this town than in other parts of Scotland, with incidents of criminal damage and arson also prevalent (UK Crime Statistics, 2020). Hollyburn and Hornbeam are medium-​sized towns lying to the west of Glasgow, located in one of the smallest Scottish local authority areas, where a high number of data zones have been identified as being among the most deprived 20 per cent in Scotland (OCSI, 2016; Scottish Government, 2020e). The football clubs here belonged to a lost industrial landscape based around heavy industries such as textiles, shipbuilding and coal 149

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mining, which no longer exist in the contemporary world. Their demise and the subsequent deleterious effects are palpably relevant to the social landscapes of the aforementioned towns. Hollyburn has a population of just under 20,000 and has been identified as one of the hotspots of high deprivation in Scotland. Hornbeam has a population of around 26,000 and is among the 20 per cent most deprived areas in Scotland, according to SIMD 2020 (Scottish Government, 2020e). Crime levels within the data zones of these two towns vary markedly, indicating high concentrations in certain areas (Scottish Government, 2020e). Limegate is a medium-​sized town located south-​west of Glasgow city centre. The SIMD 2020 (Scottish Government, 2020b) places some of its streets among the 1,000 worst affect communities in Scotland. Many of the town’s roughly 17,000 residents are judged to be income-​deprived and, coupled with poor housing and high crime levels, this has been found to undermine perceptions of community safety. Juniperville is a medium-​sized town (with a population of just over 31,000) that borders Glasgow to the southeast. This town has more than double the average recorded crime; many residents are twice as likely to be affected by anti-​social behaviour. A high proportion of its children are eligible for free school meals and live in poverty. Residents are three times more likely to be hospitalised for alcohol and drug misuse than the national average. Finally, Sprucehill is a medium-​sized town (population just under 20,000) located around eight miles northeast of central Glasgow. Although the broader local authority area where it is located has generally low levels of child poverty, Sprucehill is one of several towns there where one in four children live in deprived circumstances and a higher percentage of people are classed as employment deprived (BBC News, 2018). Although crime rates are generally low in the wider local authority compared with other areas, Sprucehill has been identified as one area that presents some concern in this regard.

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Notes Chapter 2 1

2

3

4

The SCJS records public experiences of, and perceptions about, crime (Scottish Government, 2019c, 2020d). 1965 was judged to be the peak year for weapon-​carrying and its relationship to gang and street violence (ISTD, Scottish Branch, 1970) The described geographical locations, where the participants had grown up and/​or spent their teenage years, were not necessarily always the ones they currently resided in (particularly in the case of the adult members of our sample). In an abundance of caution and to protect the human subjects of our research, the data sources for these descriptions are either not published or described in loose terms, as a means of ensuring that the specific geographical locations of the fieldwork sites do not become immediately apparent to the reader. More information on the locations may be available upon request on a case-​by-​case basis and subject to the discretion of the authors.

Chapter 3 1

2

3

The Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) is the Scottish Government’s standard approach to identifying areas of multiple deprivation in Scotland. It is a relative measure of deprivation across 6,976 small areas (called data zones). It looks at the extent to which an area is deprived across seven domains: income, employment, education, health, access to services, crime and housing. SIMD ranks data zones from most deprived (ranked 1) to least deprived (ranked 6,976) (Scottish Government, 2020e). All interviewee names used are, as in the other parts of the book, pseudonyms. The real names of the organisations that were difficult to disguise because of their high-​profile presence within Scotland have, with the permission of the interviewees, been named, while the name of the school has been anonymised. In some cases, the specific named professional roles of the participants have been amended slightly as a further means of providing anonymity to those whose organisations are named. Our fieldwork was conducted in the months immediately preceding the emergence of COVID-​19 cases in Scotland and the subsequent lockdown restrictions introduced in March 2020.

Chapter 4 1 2

All geographical areas have been given pseudonyms. See Appendix for further details. A loose contextual description of each of the geographical areas can be found in the Appendix.

