The Palgrave Handbook of Youth Gangs in the UK 9783030996574, 9783030996581, 3030996573

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The Palgrave Handbook of Youth Gangs in the UK Edited by Paul Andell · John Pitts

The Palgrave Handbook of Youth Gangs in the UK

Paul Andell · John Pitts Editors

The Palgrave Handbook of Youth Gangs in the UK

Editors Paul Andell University of Suffolk Ipswich, UK

John Pitts Vauxhall Centre for the Study of Crime University of Bedfordshire Luton, UK

ISBN 978-3-030-99657-4 ISBN 978-3-030-99658-1 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99658-1

(eBook)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: David Kilpatrick/Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For Jock & Roger—“There Ain’t Half Been Some Clever Bastards” Ian Dury and the Blockheads

Contents

1

Introduction Paul Andell and John Pitts

Part I 2

1

The Evolution of the UK Street Gang

Theorising Gangs: Towards a Critical Realist Moral Theory of Youth Gangs Paul Andell and David James

21

3

Reluctant Gangsters Revisited Andrew Whittaker and Tirion Harvard

41

4

County Lines: Dealing in Vulnerability Simon Harding

57

Part II 5

International Comparisons

US and UK Gangs: Research, Policy and Practice James Densley

91

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Contents

6

Gangs and a Global Sociological Imagination John Hagedorn and Alistair Fraser

7

‘Why Them?’ ‘Why Then?’ ‘Why There?’: The Political Economy of Gangland John Pitts

Part III 8

9

Gangs, Gang Evolution and Young People’s Involvement in Drug Supply and Distribution in Scotland Ross Deuchar and Robert McLean Young People, Gangs and Paramilitary Violence in Northern Ireland John Pitts

Gangs in Liverpool: Scouse Soldiers init? Urban Street Gangs on Merseyside Robert Hesketh and Grace Robinson

Part IV 12

13

141

Nations & Regions

10 Youth Gangs in Wales: Blocked Opportunities and Broken Transitions—A Generational Evolution from Troublesome Youth Groups to ‘Gangs’ in South Wales? Jenny Maher and Howard Williamson 11

111

173

191

209

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Race and Gender

Supporting Young Women Affected by Gang Association and County Lines Abi Billinghurst and Fiona Factor ‘The Alchemy of Race and Rights’: The Logic of Historicizing the Contemporary Racialized Youth and Gang Phenomenon Esmorie Miller

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297

Contents

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14

Race and Gangs: Towards a Black Criminology Suzella Palmer

323

15

Black Lives Matter in Gang Research Paul Andell

347

16

‘The Boys’, Their Identities and Dynamics Mohammed Qasim

363

17 The Pakistani Muslim Community, Street Gangs and the Heroin Trade Mohammed Qasim Part V

389

Gangs and the Justice System

18

Policing UK Street Gangs Tom Davies and Nigel South

19

Crown Prosecution Service Decision-Making and Gangs Stephen Colman

411

435

20

Gangs in Prisons Dev Maitra

457

21

County Lines in Prisons Kelly Gray

473

Part VI

Policy & Practice

22 The English Street Gang and Government Policy John Pitts

491

23 Youth Work and Gang Violence Reduction Pete Harris and Mike Seal

519

24

537

Safeguarding, Young People and Gangs Isabelle Brodie

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Contents

25 The Premier League: Breaking the Cycle of Gang Violence Christine Barter, Paul Hargreaves, Kelly Bracewell, and John Pitts 26

Using Ex-Gang Members as Peer Youth Workers Junior Smart

27

Criminal and Sexual Exploitation in County Lines: Voices from Affected Communities Paul Andell

Index

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587

615

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Notes on Contributors

Andell Paul is Associate Professor in Criminology at University of Suffolk. He has worked as a probation officer, youth justice worker and community safety manager for the Greater London Authority. He was Head of Criminal Justice Initiatives for the Criminal Defence Service and a Strategic Advisor to several Local Criminal Justice Boards on behalf of the Ministry of Justice. He has also led national research projects on policing and was a managing consultant for Matrix Knowledge on a number of Home Office sponsored projects. Recently, he was National Director of Brathay Communities Projects which included the Lambeth X-It project. He has co-authored the West Yorkshire Gang Vulnerability Report undertaken on behalf of West Yorkshire Police and has acted as a consultant for the Hammersmith and Fulham Youth Offending Service SOS-gang desistance project and the Lambeth Gangs Strategy. He has authored several peer-reviewed papers analysing theory and practice regarding gangs and was the author of Thinking Seriously About Gangs: Towards A Critical Realist Approach (Palgrave, 2019).

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Barter Christine, Ph.D. is Professor of Interpersonal Violence Prevention and Co-Director of the Connect Centre for International Research on Interpersonal Violence and Harm at the University of Central Lancashire, UK. Her research in the past 15 years has concentrated on children and young people’s experiences of violence and abuse. She undertook the first European project to measure the prevalence, nature and impact of online and face-to-face forms of violence and abuse in teenage relationships. Her work has recently addressed prevention of intimate violence through school-based relationship and sex education initiatives. She is currently undertaking a longitudinal study to explore the physical and mental health impacts of intimate violence in young adult relationships. Billinghurst Abi is the founder and CEO of Abianda. She has led the growth of the organisation over the past 10 years. She is a qualified youth worker, group work facilitator and trainer. For the past 20 years, she has worked with, and managed services for vulnerable young people and has developed participatory models of practice for UK and European service providers in engaging young people affected by sexual violence. She advises strategic and government bodies on policy and legislation spanning violence against women and girls, gangs and youth and criminal justice sectors. She is a visiting lecturer at various UK and European universities and regularly contributes to and advises on academic research that involves young people’s voices on issues pertaining to the work of Abianda. Bracewell Kelly, Ph.D. is a Research Fellow at the University of Central Lancashire. Kelly spent ten years working in the voluntary sector, supporting adult and child victims/survivors of domestic violence and abuse (DVA). Since moving into academia Kelly has undertaken several research projects and evaluations working with vulnerable children and young people living in difficult life situations such as those living in care, leaving care and those who have experienced DVA. Her research interests include children’s rights, resilience, violence and abuse, domestic homicides and interventions to address gender-based violence and support recovery.

Notes on Contributors

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Brodie Isabelle, Ph.D. is a Senior Research Fellow at the Safer Young Lives Research Centre, University of Bedfordshire. She has some 25 years’ experience as a researcher and university lecturer working on a range of research and practice-based projects relating to different aspects of child welfare, including children and young people in care, education, youth offending, safeguarding and child exploitation. Over the past three years, she has worked with the Tackling Child Exploitation Support Programme, a partnership between the University of Bedfordshire, The Children’s Society and Research in Practice. Colman Stephen is a Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Suffolk and a non-practising solicitor. He was formerly a Senior Crown Prosecutor at the Crown Prosecution Service where his specialisms included Hate Crime prosecutions and Youth Court cases. His research interests are criminal law, evidence and procedure. His research is currently focused on the exercise of prosecutorial discretion and how victims can challenge decisions not to prosecute using private prosecutions, judicial review and the CPS Victims’ Right to Review procedure. Davies Tom is a Research and Analysis Officer at Mayor’s Office for Policing And Crime (MOPAC). He was awarded a Ph.D. from the University of Essex in 2018 for his thesis ‘Policing Gangs in London: Perceptions of the Process from Key Practitioners’. Prior to this he obtained a Master’s Degree in Criminology at King’s College London and a History Degree from the London School of Economics. Densley James is a Professor and Department Chair of Criminal Justice at Metropolitan State University, Minnesota (USA). He is the author of seven books, most recently On Gangs (Temple University Press, 2022), 50 peer-reviewed articles in leading social science journals, and more than 90 book chapters, essays and non-refereed works in outlets, such as The Guardian, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal , and The Washington Post. He earned his doctorate in sociology from the University of Oxford. Deuchar Ross is a Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice in the School of Education and Social Sciences at the University of the West of Scotland. He is known primarily for his work on gangs,

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masculinity, street culture, violence and gang desistance and also on policing, procedural justice and focused deterrence strategies. He has conducted ethnographic research on gang intervention programmes in Scotland, Denmark, the USA and Hong Kong. He has also engaged in participant observation of frontline police practice, street advocacy and youth work in both the USA and Scotland. In 2016–2017, he was the recipient of a prestigious Fulbright scholarship award and spent a semester as Fulbright scholar-in-residence within the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida Atlantic University, USA. He is the author and co-author of six books his latest work, ‘Policing Gangs in Times of Crisis: Law Enforcement and Youth Violence in the PostFerguson Era’ (co-authored with Vaughn Crichlow and Seth Fallik) was published in November 2021. Factor Fiona, Ph.D. has a professional background in youth work. Her academic career began at the University of Bedfordshire in 1995 developing youth work training; she is now responsible for a number of courses and projects in the School of Applied Social Sciences. She has also run her own consultancy company, established numerous professional and academic partnerships in the UK and Europe and undertaken multiple research projects focusing on how professionals support vulnerable young people, particularly within youth justice systems, policing and children’s social care. She is committed to co-creating knowledge and practice with young people and professionals that challenge dominant narratives and promote social justice. Fraser Alistair is Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Sociology at the University of Glasgow, and Director of the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research. He teaches and researches issues of youth violence, street culture and urban crime, with a particular interest in the global gang phenomenon, and is particularly interested in ethnographic, creative and interdisciplinary ways of working. His work seeks to make theoretically ambitious, he is currently leading a study, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (UK), investigating the meaning and utility of ‘public health’ approaches to violence reduction in Scotland and England. Alistair is the author of two books: the first, Urban

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Legends: Gang Identity in the Post-Industrial City (OUP, 2015) was shortlisted for the BBC/BSA Ethnography Award and co-awarded the British Society of Criminology Book Prize. Gray Kelly is a Hertfordshire Constabulary Detective Inspector seconded into the Eastern Region Special Operations Unit. She is a Regional County Lines Coordinator working with the National County Lines Coordination Centre. She supports law enforcement and other partners in tactical and strategic assessments to address County Lines and identifies safeguarding needs for vulnerable people. She holds the national portfolio for County Lines on behalf of Her Majesties Prison and Probation Service. Hagedorn John is Professor Emeritus from the University of IllinoisChicago. He has studied gangs in Chicago, Milwaukee, and around the world for the past 40 years. He has written five books, edited two more, and written dozens of popular and academic articles. Since the mid1990s he turned his attention to the courtroom as an expert witness. His last book, Gangs on Trial: Challenging Stereotypes and Demonization in Court, tells stories from trials and sentencings of gang members. Rather than an examination of ‘them’—gangs, he turns his attention to ‘us’—how we all think in stereotypes and too easily demonise ‘the other’. He lives in Milwaukee and is married to Mary Devitt and together they have four children and ten grandchildren. Harding Simon is Professor of Criminology at the University of West London and Director of the National Centre for Crime Research. He is author of The Street Casino (2014) which is based on a three-year study of youth gangs in south London and County Lines: Exploitation and Drug Dealing Among Urban Street Gangs (2020) based on a study of gangs and drug dealing in the south of England. Hargreaves Paul is a Professional Tutor within the Policing Team at the University of Central Lancashire with an academic research background in domestic violence/abuse and youth violence prevention/intervention. He is studying for a Ph.D., examining the implementation of a police risk assessment tool and risk level decisions by attending officers to

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reports of domestic violence/abuse. He teaches at Undergraduate and Masters level in policing, decision-making and partnership working. Harris Pete, Ph.D. spent 18 years as a Youth Worker and then as a Senior Manager for a children’s charity before joining Newman University College in 2010. He holds a B.A. in Social Policy, a Dip. H.E. in Youth and Community Work and an M.A. in Education Studies. He was Presidents Doctoral Scholar at Manchester University where he completed an ESRC-funded Ph.D. in Criminology. Harvard Tirion is an Associate Professor in the Social Work department at London South Bank University. She draws on her experiences as a probation officer working with violent offenders to inform her research into Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG). She has advised English parliament in relation to coercive control/tech abuse and how it relates to both domestic abuse and young women and girls in gangs. Hesketh Robert, Ph.D. is currently based at the School of Justice Studies, Liverpool John Moores University with the Liverpool Centre for Policing Studies (LCAPS) where he is involved in both teaching and research. He has undertaken research into street gang culture, focusing particularly on involvement in, and abstention from, street gang membership in socially excluded areas of Merseyside. He is presently chair of a third sector charity in Prescot Merseyside. James David is Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of Suffolk and course leader. He has undertaken evaluation work that has examined social policy interventions for young people, city centre policing practice and crime reduction interventions. He has a wide interest in social theory and social change with a recent focus on the implications of a well-considered materiality. McLean Robert is a Lecturer in Criminology and Criminal Justice in the School of Education and Social Sciences at the University of the West of Scotland. He was awarded his Ph.D., Doctor of Philosophy Education, from the University West of Scotland in 2018 for his thesis: Discovering Young Crime Gangs in Glasgow: Street Gang Organization as a means for Gang Business. Since then Robert has authored and co-authored five

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books about drugs and gangs in including the recent Robbery in the Illegal Drugs Trade: Violence and Vengeance with James Densley. Maher Jenny, Ph.D. is a Senior Lecturer at the University of South Wales [UK]. Having completed her Ph.D. in 2007 on ‘Youth gangs and Troublesome Youth Groups in South Wales’, she has since conducted research funded by the European Commission, South Wales Police and RSPCA on violence, victimisation and harms among young people. Since 2018, as Vice President, Jenny has provided guidance to the Council for Wales of Voluntary Youth Services [CWVYS], having previously advised the Safer Capital Partnership Cardiff and Cardiff Youth Partnership Knife Crime Group. She has published internationally in peer-reviewed journals, co-edited books and special issue journals, including papers which explore the links between youth crime and animal abuse. Maitra Dev is a Research Fellow and Lecturer in Criminology & Law at the University of Suffolk. He holds degrees from the University of Cambridge (M.Phil.; Ph.D.) and the University of Bristol (LL.B. Hons.) and was called to the Bar of England and Wales at Lincoln’s Inn. His research interests focus on street gangs, prison gangs, organised crime and prisoner radicalization. Miller Esmorie is a Lecturer in Criminology at London Southbank University. Her research historicises the role of race and racialization in contemporary youth justice. Her research explores beyond crime and punishment, investigating the racialization of punitiveness in contemporary YJ as a continuity of the historic exclusion of racialised peoples from the benefits of modern, universal rights. Retributive justice has, thus far, decoupled racialised youth’s contemporary concerns from relevant histories. Her work explores the importance of racialization in these histories. She is currently Chair of #HCNET, the British Society of Criminology’s (BSC) historical working group. Palmer Suzella, Ph.D. has worked at the University of Bedfordshire Since 2003 teaching social research methods, criminological/social theory, youth justice, serious youth violence and ‘race’, crime and justice at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Outside of her academic

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role, she works closely with a number of community groups and organisations that provide interventions and support for young people and families whose lives are impacted by structural disadvantage and serious youth violence. Pitts John is Vauxhall Professor of Socio-legal Studies at the University of Bedfordshire and co-Director of the Vauxhall Centre for the Study of Crime. He is Visiting Professor of Criminology at the Universities of Kent and Suffolk. He has worked in publishing and as a school teacher; a street and club-based youth worker; a youth justice worker, a group worker in a Young Offender Institution and as a consultant on youth crime and youth justice to the police, youth justice and legal professionals in the UK, mainland Europe, the Russian Federation and China. In the past fifteen years, he has undertaken studies of violent youth gangs, organised crime groups and drug markets in London, Manchester, West Yorkshire and East Anglia, the findings of which are recounted in Reluctant Gangsters (Routledge, 2008), Mercenary Territory (in Goldson ed. Routledge, 2011) Drifting Into Trouble: Sexual Exploitation and Gang Affiliation (in Melrose & Pearce, eds. Macmillan, 2013) Critical Realism and Gang Violence (in Matthews ed. Macmillan 2016), The End of the Line: The Impact of County Lines on Youth Offending in a County Town (Youth & Policy, 2018) and The Evolution of the English Street Gang (Safer Communities, 2019) Qasim Mohammed was awarded a Ph.D. in Criminology by Swansea University in July 2016. The thesis was the basis of his recently published book in paperback with University of Bristol Policy Press, Young, Muslim and Criminal . He is currently writing two books, one with Routledge alongside Professor Colin Webster which investigates desistance among British Pakistani Muslims and the other book which explores the history of the British Pakistani community living in the UK. He is currently a Visiting Research Fellow at the London School of Economics. Prior to this he was visiting Research Fellow at Leeds Beckett University from 2017 to 2019 working on a research project titled Effects of Poverty and Prison on Identity and Desistance among Pakistani Young Men Who Offend . He is a researcher who has published in several journals including Criminology and Criminal Justice and The Prison Journal . The

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impact of his work has been considerable and growing, including media appearances and outputs for BBC Radio 4, BBC Five Live, BBC Asian Network, The Independent, The Times, The Guardian, VICE and The Telegraph. His research interests are around Race, Ethnicity and Crime, his research focuses on poverty, class, deprivation and demographic change as possible factors explaining the alleged increase in offending among young British Muslims. In particular the influence of these social structural factors on, and their intersection with criminal identity, career and desistance. Robinson Grace is the founder and CEO of Black Box Research & Consultancy; a nationwide criminal justice consultancy specialising in providing Expert Witness Testimony and raising awareness of criminal exploitation. She has worked on over 100 Modern Slavery cases comprising drug and weapon offences, fraud, robbery and murder. She has recently been involved in research exploring the impact of COVID19 on County Lines drug supply; examining the intersection between cognitive impairments and exploitation, and investigating the prevalence of trafficking and online sexual exploitation of children in the Philippines. Seal Mike is Professor of Education and Social Mobility at the University of Suffolk. He was previously a Reader in Critical Pedagogy at Newman University and chair of the Romero Freire Institute. His research areas are critical and queer pedagogy and social justice in higher education. He is a National Teaching Fellow, a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts. He has conducted over 30 pieces of funded research, written 11 books, 20 book chapters, 14 journal articles and over 25 other publications. He has presented at over 80 conferences worldwide. Smart Junior joined St Giles Trust in 2006 upon his release from prison from where he served a 10-year sentence for a drug and gang related offence. With support from St Giles Trust, he is credited in developing the award-winning SOS Gangs project, London’s largest exoffender gangs exit programme. Covering 14 London boroughs and employing a team comprising predominately of ex-offenders. This year

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the SOS Project is on target to reach over 700 young people caught up in Serious group offending and has won numerous awards and recognition, including the South London Press Awards 2008 and the Centre for Social Justice Awards in 2009. Whilst undertaking his Ph.D. at Middlesex University into the connection between gangs and families, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Greenwich University in Education. In 2020, he was included in Her Majesty the Queens New Year’s Honour List receiving an OBE for recognition of his work with young people in tackling youth violence. South Nigel is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex. He was a student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Essex in the 1970s and returned to teach in the Department in 1990. He studied for a Ph.D. in the field of criminology at Middlesex and throughout the 1980s worked at the Institute for the Study of Drug Dependence (now Drugscope), London. He has held teaching and research posts in London and New York, is an Adjunct Professor in the School of Justice at Queensland University of Technology and serves on several editorial boards including as the European Editor of Critical Criminology. In 2013, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Criminology, Division on Critical Criminology. Whittaker Andrew is Professor of Social Work Research at London South Bank University and co-chair of the Serious Violence research group. He is lead author of From Postcodes to Profits: Changes in Gang Activity in Waltham Forest, editor of the Journal of Social Work Practice and previously worked as a child protection social worker and director of a voluntary organisation. Williamson Howard is Professor of European Youth Policy at the University of South Wales in the UK. Previously, he worked at the Universities of Oxford, Cardiff and Copenhagen and has held visiting positions at universities and research institutes in Hong Kong, Malta, Croatia, China, France, Australia and Iran. He has lectured and published widely on young people, youth policy and youth work. He is a qualified youth worker and ran a youth centre for 25 years in

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parallel with his academic research. He has advised many levels of governance on youth policy issues, from the Welsh and UK governments, the European Commission, the Council of Europe and the United Nations. He co-ordinated the Council of Europe’s international reviews of national youth policy. He is a board member of Grassroots—the Cardiff City Centre Youth Project, the Restorative Justice for All International Institute, the European Forum Alpbach Foundation and the Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award for Young People. Since 2002, he has been Organisational Secretary of the International Sociological Association Research Committee 34 (youth research). In 2002, he was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) and, in 2016, a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (CVO). In 2019, he received an Outstanding Contribution to Youth Work award from the First Minister of Wales.