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Chapter 5 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9 10

In 2010, a car in which Kevin Carroll was travelling was ambushed by masked men with firearms, who unloaded a series of bullets into the vehicle, killing Carroll (Findlay, 2012). The nature of knife crime, and the young ages of those involved, meant that the activities of OCGs went under the radar in some respect in the eyes of the public. Indeed, the notorious head of the Lyons crime family in Glasgow was allowed to operate a community centre for years, despite local appeals to have him removed. It was only once two masked men walked into a local garage owned by the Lyons’ OCG and opened fire, injuring two and killing one, that the individual in question was removed from his position (Findlay, 2012). This drug war saw 14 individuals murdered, and the systemic killing of one of the two main rival groups (McLean, forthcoming). With the decline of the Daniels OCG, following the death of older and prominent members, another resulting gang emerged in the aftermath, comprised mainly of Daniels allies and remnants of the Daniels gang (McLean and Densley, 2020). The brothers originate from an area south of the city centre. Their position was not one involved in extorting extra-​legal governance over criminal groups in the country but rather in supplying them with the means to do so (McLean and Densley, 2020). The Milton YSG formed the original core of individuals for the current Lyons OCG. Through the kinship of two of the local YSG members, access to political and police corruption was gained, and premises was established for drug storage and supply. As the gang aged, core members would form alliances with adults and established criminal figures in Paisley. This would provide the muscle for the Lyons gang to evolve (see McLean and Densley, 2020). A loose contextual description of each of the geographical areas can be found in the Appendix. In reality some ‘new drugs’ have been around for a number of years but have only now found their way into the realm of more mainstream illicit drug use. ‘On tick’ refers to drug users buying supplies from dealers with an agreement to pay later. Older dealers are more involved in monitoring the behaviour of youth dealing on their behalf, and indeed, in such situations, may do so through various apps using location finders and FaceTime (Storrod and Densley, 2017).

Chapter 6 1

In the late 2000s, Rangers FC experienced financial difficulties, entering into administration in February 2012. The Rangers Football Club PLC entered liquidation later that year and the administrators sold the business and assets of Rangers to a new company (BBC News, 2012). Since the other member clubs of the SPL refused to allow the new company to adopt the league membership of the old company, Rangers (now trading as The Rangers Football Club Ltd) entered the Third Division of the SPL. It took the relaunched club four years to climb through the divisions and re-​enter the Scottish Premiership, finally re-​entering the SPL in time for the 2016–​17 season and thus reinstating the regular Rangers vs Celtic league fixture (Herbert, 2016).

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173

Index References to boxes or vignettes appear in italic type; those in bold type refer to tables. References to endnotes show both the page number and the note number. A ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences)  38, 46, 54–​5, 59, 90 abuse, neglect and household dysfunction exposures  38, 48, 67 adults and former gang members  63, 67, 69, 80, 136, 137 gangs and organised crime  38, 63–​70, 136 mental health  137 street violence and  47–​8, 137 adults and former gang members  29, 30–​1, 44, 62, 81 ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences)  63, 67, 69, 80, 136, 137 housing schemes  59, 60–​2, 64, 65, 76–​9, 80 moving in and up: gangs and organised crime  63–​70 moving on: turning points and the impact of interventions  70–​6 reflections on gangs, turning points and contemporary challenges  60–​80, 136–​7 vignettes  63, 64–​5, 68 see also gang life, transition out of adversity  97, 137 intergenerational transmission of adversity  135, 137 symptoms of  135 alcohol  25, 45, 88, 113, 114 COVID-​19 pandemic  19 crime and  19–​20, 68 policy recommendations  145 poverty and  56 ‘Serious Violence Strategy’  13 violence and  133, 137, 140, 144 weapon crime and  22 Aldridge, J.  9 Anderson, E.  130 attachment theory  48, 64 austerity  4, 13, 58, 134

B Bennett, T.  8, 9 bigotry  109 see also football bigotry; sectarianism Bourdieu, P.  10, 24, 75, 134 ‘Brigton Billy Boys’  23 British Journal of Criminology  21 Brotherton, D. 8–​9  Bullock, K.  8, 9 bullying  63–​4, 65, 136 cyberbullying  119–​20, 132 C Cameron, David  8 CAMHS (Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services)  57, 118 capital  cultural capital  10, 130, 134, 144 economic capital  11, 130, 134 social capital  10, 24–​6, 44, 47, 53, 55, 74–​5, 76, 130, 134, 135, 144 street capital  10–​11, 27–​8, 69, 75, 80, 97, 130, 136 symbolic capital  11, 75, 76 violence capital  138, 144 capitalism  84, 125, 139 Carroll, Kevin  83, 152n1 Catholicism  22–​3, 109, 113, 133, 140 CCE (child criminal exploitation)  11, 78, 102 celebrity culture  78, 120, 121, 131, 136, 146 see also image-​conscious culture Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (Birmingham University)  7 CIRV (Community Initiative to ReduceViolence)  46–​8, 50, 53, 75, 84, 104 ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences)  47–​8 see also SVRU Cohen, S.  7

174

Index

community  community-​based approach/​projects  71, 76, 80, 135 community-​based sanctions  144 community efficacy  131 community learning and development  73 compassion  70–​1, 72, 73, 74, 76, 80 consumerism  84, 98, 140 counter-​narratives of crime and violence  146 County Lines  78, 98–​103, 131, 138 CCE (child criminal exploitation)  11, 78, 102 England  98, 99–​100, 138, 139 exploitation and victimisation  95–​7, 98, 101–​2, 131, 138–​9 OCGs (organised crime groups)  11, 12, 101 poverty and  79 Scotland  98, 99–​101 social media  28, 79, 99, 100 west of Scotland  78–​9, 101, 139 young people  98–​103 see also drug distribution COVID-​19 pandemic  19, 151n3 mental health  57, 116–​17, 132 poverty  132 crime  alcohol and  19–​20 crime statistics, Scotland  18–​20, 40 deprivation and  19, 40, 139 poverty and  56, 130, 143 unemployment and  130 see also drug distribution; knife crime; weapon crime/​weapons criminality  129, 131–​2, 141 origins of  131 YCG identity and  27 criminology  7, 129–​30 D Davies, A.  22, 23, 82 Day, A.  49 deindustrialisation  24, 25, 33, 107, 133–​4 unemployment  24, 57 Densley, J.  v–​vii, 10, 12 drug distribution  91, 95, 103 deprivation  25, 131 crime and  19, 40, 139 Glasgow  40 SIMD (Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation)  40, 57, 148, 149, 150, 151n1 violence and  65, 139 weapon crime  20 see also housing schemes; poverty desistance (from gang violence/​crime)  39, 47, 60, 76, 80 as gradual/​‘drifting’ process  72–​3 ‘phenomenology of desistance’  73

as preventing the passing on of dysfunctional attitudes  48 public health-​focused interventions  75–​6, 135, 137 successful desistance  48, 73 see also gang life, transition out of Deuchar, R.  14, 24–​6, 28–​30, 61, 64, 117, 132 CIRV (Community Initiative to ReduceViolence)  47–​8 FARE (Family Action in Rogerfield and Easterhouse)  53 housing schemes  12, 59, 60, 65–​6, 74–​5 racial discrimination and harassment  65–​6 sectarianism  110, 116 SSF (Scottish Sports Futures)  55 territorial violence  106–​7 youth work  52 Dick, Cressida  13 domestic violence  38, 48, 67, 132 drug abuse  4, 13, 25, 45, 81, 136 crime and  68 drug-​related deaths  58, 59, 82, 83, 87, 88, 136 Dundee  83 Glasgow  83 housing schemes  77, 78, 80 increase of  46, 57–​8, 60 normalisation of  55, 87–​90, 138 poverty and  56, 59 self-​medication with drugs  117, 124, 125, 137, 140, 144 social media  79, 140 violence and  137 west of Scotland  16 young age of users  88, 89, 138 see also drugs drug distribution 4, 8  burner phones  95, 100–​1 consumerism and material goods  84, 98, 104, 137, 139 drug debt/​‘on tick’  12, 77, 92, 94, 131, 138, 152n9 drugs market  82, 90–​1, 103, 138 gang affiliations and  8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 90–​8 housing schemes  77–​8, 80, 93 image-​conscious culture and designer label culture  77, 78, 98, 121, 124, 125 increase of  57, 60 lexicon from London  102–​3, 139 money as motivation for  77–​8, 79, 91, 97–​8, 102, 131, 136, 139 OCGs (organised crime groups) 91  organised crime  16, 68–​9, 81, 83, 131, 137, 139 poverty and  57, 58, 59, 139 social media  28, 79, 93, 94–​8, 104, 119, 122, 138, 140 supply chain  84, 91–​7, 104, 138