List of Tables

Table Table Table Table

3.1 4.1 10.1 10.2

Original gangs (Pitts 2007) Gangs (2017) Modes of contested vulnerability Summary of Maher’s methodology and sample Typology categories by number and per cent of gangs

49 65 217 223

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1 Introduction Paul Andell and John Pitts

The study of ‘violent street gangs’ only began in earnest in the UK in the early years of the twenty-first century. It was then that writers, researchers and scholars in different parts of the country were becoming aware of groups of young people, from similar types of neighbourhood, involved in particular types of serious offending. And so, the sometimes heated debate about UK youth gangs began. This book brings together for the first time the work of some of the leading writers, researchers and scholars in the field of UK gang studies. P. Andell (B) University of Suffolk, Ipswich, UK e-mail: [email protected] J. Pitts Vauxhall Centre for the Study of Crime, University of Bedfordshire, Luton, UK e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Andell and J. Pitts (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Youth Gangs in the UK , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99658-1_1

1

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P. Andell and J. Pitts

However, many of them have also worked in or with agencies and organisations dealing with gang-involved and gang-affected young people and so they bring practical as well as academic experience. Some people opening this book will be aware that in academia, the idea of a UK ‘youth gang’ is disputed. Some scholars argue that contemporary concerns about violent youth gangs are akin to the demonising discourses, the ‘moral panics’ (Cohen, 1972) that attended the teddy boys in the 1950s, the ‘mods and rockers’ in the 1960s, the punks in the 1970s, the lager louts in the 1980s and so on (cf. Aldridge & Medina, 2008). These scholars maintain that these periodic expressions of popular outrage tell us more about the anxieties of an adult public, ‘opinion formers’ and the media than the behaviour of young people. And most commentators agree that the term ‘gang’ is frequently used to transform Black young people into contemporary ‘folk devils’ (cf. Alexander, 2008/2009; Amnesty International, 2018; Cohen, 1972; Gunter, 2017; Williams & Clarke, 2016). Moreover, some also believe that this demonisation, or ‘othering’, has a more sinister purpose, suggesting that current concerns about violent youth gangs are orchestrated by the state, its agencies and the media who generate ‘imaginaries’ in order to justify ever deeper incursions into our freedoms and ever greater control over our lives (cf. Hallsworth, 2014; Simon, 2007). All this academic scepticism notwithstanding, in ‘gang-affected’ neighbourhoods around the UK, police officers, health, welfare and educational professionals, local residents and their children were becoming all too familiar with the effects of gangs and gang crime. As too were several other academics who had conducted extensive empirical studies in some of these neighbourhoods (Balasunderham, 2009; Densley, 2013; Harding, 2014; Palmer, 2009; Pitts, 2008).

Defining the Gang In the early part of the twenty-first century, academics like Gordon (2000) and Hallsworth and Young (2008) produced typologies which aimed to clarify the differences between delinquent peer groups, street gangs and criminal business organisations. Simon Hallsworth and Tara

1 Introduction

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Young, for example, offered a succinct definition of these different groupings in their Three Point Typology of Urban Collectivities: . The Peer Group: A small, unorganised, transient grouping occupying the same space with a common history. Crime is not integral to their selfdefinition. . The Gang: A relatively durable, predominantly street-based group of young people who see themselves (and are seen by others) as a discernible group for whom crime and violence is integral to the group’s identity. . The Organised Criminal Group: Members are professionally involved in crime for personal gain operating almost exclusively in the ‘grey’ or illegal marketplace. It is of course the case that not all groupings that correspond with this gang definition will define themselves as a ‘gang’. In Mohammed Qasim’s article, in this volume, for example, the group he writes about are just known as ‘The Boys’. Elsewhere, they may be called a ‘Mandem’, a ‘Fam’, ‘Broes’ ‘The Boys’ or just ‘My Mates’. Pitts (2016) argues that, these differences notwithstanding: Gangs are real because both those who claim affiliation to them and those affected by them are aware of the gang as a discrete social grouping with a recognised soubriquet, an identifiable structure, distinct norms and values and an unambiguous raison d’être; namely the perpetration of crime and violence. Gangs may meet other needs and perform other functions but their existence is predicated upon crime and violence and if these characteristics are absent, they are not gangs.

In this volume, the use of the term gang usually refers to a relatively durable, predominantly street-based group of young people who: . . . . .

(1) see themselves (and are seen by others) as a discernible group, (2) engage in a range of criminal activities and violence, (3) identify with or lay claim to territory, (4) have some form of identifying structural feature, (5) are in conflict with other, similar, gangs. (Centre for Social Justice, 2009; Pitts, 2008)

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However, by the second decade of the twenty-first century, the conceptual and practical focus had shifted from how we tell Peer Groups, Gangs and Criminal Business Organisation apart to whether, and if so how, the one may evolve into the others. And this prompted a new kind of research on the evolution of UK street gangs (Densley, 2013; Whittaker, 2017, Andell & Pitts, 2018; Densley & Harding, 2018). Contemporary models of gang evolution tend to identify a linear progression from the adolescent peer groups to absorption into serious criminality. Densley and Harding (2018), for example, identify a progression from formative groupings, which facilitate recreational violence, through criminal activity to criminal enterprise and ultimately to ‘governance’. They write: This evolution permits movement from recreational and criminal stages to financial goal orientation. Rejecting Hallsworth and Young’s (2008) position that gang members do not view crime as their “occupation”, we argue that upon reaching the highest developmental stage, gangs “resemble not just crime that is organised, but organised crime.” As such they develop structures for issuing orders, informal rules and codes of trust. (Densley & Harding, 2018)

This account neatly encapsulates an observable evolutionary trajectory, but it can also be read as a description of a spectrum of different gang forms, as well as a model of gang evolution. As Julie Ayling (2011) observes, most street gangs are temporary and disorganised, akin in some ways to what Lewis Yablonsky (1966) describes as the ‘near group’; located on a continuum with the ‘mob’ at one end and the structured ‘youth gang’ at the other end. This switch in the ‘academic gaze’ has been precipitated by an acceptance by most UK academics that street gangs really do exist, real changes in the way illicit drugs are distributed in the UK (see Simon Harding’s chapter on County Lines) and concerns about the criminal exploitation of vulnerable gang-involved children and young people (c.f. Beckett et al., 2013; Densley, 2013; Melrose & Pearce, 2013; National Crime Agency, 2016, 2017; Sturrock & Holmes, 2015).

1 Introduction

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This book is divided into 27 chapters in six-themed sections which represent the focal concerns of much of the gang research and scholarship that is happening now. The sections are concerned with the ways we theorise the gang, the ways gangs evolve, international comparisons, developments in the different UK nations and regions, the central role played by gender and ethnicity within youth gangs, the responses of the justice system and government policy and professional practice in youth work, safeguarding and children’s services.

Part I: The Evolution of the UK Street Gang In Chapter 2, Theorising Gangs: Towards a Critical Realist Moral Theory of Youth Gangs, Paul Andell and David James set out to answer a number of questions. If, for example, different groups of young people, involved in similar types of offending in different places, describe themselves differently, should we call them all ‘gangs’. And, can we accept that what the young people say about the gang, or indeed what the academics, police officers and social workers who investigate or work with gang members say, represents ‘the truth’ about gangs. Their answer to both questions is ‘yes but’. The ‘but’ says that while the accounts these young people and professionals give describe their day-to-day, ‘common-sense’ understandings of their world social, scientist must also investigate the unobservable social, economic and cultural structures and processes that account for the emergence, persistence and the distinctive characteristics of gangs and gang crime in particular settings. Having questioned whether our research into gangs and gang crime can ever be wholly ‘objective’, the authors suggest that such objectivity is probably unattainable because research, and the researchers, invariably bring a moral and empathetic dimension to their analyses. In Chapter 3, Reluctant Gangsters Revisited , Andrew Whittaker and Tiron Harvard observe that although, to date, there have been no longitudinal studies of street gangs in the UK, research he and his team undertook in 2018, in Waltham Forest in the same area where John Pitts had undertaken a similar study in 2008 enabled them to trace the changes that had taken place over the period. He recounts the findings

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of this research, noting that whereas in 2008, Pitts found that local drug dealing was just one source of income for the young people involved in street gangs, and that their main concern appeared to be the defence of their ‘ends’. Ten years on, however, drug dealing had become the raison d’etre of most of the borough’s gangs, while the most powerful one, the Mali boys, having co-opted other local gangs as its ‘foot soldiers’, had morphed into what was, in effect, a criminal business organisation dealing drugs in numerous out-of-town locations. In Chapter 4, County Lines: Dealing in Vulnerability, S imon Harding observes that from 2014/2015, onwards County Lines networks adopted different business practices which increasingly relied upon the exploited labour of young people. Continual mutation and adaptation of drug dealing networks were largely driven by improved IT technology and social media, alongside more localised factors in gang-affected neighbourhoods, namely increasing saturation of localised drug markets. This market adaptation represented a dramatic expansion of drug networks and increased utilisation of young people which rapidly drew the attention of local police, national policing organisations, NGOs, charities, the media, national government and the general public.

Part II: International Comparisons In Chapter 5, US and UK Gangs: Models, Policy and Practice, James Densley takes stock of what we now know about UK gangs in comparison to their US counterparts. He therefore examines points of convergence and divergence, and highlights what Britain can learn from the US experience of gangs and vice versa in order to set a research agenda for the next decade. He notes that although there is reluctance among UK criminologists to embrace gang research, UK gang studies should be viewed as foundational to UK criminology. They are important, he argues, for understanding the lives of children and young people because gangs are integral social groups for those involved. Moreover, gang membership changes people’s lives and there is a pressing need to respond to its consequences.

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In Chapter 6, Gangs and a Global Sociological Imagination, Alistair Fraser and John Hagedorn argue that across the globe, the phenomenon of youth gangs has become an important and sensitive public issue. As a result, research attention has focused on the development of what they describe as ‘universalised definitions’ of gangs in a global context. In this chapter, they contend that this search for similarity has resulted in a failure to recognise and understand difference. Drawing on an alternative methodology they call a ‘global exchange’, the chapter suggests three concepts—homologies of habitus, vectors of difference and transnational reflexivity—which will enable gang researchers to re-engage ‘the sociological imagination’ in the study of gangs and globalisation. In Chapter 7, ‘Why Them?’ ‘Why Then?’ ‘Why There?’: The Political Economy of Gangland , John Pitts argues that European gang scholarship has largely ignored the social, economic and political contexts from which street gangs emerge or in which they mutate. And it has therefore failed to understand the ‘politics of gangland’. The chapter considers how changes in the social, economic and political circumstances surrounding the emergence of different types of twentiethcentury youth gangs in England, France, the Netherlands, Spain and Russia have affected their constitution, affiliations and activities. In exploring the differences and commonalities between these different groupings, he finds that, in each instance, the young people involved are drawn from socially and economically disadvantaged populations who experience social stigma by virtue of their ethnicity or social status. However, as he argues, that their involvement in gang crime and/or oppositional youth movements is profoundly affected by historical and contemporaneous economic and/or political events.

Part III: Nations and Regions In Chapter 8, Gangs, Gang Evolution and Young People’s Involvement in Drug Supply and Distribution in Scotland , Ross Deuchar and Robert McLean examine the changing nature of youth street gang formation in Scotland. In particular, they focus on Glasgow and the west of Scotland, because of the historical prevalence of gang culture, knife

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crime and violence. Just over a decade ago, gang violence contributed to Glasgow being dubbed ‘the murder capital of Europe’, yet by 2015 commentators were suggesting that the city’s gang problem had been solved as a result of intensive intervention from law enforcement and voluntary and third sector agencies. However, since 2015 there has been a significant increase in drug use, and more worryingly drug deaths, in the country, particularly among young people. Organised crime groups using young people as ‘runners’ have come to dominate drug supply. They draw upon their interviews with young people between 2019 and 2020, to chart the evolution of street gangs,engaged primarily in territorial conflict, into an integral part of illicit drug supply in the region. In Chapter 9, Young People, Gangs and Paramilitary Violence in Northern Ireland , John Pitts, citing research undertaken over several decades in Northern Ireland, considers the legacy of the ‘Troubles’ for the children, young people and families who live in the sectarian strongholds of the Province. He endeavours to explain something of the mindset of many of the people living in these areas, their sense of victimisation and the burden this places on the younger generation. By way of example, he charts the history of the Tartan youth gangs that morphed into a faction of the ‘Loyalist’ Ulster Defence Association and notes that despite the 1996 peace accord, young people continue to be recruited into both Loyalist and Nationalist organisations which may then involve them in fund-raising via drug dealing and violent street demonstrations. He concludes with a consideration of how re-framing this situation as a children’s rights issue could constitute part of the solution. In Chapter 10, Youth Gangs in Wales: Blocked Opportunities and Broken Transitions—A Generational Evolution from Troublesome Youth Groups to ‘Gangs’ in South Wales? Jennifer Maher and Howard Williamson chart the history of groups of socially deviant young people in South Wales from the 1980s onwards, against a backdrop of worsening de-industrialisation. One of the authors, Howard Williamson, explored the development and subsequent life course of groups he first worked with on a social housing estate in the 1980s for the next three decades. ‘The Milltown Boys’ transition from teenagers to young adults coincided with the collapse of the youth labour market and the demise of traditional pathways from school to work for working-class boys. Three

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decades later, Jennifer Maher, picked up the story in her ethnographic studies of contemporary youth formations in South Wales. On the basis of this research, she develops typologies of the various groupings one of which resembles the street gangs identified by other UK researchers. Bringing these studies together, this chapter offers a unique picture of the development deviant youth groups in one area over almost 50 years. In Chapter 11, Gangs in Liverpool: Scouse Soldiers Init? Urban Street Gangs on Merseyside, Robert Hesketh and Grace Robinson discuss the emergence of urban street gangs on Merseyside. They observe that although Liverpool’s recent problems with youth gangs have attracted national and international media attention, academic research has lagged behind. Nonetheless, the available data suggest that there are over 200 organised gangs involving an estimated 3000 members. Those involved range from low-level participants, largely engaged in anti-social behaviour to others who have links into international crime syndicates. The authors note that the Knowsley area of Liverpool has the highest rate of children at risk from gangs in the whole country; a rate even higher than London’s. The chapter gathers together the findings of all the recent research that have been undertaken in Liverpool to give a thorough, and alarming, picture of developments in the city.

Part IV: Race and Gender In Chapter 12, Supporting Young Women Affected by Gang Association and County Lines, Fiona Factor and Abi Billinghurst outline the political and practice context of supporting young women affected by gang association and County Lines drug dealing. It presents the model of practice developed by Abianda, a social enterprise in London working with young women. The authors consider the key practice challenges faced by Abianda when delivering gender-specific services, and how the learning gleaned from their combined experience in research and professional practice, could be helpful to policymakers and practitioners working with girls and young women. In Chapter 13, ‘The Alchemy of Race and Rights’: The Logic of Historicizing the Contemporary Racialized Youth and Gang

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Phenomenon, Esmorie Miller maintains that explanations of the racialised youth gang are de-historicised and instead proffer majoritarian understandings reinforcing links between race, crime and punishment. She argues that racialised youth are represented in public narratives as ‘dying to belong’, lacking confidence in the system, and are reluctantly, yet inevitably, drawn into deviance. The chapter draws upon crossnational research conducted in London (England) and Toronto (Canada) and aims to highlight the institutional dynamics of policy and practice often absent from majoritarian gang narratives. She argues that the racialisation of the contemporary youth gang, particularly the focus on individual responsibility ahead of institutional legitimacy, can be read as a continuity of the historic outsider status whereby racialised people, in general, and youth, in particular, are relegated from the benefits of modern rights. In Chapter 14, Race and Gangs: Towards a Black Criminology, Suzella Palmer argues that much of (mainstream) UK gang research has obscured the ‘relevance of racism’, choosing instead to pathologies of young black males. Although the implicit aim of this research is to reduce serious youth violence, it is hampered, she contends, by a failure to capture the lived realities of young black men: how they make sense of their experiences, how this informs their world view and how it shapes their behaviour. Her belief is that ‘Despite the numerous studies commissioned and conducted, numbers crunched, analysis and re-analysis of official statistics, and papers churned out on this issue, mainstream criminology in Britain is, for the most part, “out of touch”, with the Black communities that it has repeatedly scrutinised ’. As a result, she argues, what is needed is a ‘Black criminology’ that identifies the unique, racially specific, conditions rooted in concentrated disadvantage in segregated communities, racial socialisation by parents, experiences with and perceptions of racial discrimination, and disproportionate involvement and unjust treatment in the criminal justice system. In Chapter 15, Black Lives Matter in Gang Research, Paul Andell argues that the death of George Floyd, a black man killed by a white police officer, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) highlights the current crisis in criminal and social justice. He notes that in the US public demonstrations were met with attempts, by the now defeated President Trump,

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deploying active duty troops under the 1807 Insurrection Act (Borger 2020) against the wishes of State and City authorities. These events and others like them, he observes, have prompted questions across the globe about the role and accountability of state agencies in relation to black and working-class communities. Aligned to this, further questions are raised about the kinds of knowledge that might be utilised to guide future policy and practice to improve the community safety of populations ‘at risk’ from ‘over-policing’. In Chapter 16, ‘The Boys’, Their Identities and Dynamics, Mohammed Qasim recounts the findings from the unique participant observation study he conducted between 2010 and 2014 in Bradford (England) where he investigated the sense of identity, substructures and dynamics of a group of British-born, Pakistani, Muslim men aged between 25 and 33 known as ‘The Boys’. The Boys were involved in drug dealing, violence, robbery and gun crime. Although they did not describe themselves as a ‘gang’, The Boys’ main source of income was derived from, sometimes very serious, crime, while they were frequently involved in inter-group violence and clearly exerted control over others through intimidation. The Boys were a well-known group, recognised locally by other young people, community elders and shopkeepers. This level of familiarity in the neighbourhood was due to the Pakistani population being a close-knit community with a strong sense of mutual support, both psychologically and practically. And while this was clearly a response for the first generation in an alien, and largely hostile, land, this was also a characteristic of the second and third generations. In Chapter 17, The Pakistani Muslim Community, Street Gangs and the Heroin Trade, Mohammed Qasim describes the social and economic impact of the precipitous decline of the garment industry in Bradford in the late twentieth century and the rise in Class A drug dealing in the twenty-first century. During this period, growing numbers of young Muslim men of Pakistani origin were arrested for selling drugs. Between 2013 and 2014, conviction data for drug dealing in Yorkshire and Humberside, revealed that more British Pakistanis were convicted for importing Class A drugs into the UK than white British people. This was related to the fact that Pakistani Muslims have ready access to heroin in Pakistan and many contacts in areas of Pakistani settlement in the UK.

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He notes that the apparent increase in the numbers of young British Pakistani men trading drugs in Bradford was not only worrying for the authorities but also deeply concerning for the Pakistani parental generation. Surveys revealed that by 2010, drug dealing and the attendant violence was regarded by local respondents as a major problem affecting Bradford’s Pakistani community. Having set the context, the chapter goes on to describe the day-to-day lives of young people caught up in this dangerous but potentially profitable business.

Part V: Gangs and the Justice System In Chapter 18, Policing UK Street Gangs, Tom Davies and Nigel South note that despite the growth of gang scholarship in the twentyfirst century, empirical research on the policing response in the UK is surprisingly sparse. Their chapter aims to help fill this knowledge gap, focusing on London and the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) to present critical insights regarding the processes and mechanisms which have combined to shape the MPS understanding of, and response to, gang-related criminality over the past decade. The chapter begins by providing a brief review of the origins and evolution of gang policing in the UK, before exploring strategic and intelligence developments such as the MPS Gangs Violence Matrix. Barriers to and benefits of current approaches are discussed in the context of the evolution of gang forms and fluid networks, and in some cases, the blurring of boundaries with organised crime. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the current landscape, the increased focus on exploitation and vulnerability, and the idea of a public health approach to violence reduction. In Chapter 19, Crown Prosecution Service Decision-Making and Gangs, Stephen Colman examines the legal issues related to the prosecution of gang-related offences in England and Wales. As there are no specific ‘gang’ offences, the focus of this chapter is on how the prosecution may present evidence that offences are gang-related and how the rules of evidence can be used to allow this to happen. It offers a brief overview of the role of the prosecutor in the adversarial legal system followed by an examination of why the prosecution, may wish to admit

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evidence to show that an offence was gang-related. The focus then shifts to three types of evidence which may be used to prove that there was a gang dimension to the offence, namely expert evidence, bad character evidence and social media evidence. Finally, some of the issues associated with introducing such evidence into the prosecution are considered. In Chapter 20, Gangs in Prisons, Dev Matra presents data collected from serving prisoners, the majority of whom were prison gang members. He found that most gang members he interviewed had ‘re-joined’ or re-formed their street gang upon entering custody. And that many gangs were being effectively ‘imported’ into prisons from the streets in the neighbourhoods serviced by the prisons. This illustrated the interconnectedness between the internal carceral space and its surrounding regions. Through conducting qualitative interviews, the study found these prisoners to have been affected by the conditions of their confinement and that violence, hyper-masculinity and conflict were amplified by imprisonment. He observes that violence learnt on the streets and in street gangs were often ‘imported’ into the penal complex. In Chapter 21, County Lines in Prisons, Kelly Gray, a Detective Inspector attached to the Eastern Regional Serious Organised Crime Unit (ERSOU) explains its role. The Unit is charged with identifying and disrupting organised criminals operating across the eastern region. The ERSOCU is one of ten ROCUs operating in England and Wales, providing specialist capability to tackle the increasingly complex threat posed by organised crime. Officers and staff in the unit tackle a range of crimes from child sexual exploitation and modern slavery to county drugs lines. Initially, interventions from ROCU’s provided support to local police services addressing conflicts between neighbourhood gangs, often related to drug dealing. As these networks developed, ROCU’s turned their attentions to County Lines and local organised crime networks. The chapter focuses upon case studies of exploitation from County Lines operating within the UK prison system and makes suggestions for disrupting exploitative County Lines practices and safeguarding the vulnerable.

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Part VI: Policy and Practice In Chapter 22, The English Street Gang and Government Policy, John Pitts outlines governmental responses to ‘gang’ and serious youth violence in the twenty-first century. He observes that although gangrelated knife and gun crime among children and young people of African Caribbean descent was rising rapidly in London from 2004, it was the murder of Rhys Jones, an 11 year-old White boy, in Liverpool, in August 2007 that caused Prime Minister Gordon Brown to launch the Tackling Gangs Action Programme (TGAP). Later, the 2011 riots triggered the Ending Gang and Youth Violence programme of 2012, initially targeting 30 areas and extended to a further 22 in 2016. Evaluations of the programme were equivocal but by now the government’s focus had shifted to child sexual and criminal exploitation and County Lines drug dealing, withdrawing funds from local authorities and handing over the responsibility to the National Crime Agency. Nonetheless, County Lines proliferated and knife crime soared, leading PM Theresa May to convene a Serious Youth Violence Summit in February 2019. Maintaining that we could not ‘arrest our way out of the problem’, May placed a requirement on health and welfare agencies to prioritise youth violence prevention. However, July 2019 saw the election of Boris Johnson and Home Secretary Priti Patel who promised more stop and searches, more police and more prison places. In Chapter 23, Youth Work and Gang Violence Reduction, Mike Seal and Pete Harris, draw upon the findings of a two-year European research project entitled ‘Responding to violence through youth work’. The project endeavoured to answer the question of how youth workers should respond to the violence involving young people that continues to challenge practitioners and policymakers. The project combined elements of critical theory, psychosocial criminology and applied existential philosophy to present a new model for responding meaningfully and effectively to these issues based on case studies and insider accounts generated through peer research. In Chapter 24, Safeguarding, Young People and Gangs, Isabelle Brodie explores how safeguarding policy and practice have been applied,

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and not applied, to the issue of youth violence in gangs and drug trafficking via County Lines, and the significance of this for the experience of young people, their families and the professionals who work with them. The chapter places the issue of gangs and County Lines within the policy discourse of ‘child exploitation’ which has gradually emerged over the past 20 years. It considers the extent to which this discourse serves to promote a safeguarding approach to the children and young people concerned, or whether it has generated a new set of difficulties. It will argue that understanding of this issue in the contexts of the lives of children, young people and their families has been constrained by the nature of the discourses surrounding young people in trouble of various kinds. These include assumptions relating to age, gender, race and ethnicity as well as the ‘blind spots’ that exist within the worlds of policy, practice and research conversations. These fissures are deeply rooted, she argues, and have historically been little recognised, far less overcome. In Chapter 25, The Premier League: Breaking the Cycle of Gang Violence, Christine Barter, Paul Hargreaves, Kelly Bracewell and John Pitts report on the findings of the BBC Children in Need and the Premier League Charitable Fund programme Breaking the Cycle of Youth Violence. The programme, was based in eight Premier League football clubs in England (Arsenal, Burnley, Crystal Palace, Everton, Newcastle United, Southampton, Stoke City and Tottenham Hotspur). It aimed to reduce youth violence in the communities in which Premier League football clubs operated. Each of the eight participating clubs had Club Community Organisations funded through the BCYV programme that undertook work with young people in their catchment area. This chapter is based on those elements of the programme which investigated the clubs responses to gang-involved young people in their area. In Chapter 26, Using Ex-gang Members as Peer Youth Workers, Junior Smart draws on a qualitative study which explored the experiences of those practically involved in peer and relational support with young adults mixed up in street gangs and the commissioners of their services. The study aimed to establish the benefits of using such an approach and the attitudes and experiences of the agencies commissioning the work of peer mentors. The chapter deals with the challenges confronting those

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involved in peer mentoring and the issues their involvement presents to the agencies in which, and with which, they work. In Chapter 27, Criminal and Sexual Exploitation in County Lines: Voices from Affected Communities, Paul Andell observes that although, as the Children’s Society Look Closer campaign, (2021) notes, everyone has a role to play in protecting children and vulnerable young people from abuse and exploitation, statutory partnerships like Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hubs and Crime and Disorder Partnerships have been slow to implement relevant interventions. Sometimes, he writes, their efforts are not helped by the growing numbers of ‘gang experts’ who frame interventions on the basis of dated understandings of the additional risks faced by socially vulnerable young people in the second decade of the twenty-first century. The chapter presents several case studies to illustrate the realities faced by young people who become associated with drug dealing gangs.

References Aldridge, J. & Medina, J. (2008). Youth gangs in an English city: Social exclusion, drugs and violence: Full Research Report ESRC End of Award Report, RES-000-23-0615. Swindon: ESRC. Alexander, C. (2008). (Re) thinking ‘gangs’. Runnymede trust perspectives, Runnymede Trust, London. Amnesty International. (2018). Trapped in the matrix: Secrecy, stigma, and bias in the Met’s Gangs Database Published by Amnesty International United Kingdom Section. Available at: https://www.amnesty.org.uk/files/ 2018-05/Trapped%20in%20the%20Matrix%20Amnesty%20report.pdf?lJS xllcKfkZgr4gHZsz0vW8JZ0W3V_PD (Accessed 22.11.20). Andell, P. & Pitts, J. (2018). The end of the line? The impact of county lines drug distribution on youth crime in a target destination, Youth & Policy, January. Ayling, J. (2011). Gang change and evolutionary theory, Crime, Law and Social Change 56 (1), 1–26.

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Beckett, H., Brodie, I., Factor, F., Melrose, M., Pearce, J., Pitts, J., Shuker, L., & Warrington, C. (2013). “It’s wrong…but you get used to it”. A qualitative study of gang-associated sexual violence towards, and exploitation of, young people in England . Children’s commissioner: University of Bedfordshire. Centre for Social Justice. (2009). Dying to Belong: An in-depth review of street gangs in Britain. London: Centre for Social Justice. Cohen, S. (1972). Folk devils & moral panics: The creation of the mods & rockers, MacGibbon & Kee. Densley, J. (2013). How Gangs Work: An ethnography of youth violence, Palgrave. Gunter, A. (2017). Race, gangs and youth violence: Policy, prevention and policing. Gordon, R. M. (2000). ‘Criminal business organizations, street gangs and ’wanna-be’ groups: A Vancouver perspective’, Canadian Journal of Criminology, 42(1), 39–60. Hallsworth, S., & Young, T. (2008). Gang talk and gang talkers: A critique. Crime, media, culture, 4 (2), 175–195. Hallsworth, S. (2014). The gang and beyond: Interpreting violent street worlds punishment & society 16(5), 598–600. Harding, S. (2014). The Street Casino: Survival in violent street gangs, Bristol, Policy Press. Melrose, M., & Pearce, J. (2013). Critical Perspectives on Child Sexual Exploitation and Related Trafficking by, Basingstoke Macmillan. National Crime Agency. (2016). County lines gang violence, exploitation & drug supply. National Briefing Report. London: National Crime Agency. National Crime Agency. (2017). County lines gang violence, exploitation & drug supply. National Briefing Report. London: National Crime Agency. Pitts, J. (2016). Critical realism and gang violence. In What is to Be Done About Crime and Punishment? (pp. 57–88). Palgrave Macmillan, London. Simon, J. (2007). Governing through crime how the war on crime transformed american democracy and created a culture of fear. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sturrock, R., & Holmes, L. (2015). Running the Risks: The links between gang involvement and young people going missing, London, Catch 22 and Missing People. Williams, P., & Clarke, B. (2016). Dangerous associations: Joint enterprise, gangs and racism. London: Centre for crime and Justice Studies.

Part I The Evolution of the UK Street Gang

2 Theorising Gangs: Towards a Critical Realist Moral Theory of Youth Gangs Paul Andell and David James

Introduction: Getting Real About Gangs, Again The purpose of this chapter is to explore how Critical Realist philosophy can be fruitfully used to support the development of policies to mitigate the problem of gang crime.

P. Andell (B) · D. James University of Suffolk, Ipswich, UK e-mail: [email protected] D. James e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Andell and J. Pitts (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Youth Gangs in the UK , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99658-1_2

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Critical Realist Philosophy and Gangs Critical Realism is a philosophical system developed in the UK by philosopher, Roy Bhaskar (1986), in collaboration with a number of British social theorists. Critical realism is a branch of philosophy that distinguishes between a ‘real’ world and an ‘observable’ world. As the name suggests, the ‘observable’ world can be seen and experienced directly by the observer. However what they call the ‘real world’ consists of the unobservable forces which lie behind, shape and propel observable events. Sociologists make a similar distinction between what they call ‘first order constructs’, the implicit theories about their own activities held by social actors as they go about their day-to-day lives, and ‘second order constructs’ utilised by social scientists which endeavour to understand the social economic and cultural structures which shape and give meaning to these ‘first order constructs’. Critical realists maintain that these unobservable forces can be inferred from observable phenomena. To use an analogy from the natural sciences, when natural scientists conduct experiments, as often as not, they infer underlying, and unobservable, mechanisms, structures and laws to explain their results. Critical Realism was first applied systematically to Criminology by UK Left Realist criminologist Roger Matthews (2014). Subsequently, this approach has been applied to gangs research (Andell, 2015; Pitts, 2016) as a response to the perceived shortcomings of gang studies, (cf the UK gangs thesis debate, Hallsworth, 2013; Pitts, 2011). This debate was essentially a debate between those who believed that the unwarranted focus on youth gangs in the early twenty-first century was a product of a moral panic and those who maintained that the emergence of violent street gangs on UK streets was a new and pressing problem caused in large part by the worsening social and economic predicament of some young people and the globalisation of both ‘gangsta culture’ and the illicit drugs business (Andell, 2019).

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Is It a Gang? It’s a gang, not a government. (Alan Bennett Diary 13th December 2019, London Review of Books, January 2020, the morning after the Conservative victory in the UK general election)

If a lot of groups can be candidates for being called a gang, from governments to street collectives, it is also true, as Thrasher (1936, p. 5) observed, that ‘no two gangs are just alike’. This poses two problems for the study of gangs, the first of definition and second of variation. It is only in a specific context that particular gangs can be understood, not as a universal standardised phenomenon with a standard set of characteristics. What gangs do appear to share however are the circumstances of their emergence. So, while Alan Bennett’s statement is amusing, the term gang is mostly used to describe the organisational form and related behaviours of a group with little power and relatively low status when they band together in search of identity, status and power. Gangs exist as either a looser or more tightly knit organisation or structure in different, often violent, historical contexts. This is nicely summarised by Horne Carter (2021, p. 16) based on his research in Central America: One consistent commonality gangs share perhaps the world over is “threshold” relation to state power. Gangs exist at the threshold between law and community, where law is inconstant and selectively applied. Gangs are social worlds that take shape from within the margins of the state, shielding themselves and sometimes the broader community from economic and physical violence.

In the USA, Hagedorn (2008) emphasises the anger and despair felt by many young men who go on to become involved with gangs and the alternative economy of drugs due to the perceived unwillingness or inability of the state to improve their lives. The moral dimension of helping humans live the good life is always lurking in the background and must, this chapter argues, be a key part of what research into gangs engages with. The critical realist tradition provides useful questions with which to explore the moral dimension, the structural dimension and the

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human consequences of gangs. In order to analyse gangs, we need an understanding of the power dynamics in which they are formed and how this dynamic impacts upon the meaning of gangs both for gang members and those responding to gangs. The ‘threshold’ relationship to state power provides a helpful starting point. It allows us to move away from an approach based on Thrasher’s observations that no two gangs are alike, what Grossberg (2010)called radical contextualism, and this makes it difficult to deliver on the promise that a theory should either explain something or provide a model of something by identifying its key features in order to provide some analytical grip to inform policy. Broadly, historical context holds the key to understanding differences between gangs in San Salvador, Los Angeles, Chicago, Lagos, Glasgow or London, through consideration of the urban environment and how state politics shapes the environment for the emergence of gangs and limits or enables progressive policy responses.

Knowing and Defining We know quite a lot about gangs, from ethnographic studies to those that focus upon (sub)cultures and routes into and out of gangs, to studies based on large administrative data sets (Akhtar & South, 2000; Andell, 2019; Andell & Pitts, 2009, 2013; Ariza et al., 2014; Bennett & Holloway, 2004; Bullock & Tilley, 2002; Coomber & Moyle, 2018; Densley, 2012; Hallsworth & Young, 2004; Harding, 2014; Hesketh & Robinson, 2019; McLean et al., 2018; National Gang Centre, 2012; NCA, 2016, 2017, 2018; Palmer & Pitts, 2006; Pitts, 2007; Windle & Briggs, 2015; Young et al., 2007). Gangs create and leave traces when they interact with other non-gang individuals, community groups or state agencies. Gangs are known about either when gang-like behaviour is observable from the different perspectives of victims of gang violence, gang members, the media, the police or the subjective experience of gang members. However, our knowledge of gangs is necessarily incomplete because of the necessary secrecy which cloaks their activities. Nonetheless, we know something about gangs

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through studies (ethnographic or survey-based) or through interested parties in the criminal justice and other related state agencies (National Crime Agency or local authority Youth Offending Teams in England for example) and the media. As most gang research focuses on criminal activity there is an interplay between victims, perpetrators, state agencies, media interest or public opinion. It is here that ‘problem streams’ are generated and to which, usually short-term policy responds. This interplay of the network of researchers, institutions and actors not only define the actions of gangs but in doing so shape the nature of gangs. Being specific about the level of social reality being discussed is important to providing an adequate theory for analysis (Crossley, 2021) that extends beyond individual action. Anything common between different gang behaviours and contexts should show up as a pattern and hence something that can be analysed at an institutional or structural level. This real (re)construction of collective subjectivity (Vandenberghe, 2018) can allow for the study of similarity between corresponding features or instances (homologies) between different structured gang contexts.

What Is a Gang? from Structures to Borders The first theoretical task is the tricky one of definition and how a gang might be conceptualised, then theorised. According to van Gemert (2005, p. 148), a street gang can be defined as ‘any durable, streetoriented youth group whose involvement in illegal activity is part of their group identity’. The emphasis is on durable, street-oriented, youth broadly defined, and illegal as criminal. This commonly used and cited Eurogang definition (van Gemert, 2005; van Gemert & Weerman, 2015) has the plausibility of positing gangs as an enduring structure with certain characteristics but does little to distinguish the different aspects of structure involved that necessarily shape the pathway of gangs in any given social context. It is worth noting that even the critiques of standard gang definitions always have something fairly close to this definition at heart. For example, Fraser and Hagedorn see a gang as a ‘street-based group’, referring to ‘alienated groups socialised by the streets or prisons not conventional

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institutions’ (Hagedorn, 2008, p. 31). These characteristics provide the basis for a realist approach that identifies a reality at the structural and meaning levels over and above the understandings of gang members with their own definition of their issues and situations. According to this line of argument, street gangs can be investigated utilising a ‘strategic essentialism’ which recognises the socio-structural preconditions of gang involvement alongside the sometimes fragmented realities and understandings of those involved. Here, the ontological premise is that the actions, thoughts and dispositions of socially situated actors (Vandenberghe, 2018) provide entry points to understand the deeper realities or causal mechanisms of gangs (Andell, 2021; Go, 2016). Gang members and those interacting with them act within an already existing set of structural and historical arrangements that delimits the range of possibilities for action and change through structural elaboration (Archer, 1982). Pitts (2019) captures some of these transitions through time in his detailed accounts of English gang evolution charting the changes of gang form in London and Manchester over a period of around 25 years. Gangs also have the interesting feature of breaking down and disappearing, something that rarely happens with the structures usually studied in the modernist account of social change through specialisation and structural elaboration. Fraser and Hagedorn (2018) argue that if there are any consistencies regarding gangs globally, it is their ability to adapt and change and that historical context is a key determining factor in the form they take and potential pathways for change. Context really does matter. What we know is dependent on the observer and the lens of observation to generate ‘partial but objective truths’ about the social world that relate to specific layers or levels of reality (Andell, 2021; Go, 2016). It is not therefore in doubt that there are social groups called ‘gangs’ in different social contexts involved in sometimes similar, sometimes different, activities emerging from sometimes similar sometimes different historical conditions. These groups are enduring and identifiable as organisations or at least quasi-organisations. In the literature, there is a common assumption that the same types of things are being discussed in different contexts but associated with a different range of actual and possible actions many of which are shaped by the interface with the state.

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This ‘border work’, often taking place at the threshold to the state, is framed through the formation of us and them identities and relations with other groups. The border work might also involve secrecy in order to evade interactions with other, often state or state linked, organisations or institutions. At a general level, the process of gang formation and change involves in-groups and out-groups shaping relations with other gangs and other often state organisations (Vasquez et al., 2015). It can also be seen that the borders provide the possibility for changes to take place (Densley, 2012).

Where Is a Gang? There are plenty of place-based studies, mainly in cities but also now in smaller towns through the stretching of places where gang-related business is carried out. The time space compression (Harvey, 1990) brought about by Globalisation and the use of digital technologies affects both legitimate and illegitimate markets and has driven some gangs involved in drug dealing to seek out new market innovations locally. With these pressures, the form of the gang changes and they become perhaps much less street-based than previously (Whittaker et al., 2017). More recent evidence shows an interface or at least an organisational blurring between street gangs (as they become less street and more business) and local organised crime groups (Andell, 2019) linked to changes to supply and distribution in the UK drugs middle market. The place of gangs is therefore less completely on the street, though it still matters, and now has the added layer of a range of networks. The traces of the network allow us to see what a complex layered organisation of the gang might be like. A gang can therefore be viewed as a process that has many sides and places of interaction, it is also an assemblage of human and non-human actors such as mobile phones and social media (Latour, 2005).

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Gangs, Critical Realism and Morality There is an implicit morality in most work that aims to understand and provide some evidence for ways to intervene and reduce the human costs of youth gangs. The approach we seek to adopt draws on the philosophical work of Roy Bhaskar ([1986] 2009) and his human emancipation project in the social sciences. Previously, Andell (2019) indicated a moral level to the work exploring gangs and this chapter develops this and considers the importance of context by drawing on the idea of judgemental rationality that considers the values of people who are surviving in difficult circumstances and those who respond to them or who may be professionally charged to reduce harms and act in the interests of justice. This involves questions of reflexivity and responsibility alongside a more developed account of context. In other words, there is potential to allow for both morality and reason in policy decisions.

The Problem of Crime We cannot duck the fact that Gangs are a problem, a very real problem, in many urban areas of the UK. Gangs have recently been shown to be present and real in terms of their effects on coerced, conscripted or willing gang members and the increasing number of places where they are present or where they ‘take care of business’ in all its forms. The moral dimension is preventing harm to vulnerable populations and trying to encourage better lives through state action to impact or intervene on gangs in relation to the physical, social or mental harms that are involved. There are still social scientists who argue that crime is a social construct, deploying the naïve argument that crime is fake or a mirage created by the powerful to dupe people into agreeing with tougher state responses. However, in the main, policy relevant academic responses to crime is a debate that has been won by (critical) realists (Matthews (2014); Pitts (2007); liberal structuralists (Bourgois, 2003; Wacquant, 2009; Wilson, 1987) and those who are often disparagingly called positivists (Farrington & Welsh, 2008). That gangs are just mythical beasts in the minds of academics and the violence-hungry media is simply not

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true. They are real in their effects, particularly in terms of violence, coercion and fear they generate. Even if there is a debate about the best definition and where a particular group might sit on the continuum of deviant youth subcultures; street gang, local organised crime group, organised crime network, and the important relationship to historical context (Andell, 2019). What is however not true is that the gang is a simple evil and generalised form of youth crime with a standard mode of operation or structure. The best case for critical realism in criminology comes from Roger Matthews in his book Realist Criminology (2014). Matthews (2014, p. 27) argues that: These are criminologists who have a left social democratic orientation and whose objective is to develop an evidence-based approach to crime and punishment in a conceptually coherent and practically effective way.