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territorial barriers, absence of  84, 93–​4, 105, 138 weapon-​carrying  77, 108, 131, 140 west of Scotland  16, 78–​9, 85, 93 YCGs (young crime gangs)  84, 91 young people  22, 84–​5, 91–​7, 102–​4, 138–​9 YSGs (young street gangs)  84, 152n6 see also County Lines; drugs drugs  1980s heroin boom  82, 83, 103 amphetamines  87 cannabis  58, 77, 87–​90, 92, 94, 117, 123, 138 cocaine  11, 67, 78, 87, 89, 138 COVID-​19 pandemic  19 drug wars  83, 91, 152n3 ecstasy  87, 88, 89, 138 heroin  11, 67, 68, 77, 82, 83, 89, 103 ‘new drugs’  87, 152n8 public health-​led initiatives and  105, 139 Scotland as ‘drug capital of Europe’  14, 82, 138 street valium  58, 82 valium  137 violence and  13, 22, 69, 137 see also drug abuse; drug distribution E education  145 education, youth work, empowerment and inclusion  51–​6, 59 higher education  75 peer education  51, 52 public health approach  39 school boundaries  44–​5, 135 transition out of gang life  74–​5 unemployment and  143 employment/​employability  22, 25, 48–​9, 54, 59, 76, 135, 137 job training and skills  48, 55, 143 policy recommendations  143–​4 enforcement  41, 43, 46, 47 England  County Lines  98, 99–​100, 138, 139 knife crime  4, 10, 12 violence/​gang violence  3, 8 see also London ethnicity/​ethnic-​related issues  Black gangs  130 Black men  9, 13, 132 ethnic minorities  9, 14, 62, 136–​7 gang membership  10, 14, 130 White men/​women  14, 62, 66, 132 see also racism Eurogang  5–​6, 7 ‘Eurogang Paradox’  5 European gang research  3, 5–​6 ‘international turn’ in gang research  5 US/​European gangs comparison  6

F family  131, 133 divorce  64, 65 healthy parenting  55 single-​parent households  19, 63, 67, 68, 136 working with families as priority  55 youth offending and  19, 21, 67, 68, 136 FARE/​FARE Scotland (Family Action in Rogerfield and Easterhouse)  53–​4, 55, 61, 73–​4, 75, 89, 135 fear  93, 94, 107, 140 fear of deportation  66 fear of retaliation  20, 118, 119, 140 ‘fear signals’  23, 42, 43 food and eating  food aid/​provision  54, 56–​7 food poverty  57, 79 healthy eating  59, 135 football bigotry  4, 109–​16, 124, 133, 140 Celtic FC  22–​3, 109–​10, 112, 113, 116, 133 Old Firm fixture  109–​13, 116, 140 Rangers FC  22, 23, 109–​12, 113, 116, 133, 152n1 social media  111, 112 west of Scotland  112, 124 see also sectarianism Fraser, A.  26, 107, 124 G gambling  21, 56, 122–​3, 124, 125, 140 gang (street gang)  130 definition  5–​6, 9, 106, 131 distinction from other gangs and criminal groups  6 drug distribution  8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 90–​8 from territorial issues to drug-​related issues  81–​2, 106 gang fighting  23, 64, 65 Glasgow  12, 14, 15, 23–​4, 76 London  8, 10, 11, 131 Manchester  9 masculinity  7, 11, 24, 65, 69, 106, 130, 134, 136 media  7, 23–​4, 25 Merseyside  11 motivations for seeking out gang membership  17, 64, 67–​8, 132–​3, 136 organised crime  8, 10, 12 poverty and  65 a real and growing phenomenon in UK  3, 6, 9, 10, 12 as recreational group  26, 27, 106 UK  3–​5 the urban/​the gang connection  130 US  5, 130 west of Scotland  12, 14, 27 see also YSGs

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gang culture  7, 16, 69 decline of  45 evolving gang culture  26–​8 Glasgow  22–​6, 28, 33 London  11 west of Scotland  16 gang debate (UK)  7–​9 gang denial  8, 131 subculture–​gang division  3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 130, 131 UK/​US gangs comparison  8, 131 gang evolution  10–​12, 26–​8, 33 criminality  27 gang business  10, 12, 27–​8, 69 organised crime  27, 33, 67–​8, 68–​9, 80 recreational stage  26, 27 syndicate stage  27 urban gangs’ expansion into rural communities  22 gang life, transition out of  16, 60, 69–​70, 80, 146 educational initiatives  74–​5 public health-​focused interventions  70–​6, 80 supporting others  74 turning points and trigger events  70–​4 see also adults and former gang members; desistance gang membership  average age  7 ethnicity  10, 14, 130 male membership  7, 8, 10, 23, 25 motivations for seeking out gang membership  17, 64, 67–​8, 132–​3, 136 Gangs, Drugs and Youth Adversity  3–​5, 15–​16, 129–​30 historical change and continuity  133, 134, 136–​9 see also methodology gatekeeping organisations  30–​1, 61, 62, 85 Glasgow  3, 4, 12, 132 city districts and suburbs  147–​9 crime reduction  19 deprivation  40 gang culture  22–​6, 28, 33 housing schemes  12, 14, 24, 30, 42, 59, 60, 65–​6, 132 immigration  25, 61, 65–​6 knife crime  15, 17, 18, 26, 76, 132 knife crime decline  4, 14 low life expectancy  82 non-​sexual violent crime  18 razor gangs  23 sectarian rivalry  15, 17, 22–​3, 33 street gang  12, 14, 15, 23–​4, 76 territoriality  12, 24–​6, 42, 106 unemployment  23, 24 violence  12, 23, 82–​3, 132 violent crime rates  18–​20