To the forefront here is the moral and political approach to crime and punishment. Given that the negative impacts of gangs are primarily viewed through crime and punishment, the moral nature of the analysis and response to crime does matter. However, the wider questions of power need integrating into this approach and some of the key points by those who argue that gangs are a problem and affect state interventions in the lives of young marginalised people (Hallsworth, 2013). Any realist approach that also aims to answer the important philosophical questions of critical realism needs to account for different levels of gangs and the powerful role of structure and context as setting the stage for action and change. We have here the embodied habitual dispositions of young people living in relatively deprived urban areas or disaffected rural ones, the historical context that shapes the arena for action at the structural material level as well as the ideological level, the interface with other organisations and structures such as the state, other gangs and importantly for recent changes in British gang links to organised crime groups, the changing drug middle-market organisation (with its own difficulties of definition and knowledge) and the material and technical organisation of drug distribution and demand.

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Knowledge Production and Problems Arising from a Partial Picture A small case study of the implications of partially knowing and trying to deal with gangs by state agencies in Britain is the potentially problematic use of network ideas and techniques to gain a picture of individuals involved in gangs until recently called the Gangs Matrix. This matrix was a controversial set of practices that attempts to responding to gang problems by identifying individuals with possible links to gangs (Williams, 2018). This is a very thin ontology which only recognises individuals making up gangs and not viewing any structural level of the gang and its context. The Matrix arrived in 2012 shortly following the English Riots of 2011 and was used to identify and share information about individuals who are deemed to be linked to gangs and who pose a risk or thought to be at risk of harm. The information is gathered through a range of police and institutional sources linked to local government welfare duties. However, given the way individuals were allocated to the matrix and the practices involved in these assessments, there was a strong likelihood of racial discrimination. The Matrix has been described by the Institute of Race Relations (Bridges, 2015) as institutional racism in practice. According to Amnesty International UK (2018), 78.2% of 3,422 people then included on the Metropolitan Police Matrix were classified as black and a further 8.7% from other minority ethnic communities which shows disproportional representation of black young men. Often intelligence is gleaned from multi-agency partnership meetings, much to the quiet discomfort of other professionals involved. During these meetings, young people thought to be at risk or who pose a risk are discussed by various professionals who raise concerns and highlight protective factors. In order to overcome institutional racist assumptions in knowledge production regarding gangs, practical and theoretical changes need to be brought about. Thinking about wider questions of power and the different layers of reality can help with informing the practice of strategy or strategy as action (Andell, 2019).

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Power Sources and Balances If a gang matrix can be problematic, partial and discriminatory, the assumption of the stability of gangs is also a problem. In longitudinal studies from cities in the USA, gang involvement is usually temporary and lasts for less than one year for the majority depending on the extent of gang embeddedness (Pyrooz et al., 2013). Pyrooz et al. (2013) also note that only 22% of gang members remained at the end of a 5-year period. In the UK, there is reported transitioning of some street gangs into Local Organised Crime groups (Andell, 2020) which suggest for some, there is later onset of offending with protracted involvement in more organised crime networks (Pitts et al., 2017). This suggests that even if there is considerable change in gang membership, there is a lasting organisation separate from its members that takes the structural but changing form of the gang. This chimes with Hagedorn’s (2008) institutionalised gang: In other words, to say that a gang has institutionalised is to say that it persists despite changes in leadership (e.g., killed, incarcerated, or ‘matured out’), has organisation complex enough to sustain multiple roles of its members(including roles for women and children), can adapt to changing environments without dissolving (e.g., as a result of police repression), fulfils some needs of its community (economic, security, services) and organises a distinct outlook of its members (in rituals, symbols and rules). The gang as an organisational form has a key role in enabling violence and criminality for members and victims in the places where they operate. Some of the boundaries between member and non-members may be considered on an embeddedness continuum, but the gang even as a porous organisation with high membership turnover is exerting power and this power is in many contexts in opposition to the internal pacification of a given territory as a key function of a democratic nation-state. Gangs create serious social and political problems or problem streams that for most researchers and interested parties is the responsibility of the state to deal with. Gangs therefore pose a challenge to the state in particular areas. This level of what we might broadly call social power is where the political and policy action is, and it is in most situations one of the state needing

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to assert its power in places it does not quite control and to prioritise these interventions. If there are 4 major sources of power the ideological, economic, military and political (IEMP model), where power is defined as ‘the capacity to get others to do things that otherwise they would not do’ (Mann, 2012, p. 1), it is the social capital of the gang which is its main resource. Social capital takes two forms, bonding social capital and bridging social capital. Mørch and Andersen (2012) distinguish between the social and societal functions of gangs. Gangs are ‘social’ to the extent that their activities ensure mutual support in vulnerable contexts and maintain social networks. In effect, they offer their members ‘bonding social capital’ which enables them to ‘get by’. But the ‘societal’ aspects of gangs provide ‘bridging social capital’ (Putnam, 1995) which offers young people with limited prospects in the conventional world a pathway to a potential brighter future. In a situation of unavailable or unattainable legitimate opportunities, a structured Class-A drug dealing organisation may offer an entrée to a potentially lucrative career in the illicit economy (Harding, 2014). The source of power in the bonding and bridging social capital is broadly ideological and economic with an instrumental or expressive role for violence. These strategies are all much less organised or successful even in dangerous neighbourhoods than adherence to widespread values and acceptance of the legitimacy of the state in most areas of life. Only states can legitimately try and get things done. The best policy is for states to enable more legitimate forms of social and societal capital to emerge. In some situations where gangs and organised crime merges with aspects of the state, then more serious endemic violence and corruption takes place, all of course within a particular historical context. It is the interface between gangs and the state where many of the consequences of gangs are played out. Even the sharp interface between gangs and prison officers has the possibility and maybe necessity for corruption. Where gangs have tried to wield political power, this has often stopped at the interface between the state and criminal justice systems (Brotherton, 2008; Brotherton & Barrios, 2004). Gangs not just the individuals within them are power containers with different amounts of ideological, economic, military and political resource (with the economic increasingly to the fore and the political

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in any institutional sense at the bottom), there must also be some level of individual agency, reflection and decision-making, as most young people do not join gangs and many do not stay for long, but gangs still persist for longer periods than an analysis based at just the individual member level might suggest. They are therefore not fatalistic destinies of constant conjunction but shaped by risk factors operating in an open structured environment which may be activated or not dependent on the impact of structural vindictiveness (Young et al., 2007) and availability of convincing socio-technical assemblages to provide the bridging capital of a brighter future (Andell & Pitts, 2019). One illustrative tension in the literature is between the individual level change that causes one to leave a gang (maturing out, spiritual enlightenment, wider account of reflexivity) and the more deterministic social factors that lead to increased prevalence of gang membership such as hyper-consumerism, relative deprivation, educational failure or impulsive behaviour (FrisbyOsman & Wood, 2020). There is a tension between conceptions of gangs as holders and creators of meaning and solidarity often in particular ethnic, historical and geographical contexts (Fraser & Hagedorn, 2018) such as Chicago and Glasgow, and those that are coming to the forefront more recently about gangs as primarily economic units primarily interacting with the sale of illegal drugs (Coomber & Moyle, 2018; Whittaker, Densley, Cheston, et al., 2020). Gangs are deeply involved in power internally and externally and the form that power takes will be shaped by the socio-technical relations any gang is involved in. Whether a gang is primarily involved in acquisitive crimes related to theft, or drug supply, or simply hanging out and killing time will shape the organisational form and the power relations and hence morality. Developing certain organisational and technological arrangements can give rise to different forms of power and politics and thus shape morality (Winner, 1980). This suggests that political, moral and organisational form emerges out of the practical necessity and opportunity structures of the situation. Arising out of consideration of the relationship between the sociotechnical situation and the inherent morality of the organisational form of a gang is a conundrum. According to Elias (2000), if many gangs move

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to more mediated forms of communication and interaction (Whittaker, Densley, & Moser, 2020) that have extended chains of interdependency, there should be an increase in self-control and a decrease in arbitrary violence. However, there are important signs that violence is maintained and also that in doing the business of drug supply (Andell & Pitts, 2018; Harding, 2020), there will be a search for situations with high gradients of power where gangs will identify and co-opt vulnerable young people. So the criminal exploitation of vulnerable young people requires the operation of a particular power gradient between exploiter and the exploited. At this point, the moral vision of child protection and the guardianship of the state enters (Firmin, 2020; Wroe, 2021). Child protection must be considered as the operation of and campaigning for a bureaucratic state power to level up power differentials by making interactions more bureaucratic and formal and symmetrical. The aim is to keep the arbitrariness of the street and sudden and violent emanations of power out of these links and ideally to ensure these sorts of links do not take place. This is one of the prime moral and power interfaces between gangs and the state. Various discourses such as for example using an appropriate public health model are ways of making the case for more state intervention to change these harmful power dynamics (See Pitts this volume).

Conclusions and Realist Implications for Policy To the critical realist, gangs exist in a social reality wherein sociostructural, material and cultural factors are imposed (Bhaskar & Danermark, 2006); multiple models of gangs are aimed at different levels of analysis, and each provides valid information for ascertaining objectivity. A critical realist approach to gangs (Pitts, 2016) assumes that unobservable structures (patterns of relations and roles) cause observable events (gang behaviour). This suggests a reality of gangs independent of individual ideas about them but is set in an approach in which theory is foregrounded. This approach encompasses a stratified ontology outlined above. But the layers can exist together and seem incompatible. In the same way, it can be Monday and January and summer in the UK but

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winter in Australia. So we can have different layers to build up a better understanding of gangs. Between the levels or layers, there must be some fluidity if we are to remain true to Archer’s (2010, p. 273) observation that, the influences of the social order upon agency should not be located fully within agents or entirely outside them.

A critical realism of gangs highlights the importance of specificity within the geographical, historical, social and cultural contextualisation of the production of knowledge (Andell, 2021). In this framework, our theories about the world are situated and always partial. Arguably at this moment in time, our best ideas about the underlying causal forces which precipitate gangs involve social structures which have push and pull factors acting in conjunction with culturally enmeshed individuals with limited choices. The pushes of social exclusionary factors such as institutional racism and unemployment act in consort with pull factors of excessive consumerism (Andell, 2019). The unintended structural effects of an unequal society is certain forms of gang-related criminality and these take place in most countries from the Scandinavian with their biker gangs, the unequal, racially divided and fully weaponised USA with a consequence of much higher levels of social harm and violence, or those in South Africa, Nigeria or Sierra Leone (Hagedorn, 2008). Gangs as identity units and criminal vehicles are here to stay in some form or other and it is the moral imperative of policy to reduce harm from these emerging forms of entrenched problems.

References Akhtar, S., & South, N. (2000). Hidden from Heroin’s History: Heroin use and dealing within an English Asian community—A case study. Crime Prevention Studies, 11, 153–178. Amnesty International UK. (2018). Trapped in the matrix. https://www.amn esty.org.uk/files/reports/Trapped%2520in%2520the%2520Matrix%252 0Amnesty%2520report.pdf

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Andell, P. (2015). Thinking about gangs (Unpublished Doctoral Thesis) University of Bedfordshire. Andell, P. (2019). Thinking Seriously about Gangs: Towards a critical realist approach. Springer International Publishing AG. http://ebookcentral.pro quest.com/lib/ucsl/detail.action?docID=5771093 Andell, P. (2020). Gangs, violence and county lines. In The handbook of collective violence (pp. 198–208). Routledge. Andell, P. (2021). Utilizing Southern Criminology in the Global North. In Routledge International Handbook of Critical Gang Studies. Routledge. Andell, P., & Pitts, J. (2009). West Yorkshire gangs study. A Report for West Yorkshire Police. Andell, P., & Pitts, J. (2013). Developing the Lambeth gangs strategy. A Report for the Lambeth Gangs Unit. Andell, P., & Pitts, J. (2018). The end of the line? The impact of county lines drug distribution on youth crime in a target destination. Youth & Policy. Andell, P., & Pitts, J. (2019). Preventing the violent and sexual victimisation of vulnerable gang-involved and gang-affected children and young people in Ipswich (1913160033). Archer, M. S. (1982). Morphogenesis versus structuration: On combining structure and action. The British Journal of Sociology, 33(4), 455–483. Archer, M. S. (2010). Routine, reflexivity, and realism. Sociological Theory, 28(3), 272–303. Ariza, J. J. M., Cebulla, A., Aldridge, J., Shute, J., & Ross, A. (2014). Proximal adolescent outcomes of gang membership in England and Wales. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 51(2), 168–199. Bennett, T., & Holloway, K. (2004). Gang membership, drugs and crime in the UK. British Journal of Criminology, 44 (3), 305–323. Bhaskar, R. ([1986] 2009). Scientific realism and human emancipation. Routledge. Bhaskar, R., & Danermark, B. (2006). Metatheory, Interdisciplinarity and disability research: A critical realist perspective. Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research, 8(4), 278–297. https://doi.org/10.1080/150174106009 14329 Bourgois, P. I. (2003). In search of respect: Selling crack in El Barrio (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. Bridges, L. (2015). The met gangs matrix—Institutional racism in action. Institute of Race Relations. Retrieved July 10 from https://irr.org.uk/article/themet-gangs-matrix-institutional-racism-in-action/

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Brotherton, D., & Barrios, L. (2004). The almighty Latin King and Queen Nation: Street politics and the transformation of a New York City gang. Columbia University Press. http://www.degruyter.com/doi/book/10.7312/ brot11418 Brotherton, D. C. (2008). Beyond social reproduction: Bringing resistance back in gang theory. Theoretical Criminology, 12(1), 55–77. https://doi.org/ 10.1177/1362480607085794 Bullock, K., & Tilley, N. (2002). Shootings, gangs and violent incidents in Manchester. Coomber, R., & Moyle, L. (2018). The changing shape of street-level heroin and crack supply in England: Commuting, holidaying and cuckooing drug dealers across ‘county lines.’ The British Journal of Criminology, 58(6), 1323– 1342. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azx068 Crossley, N. (2021). A dependent structure of interdependence: Structure and agency in relational perspective. Sociology, 56 (1), 166–182. https://doi.org/ 10.1177/00380385211020231 Densley, J. A. (2012). The organisation of London’s street gangs. Global Crime, 13(1), 42–64. https://doi.org/10.1080/17440572.2011.632497 Elias, N. (2000). The civilizing process: Sociogenetic and psychogenetic investigations (Rev. ed.). Blackwell. Farrington, D. P., & Welsh, B. C. (2008). Saving children from a life of crime: Early risk factors and effective interventions. Oxford University Press. https:// books.google.co.uk/books?id=UfYKaSjW9aIC Firmin, C. (2020). Contextual safeguarding and child protection: Rewriting the rules. Taylor & Francis. Fraser, A., & Hagedorn, J. M. (2018). Gangs and a global sociological imagination. Theoretical Criminology, 22(1), 42–62. https://doi.org/10.1177/136 2480616659129 Frisby-Osman, S., & Wood, J. L. (2020). Rethinking how we view gang members: An examination into affective, behavioral, and mental health predictors of UK gang-involved youth. Youth Justice, 20 (1–2), 93–112. https://doi.org/10.1177/1473225419893779 Go, J. (2016). Globalizing sociology, turning south. Perspectival realism and the southern standpoint. Sociologica, 10 (2). Grossberg, L. (2010). Cultural studies in the future tense. Duke University Press. Harvey, D. (1990). The condition of postmodernity: An enquiry into the origins of cultural change. Blackwell. Hagedorn, J. (2008). A world of gangs : Armed young men and gangsta culture. University of Minnesota Press.

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Hallsworth, S. (2013). The gang and beyond: Interpreting violent street worlds. Springer. Hallsworth, S., & Young, T. (2004). Getting real about gangs. Criminal Justice Matters, 55 (1), 12–13. Harding, S. (2014). Street Casino: Survival in violent street gangs. Policy Press. Harding, S. (2020). Getting to the point? Reframing narratives on knife crime. Youth Justice, 20 (1–2), 31–49. https://doi.org/10.1177/1473225419893781 Hesketh, R. F., & Robinson, G. (2019). Grafting: “the boyz” just doing business? Deviant entrepreneurship in street gangs. Safer Communities. Horne Carter, J. (2021). States of emergency: Gangs, Benjamin, and the challenge to modern sovereignty. In D. Brotherton & R. J. Gude (Eds.), Routledge international handbook of critical gang studies. Routledge. Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-networktheory. Oxford University Press. http://uos.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http:// www.vlebooks.com/vleweb/product/openreader?id=SuffolkUni&isbn=978 0191531262&uid=^u Mann, M. (2012). The sources of social power: Volume 4, globalizations, 1945– 2011. Cambridge University Press. Matthews, R. (2014). Realist criminology. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/ 10.1057/9781137445711 McLean, R., Densley, J. A., & Deuchar, R. (2018). Situating gangs within Scotland’s illegal drugs market(s). Trends in Organized Crime, 21(2), 147– 171. Mørch, S., & Andersen, H. (2012). Becoming a gang member: Youth life and gang youth. Online Submission, 2(9), 506–514. National Gang Centre. (2012). National youth gang survey analysis. Retrieved July 10 from https://nationalgangcenter.ojp.gov/survey-analysis NCA. (2016). County lines gang violence, exploitation & drug supply 2016 . N. C. Agency. https://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/who-we-are/public ations/15-county-lines-gang-violence-exploitation-and-drug-supply-2016 NCA. (2017). County lines gang violence, exploitation & drug supply 2017 . N. C. Agency. https://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/who-we-are/public ations/234-county-lines-violen-ce-exploitation-drug-supply-2017 NCA. (2018). County lines gang violence, exploitation & drug supply 2018. N. C. Agency. https://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/who-we-are/public ations/257-county-lines-drug-supply-vulnerability-and-harm-2018 Palmer, S., & Pitts, J. (2006). ‘Othering’ the brothers: Black youth, racial solidarity and gun crime.

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Pitts, J. (2007). Reluctant gangsters: Youth gangs in Waltham Forest. http://static. walthamforest.gov.uk/sp/documents/reluctant-gangsters.pdf Pitts, J. (2011). Mercenary territory: Are youth gangs really a problem, In B. goldson, (Ed.), Youth in crisis: Gangs territoriality and violence. Routledge. Pitts, J. (2016). Critical realism and gang violence. In R. Matthews (Ed.), What is to be done about crime and punishment? (pp. 57–88). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57228-8_4 Pitts, J. (2019). The evolution of the English street gang. Safer Communities. Pitts, J., Hope, T., Hurley, M., & McGibbon, I. (2017). Preventing organised crime (1911168053). Putnam, R. D. (1995). Tuning in, tuning out: The strange disappearance of social capital in America. PS: Political science & politics, 28(4), 664–683. Pyrooz, D. C., Sweeten, G., & Piquero, A. R. (2013). Continuity and change in gang membership and gang embeddedness. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 50 (2), 239–271. https://doi.org/10.1177/002242781143 4830 Thrasher, F. M. (1936). The gang: A study of 1,313 gangs in Chicago. Chicago University Press. van Gemert, F. (2005). Youth groups and gangs in Amsterdam: A pretest of the Eurogang expert survey. In S. H. Decker & F. M. Weerman (Eds.), European street gangs and troublesome youth groups (Vol. 3). Rowman Altamira. van Gemert, F., & Weerman, F. M. (2015). Understanding European gangs. In The handbook of gangs (pp. 503–519). https://doi.org/10.1002/978111872 6822.ch27 Vandenberghe, F. (2018). Principles of reconstructive social theory. In Critical realism, history, and philosophy in the social sciences. Emerald Publishing Limited. Vasquez, E. A., Wenborne, L., Peers, M., Alleyne, E., & Ellis, K. (2015). Any of them will do: In-group identification, out-group entitativity, and gang membership as predictors of group-based retribution. Aggressive Behavior, 41(3), 242–252. Wacquant, L. (2009). Punishing the poor: The neoliberal government of social insecurity. Duke University Press. Whittaker, A., Cheston, L., Tyrell, T., Higgins, M., Felix-Baptiste, C., & Havard T (2017). From postcodes to profits: How youth gangs have changed in waltham forest. South Bank University. Whittaker, A., Densley, J., Cheston, L., Tyrell, T., Higgins, M., Felix-Baptiste, C., & Havard, T. (2020). Reluctant gangsters revisited: The evolution of

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gangs from postcodes to profits. European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research, 26 (1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10610-019-09408-4 Whittaker, A., Densley, J., & Moser, K. S. (2020). No two gangs are alike: The digital divide in street gangs’ differential adaptations to social media. Computers in Human Behavior, 110. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2020. 106403 Williams, P. (2018). Being matrixed: The (over) policing of gang suspects in London. Wilson, W. J. (1987). The truly disadvantaged: The inner city, the underclass, and public policy. University of Chicago Press. Windle, J., & Briggs, D. (2015). ‘It’s like working away for two weeks’: The harms associated with young drug dealers commuting from a saturated London drug market. Crime Prevention and Community Safety, 17 (2), 105–119. Winner, L. (1980). Do artifacts have politics? Daedalus, 109 (1), 121–136. http://www.jstor.org.uos.idm.oclc.org/stable/20024652 Wroe, L. E. (2021). Young people and “county lines”: A contextual and social account. Journal of Children’s Services. Young, T., Fitzgerald, M., Hallsworth, S., & Joseph, I. (2007). Groups, gangs and weapons: A Report for the Youth Justice Board of England and Wales.

3 Reluctant Gangsters Revisited Andrew Whittaker and Tirion Harvard

Introduction In the UK, there has been considerable controversy about the existence and nature of street gangs. In 2007, Pitts (2007, 2008) published the first of what has become a wave of UK gang studies (Andell & Pitts, 2017, 2018; Densley, 2012, 2013; Deuchar, 2009; Harding, 2014; McLean, 2017; Whittaker et al., 2018, 2020) that have marked a growth in interest in gangs (Andell, 2019). Early debates focused upon whether gangs were a response to inner city poverty and structural disadvantage (Pitts, 2008, 2012, 2016) or a social construction based upon media portrayals of young people, particularly young black people, in negative ways (Hallsworth, 2013; Hallsworth & Young, 2008). Pitts’ study A. Whittaker (B) · T. Harvard London South Bank University, London, UK A. Whittaker London South Bank University, London, UK

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provided a clear baseline for future gang studies and he responded to criticisms of unguarded ‘gang talk’ by highlighting how academics who underplayed the harm identified by victims, families and youth workers were acting as ‘reluctant criminologists’, refusing to transform private troubles into public issues (Pitts, 2012). The chapter presents the results of study (Whittaker et al., 2018, 2020) of gangs in a London borough that is a ten-year follow-up to the original classic study (Pitts, 2007, 2008) undertaken in the same area. Many gang studies have focused upon the level of individual gang members rather than the whole gang, have been cross-sectional, are timebounded and are rarely replicated. Consequently, capturing the process of how gangs evolve has been challenging. The current study offers a rare opportunity to study gangs within a specific territory over two time periods, ten years apart. It contributes to the emerging literature on the nature and extent of gangs in the United Kingdom by investigating the extent to which there are similarities or differences in street gangs in the area studied by Pitts and explore how gangs appear to have changed in the past 10 years.

Background to the Study The London Borough of Waltham Forest is situated in the northeast of London and covers an area of 15 square miles. With a population of approximately 277,000 and an estimated 53% of its residents from minority ethnic backgrounds, Waltham Forest is one of the most diverse areas of the UK (LBWF, 2020). The number of working aged residents in employment is 74%, and more than 9 out of 10 enterprises in the borough employ fewer than 10 people (LBWF, 2020). There have been improvements in education with the number of children reaching the expected or higher standard of reading, writing and maths higher than both the England and London average. Waltham Forest has historically been associated with structural disadvantage and poverty and was the 82nd most deprived borough nationally. The local authority’s decision to sell social housing saw an increase in ‘buy to let’ properties, which coupled with Waltham Forests involvement

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in the hosting of the 2012 Olympics, is thought to have contributed to an increase in housing prices, the cost of renting and a growth in the night-time economy. A key change in the decade since the original report was published was the global financial crisis and a series of severe austerity programmes that had seen substantial cuts in public services across England. A reduction of 67% in central government grant funding to Waltham Forest over a decade (Waltham Forest, 2018) had a significant impact on youth services. Having commissioned the original research (Pitts, 2007, 2008), the local authority subsequently used the analysis and intervention model to successfully inform their gang interventions (Cordis Bright, 2014). However, by 2016, a spate of particularly violent gang conflicts, including a double murder, led the local authority to realise that the operating model that gangs used had changed and they commissioned the current study to identify the emerging issues.

Methods Given previous controversies about whether gangs were purely a social construction based upon ‘gang talk’ (Hallsworth & Young, 2008), the research design sought to engage with a diverse range of different data sources and emphasised both methodological and data triangulation to avoid ‘outsider’ interpretations being imposed on the data (Williamson & Whittaker, 2019). The first stage involved qualitative semi-structured interviews with 31 participants, comprising 21 practitioners who were recruited from a wide range of local services from small voluntary organisations to senior police officers who were all working on gang-related issues and 10 young people formerly embedded in local gangs or currently affected by gangs. We have used the term ‘former’ or ‘ex-gang member’ to describe young people who have had varying degrees of ‘embeddedness’ in gangs (Pyrooz & Mitchell, 2015) and who either self-identify as gang members and/or who have been identified by gang intervention agencies as having recently left local gangs. All had left within the preceding 12–18 months,

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and some still retained strong social links with the gangs they had been involved with. The study used the definition utilised in Dying to Belong (Centre for Social Justice, 2009) with five key features: A relatively durable, predominantly street-based group of young people who (1) see themselves (and are seen by others) as a discernible group, (2) engage in a range of criminal activity and violence, (3) identify with or lay claim over territory, (4) have some form of identifying structural features (5) are in conflict with other, similar, gangs. (Centre for Social Justice, 2009)

The data from the interviews were analysed using a thematic analysis approach (Braun & Clarke, 2006; Whittaker, 2012). This was augmented by an analysis of key quantitative and qualitative data held by local services, including the YOT, Police, Education and drug agencies to provide important insights into the scale, severity and duration of particular issues. Following an initial stage of data collection and analysis, the second stage involved presenting the preliminary findings to two large focus groups of diverse stakeholder groups involving 37 participants from key local statutory and voluntary agencies. Ethical approval for the study was obtained from the LSBU research ethics committee.

From Postcodes to Profit a New Operating Model Although there were many similarities between the two time periods, there were also significant differences. When Pitts (2007, 2008) completed his original study, he found that ‘youth gangs’ were reported as being a relatively recent phenomenon: When key informants were asked how long they had been aware of a ‘youth gangs’ in the borough, almost all of them said less than ten years with a substantial minority placing it at four or five years. (Pitts, 2007, p. 15)

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Pitts (2008) identified that a small number of the more powerful gangs had moved into the drugs market across East London. In the Waltham Forest area, the Beaumont Gang became the major supplier through an alliance with gangs in neighbouring boroughs (Pitts, 2008, p. 69). However, many gangs were focused upon other forms of crime, such as street robbery and some gangs did not regard crime as a core activity. Interestingly, those that were involved in drugs or other forms of crime were very powerful and these gangs dictated the style and values adopted by other gangs for whom crime was an incidental or marginal activity (Pitts, 2008, p. 71). Ten years later, we found that there was an unexpected consensus across both young people and workers in the voluntary and statutory sectors that street gangs in Waltham Forest had evolved further and there was a more economically focused operating model focused almost exclusively upon drug markets. This was expressed by both former gang members and by practitioners: Back then it wasn’t about money…Back then it was just about ratings. (Participant 27, former gang member) It’s not really about postcodes anymore. It’s about money. (Participant 10, statutory sector professional) We just don’t hear about postcodes... they’ve evolved now in that, you know, the moneys with the drugs. (Participant 9, pan-London statutory sector professional)

An important aspect of this evolution of a more professional operating model is that it is more ruthless in its focus on earning money. This is consistent with research in another area of London, which used focus groups with young people in gang-affected areas (Storrod & Densley, 2017). Young people argued that money was the key motivator for gangs and violence was not an expressive means of reinforcing gang identity, but rather an instrumental means of protecting their core business. The researchers concluded:

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We heard statements like this a lot, for example: ‘Money, money, money that’s what it’s all about now. It ain’t about all this violence and shanking anymore, that was like 2008. You gotta prove your trap now, be businessmen’. (Male, 15, Group 1) (Storrod & Densley, 2017, pp. 685–686)

This increasingly financial focus appeared to be influenced by the wider economic and social climate. As noted above, Waltham Forest has seen a reduction in government funding to the public sector linked at least in part to the austerity response to the global financial crisis of 2008. In the face of the retreat of public services in their daily lives, young people may find that street gangs offer both economic and psychological security to young people who face increasing disadvantage. The impact of this climate of austerity, with increased poverty and poor employment opportunities on the economically focused operating model, was identified by a number of participants. For example, one young person stated: Nobody woke up one morning and said I want to be in a gang… you all just grew up in the same area and both areas happened to be deprived areas with the same problems but the main problem you have is you live on an impoverished estate, people have not much money there, that’s one of the biggest problems, they’ve got no money. How can we make money? We can’t get no jobs, so you turn to drugs. (Participant 24, young gang-affected person)

This was echoed by professionals: I think it’s probably down to money, people are struggling, young people are struggling, and they don’t see a way out, they don’t see education as a key to help them move forward. (Participant 10, statutory sector professional) Another aspect, and one I see more, is as an escape from poverty, money is a big factor especially with the younger kids. (Participant 16, statutory sector professional)

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Financial pressures within the family can lead to additional demands on the family, such as parents working long hours, which leave young people vulnerable to exploitation. One statutory sector professional gave the following example of recruitment: Mum moved back to the Waltham Forest area, got a job doing long shifts in an elderly care home, low paid income but at least it’s a job but with shift work she was often absent. Gangs have picked up on this, the boy was excluded from mainstream education, didn’t fit in because of his troubled background and ended up in a pupil referral unit. Within that environment he was recruited to the DM Crew [local gang]. (Participant 16, statutory sector professional)

The Changed Meaning of Territory and Violence The original ‘Reluctant Gangsters’ study (Pitts, 2007, 2008) found that gang members described an emotional connection with their postcode area. London is divided upon into postcodes and in Waltham Forest, there are E4, E10, E11 and E17 postcodes that are displayed on every street sign. At this time, young street gangs had a strong identification with their local postcode, which participants expressed in the following ways: I‘d defend anyone in E10. (Key Informant 27, Pitts, 2007, p. 34) I can’t explain it, I love my area, I just love it. (Key Informant 46, Pitts, 2007, p. 50)

This strong identification with the local areas is striking and suggests a powerful emotional connection. As Pitts (2008) notes, although there was some instrumental violence related to the emerging drugs markets (p. 80), territories were largely not based upon drugs markets and much of the violence involved appeared to serve little practical purpose beyond providing an arena where young people could demonstrate their courage (p. 114).

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Ten years later, the new operating model appeared to affect the meaning of territory for gangs. Rather than being primarily experienced as an emotional connection to an area that needed to be defended as part of a shared identity, territory appeared to be increasingly viewed exclusively as a drug marketplace to be protected. These developments are consistent with wider national trends in the development of county lines style drugs markets in small towns across the UK, where gangs experience less competition, and they are unknown to local law enforcement agencies (Andell & Pitts, 2017, 2018: Harding, 2020). According to a National Crime Agency report in 2017, 88% of areas in England reported established county lines activity in their area (NCA, 2017). Just as territory has a more instrumental meaning, there were similar developments in the meaning of violence. Rather than a vehicle for expressing collective identity, violence was described as a means of achieving business aims: You need to make some money and that is the best way to make money and if you’ve got links already into that kind of activity then I can see why people do it and it’s going away from the violence. There is still violence because of the drug activity but not so much violence just for the sake of violence because it then highlights the other activity you were doing. (Participant 12, statutory sector professional)

The gangs at the moment are much more about making money and they will use violence to get what they want (Participant 6, statutory sector professional). This finding is consistent with another research study undertaken in London (Storrod and Densley (2017), who undertook focus groups with young people in gang-affected areas. They quoted one young person: ‘Real violence only happens when it needs to and there has got to be a good reason for it now’. He added, ‘It’s not like the old days, it’s all about the money now’. (Male, 15, Group 4) (Storrod & Densley, 2017, pp. 685–686)

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The researchers found that participants saw money as the key motivator for group membership and that violence was primarily used to protect ‘business interests’ in the drug trade (Storrod & Densley, 2017). The early stages of this development were noted in Pitts (2008), who identified how violence was being used in the developing drugs markets to regulate ‘contract compliance problems’ (p. 69).

Gang Evolution One way of understanding these changes is in terms of how gangs evolve. Table 3.1 lists the gangs identified in the original and the current study. There were 12 gangs that were active in Waltham Forest in 2017, compared to the 13 gangs identified by Pitts (2007). Of the gangs identified in the original study, only four (Beaumont Crew, Priory Court, Drive and Boundary) were still active and had evolved into more developed entities. In 2017, approximately 230 individuals in Waltham Forest were identified by police as gang members or associates, and 56 people were currently imprisoned or on remand for a gang-related offence, ranging from minor fraud to serious violence. Densley (2013) developed a gang evolution model based upon his research in six London boroughs (Croydon, Hackney, Haringey, Table 3.1 Original gangs (Pitts 2007) Gangs (2017) 1. Beaumont E10 2. Boundary/Monserrat 3. Priory Court 4. Drive 5. Piff City 6. Red African Devils 7. Canhall 8. Barrier/Brookscroft 9. Highams Park 10. New World Order 11. Asian Auto Theft 12. Hackney Overground Commuters 13. Russian/Lithuanian/Polish Gangs

1. Beaumont Crew E10 2. Boundary Boys E17 3. Priory Court E17 4. The Drive/DM Crew E17 5. Mali Boys/Mali Strip E10/E17 6. Loyal Soldiers/Cathall Boys E11 7. Chingford Hall E4 8. Selrack E4 9. Stoneydown E17 10. Coppermill E17 11. OC Crew E10 12. Thatched House Thugs E15

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Lambeth, Lewisham and Southwark) involving interviews with 52 selfnominated ‘gang members’ and 17 self-nominated ‘gang associates’. He identified four stages of gang evolution in which gangs can move from an initial ‘recreational’ stage focused upon expressive ends to a final ‘extra-legal governance’ stage focused upon instrumental ends. In the initial ‘recreational’ stage, gang members know each other through friendship and family networks organised around schools and neighbourhoods. As one professional explained: They go to the studio, they hang out and they may play games like Play station and X-box. Some of them go to school so they meet in education they meet anywhere, like the chicken shop. (Participant 10, statutory sector professional)

Participants from the focus group described this stage of a gang as: Similar people tend to do similar things so if you are around somebody that is doing something for long enough, birds of a feather you will naturally start to do it. You make friends, you chill with your friends and if your friends do bad things then sometimes you get caught up and sometimes you don’t. (Participant 23, young person, focus group 1)

At this stage, there is a significant focus upon territory and visible displays of masculinity as a means of gaining a reputation, often because members are too young and developmentally immature to earn (McLean, 2018). Where criminal activity is usually involved, it is rarely acquisitive crime and often involves fighting and graffiti. Most recreational groups at the first stage remain so and do not become more formalised. However, others grow and develop in size and complexity and need to negotiate a series of challenges at each stage that require a different structure. The second stage is the ‘crime’ stage, where criminal activity has a more central role. In order to become integrated into the gang, aspiring members commit offences because this gains respect in the group. An ex-gang member gave the following example:

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So, I could be a younger that will carry knives and I don’t care about stabbing people so I will do the dirty work for people. So, in that sense, one of the olders can go up and say, ‘Oh yes, I’ve got an issue with this person, deal with him’. I do it repeatedly, until I get this reputation of, ‘Right, that guy is crazy, he will stab you in seconds, he doesn’t care and then you gain this more of a status……people just have more respect for you. (Participant 29, ex- gang member)

At this stage, groups often attract attention from the police and so the gang must become more organised to remain successful. In the third phase, the ‘enterprise’ stage, gangs move away from being based upon personal friendships and recreational activities and instead focus more on developing more organised activities. Gang recruitment changes from being based upon friendship and family networks to becoming based upon recruiting subordinates who enable them to expand their operations. One participant described the local gang that has become the most organised and had become forming business partnerships with other local gangs: They have a got a good supply of drugs and so from a business point of view I think certain people have teamed up with them because they get good stuff at a good price. (Participant 7, voluntary sector professional)

There is a final stage, the extra-legal governance stage, where gangs ‘resemble not just crime that is organized, but organized crime’ (Densley, 2013, p. 66). At this stage, gangs move to becoming the sole supplier of goods and services (Densley, 2012) and start to resemble organised crime groups. Another development is that gangs begin to form legitimate businesses. For example, the London gang PDC (Poverty Driven Children) had, at one stage, an underground record label, a clothing line, a barbershop, a youth engagement project and investments in the local night-time economy (Densley, 2014, p. 537; Pitts, 2008). Few gangs in London reach this stage, at least partly because it is difficult to gain a monopoly in drugs markets except in a very limited area. It is possible to become a monopoly survey in niche markets such as firearms, but this appears to remain the preserve of organised crime groups.

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However, Pitts (2019) provides a salutary and insightful caution against seeing this evolution towards more organisation as linear and ineluctable. Using the same example of the Peel Dem Crew (PDC/Poverty Driven Children) gang in Lambeth, originally called the Raiders and then the 28s in the late 1980s, Pitts outlines how this established and powerful gang started to fragment in 2005. This began with the jailing of several PDC elders, leading to a power vacuum that created a period of violent conflict known as the ‘Madness’. Rather than the emergence of a new leadership, this resulted in a fragmentation into adolescent fighting groups. This tendency towards disintegration or entropy may be built into more organised gangs, influenced by a range of factors, such as escalating police action, competition from competitor gangs and the inherently exploitative nature of gangs at this stage of development that pits gang members against each other in constantly shifting and unstable alliances. Pitts (2019) further argues that the forms of ‘governance’ exercised by the Mali Boys in Waltham Forest required an absence of the law, i.e., the actual or perceived inability of the police to counter the threat posed by the gang. This puts pressure on individuals to take responsibility for managing the risks that would normally be managed by the justice systems. He noted that the ‘incalculability of these threats leads to escalating anxiety and a need to find ways of alleviating it’ (Pitts, 2019, p. 69). This was echoed in the accounts given by young people living in gangaffected areas. For example, one young person stated: People want protection, and if I hang around with the [Mali Boys], yes, I might get protection because, you know, if I’m going to do that for them, they’re going to do that for me… They’ve got a reputation now for being scary people, and if that’s the scary gang then we need to join that scary gang because we need protection, because the police cannot protect us. (Participant 20, young person)

This echoes a key finding of Pitts (2007) study, that some young people have an ambivalent or reluctant involvement with gangs and see their relationship as essentially pragmatic. They are aware that they face

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a range of risks in their environment and see gang membership as an effective way of managing those risks. Indeed, a classic distinction can be made between risk and uncertainty (Knight, 1933). In situations of risk, we know what may happen and how likely each alternative is, e.g., a game of poker or chess. In situations of uncertainty, however, we do not know what may happen or how likely each alternative is. Indeed, there may be many risks that you are not aware of. While situations of risk can be anxiety-provoking because they involve potential adverse events, it is situations of uncertainty that are more psychologically intolerable because we do not know what we are facing. Consequently, we have an inbuilt tendency to want to turn situations of uncertainty into situations of risk because we feel that we can prepare more. This is consistent with Meldeet al. (2009), who argues that gang membership objectively increases young people’s likelihood of being a victim of crime, but young people often feel less anxious because they feel they have a clearer idea what those risks are and have resources to manage them.

Conclusion This chapter has outlined a 10-year follow-up study to the classic gang study Reluctant Gangsters (Pitts, 2007, 2008), which offers a rare opportunity to compare two time periods. The follow-up study found key similarities with the original, e.g., some young people continue to have a reluctant relationship with street gangs. However, there were important differences between the two time periods that appeared to be related to how gangs had developed in the intervening period. A key change was the adoption of a more financially focused operational model by the small number of gangs who still remained. This had led to changes in the ways that territory and violence are understood. This appeared to have been influenced by both the period of austerity measures introduced in the wake of the financial crisis and the internal development of gangs into more organised forms.

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A model of gang evolution was explored to explain these changes from recreational gangs into a more organised enterprise stage. However, a note of caution was sounded against assuming that this development towards more organised forms was inevitable and the role of entropy was explored to explain how gangs can disintegrate into more chaotic forms.

References Auyong, Z. E., Smith, S., & Ferguson, C. J. (2018). Girls in gangs: Exploring risk in a British youth context. Crime and Delinquency, 64, 1698–1717. Andell, P. (2019). Thinking seriously about gangs: Towards a critical realist approach. Springer. Andell, P., & Pitts, J. (2017). Preventing the violent and sexual victimisation of vulnerable gang-involved and gang-affected children and young people in Ipswich. University of Suffolk. Andell, P., & Pitts, J. (2018). The end of the line? The impact of county lines drug distribution on youth crime in a target destination. Youth & Policy. Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77–101. Centre for Social Justice. (2009). Dying to belong: An in-depth review of street gangs in Britain. CSJ. Cordis Bright (2014) Evaluation of the Gangs Prevention Programme: Stage 2 report. Densley, J. (2012). The organization of London’s street gangs. Global Crime, 13, 42–64. Densley, J. (2013). How gangs work. Palgrave Macmillan. Densley, J. (2014). It’s gang life, but not as we know it: The evolution of gang business. Crime & Delinquency, 60, 517–546. Deuchar, R. (2009). Gangs, marginalised youth and social capital . Trentham. Hallsworth, S., & Young, T. (2008). Gang talk and gang talkers: A critique. Crime, Media, Culture, 4, 175–195. Hallsworth, S. (2013). The gang and beyond . Palgrave Macmillan. Harding, S. (2014). The street casino. Policy Press. Harding, S., (2020). County lines: Exploitation and drug dealing amongst urban street gangs. Policy Press.