weapon-​carrying  14, 21, 47, 107 weapon crime  19–​20, 21–​2 Glasgow Working Group  21–​2 Goodall, K.  110, 113–​14, 116 guns  see weapon crime/​weapons Gunter, A.  9 H Hallsworth, S.  8–​9, 65 Harding, S.  10–​11, 103 Holligan, C.  21, 22, 26, 47–​8, 107, 117 sectarianism  110, 111, 112, 116 Holloway, K.  8, 9 Home Office  8 hopelessness  135 housing: policy recommendations  145 housing schemes  12, 14, 16, 24, 59 adults and former gang members  59, 60–​2, 64, 65, 76–​9, 80 community pride within disadvantaged communities  46 drug abuse  77, 78, 80 drug distribution  77–​8, 80, 93 Glasgow  12, 14, 24, 30, 42, 59, 60, 65–​6, 132 housing regeneration policies  44–​5 knife-​carrying  43–​4, 77 local cohesion  45 territorial gang violence  42, 65, 68, 106, 107, 132 west of Scotland  12, 14, 16, 60, 132 see also deprivation I identity  masculine identity  65, 69, 74, 117, 134, 144 reconstruction of personal identities  76, 80 subculture identity  7 violence and  6 YCG identity  27 image-​conscious culture  120–​1, 136 designer label culture  77, 78, 98, 121 drug distribution and  77, 78, 98, 121, 124, 125 self-​branding  120, 124–​5 see also celebrity culture immigration  asylum seekers  25, 61, 65–​6 fear of deportation  66 Glasgow  25, 61, 65–​6 racial discrimination and harassment  65–​7 inclusion  73, 75, 76, 81, 135, 143, 145 education, youth work, empowerment and inclusion  51–​6 SVRU (Scottish Violence Reduction Unit)  46–​50 Irish community in Scotland  22, 109–​10, 113–​14, 133

177

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J Joseph Rowntree Foundation  56 A Journal of Youth Work  61 K Kingsley-​Long, H.  23 Klein, M.W.  5–​6 knife crime  as cultural ‘adaptation’  26 England  4, 10, 12 epidemic of  12–​14, 132 ‘fear signals’  23, 42, 43 Glasgow  15, 17, 18, 26, 76, 132 Glasgow model  13–​14, 132 homicides  12, 13 housing schemes  43–​4, 77 knife-​carrying  43–​4, 51–​2, 64, 67, 76, 77, 107–​8 lock-​back knives  43 masculinity and  17, 42, 43, 64–​5 media coverage  12 prison sentence for  44, 107, 133 public health approach to  13–​14, 132 Scotland, decline of knife crime  4, 44, 45–​6, 52, 82, 132 ‘Serious Violence Strategy’  13 UK  3 Wales  4, 10, 12 west of Scotland  18, 43 see also weapon-​carrying; weapon crime/​ weapons L law enforcement  13, 131 Lawson, R.  26 left-​wing politics  8, 9 London  County Lines  138 knife crime and violence  3 street gangs  8, 10, 11, 131 M Manchester  8, 9, 14, 78, 89, 99 Mares, D.  7–​8 masculinity  drugs  144 Glasgow as ‘archetypal macho city’  24 ‘hard man’  97, 132, 133–​4, 138 hegemonic masculinity  11, 24, 26, 43, 64, 80, 108, 117, 124, 134, 135, 144 knife crime and  17, 42, 43, 64–​5 masculine identity  65, 69, 74, 117, 134, 144 masculine values  7, 24 masculinised territoriality  26, 106–​7, 108, 124 sectarianism and masculine culture  110, 111, 114 street gangs and  7, 11, 24, 65, 69, 106, 130, 134, 136 violence and  24, 80, 134