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Knight, (1933). Risk, uncertainty, and profit. London School of Economics and Political Science. London Borough of Waltham Forest (LBWF). (2020). Statistics about the borough. https://www.walthamforest.gov.uk/content/statistics-about-bor ough McLean, R., (2017). An evolving gang model in contemporary Scotland . J Deviant Behav. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2016.1272969 McLean, R. (2018). An evolving gang model in contemporary Scotland. Deviant Behavior, 39, 309–321. Melde, C., Taylor, T. J., & Esbensen, F. A. (2009). “I got your back”: An examination of the protective function of gang membership in adolescence. Criminology, 47 (2), 565–594. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-9125.2009. 00148.x National Crime Agency, (2017). County lines violence, exploitation and drug supply 2017: National briefing report. Pitts, J. (2007). Reluctant gangsters: Youth gangs in Waltham Forest. http://www. wfcw.org/docs/reluctant-gangsters.pdf Pitts, J. (2008). Reluctant gangsters. Willan. Pitts, J. (2012). Reluctant criminologists: Criminology, ideology and the violent youth gang. Youth and Policy., 109 (109), 27–45. Pitts, J. (2016). Critical realism and gang violence. In: Matthews R. (eds) What is to Be Done About Crime and Punishment? Palgrave Macmillan. Pitts, J. (2019). The evolution of the English street gang. Safer Communities, 18(2), 64–78. Pyrooz, D. C., & Mitchell, M. (2015). Little gang and big gang research. In S. H. Decker & D. C. Pyrooz (Eds.), The handbook of gangs (pp. 28–58). Wiley. Storrod, M. L., & Densley, J. A. (2017). ‘Going viral’ and ‘going country’: The expressive and instrumental activities of street gangs on social media. Journal of Youth Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2016.1260694 Waltham Forest, (2018). ‘Creating Futures for young people: Our plan to improve life chances’. Available at: https://www.walthamforest.gov.uk/sites/ default/files/Life%20Chances%20Council%20Response.pdf Williamson, G. R., & Whittaker, A. (2019). Succeeding in literature reviews and research project plans for nursing students (4th ed.). Sage. Whittaker, A. (2012). Research skills for social work. Sage. Whittaker, A., Cheston, L., Tyrell, T., Higgins, M., Felix-Baptiste, C., & Havard, T. (2018). From postcodes to profits: Changes in gang activity in Waltham Forest. LSBU. https://doi.org/10.18744/PUB.002234

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Whittaker, A., Densley, J., Cheston, L., Tyrell, T., Higgins, M., Felix-Baptiste, C., & Havard, T. (2020). Reluctant gangsters revisited: The evolution of gangs from postcodes to profits. European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research, 26 (1), 1–22.

4 County Lines: Dealing in Vulnerability Simon Harding

What Are County Lines? County Lines (CLs) involve the transportation of Class A drugs from urban centres to rural/provisional locations, have occurred in plain sight for years and was largely of sole interest to police and social workers. From 2014/2015, onwards CLs altered relatively quickly via the adoption of different business practices which increasingly relied upon the exploited labour of young people (Harding, 2020a). Continual mutation and adaptation of drug dealing networks were largely driven by improved IT technology and social media, alongside more localised factors in gang-affected neighbourhoods, namely increasing saturation of localised drug markets (Harding, 2020a; Robinson et al., 2019). This market adaptation represented a dramatic expansion of drug networks S. Harding (B) University of West London, London, UK e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Andell and J. Pitts (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Youth Gangs in the UK , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99658-1_4

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and increased utilisation of young people which rapidly drew the attention of local police, national policing organisations, NGOs, charities, the media, national government and the general public. By 2017, The National Crime Agency (NCA), identified CLs as a ‘significant national threat’ with supply chains criss-crossing the UK. Cognisant of newspaper headlines, the National County Lines Coordination Centre was established to oversee police responses and corral regional and local cooperation in focused action against this emerging ‘threat’. The primary, and for many localities, the enduring focus, was one of enforcement action and policing: a policy which met with mixed/fluctuating success (Spicer, 2020). The evident manifestations of CLs networks and their policing however mask hidden, subtle and potentially damaging elements—child criminal exploitation, modern slavery, coercive control and contested agency. As CLs continue to evolve, the early ‘epidermal’ issues are now being reframed through the recognition of these often unrecognised, elements. This chapter gives a brief overview of CLs before the emergence of these sub-surface issues and explores the new challenges of focusing on vulnerabilities, victimisation and exploitation.

Overview County lines is a term used for urban gangs and organised crime groups extending drug dealing activities beyond their urban area into suburban, market and/or coastal towns using dedicated phone or “deal” lines. Lines can also be run within a smaller geographical area. County lines is a cross-cutting form of harm which can involve drugs, violence, gangs, safeguarding, criminal and sexual exploitation, modern slavery, trafficking and missing persons, often involving vulnerable children and young people. (Source: Local Government Association Children & Young People: County lines exploitation [12/09/2017])

Whilst this statement references contextual issues of safeguarding, slavery and vulnerabilities, these issues were seldom critical in addressing

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CLs. The NCA (2018, p. 2) typology of CLs includes: transportation and movement of Class A drugs; mobile phones storing client databases; remote controlling of phone lines; utilising young people to transport, store/wrap/sell drugs; acquisition of dealing hubs via ‘cuckooing’; young people commuting to locations to deliver drugs; use of intimidation, violence, coercive control and access to weapons. The NCA has tracked the emergence of CLs in annual reports (NCA, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019) noting that ‘branded lines’ had increased with highly adaptable methods and practices. The 2018 report (NCA, 2019), identified over 2,000 individual operative deal lines, mostly supplying heroin and crack cocaine. 91% of individuals involved were male; age of involvement was decreasing; forms of control were increasingly inventive, e.g., kidnap and sexual violence; and exploitation of vulnerable young people remained central to the business model. Reports indicate London was the main CL exporter with road/rail distribution (Blakeburn & Smith, 2020). Despite highlighting continuing intelligence gaps, the NCA and regional constabularies developed policing strategies involving covert surveillance, evidence-led policing, test purchasing, ANPR and use of cell-cite data which met with some success in targeting and reducing the volume of active CLs (Jaensch & South, 2018).

The Academic Contribution—What We Know Thus Far Our knowledge regarding CLs networks continues to expand and recent research has helped to surface key elements of this expansive form of drug dealing. For example, we know that: . The Majority of CLs involve Urban Street Gangs (USGs) (NCA, 2016, 2017, 2019a, 2019b). . Dealers migrate and commute out of town to new markets (Coomber & Moyle, 2015; Densley, 2013; Disley & Liddle, 2016; Hallworth, 2016; Harding, 2014; Johnson, 2015; Windle & Briggs, 2015b).

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. UK drug markets are altering; County Lines impact host towns (Andell & Pitts, 2018; Disley & Liddle, 2016). . Despite IT, face-to-face dealing is favoured for heroin/crack (Coomber & Moyle, 2015). . Some YP prefer independent dealing (Coliandris, 2015; Hales and Hobbs 2010; Windle & Briggs, 2015a). . User-dealers are present within CLs (Coomber & Moyle, 2014; Coomber et al., 2015; Harding, 2020a). . IT and social media platforms are central to effective CLs (NCA, 2016–2019; National Youth Agency, 2021; Storrod & Densley, 2017). . Increased professionalisation and occupational culture (Andell & Pitts, 2018; Harding, 2020a; Hesketh & Robinson, 2019; McLean et al., 2020; Whittaker et al., 2019).

County Lines as Business Model Increasingly, CL networks are viewed as an effective business model. Harding (2020a) expands further on CLs using marketing principles. Scholarship has revealed multiple operating models which emerge and evolve at different rates, thus presenting considerable variation. Their emergence and establishment depend greatly upon the push/pull factors operating in destination markets. Each ‘host’ town retains a domestic market of ageing heroin users often forming the core customer base (Andell & Pitts, 2018). The size/accessibility of this customer base then often determines the speed of expansion of the local CLs market. Thus, two neighbouring locations may experience evolution in their drugs market but may be at different evolutionary stages. Harding reported these variations as a Spectrum of County Lines Models (Harding, 2020a, p. 44/45), showing four evolutionary stages: emerging from the status quo of a traditional drugs market, through market formalisation, to increased market professionalism and finally to full market diversification. These four models are identified as: – –

The Community Model The Satellite-Hub Model

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– –

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Market Consolidation and Expansion Model Market and Product Diversification Model

Harding argues that this spectrum reflects the necessary evolutionary process required to advance the CLs dealing network to a more professional and productive business model based on maximising profits, mitigating/reducing risk and seeking competitive advantage. Central to evolutionary models is a move away from a commuting model to localised dealing hubs then progression to local recruitment of user-dealers. The user-dealer (Coomber & Moyle, 2014; Coomber et al., 2015; Harding, 2020a) is one clear expression of increasing professionalisation and occupational culture now central to CLs, as noted by (Andell & Pitts, 2018; Harding, 2020a; Hesketh & Robinson, 2019; McLean et al., 2020; Whittaker et al., 2019).

Mutations and Perceptional Variance Mutation and evolution of different CLs models challenge UK policing and practitioners regarding initial perceptions, policing and policy responses. Adjoining regions, towns, localities and local stakeholders, all experience CLs in variable forms or, more precisely, at different stages/models of their evolutionary life. Stakeholders may search in vain for commonalities in drug market presentations and are instead frequently presented with a kaleidoscopic landscape of drug markets. This variance is underpinned by local push/pull factors and multiple situational variables including user profiles, product quality, product pricing and availability. Mutations from one model to another can be subtle, hidden or nuanced over time; alternatively, they can occur more suddenly and swiftly. It is said that the impact of COVID-19 and the lockdowns have led to more rapid movement along this evolutionary spectrum, Brewster et al. (2021). In the same way that different CLs models operate nationally, so do policing styles, tactics and responses (Spicer, 2021). Variance across boroughs, counties or constabularies is considerable, generating a patchwork quilt of policing practice. Enforcement-led policing retains a firm focus on drug line disruption, asset seizures

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and arrests, for example limiting operational phone lines using Drug Dealing Telecommunications Restriction Orders. Their limited use has a questionable record of success however (Home Office, 2021a). We now recognise that perceptions, policy interpretation and subsequent policing approaches to CLs is highly variable across the UK with attempts to address them via enforcement and policing being pre-dominant (Spicer, 2021). Consequently, concerns regarding vulnerability, grooming, recruitment, coercive control and gendered exploitation are often overlooked. These issues have only belatedly surfaced via the voices of practitioners, victims and voluntary sector organisations. It can be argued that COVID-19 lockdowns have further surfaced issues of vulnerability (MacDonald, 2020). The remainder of this chapter focuses on those underpinning, yet under-recognised elements, suggesting that a re-focus on these issues opens opportunities for reframing this topic with an increased emphasis on exploitation and victimisation.

Vulnerability to County Lines Involvement Academics have long recognised that within CLs, young and vulnerable people are exploited by urban street gangs (USGs) and drug dealing crews (Andell & Pitts, 2018; Calouri, 2020; Firmin, 2017; Harding, 2020a; Harvard et al., 2021; Maclean et al., 2019; NYA, 2020; Pepin, 2018; Robinson et al., 2019; Pepin, 2018; Windle et al., 2020; Moyle). Despite this, a more nuanced understanding of victims, offenders and their inter-relationships often lags behind that of policing and enforcement (Coliandris, 2015). Indeed, we know that propinquity to USGs is the major source of vulnerability to county line involvement, via ongoing forms of grooming and targeted recruitment which occur within this environment. Unsupervised and lengthy exposure to social media is also said to increase this risk (Storrod & Densley, 2017). Traditionally recruitment into a USG occurred in physically shared spaces, such as families, school, youth clubs and social housing estate where shared ‘territoriality’ was often a central binding factor. Increased access to and engagement with social media platforms now

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offers increased opportunity for grooming and recruitment (Storrod & Densley, 2017). Grooming is a process of getting someone ready to do whatever is asked of them by their abuser. It means working to build an emotional connection, complete trust and reliance, often isolating the victim completely from their support network – friends, family etc. Once a person has been groomed they can then be led into a number of situations they may not otherwise enter – such as sexual exploitation, criminal exploitation, extremism or financial exploitation. (https://notinourcommunity.org/gro oming-exploitation)

Through young people’s ever-widening use of social media, gang presentations, gang-branding and gang bibliographies are now increasingly available, and viewed, online. This widens the orbit of gang imagery and culture to an expanded range of often willing potential recruits, many of whom are eager to demonstrate their ‘authenticity’ (Harding, 2020a), by engaging in either performative Drill music or being a CLs runner. Recruitment into CLs can be immediate as demonstrated by the increased missing episodes of young people suddenly sent ‘up country’ to work on a line (Sturrock & Holmes, 2015).

Establishing Vulnerability Gangs are known to actively target those children and adults that they perceive as vulnerable. The Home Office’s guidance on CLs (Home Office, 2018) noted several factors which heighten vulnerability: . Having prior experience of neglect, physical and/ or sexual abuse. . Lack of a safe/stable home environment, now or in the past (domestic violence or parental substance misuse, mental health issues or criminality, for example). . Social isolation or social difficulties. . Economic vulnerability. . Homelessness or insecure accommodation status. . Connections with other people involved in gangs.

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. Having a physical or learning disability. . Having mental health or substance misuse issues. . Being in care (particularly those in residential care and those with interrupted care histories). The Home Office list of vulnerability factors are perhaps better expressed as contributory elements to a wider range of Vulnerability Modes which entrap young people or dictate their trajectory into criminal activity. Enduring exposure or embedded engagement with such modes can place a young person within the ‘Pool of Availability’, (Harding, 2014) for CLs. These Modes of Vulnerability can be structural and enduring, or temporal or short-lived whilst others might be more situational and thus changeable. Table 4.1 illustrates different modes of vulnerability for young people involved in CLs. A surfeit of different modes will inevitably lead to a greater gravitational pull towards CLs and possibly to a deeper and more intractable form of engagement. It also increases vulnerability and exposure to criminal exploitation. An increasingly recognised vulnerability to USG and CLs involvement faces children-in-care, especially those ‘looked-after’ by the state. Calouri et al. (2020) in their report, Looked After Children, (LAC) identify that LACs are disproportionately represented in CLs networks. They dominate placements in care settings (including unregulated and out-of-borough care homes) which fail to protect them from CLs recruitment and exploitation and as such are highly vulnerable to adaptive CLs models. This issue is further hampered by failure to establish a statutory definition of Child Criminal Exploitation (CCE), and an ill-defined national strategy to address CCE and CLs. The increased reports of young people exploited into CLs led the Children’s Commissioner, Anne Longfield, to call for CCE to be made a national priority (Children’s Commissioner, 2019).

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Table 4.1 Modes of contested vulnerability Vulnerability type

Example

Overview

Structural/circumstantial

• . . . .

. . . .

. Positional

Situational

. . .

. . . . . .

Relational

. . . . . . . . .

Immigration status Unemployment Network Poverty Deprivation/poverty Unstable accommodation Dysfunctional family/ Domestic life Age Gender Neurodevelopmental/ neuro-diversity Mental health Substance misuse Physical stature Family Factors Joining new dealing crew Arrival in new town as CL dealer Family relocation Osman warning Territorial ‘Slippin’ Level of street capital Street Experience Variant Trust Hierarchical position Level of Debt Reputational status—risin’ or slidin’

Structural Status Entrenched Enduring Linked to Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)

. Partially fixed/ partially slowly adapting . Perceptionally fixed in minds of others . Triggers stereotypes . Influences early reputation . Temporal . Suddenly variable depending upon situation

. Fluctuating and Fluid . Often perceptional and established by others . Difficult to map . Constantly shifting . Often time-lagged

Criminal Exploitation with County Lines The concept of criminal exploitation within CLs remains relatively under-developed. The Children’s Society (2019) describe understanding and awareness of ‘exploitation’ as patchy and inconsistent with agencies struggling to keep pace with criminal groups. The Children’s Society (2019: p. 4) report,

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All forms of criminal exploitation have a detrimental impact on a child’s life. As such, any child being forced or coerced to commit crime must be seen as a victim of exploitation. Too often children are criminalised rather than seen as victims of criminal exploitation and given the appropriate child protection response.

Several exploitative behaviours act as effective business practices within CLs (Robinson et al., 2018). Their employment brings benefits of low overheads with higher returns and profit margins whilst exacerbating business challenges of staff churn, management and control. Key elements of criminal exploitation include:

Debt Bondage Dealers, (runners) are easily targeted for robbery by gang rivals, rival dealers, drug users and may even be targeted by their own bosses or fellow gang members for a ‘fake’ robbery or ‘set-up robbery’. The aim being to rob the unsuspecting young dealer of their drugs cache alongside their cash profits. Any ‘lost’ drugs/cash must be repaid to the line controller and thus a debt is created which must be paid off, often with exorbitant interest. Debts also arise for those who skim, or shortchange, or who ‘loose’ drugs through police confiscation. The person ‘losing’ the drugs/cash may have to work for free to pay off the debt. This is called Debt Bondage and is more recently referred to as a form of modern-day slavery. Violence and intimidation compound such circumstances as young people often fail to discharge their ‘debt’ or become increasingly entangled in criminal activity to pay off escalating debt. Debt bondage is effectively a form of coercive control and manipulation placing young people at greater risk whilst elevating power and control to the line controller or exploiter. It creates a vicious circle of debt and violence which might lead to family homes being targeted and even parents handing over large sums of money to make the ‘debt’ disappear. Sadly, several young people have lost their lives through debt bondage and failure to ‘pay up’.

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Cuckooing Cuckooing is long-established housing studies term relating to exploitative use for gain of another person’s property. In CLs, this involves exploiting vulnerable tenants/residents with physical or mental disabilities and who are often vulnerable due to alcohol or substance misuse (HMICFRS, 2019). Flats or bedsits may be effectively taken over by dealers who then use the property to wrap, store and deal drugs. Described by Spicer et al., as parasitic home invasion, homes can also be used as a local dealing hubs and flop houses (Harding, 2020a).

Gendered Exploitation A further often hidden element of CLs is the role played by girls and young women (GYW). Their entrance into drugs dealing networks often occurs via USGs, thus their roles and their consequent exploitation echo the stereotypical forms of exploitation experienced and recognisable within USGs; men frequently retain control of GYW, in both physical/digital spaces, through sexual violence and control mechanisms centring on interpersonal relationships and economic abuse (Beckett et al., 2013; Deuchar et al., 2020; Firmin, 2011; Harding, 2014). USGs also utilise the relative ‘invisibility’ of GYW via couriering roles, hiding weapons, banking, hiring cars, etc. However, Harding reported that their centrality in managing information within USGs offers greater agency and for those with social skills, the opportunity of elevated/central positions within USG hierarchies (Deuchar et al., 2020; Harding, 2014). Harvard et al (2021) identified that gender-specific exploitation continues within CLs and argues cogently that forms of coercive control can offer new ways of understanding the vulnerabilities of gendered experiences of gang life.

Financial Exploitation One form of exploitation now surfacing is that of using young people’s bank accounts to hold/launder profits from drug dealing (ATCM, 2018).

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Here, young people are coerced and entreated into accepting large amounts of cash into their accounts for a small transactional fee. After two or more days, the funds are transferred out and onwards. Risk is again relegated from the top exploiters to the young person. Eventually the audit trail goes cold, leaving the victim exposed to banking interventions, account termination and damaged credit scores. It appears that victims of criminal exploitation are often the last to recognise or admit that victimisation is occurring to them. Self-identification is often a slow journey of reflection then realisation. Victims talk of normalised threats, violence and control. Opportunities for reporting or alerting authorities are diminished due to the Street Code (Anderson, 1999).

Contested Vulnerability Scholars and practitioners have identified that some young people enjoy CL employment and demonstrate agency in their roles, often describing adrenaline, brotherhood, excitement and financial gain as motivational factors (McLean et al., 2020; Moyle, 2019; Windle et al., 2020). Lack of educational opportunities (Hesketh & Robinson, 2019), and survival narratives (Harding, 2020a; Hesketh & Robinson, 2019) are increasingly mooted as motivational reasonings for CL engagement. Ellis (2018) in her study of young girls in care settings notes that young people, and some practitioners, can often reject the label of ‘vulnerability’ leaving the concept contested and open to perceptional subjectivity. Police Officers who arrest dealers often support such views when confronted with a young person bragging about their CL skills and profits. Such perceptional challenges raise questions about contested vulnerability, victimhood and criminal exploitation. This in turn has surfaced new vocabulary about contextual safeguarding, gendered exploitation, human trafficking and modern slavery.

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Policy Re-appraisal of County Lines From 2018 onwards, the concept of CLs began to be reframed differently with an increasing emphasis on exploitation and control of vulnerable young people. Aligned with this is a reframing of language to focus now on criminal exploitation and forced labour, working under duress and forms of modern slavery. The recent Traverse review (2021, p. 11) notes that ‘conscious shifts’ in the vocabulary used to describe those within exploitative relationships, ‘can contribute to a cultural shift towards a more child-centred, trauma-informed approach’. This reframing arose from three key concepts:

Contextual Safeguarding Safeguarding is a policy aimed at keeping children safe from mistreatment so they might thrive in safe and suitable environments; alongside a policy imperative to actively achieve safeguarding through effective outcomes. Overtime, it increasingly focused on domestic situations involving the immediate family home thus its definitional and policy deficits became increasingly clear. Windle et al. (2020) identified safeguarding issues and vulnerabilities as crucial to our understanding of CLs, however, take-up of this concept remains slow or uneven. Contextual safeguarding (Firmin, 2017, 2020) arises from the evidential policy and practice limitations of ‘safeguarding’; this revised concept is an elevated approach to exploitation which requires both understanding and immediate response to any significant harm beyond the immediate family, which risks the lives of children or young people. Thus, it moves beyond domestic environments considering risk assessments across a wider landscape of potential risks, e.g., school, transport hubs, etc. This wider context hopefully reveals greater insights into the real/perceived risks affecting young people. Through insights of lived experience, professionals can better assess/plan for risk mitigation and intervention. The County Lines Pathfinder Policy Review (Traverse, 2021, p. 10) claims ‘safeguarding provisions are extended only to children who are readily identifiable as victims’ and that notions of ideal

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victimhood leads to ‘adultification’ and criminalisation of exploited children.

Trauma-Informed Practice A report by Kincaid et al (2019) and Kincaid et al (2021) further surfaces the nexus of young people and violence, including increased reliance on younger children by USGs, increased CCE; evident victim/offender overlaps; and inadequate inter-agency partnership work. They point to increased challenges of mental health for young people, arguing strongly for the development of trauma-informed practice when dealing with those embroiled in violence and CLs. Now increasingly positively advocated, Trauma-informed practice (TIP) (Bloom, 2013; Harris & Fallot, 2001) ‘is informed by neuroscience, psychology and social science as well as attachment and trauma theories, and gives a central role to the complex and pervasive impact trauma has on a person’s world view and relationships’ (Scottish Government, 2021, p. 8). Utilising therapeutic approaches, TIP considers the invasive impact of trauma on a person’s world view and subsequent actions, including an inhibition to build trusting relationships with service providers. Prevention of re-traumatisation is key and within the CJS, TIP can reduce time to discharge for youth-in-care (Greenwald et al., 2027) and reduce criminal risk (Miller and Najavits 2012); and for hard-to-reach young people, can reduce trauma-related symptoms, improve engagement with treatment and reduce substance misuse (Cocozza, et al., 2005; Chung et al., 2009).

Reframing County Lines as Criminal Exploitation and Modern Slavery As we look to reframe CLs activity as criminal exploitation, criminal exploitation is itself now reframed as a constituent element of modern slavery. This new vocabulary finds expression in the Modern Slavery Act (2015). The Modern Slavery Act (MSA) (2015) is ‘part of

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a wave of new governance initiatives to combat severe labour exploitation’ , primarily intended to address criminal/sexual exploitation arising from cross-border trafficking, brothels, sex work, gang masters and servitude. Its application to CLs can often appear as an adjunct to its original purpose and thus its provisions and guidance regarding CLs is often poorly defined and expressed. The Home Office classifies four types of Modern Slavery (MS) (Cooper et al., 2017): labour exploitation; sexual exploitation; domestic servitude; and criminal exploitation. Criminal exploitation, including working in the drugs trade, cannabis farms, CLs, or undertaking financial fraud, or being forced into sham marriages, was only officially recognised as a separate form of MS in the UK in the 2017 Home Office report. This late inclusion has illuminated shortfalls in both knowledge of the issue and the data central to evidencing the issue. The National Crime Agency (NCA) (2018) define Criminal Exploitation as: a lesser-known type of Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking that encompasses acquisitive crimes such as forced begging, forced theft (including shoplifting and pickpocketing), as well as cannabis cultivation and financial exploitation.

Covered by Section 1 of the UK Modern Slavery Act (2015), it is categorised as a sub-category of forced labour and it comes under the EU Directive (2011/36), which defines exploitation of criminal activities as: the exploitation of a person to commit, inter alia, pick pocketing, shoplifting, drug trafficking and other similar activities which are subject to penalties and imply financial gain.

Traditionally criminal exploitation within the UK has been poorly recorded and under-reported. The National Slavery Operations Database (HM Government, 2019) noted that between December 2016 and July 2019, identified/recorded criminal exploitation increased from 6 to 25% of all exploitation cases arising from police operations. The charity, Hestia, suggests such increases represent an actual increase in criminal

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exploitation, (including CLs) not just increased reporting (Papadaki, 2020); with increases due to decreased investment in community engagement and prevention coupled with increased use of social media to recruit vulnerable young people. The Annual Monitoring Report on MS is the key location for data publication on different types of MS including criminal exploitation. According to the 2019 UK Annual Report on Modern Slavery, (HM Government, 2019), during the period 2016–2018, criminal exploitation was the least reported form of exploitation in the UK accounting for only 3% of reported exploitation cases of children and adults. The Modern Slavery Act (2015), itself has drawn considerable criticism from NGOs, practitioners (Craig et al., 2019) and victim agencies for lacking a structured approach towards implementation. Haughey (2016) argues that inherent structural limitations are undermined by poor quality intelligence gathering, questionable statistics and even operational reticence to engage with its provisions and intentions. Such deficits hinder and inhibit its efficacy such that the recovery ‘journey’ of victims is likened to ‘a Game of Chance’ (Murphy, 2020). This criticism highlights multiple regional inconsistencies including the limited ability of key agencies to track, record, manage and support the victim in any meaningful, or quality way. Central to this is poor quality or non-robust victim data. This ‘data deficit’ potentially undermines the stated aim of the MSA (2015), weakening its intent to identify, map and support the victim’s journey.

Victim Identification Challenges One central criticism of the MSA 2015 is a common failure to accurately identify a victim (Haughey, 2016; Murphy, 2018). Victim identification of someone trafficked internationally presents specific challenges; however, similar challenges present for UK nationals criminally exploited within CLs (NCA, 2015, 2017, 2019). Recognition that criminal exploitation within CLs fell within the definitional boundaries of MS came somewhat belatedly as it is unlikely that the MSA 2015 was created with this form of domestic exploitation in mind.

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The average age of those involved in CLs is 14–21yrs (McLean et al., 2020). Many are young people missing from home or groomed/recruited into dealing, but now earning substantial profits for the first time. Whilst still vulnerable and exploited, they often present to first responders as actively and enthusiastically involved, i.e., not fitting ideal victim stereotypes (Christie, 1986, p. 18). Moreover, their perceived vulnerability may be openly contested, (Ellis, 2018). Papadaki (2020), and Walker-Smart (2018), claim that victim presentation and identification are governed by multiple issues of myths and stereotypes, especially if deep-rooted grooming is present whereby victims overly attach themselves to exploiters and exhibit loyalty. Police too can quickly classify victims of criminal exploitation as criminals, e.g., Vietnamese cannabis cultivators. Papadaki (2020, p. 17), reporting on a review of clients working with the charity, Hestia, found 52% of victims of criminal exploitation had incurred prison time for crimes committed during exploitation. The HO Interim Review of the NRM (2014) noted inconsistencies in victim identification, failure to recognise victim and victims themselves failing to self-identify, e.g., for young people involved in drug supply networks, grooming, coercion, threats of violence are often ‘normalised’.

Variable Police Recording Practice Limited scenario conceptualisation and inaccurate victim stereotypes doubtless contribute to failures to identify exploitative situations which in turn diminishes reporting and referral levels. This sits in opposition to the now recommended practice of contextual safeguarding for young people (Firmin, 2017, 2020). Police recording practices amplify this challenge, as claimed by Papadaki (2020, p. 12), who is critical of the current NCA recording practices. She claims that they fail to systematically record the vulnerability characteristics of those involved in county lines exploitation to identify if criminals are targeting specific vulnerability characteristics amongst a pool of potential victims, e.g., missing or looked-after children (Calouri et al., 2020).

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Papadaki (2020, p. 15) notes if vulnerabilities are overlooked, then victims of forced criminality are more likely to be treated as criminals. This reality contradicts the purpose of the MSA 2015 which states the key determinant for assessing MS victims is assessing if their personal vulnerability has been exploited for the purpose of acquiring benefits of any kind. Victim vulnerability assessments are best done over time (Ofsted, 2018) and few provisions exist at police stations following the arrest of a young person working CLs. Challenges in intelligence gathering present further difficulties for effective practice. The IASC report (2016) identified gaps in regional policing responses—a view echoed by HMICFRS (2017) which identified regional variations in knowledge. The HO Interim Review of the NRM (2014, p. 6) noted: Intelligence gathering is not consistent or coordinated and there is a lack of understanding about where information obtained during the NRM process can be submitted to contribute to an intelligence picture.

Data categorisation also creates a challenge. Papadaki (2020, p. 8), citing Home Office data, notes between 2009 and 2018, a total of 4,491 adults and children were referred into the NRM for criminal exploitation. However, within the NRM, criminal exploitation is subcategorised within forced labour. Papadaki identified that within the forced labour category, some 2,671 cases did not register a sub-category, clearly presenting us with a data gap. Papadaki (2020, p. 8), reported internal research in Hestia reviewing 1,200 case files which found only 1% were ‘recorded’ as having been exploited for crime. This mismatched with police-recorded data given rise to the conclusion that victims exploited for crime are ‘systematically mis-recorded as having been exploited for labour’ . Commonly these mistakes relate to cannabis cultivation. In addition to police recording practices, there are significant levels of under-reporting amongst vulnerable groups who do not dare to approach the police or report to them. High levels of mistrust towards the police and fear of retribution underpin reasons for victims not reporting.

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Estimates of UK Victims of Modern Slavery The challenges listed above clearly create challenges for monitoring the MSA and calculating (then supporting) victims of exploitation. In fact, calculation of UK MS victims is often inaccurate and questionable. In estimating numbers of UK MS victims, Bales et al. (2015) noted that the Global Slavery Index used secondary sources, data from the UK NCA Strategic Assessment (2014), and onward extrapolation to estimate UK slavery as 0.013% of the national population (approx. 8,300 individuals). By utilising multiple systems estimation, Bales and colleagues estimated 10,000–13,000 potential UK victims of modern slavery.

Critiques of the MSA 2015 Clearly such issues have the potential to damage or undermine the MSA 2015 in its intent, purpose or practice and several robust critiques have surfaced. The HMICFRS report (2017, p. 82) is critical of the MSA 2015, noting it ‘has not yet led to significant improvements in the police’s response to MSHT’ . Further critiques arise from the National Audit Office report (2017) which notes an overall lack of accountability within the MSA (2015) and critiques the ‘limited means of tracking its progress’ alongside inadequate victim protection as key. To address such limitations and to plug gaps by offering guidance, definitions and tightening practice, the government has provided the UK Annual Report on Modern Slavery, (HM Government (2020), and required the ONS to report on national data regarding referrals and number of reported victims of modern slavery and human trafficking (MSHT). To address under-reporting and improve comprehension of definitions and case types, the Home Office established their ‘Typology of Modern Slavery Offences in the UK’ (Cooper et al., 2017); and belatedly, their ‘Guidance on Independent Child Trafficking Guardians’ (HO, 2021b) offering guidance into those who go missing then become trafficked.

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Haughey’s review of the MSA (2016), is perhaps the most focused critique of the limitations arising within the MSA 2015 and its subsequent impact and effect. The review found the operational response was broadly improving with an increased proactive and reactive policing investigations followed by more CPS prosecutions and convictions. However, such successes were hindered by lack of awareness about the MSA amongst the legal profession and at judicial level; significant gaps in police knowledge, practice and action, often arising from insufficient and inconsistent training. A prime exemplar of limitations of the MSA are those identifiable in the operational response from partners and the National Referral Mechanism (NRM).

The National Referral Mechanism (NRM) Section 52, of the MSA (2015), created a statutory duty for public authorities in England and Wales to notify the Home Office when encountering potential victims of MS. This duty is discharged by referring a child, or consenting adult, potential victim into the NRM. The NRM is therefore the UK’s framework for identifying/supporting MS victims (see: HO Modern Slavery: Statutory Guidance for England & Wales [under S.49 of the MSA, 2015]). Fig. 4.1 illustrates the number of NRM reported victims identified as working within UK county lines. Such low figures cannot possibly account for the total number of young people criminally exploited within CLs, estimated by the NCA (2015, 2017, 2018) and by the Commission on Young Lives (2021) as many thousands. Papadaki (2020, p. 8) citing Home Office data, notes between 2009 and 2018, a total of 4,491 adults and children were referred into the NRM for criminal exploitation. Surprisingly within the NRM, criminal exploitation is sub-categorised within forced labour; however, within that category, some 2,671 cases did not register a sub-category (Papadaki, 2020). Clearly, this data gap inhibits quantifying exploitation types. The 2020 Home Office report on the NRM (HO, 2020) stated that of the 10,613 potential victims referred in 2020, 26% (2,752) were female and 74% (7,826) were male. Whilst adult referrals has stabilised

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Fig. 4.1 Number of NRM referrals flagged as county lines, by age group at exploitation and gender (Notes: County lines referrals were classified as a subtype of labour exploitation prior to Q4 2019. Since January 2020, a ‘flag’ within the NRM digital casework system identifies country line referrals. Source SCA)

at 48%, child referrals have increased to 52%. In 2020, 1,544 referrals were flagged as relating to county lines (i.e., 15% of received referrals: an increase of 31% from 2019). The majority (81%; 1,247) of these referrals were for male children.

Criticisms of the NRM Introduced with good intentions in 2009 to comply with the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (Council of Europe, 2005), the NRM is often now a source of frustration and target of criticism. Kanics (2017) noted a need for greater coherence and improved co-ordination between NRM systems and existing national systems for asylum or child protection and a need for greater trust between agencies. Uncertain ownership and governance are critiques in the Home Office Interview Review of the NRM (2014, p. 8) noting that, ‘the management and administration of the NRM is fragmented’ with ‘no over-arching ownership of the NRM process by a single body’.

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In the Home Office NRM evaluation, Ellis et al. (2017), considered the key changes introduced following the rather damning 2014 review (Home Office, 2014). Here, piloted changes included creating Slavery Safeguarding leads; a Case Management Unit to streamline cases and improve consistency; and multi-disciplinary panels for transparent decision-making. This evaluation, however, failed to comment on data quality, information-sharing or the NRM process. Regarding decision-making, Murphy (2020, pp. 21–22) notes a ‘Culture of disbelief’ evident in NRM decisions and that ‘bureaucratic processes can undermine and undo’ victim support efforts. In their review of negative NRM decisions, Elliott (2016), reported on a ‘cut and paste’ approach to key information. The Centre for Social Justice report (2020, p. 7), points to a serious backlog of NRM referrals with victims, ‘spending months or years in limbo until a decision is made’ ; noting 80% of NRM referrals in 2019 were still awaiting a decision at the end of December 2019 (8,429 cases). Whilst government-directed and practitioner comments focus on imperfect policy, data quality, inadequate data-sharing, poor pro formas which fail to capture data; and endless definitional controversies, it seems victims recede into the background. Victims are not interviewed comprehensively/systematically leaving missed opportunities to surface the lived experience of victims. Whilst weaknesses re the NRM are commonly raised, e.g., poor quality data-sharing; definitional complexities, uneven reporting, the number of potential victims of all exploitation types increased since yearending December 2016. Labour or criminal exploitation counts for the majority of this data (ONS, 2020). All these points have led Papadaki (2020), and others to call for improved data to address criminal exploitation in the UK, whilst the National Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel also recommended that the NRM be reviewed.

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Ongoing Barriers to Effective Practice Within the NRM On top of these listed criticisms, several barriers to effective data management practice remain which inhibit practitioner roles, limit understandings and curtail NRM effectiveness, including:

Definitional Controversies From 1st October 2019, the Home Office changed its counting rules for the NRM, e.g., for NRM referrals received post this date, criminal exploitation is now recorded separately from labour exploitation. Potential victims can now also be recorded as experiencing multiple exploitation types (HO, 2020, p. 12). Whilst welcomed, this amendment creates challenges in cross-referencing statistics over the years.

Recording Disparity Data referrals and monitoring of the NRM is intended to illustrate the reported cases of modern slavery victims in the UK. However, early monitoring shows there is currently a significant disparity between the numbers of potential victims, the numbers that go through the NRM and the number of actual prosecutions (HMICPSI, 2017).

Interpretation of Victim Status The MSA 2015 (S.48) makes provision for Independent Child Trafficking Guardians (ICTGs) in England and Wales who advocate for child victims (under 18yrs), building trust and providing specialist knowledge to stakeholders. The Home Office Evaluation of ICTG Early Adopter Sites (2019), identified that in localities with ICTGs, there were fewer negative reasonable grounds decisions compared to non-ICTG sites. It is possible that the intervention of an ICTG might influence the determination or interpretation of victim status.

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From February 2017 to January 2019, a total of 4,957 children became NRM referrals across the UK. Of these, 445 were referred to the ICTG service; 63% were male; 43% of all children referred were British children. This is said to reflect a greater recognition of CSE and county lines criminal exploitation.

Poor Quality Professional Guidance Key guidance on criminal exploitation, and on the NRM, has been produced by central government including, the ‘Home Office Victims of Modern Slavery - Competent Authority Guidance’ (2016). This guidance has now gone through seven versions in only the last five years.

Lack of Training Training on victim criminal exploitation for First Responders remains an urgent requirement with Papadaki (2020), and Hestia, strongly recommending improved training and awareness for all key professionals—a view is widely shared and frequently commented upon as a recommendation.

In Adequate Data-Sharing The Interim Review of the NRM (2014) noted poor quality datasharing, poor quality data capture and lack of inter-agency trust and cooperation. Data concerns including the GDPR further inhibit partnership working. Improvements must consider central data governance and strategic management of data collation to ensure all governance boundaries are formally established.

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Re-exploitation Some criminal exploitation victims remain loyal to their exploiters through deeply rooted grooming and recruitment, which leads victims to actively return to their abuser/exploiter for re-exploitation. This remains largely under-explored and un-measured. Papadaki (2020), found 12% of Hestia clients who were released by police with No further Action were immediately re-exploited by criminals often for months before finally coming to the attention of the NRM.

In Conclusion The topic of CLs remains dynamic and in constant flux, not least with COVID-19 Lockdowns further impacting adapting criminal tactics, policing responses and strategic drug importation (Brewster et al., 2021; Grierson & Walker, 2020). COVID-19 also heightened and exacerbated vulnerabilities (Grierson, 2020). Much remains to be surfaced and reframing CLs in terms of vulnerabilities and exploitation will only improve our understanding of victims. However, it remains doubtful if such conversations will fully reframe, or address, the socio-economic underpinnings of poverty, inequality, deprivation, neglected/disenfranchised neighbourhoods, de-industrialisation, dis-investment, budget cuts and endemic lack of hope and opportunity. These structural issues lie deep below the epidermis. The NRM remains the adopted system for assessing, recording and monitoring victims of MS in the UK, but it requires reform and improvement if victims are to be appropriately supported. Victims of criminal exploitation still face multiple challenges beyond initial exploitation including a failure to identify their victim status; being disbelieved and subjected to stereotypical assumptions; being arrested, charged, then exposed to a limited court defence. Poor quality agency responses including data deficits within the NRM, exacerbate these challenges. They must also surely point towards unnecessary re-victimisation for many victims.