see also men Matza, D.  107 McArthur, A.  23 McLean, R.  12, 27, 132 drug distribution  84, 91–​2, 95, 97, 99, 101, 103, 104, 106, 138–​9 media  knife crime  12 policy recommendations  146 street gangs  7, 23–​4, 25 subculture identity and  7 men  gang membership  7, 8, 10, 23, 25 image-​conscious culture  121 mental health  117, 124, 140 offending teenage males  19, 20 as perpetrators and victims  133 suicide  56, 57, 117, 135 weapon crime  20 working-​class men  24–​5, 134 see also masculinity mental health  57, 116, 135, 136, 140 ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences)  137 anxiety-​related issues  54, 55, 66, 117–​18, 120, 132, 140 asylum seekers  66 COVID-​19 pandemic  57, 116–​17, 132 depression  117–​18, 119, 120, 140, 144, 145 drug use for self-​medication  117, 124, 125, 137, 140, 144 gang involvement and  117–​18, 124, 140 men  117, 124, 140 offender rehabilitation and mental health interventions  49 poverty and  57, 59 rumination  118 self-​harm  119–​20, 132 social media and  4, 79, 118–​24, 140 SSF (Scottish Sports Futures)  55–​6 unemployment and  57 see also suicide methodology  case studies  15, 33 data collection  28–​32, 59, 134, 141–​2 empirical focus  4, 132–​4 ethical issues and data analysis  32 fieldwork  151n3 geographical areas and socio-​economic profiles  32, 147–​50, 151nn3–​4 interviews  28, 29, 30, 31–​2, 33, 40, 59, 63, 85, 141–​2 methodological research recommendations  142 qualitative research  3, 4, 37, 125, 135 research limitations  140–​2 research methods  28–​32 sampling and participants  28–​32, 61–​2, 85, 134, 140–​1 Metropolitan Police Service  8 Miller, J.  26

178

Index

Mods and Rockers  7 the ‘Muldoons’  23 Muncie, J.  6 music  drill music  13, 103, 122 underground rap music  122 N National Crime Agency  16, 81, 99 National Service  22 neoliberalism  25, 98, 125, 134 NKBL (No Knives, Better Lives)  39, 40, 51–​2, 135 ‘Norman Conks’  23 O OCGs (organised crime groups)  27, 83–​4, 132, 152n2 County Lines  11, 12, 101 Daniels OCG  83–​4, 152n4 drug distribution  91 gangland attacks  83 Gillespie brothers  84, 152n5 Lyons OCG  83, 84, 85, 152nn2, 6 rise of 83  weapons  83 YCGs (young crime gangs)  27, 69, 84, 91 YSGs (young street gangs)  84 see also organised crime Offending Crime and Justice Survey  11 Orange Order  22, 109, 113 Orange Walks  22, 109, 113, 115, 116 organised crime  136 drug distribution  16, 68–​9, 81, 83, 131, 137, 139 gang evolution  27, 33, 67–​8, 68–​9, 80 increase of  57, 83 ‘Serious organised crime strategy’  83 street gangs  8, 10, 12 west of Scotland  83, 84 see also OCGs othering  25, 135 P Patrick, J.  7, 24, 26 the ‘Penny Mob’  23 Pitts, J.  8, 9, 10, 78, 131 police  13 demise of trust in  134 Police Scotland  16, 18, 38–​9, 45, 58, 74, 81, 135 humanity of  71 stop and search practice  43–​4 policy  137 deeper policy values  145–​6 housing regeneration policies  44–​5 policy recommendations  143–​5 poverty  143–​4 recreation and leisure  144

substance abuse  144–​5 violence  144 poverty  14, 15, 37, 56–​8, 59, 134 alcohol and  56 County Lines  79 COVID-​19 pandemic  132 crime and  56, 130, 143 drug abuse and  56, 59 drug distribution and  57, 58, 59, 139 endemic poverty  144, 145 food poverty  57, 79 mental health  57, 59 policy recommendations  143–​4 poverty reduction/​eradication  53, 56 street gang and  65 see also deprivation practitioners  3, 15, 28–​31, 33, 40, 41, 81, 151n2 diminishing gang violence and lingering issues  42–​6 education, youth work, empowerment and inclusion  51–​6 perspectives on gangs, violence and prevention  40–​59, 134–​6 poverty, inequality and emerging ‘perfect storm’  56–​8, 90 research limitations  140–​1 see also FARE/​FARE Scotland; NKBL; SSF; SVRU Protestantism  22, 23, 109, 113, 133, 140 public health approach (to violence reduction and prevention)  3, 4, 15, 37–​40, 59, 81, 135 breaking down territorial barriers  105 desistance and  75–​6, 135, 137 drug crime and  105, 139 education  39 efficacy  137 Glasgow  14, 33 key elements of  38, 135 knife crime  13–​14, 132 Scotland  15, 28–​9, 37 social determinants of gang violence and weapon-​carrying  33, 37, 38, 59 SVRU (Scottish Violence Reduction Unit)  38–​40, 46, 50, 55, 59, 70, 82, 132, 135 west of Scotland  38, 39, 59 Punks  7 Putnam, R.  24 R Raab, G.  111, 112 racism  65–​7, 74, 136–​7 see also ethnicity/​ethnic-​related issues racketeering  8 recreation and leisure  136, 144, 145 right-​wing politics  9, 131 robbery  8, 18, 19, 95

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S Sampson, R.J.  131 SCJS (Scottish Crime and Justice Survey)  18, 151n1 Scotland  4, 130 County Lines  98, 99–​101 crime reduction  19, 33, 37 as ‘drug capital of Europe’  14, 82, 138 non-​sexual violent crime  18–​19 small, medium and large towns  149–​50 violent crime rates  17–​20 see also Glasgow; west of Scotland Scottish Government  16, 18–​20, 39, 51, 81, 132, 144, 145 ‘Letting our communities flourish’ report  83 SIMD (Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation)  40, 57, 148, 149, 150, 151n1 sectarianism  109 Glasgow: sectarian rivalry  15, 17, 22–​3, 33 Loyalists and Republicans marches  113–​16, 124, 140 masculine culture  110, 111, 114 religious sectarianism  109, 110, 112, 113, 115–​16, 124, 133, 140 Scotland  109, 110, 114–​15 see also football bigotry sexual abuse  101–​2, 132 Sillitoe, Sir P.  23 Skinheads  7 social exclusion  12, 53–​4 social inclusion  see inclusion social inequality  15, 37, 53 social media  77, 119, 135, 137, 139 County Lines  28, 79, 99, 100 cyberbullying  119–​20, 132 detrimental impact of  80, 140 drug abuse  79, 140 drug distribution  28, 79, 93, 94–​8, 104, 119, 122, 138, 140 emojis  95 Facebook  94, 112, 118, 122, 138 football bigotry  111, 112 gang business and  28 gang fights and weapon-​carrying  13, 107–​8, 111 image-​conscious culture  120–​1 Instagram  94, 95, 120, 138 mental health and  4, 79, 118–​24, 140 online gambling  122–​3, 124, 125, 140 Snapchat  94, 95, 96, 119, 138 violence and crime  121–​2 WhatsApp  94, 119, 138 social mobility  93, 102, 104, 105, 136, 144 immobility  143 sports  55, 73, 135–​6, 137, 144, 146 see also SSF SSF (Scottish Sports Futures)  45, 55, 57, 61, 73–​5, 136 mental health  55–​6

Stelfox, P.  7 stigma  18, 25, 26, 65, 130, 138, 143 Street & Arrow project  49–​50, 61, 70–​2, 135, 137 see also SVRU street gang  see gang structure/​structural challenges  14, 33, 73 suicide  56, 57, 59, 60, 117, 135 see also mental health SVRU (Scottish Violence Reduction Unit)  13, 15, 26, 29, 61 ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences)  46, 59 gang life, transition out of  70–​2 limitations of initiatives  50, 59 Navigators programme  70, 137 public health approach  38–​40, 46, 50, 55, 59, 70, 82, 132, 135 shared agenda  46, 50, 55, 75 success of  39–​40, 50, 70–​2, 132, 137 west of Scotland  39 see also CIRV; Street & Arrow project Sweden  17, 18 T Teddy Boys  7 territoriality/​territorial gangs  6, 145 American gangs  6 drug dealing as replacement for territorial gang violence  81–​2, 106 drug distribution and absence of territorial barriers  84, 93–​4, 105 Glasgow  12, 24–​6, 42, 106 housing schemes and territorial gang violence  42, 65, 68, 106, 107, 132 lingering territorial boundaries, violence and knife-​carrying  106–​9 local cohesion  44 masculinised territoriality  26, 106–​7, 108, 124 school boundaries  44–​5, 135 Scottish gangs  26, 33 territorial gang violence  16, 18, 65, 105, 106–​7, 136 territorial gang violence, decline of  16, 42, 45, 53, 60, 76–​7, 82, 84, 93–​4, 135, 137 west of Scotland  16, 42, 105, 107–​8 therapeutic alliances  71 Thrasher, F.  6, 107 Tilley, N.  8, 9 U unemployment  135 crime and  130 deindustrialisation  24, 57 Glasgow  23, 24 intergenerational unemployment  135, 143 mental health and  57 violence and  18, 135

180

Index

Universal Credit  57 US (United States)  5, 130, 138 UK/​US gangs comparison  8, 131 US/​European gangs comparison  6 V Vaughan, Frankie  24 violence/​gang violence  6, 7, 8, 10, 76, 80 2011 violent disorder, England  8 2018–​19  3 ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences)  47–​8, 137 actor-​network theory  21 alcohol and  133, 137, 140, 144 context and causes  26, 48 decrease in  19, 39, 40, 55, 59, 82 deprivation and  65, 139 drugs and violence  13, 22, 69, 137 England  3 Glasgow  12, 18–​20, 23, 82–​3 identity and  6 masculinity and  24, 80, 134 persistence of  134–​5, 136 policy recommendations  144 recreational violence  12, 69 Scotland  17–​20 ‘Serious Violence Strategy’  13 social media  121–​2 territorial gang violence  16, 18, 65, 105, 106–​7, 136 UK  3–​5, 10 unemployment and  18, 135 violence capital  138, 144 Wales  3 youth violence  5, 17–​18, 81 see also domestic violence; public health approach W Wales  3, 4, 10, 12 weapon-​carrying  4, 6, 14 context and motivations for  26, 65 as cultural ‘adaptation’  26 drug distribution  77, 108, 131, 140 Glasgow  14, 21, 47, 107 masculinity and  42 normalisation of  13 peak age of  20, 151n2 persistence of  137 protection as reason for  77, 107, 108–​9, 124, 133 reduction in 20, 33, 42–​3, 47, 133  signals and triggers  20–​2 west of Scotland  108 see also knife crime weapon crime/​weapons  4, 11, 20 alcohol and  22 deprivation  20 firearms  6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 152n1

Glasgow  19–​20, 21–​2 gun crime  10, 12, 83, 152n1 gun culture  108 OCGs (organised crime groups)  83 reduction in 20, 42–​3  teenage male youth  20 weapon-​use  4, 6, 19–​20, 42–​3 see also knife crime west of Scotland  14–​16, 17 County Lines  78–​9, 101, 139 drug distribution  16, 78–​9, 85, 93 football bigotry  112, 124 gang culture  16 housing schemes  12, 14, 16, 60, 132 knife crime  18, 43 non-​sexual violent crime  18 organised crime  83, 84 street gang  12, 14, 27 territorial street gang violence  16, 42, 105, 107–​8 weapon-​carrying  108 WHO (World Health Organization)  37, 39, 46, 70, 135 women and girls  ‘bad girl femininity’  67, 80, 136 image-​conscious culture  120–​1 sexual exploitation of  101–​2 working-​class  24, 134 territorial youth gang  130 working-​class men  24–​5, 134 working-​class youth  17–​18, 24–​5, 130 Y YCGs (young crime gangs)  27, 69, 84, 91 Young, T.  8 young people  4, 16, 85, 86 ‘County Lines’, travelling dealers and wholesale collecting  98–​103 drug distribution  22, 84–​5, 90–​8, 102–​4, 138–​9 lingering territorial boundaries, violence and knife-​carrying  106–​9 lived experiences of drug consumption, supply and organised crime  85–​104, 137–​9 mental health and social media  116–​24 normalisation of drugs  87–​90 research limitations  141 sectarianism/​football bigotry  109–​16 wider lived experiences and contemporary challenges  106–​25, 139–​40 working-​class youth  17–​18, 24–​5, 130 youth violence  5, 17–​18, 81 see also YCGs; YSGs youth work  51–​6, 61, 73, 75 Youthpoint Aberlour  54, 136 YSGs (young street gangs)  27, 69, 84, 91, 152n6 Milton YSG  152n6 see also street gang

181