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Kanics, J. (2017). National referral mechanisms. In Routledge handbook of human trafficking (1st ed., Chapter 7). Routledge. Kincaid, S., Lumley, J., & Corlett, M. (2021). Violence and vulnerability. Crest Advisory. Local Government Association. (2017). Tackling child exploitation: Resources pack. https://www.local.gov.uk/publications/tackling-child-exploitation-res ources-pack McLean, R., Robinson, G., & Densley, J. (2020). County lines: Criminal networks and evolving drug markets in Britain. Springer Briefs in Criminology. Springer. Moyle, L. (2019). ‘Situating vulnerability and exploitation in street-level drug market: Cuckooing, commuting, and the “county lines” drug supply model’, Journal of Drug Issues, 49 (4), 739–755. Murphy, C. (2018). A game of chance? Long-term support for survivors of modern slavery. Centre for the Study of Modern Slavery. 16 March 2020. https://res earch.stmarys.ac.uk/id/eprint/3883 Murphy, C. (2020). Surviving trafficking, seeking asylum: Waiting, status and the state. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy. Also Open Research Archive, St Mary’s University. https://research.stmarys.ac.uk/id/epr int/4098 National Crime Agency. (2015). NCA intelligence assessment. County lines, gangs and safeguarding. National Crime Agency. (2016). County lines gang violence, exploitation & drug supply. National briefing report. National Crime Agency. National Crime Agency. (2018). County lines violence, exploitation & drug supply 2017 . National briefing report. National Crime Agency. National Crime Agency. (2019). County lines drug supply, vulnerability and harm 2018. Intelligence assessment. National Crime Agency. National Youth Agency. (2020). Gangs and exploitation: A youth work response to COVID-19. www.nya.org.uk National Youth Agency. (2021). Drug gangs use social media to groom young people in county town. www.nya.org.uk Office for National Statistics. (2020). Modern slavery in the UK: March 2020. ONS. Ofsted. (2018). Protecting children from criminal exploitation, human trafficking and modern slavery: An addendum. Ofsted. Papadaki, H. (2020). Underground lives; criminal exploitation of adult victims. Hestia Publications. https://www.antislaverycommissioner.co.uk/ media/1446/1196_criminal_exploitation_report_2020_v0_13w.pdf

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Pepin, S. (2018). County lines exploitation in London (Commons Debate Packs CDP-2018-0009). Robinson, G., McLean, R., & Densley, J. (2018). Working county lines: Child criminal exploitation and illicit drug dealing in Glasgow and Merseyside. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 1– 18. Scottish Government, (2021). Trauma-informed practice: A toolkit for Scotland , Scottish Government. Spicer, J. (2021). Policing county lines: Responses to evolving provincial drug markets. Palgrave Macmillan. Spicer, J., Moyle, L., & Coomber, R. (2020). The variable and evolving nature of ‘cuckooing’ as a form of criminal exploitation in street level drug markets. Trends Organized Crime, 23(4), 301–323. Storrod, M., & Densley, J. (2017). ‘Going viral’ and ‘going Country’: The expressive and instrumental activities of street gangs on social media. Journal of Youth Studies, 20, 677–696. Sturrock, R., & Holmes, L. (2015). Running the risks: The links between gang involvement and young people going missing, London, Catch 22. The Children’s Society. (2019). Tackling criminal exploitation. Children’s Society. The Children’s Commissioner. (2019). Keeping kids safe. Improving safeguarding responses to gang violence and criminal exploitation. Children’s Commissioner. The Commission on Young Lives. (2021). New figures reveal 12,720 children in England were identified by social services as being at risk of criminal exploitation by gangs in 2020/21. https://thecommissiononyounglives.co.uk/ new-figures-reveal-12720-children-in-england-were-identified-by-social-ser vices-as-being-at-risk-of-criminal-exploitation-by-gangs-in-2020-21 The Children’s Commissioner. (2021). Still not safe. The Children’s Commissioner. https://www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/wp-content/upl oads/2021/02/cco-still-not-safe.pdf Traverse. (2021). County lines pathfinder: Policy review. https://yjresourc ehub.uk/images/County%20Lines%20Pathfinder/Policy_Review_County_ Lines_Pathfinder_2021.pdf Whittaker, A., Cheston, L., Tyrell, T., Higgins, M., Felix-Baptiste, C., & Havard, T. (2019). From postcodes to profit: How gangs have changed in waltham forest. London South Bank University. Windle, J., & Briggs, D. (2015a). Going solo: The social organisation of drug dealing within a London street gang. Journal of Youth Studies, 18(9), 1170– 1185.

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Part II International Comparisons

5 US and UK Gangs: Research, Policy and Practice James Densley

Introduction The fact that this chapter, in this book, exists at all is testament to just how far the UK gang debate has come in recent years. Once there were gangs (Davies, 2013; Humphries, 1981), then there were no gangs, only youth subcultures (Campbell & Muncer, 1989; Downes, 1966; Scott, 1956), now there are lots of gangs (Andell, 2019; Pitts, 2008), but what really are gangs? (Hallsworth, 2013), pretty accurately summarises the last 100 years of UK gang scholarship. Much ink has been spilled over the perceived ‘Americanisation’ of gang research and responses in Britain this century, the ideological and practical borrowing from US criminal justice, and, relatedly, how administrative criminology usurped classical British sociology as the interpretative lens for troublesome youth groups (Fraser, 2015; Hallsworth & Young, 2008). There is not the scope or J. Densley (B) Metropolitan State University, Saint Paul, MN, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Andell and J. Pitts (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Youth Gangs in the UK , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99658-1_5

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intention to rehash those debates here (see instead, Densley et al., 2020). Instead, this chapter aims to take stock of what we now know about UK gangs in comparison to their US counterparts, to examine points of convergence and divergence, and highlight what Britain still can learn from the US experience of gangs going forward, and vice versa, in an attempt to set a research agenda for the future.

Points of Convergence and Divergence in UK and US Gang Research In the ‘golden era’ of US gang research (Pyrooz & Mitchell, 2015), the time of Cloward and Ohlin (1960), Cohen (1955) and Miller (1958), gangs were the study of delinquency and gang theory was criminology theory. There is a reluctance among UK criminologists to truly embrace gang research (see Pitts, 2012), but really UK gang studies should be viewed as foundational to UK criminology. The study of gangs is important for a variety of reasons (see Decker et al., 2022). First, it is important for understanding the lives of children and young people, the age cohort most susceptible to gang membership. Second, gangs are, at their core, social groups, and social groups are an integral part of people’s lives. Third, gang membership is consequential because gangs claim and change people’s lives. Fourth, there is a clear mandate to respond to gangs and (collateral) consequences when we do so. UK gang scholars must avoid using ‘not like America’ as a default category of gangs. We are now 20 years on from ‘The Eurogang Paradox’ (Klein, 2001), the idea that the UK had historically denied gangs because their makeup was inconsistent with a mythologised pattern of highly structured, cohesive and violent groups. We now recognise as fact that the US is a large and diverse place populated by a great variety of gangs (see Decker et al., 2022). UK scholars must equally embrace, as this edited volume does, the regional variation in gangs across the British Isles, focusing on Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and regions of England in comparative perspective. In London, for example, research has examined how drug sales feed the goal-orientation and articulated structure of UK gangs (Harding, 2014; Pitts, 2008; Whittaker et al.,

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2020). Akin to a ‘pyramid scheme’, gang ‘elders’ at the top exploit their ‘downline’ of drug runners and sellers at the bottom, called ‘youngers’, in order to maximise profits and avoid police attention (Densley, 2012a). These findings are reminiscent of Levitt and Venkatesh’s (2000) study of a ‘drug selling gang’ in Chicago and the income and risk disparities they found between senior gang members and their foot soldiers. Research by Hesketh and Robinson (2019) in Merseyside discovered a comparable model of ‘deviant entrepreneurship’ whereby crime gangs effectively employed young people to do the grunt work of drug dealing for them. Hesketh (2019) adds that gang membership gave young people a sense of belonging, identity and excitement, as well as a way to earn money because some gang members found a substitute for the lack of employment in the local area in ‘grafting’ (drug dealing). These findings share a lot in common with the American ‘underclass’ gang studies— namely Hagedorn’s (1988) People and Folks, Sullivan’s (1989) Getting Paid, Moore’s (1991) Going Down to the Barrio and Padilla’s (1992) The Gang as an American Enterprise—which tied a resurgence of gangs in urban America in the 1980s to deindustrialisation, a theme Fraser (2015) picks up in his ethnography of gangs in Glasgow, Scotland. In recent years, UK gang research has pivoted towards understanding ‘county lines’, or gangs transporting drugs from one area to another, using cell phones and couriers to do business remotely (Harding, 2020; McLean et al., 2020; Spicer, 2021). County lines have been implicated in the criminal exploitation of vulnerable young people and adults, and in rising youth violence in remote rural areas, market towns and coastal locations (Andell & Pitts, 2018; Robinson et al., 2019; Windle et al., 2020). But here too, there are parallels with the US experience. In the 1990s, there was a popular assumption that gangs had spread nationwide primarily to expand drug trafficking operations. Maxson (1998) famously examined this claim and found the most common migration pattern for gang members was a move for social reasons to improve quality of life and get closer to family and friends. Law enforcement presumed drug sales were a greater motivation for gang migration than they actually were and individual migration preceded the emergence of gangs in only five per cent of the cities surveyed.

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The lesson here for UK gang scholars is not to accept the media or practitioner narrative around county lines at face value, but to continue to ask the types of critical questions that will generate deeper understanding (see Densley et al., 2023). Gang migration in the US is tied more to ‘the cultural diffusion of gangs’ (Klein, 1995, p. 205) than the physical movement of gang members and this is important in the British context too (e.g., Ilan, 2015). Van Hellemont and Densley (2019), for example, found that fictional accounts of US gangs resonated with racialised and marginalised youth as far away as London, in part because Black British youth saw themselves in the characters and stories presented. In the absence of their own history and culture, London gang members even borrowed the styles and symbols of famous factual and fictional American gangs (Densley, 2013). Research on how UK gang members leverage media and popular culture lags behind the US, with only a handful of studies to date (e.g., Irwin-Rodgers et al., 2018; Storrod & Densley, 2017; Whittaker et al., 2020), but the ‘drill’ music associated with contemporary London gangs (see Ilan, 2020) originated in Chicago’s South Side (Stuart, 2020). While UK drill has its own distinct elements rooted in ‘road rap’ (Pinkney & Robinson-Edwards, 2018), the hip-hop subgenre is strongly influenced by American ‘trap’ music, which emerged from Atlanta, Georgia, and shares drill’s propensity for dark and provocative themes. Drill music videos posted on YouTube by UK gangs share a lot in common with clips posted by American gangs for the same reason—they must conform with global genre conventions (Lauger & Densley, 2018). Watch the videos with the sound off and it seems gangs in the UK and US are not so different after all. Drill is a practice mostly associated with London’s Black gangs. UK ‘gang’ research has tended to emphasise social class, socio-economic background, geography, family influence and religion over race when it comes to understanding the opportunities and preferences of gang members (for a review, see Fraser, 2017). However, there is increasing recognition that race and racism may be as important to understanding gangs in Britain as they are to understanding gangs in the US (e.g., Alexander, 2000, 2008; Gunter, 2017; Pitts, 2020; Smithson et al., 2013; Williams, 2015; Williams & Clarke, 2016). There is no question public

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trust in the police and other British institutions has been eroded by examples of systemic racism over decades and at the very least this has been shown to incentivise gang membership (Densley & Stevens, 2015). The rise of the Black Lives Matter movement in the UK after the murder of George Floyd in the US shows us that a renewed focus on immigrant and on Black and minority ethnic experiences of gangs in the UK that does not stigmatise, but purposefully contrasts with experiences in the US and other countries, would be a welcome addition to the literature. Decker et al.’s (2009) paper on gangs, immigration and culture advanced some good ideas for research in this area. Truly comparative studies of UK and US gangs are few and far between and it certainly would be nice to see more (see Deuchar et al., 2020; Densley & Jones, 2016; Fraser & Hagedorn, 2018). Comparisons are important for gang research (Klein, 2005) because they show us how gangs in Chicago differ from gangs in New York or gangs in London differ from gangs in Manchester. Differences are perfectly normal because, even in the UK, there are a variety of gang forms and evolutionary trajectories (Densley, 2014; McLean, 2018; Pitts, 2019). By interviewing youth in a ‘research city’ 200 miles north of London, for example, Judith Aldridge and her colleagues were able to identify ‘gangs’ per se, with the caveat that they were more ‘messy and fluid’ than the gangs in the capital (Aldridge & Medina, 2008). Those who might celebrate this as some sort of rebuttal to the UK gang thesis miss the point that American gangs are plenty messy and fluid, even in chronic gang cities like Chicago (Aspholm, 2020). In Manchester, gang violence was less about the drug economy than in London and more about turf, boredom and personal disputes (Ralphs et al., 2009). Still, a longitudinal analysis by Medina-Ariza et al., (2014, p. 3) found that ‘gang membership increases the chances of offending, anti-social behavior and drug use amongst young people’, which is very much consistent with findings from the US (see Decker et al, 2022). UK gang scholars take issue with the allegedly American claim that gangs are the ‘principal cause of crime’ (Hallsworth & Young, 2004; Smithson & Ralphs, 2016), but this really is a caricature of the research, which instead asks to what extent gangs facilitate or enhance individual offending, with gang members (individuals) rather than gangs (groups)

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as the unit of analysis (e.g., Thornberry et al., 1993). This issue is now largely resolved in the US (i.e., gangs ‘enhance’ offending, see Pyrooz et al., 2016), but UK scholars are yet to truly engage with it, or its sister concern regarding gang membership and violent victimisation. So-called ‘critical’ UK scholars argue this is because research should only humanise not problematise gangs. They filter gang violence through the lens of postmodernism, which holds all applications of truth are actually applications of politics by other means, and neo-Marxism, which advocates for radical activism based on identity politics. Yet, there can be no denying that violence is a regular feature of UK gang life and it claims and changes people’s lives in a real sense, not just an abstract one (Densley, 2013; Deuchar, 2013; Harding, 2014; McLean & Densley, 2020). For example, Densley and Pyrooz (2020) found that nearly half of all youth homicide in London over a 10-year period was gang-related. This deserves our attention. The only difference between UK and US gang violence is gang violence in the US is far more lethal than in the UK, thanks largely to an omnipresence of guns (Zimring & Hawkins, 1999). Gun violence was the exception even in US gang research prior to the 1970s (Carlock & Lizotte, 2015). Back then, gang disputes were settled with fists, sticks or knives. But if gang research teaches us anything, it is that things change. In a recent study, 135 of the 141 of homicides (96%) observed among individuals listed in the city of St. Louis’ police gang database were ‘assault by firearm’ deaths (Tostlebe et al., 2020). Numbers such as these are unfathomable in Britain, where gangs primarily use knives for acts of violence and only 30 people on average nationwide are killed with a gun each year. About four per cent of all homicides are committed by shooting in the UK, versus 70–80% in the US. This has implications both for how we research gangs, and respond to them, in these small isles. America is one of the few countries where the right to bear arms is constitutionally protected and where firearms are very loosely regulated. By contrast, gun laws in the UK are among the toughest in the world (Squires, 2014). All modern semi-automatic rifles, the type of guns that can be fired rapidly without needing to be reloaded, are banned, so too are all handguns and there is now a mandatory five-year prison

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sentence for possession. Hence, gun deaths remain extremely rare in Britain, and very few people, even police officers, carry firearms. Underground weapons acquisition is an area ripe for research where UK gangs may once again converge with their US counterparts (e.g., Hureau & Braga, 2018). Most illegal firearms in Britain come from Europe, but some of the weapons seized by law enforcement are antique or deactivated weapons manufactured in the US and sold legally at gun shows or by collectors there. Finally, and perhaps most controversially, is the application of US gang responses in the UK context (Densley, 2011; Fraser et al., 2018). These include specialist police gang units and police gang databases (Amnesty International UK, 2018; Densley & Pyrooz, 2020; Williams, 2018); ‘focused deterrence’ for the small number of chronic offenders (Densley & Jones, 2016; Deuchar, 2013); and civil gang injunctions that limit gang members’ freedoms of association and movement (Carr et al., 2017; Cottrell-Boyce, 2013). Gang policing is especially controversial (Fraser et al., 2021; Fraser & Atkinson, 2014; Shute & Medina, 2014). Scotland Yard’s Territorial Support Group (TSG), a specialist squad that polices public disorder in marked police vans, has come under heavy scrutiny. TSG units operate in ‘hotspots’ for gangs and serious youth violence, which tend to be in racialised and marginalised communities, hence they are synonymous with racist policing (Densley, 2013; Gunter, 2017). Today, 12 Violence Suppression Units (VSUs) comprised of 620 officers, police 250 ‘microbeats’ or small sections of London known for gangs, drugs and violence. The VSUs are tasked with stopping-and-searching suspected gang members to recover weapons, intelligence-gathering, raids and weapon sweeps. Interestingly, VSUs with a strong anti-gang focus have existed in the US for many years prior to their emergence in the UK, which has led many to speculate that they are directly modelled on the US variety. This would not be the first time the UK has looked to the US for answers on gangs. In the days following the 2011 UK riots, which were wrongly blamed on gangs (Densley & Mason, 2011), the Prime Minister tried to appoint as new Metropolitan Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, the former Los Angeles (and New York) police chief best known for his advocacy of data-driven and ‘broken windows’ policing (see Densley,

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2013). The problem is, America is not really the best role model for gang policing owing to a long history of problems, including excessive violence, civil rights violations and of course, a failure to decrease gang violence long term (for a review, see Decker et al., 2022). Some might say we should only look to our American cousins for lessons about what not to do about gangs. Gang policing in the US often operates in conjunction with immigration policing, for instance, wherein gang membership becomes criteria for deportation, and there are genuine fears about a Conservative government pushing the UK in this same direction. And at risk of getting too much into the weeds, the evidence is mixed on even the most ‘proven’ exported police gang interventions like focused deterrence (Braga et al., 2018). Positive results in (unmatched) quasiexperimental studies that employ basically the same weak strategy of comparing (a) a place with an intervention to (b) a nearby place without an intervention, with (c) no good comparison group (that could serve as a plausible counterfactual), do not instil much confidence among Brits. While it is true that Glasgow had great success with focused deterrence and other violence reduction measures imported from the US (Deuchar, 2013; Williams et al., 2014), London did not (Densley & Jones, 2016). I am generally an advocate for focused deterrence, but the UK must think about the risks of different responses to gangs in the absence of rigorous evidence (especially evidence gathered locally), which often are higher (in terms of negative externalities for communities) with police-led initiatives than they are for community-led programmes, all else being equal (Roman, 2021). In sum, therefore, Britain started this century with a rejection of the gang premise, in part because of the state crime control implications. But after finding more and more examples of gangs that fit a prototypical gang model that is, ironically, now largely rejected in the US, the UK has adopted a range of US gang responses that ostensibly ‘work’, but at some cost to the individuals and communities targeted. This is now the foundation from which we must try to build a research agenda around UK gangs in the twenty-first century.

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What the UK Can Learn from US Gang Research and Responses The ‘empirical turn’ in US gang research during the late 1980s and early 1990s, characterised by the inclusion of gang measures in longitudinal research surveys, yielded major intellectual gains (Pyrooz & Mitchell, 2015). There is a heathy scepticism of ‘administrative criminology’ in Britain, hence British studies tend to be more qualitative by design (see Fraser, 2017), but there is no question that UK gang research and responses would benefit from a more concerted effort to capture the causes and correlates of gang membership over time. Longitudinal data collection has been a driving force for mainstream research on gangs in the US (see Decker et al., 2022), but is few and far between in the UK save for the Home Office’s Offending, Crime and Justice Survey. Of the nine articles on (US) gangs published in Criminology, the discipline’s flagship journal, in the last five years, seven were longitudinal designs. In the absence of nationally representative surveys that include gang measures, knowledge about UK gangs and gang membership must be extrapolated from a select number of (qualitative) case studies, conducted in the UK’s largest cities that are not exactly representative of the country as a whole. There is a lot of fleeting interest in gangs, not from media, but from scholars, and if you think about it, practically all knowledge on UK gangs can be traced back to about a dozen (qualitative) empirical data sets, many of which started life as PhD dissertations. From London (e.g., Andell, Densley, Gunter, Harding, Pitts, Whittaker) to Manchester (Aldridge, Medina, Ralphs, Shute, Smithson), Liverpool (Hesketh, Robinson) to Glasgow (Deuchar, Fraser, McLean), there are knowledge gaps at every turn. We need triangulation of data sources and larger sample sizes, the latter because studies seeking to detect between-group differences in gang offending and victimisation, etc., must be appropriately powered to avoid Type I (false negatives) error. Quality social science outputs depend on quality data inputs. Consider this my call for (a) more, and better, data on UK gangs and gang membership; and (b) for UK criminologists to stop caricaturing and castigating quantitative work. We learn a lot from it. Not to mention, data-free diatribes are exhausting and waste energy and time.

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Relatedly, more widespread access to and use of official (i.e., school, law enforcement, court, prison) data and more work on law enforcement and criminal justice perspectives on gangs that do not start from the typical British position that all official data are biased, therefore useless, is needed (e.g., Densley & Pyrooz, 2020). American gang researcher Malcolm Klein (1995) was extremely critical of police data on gangs, yet he used them a lot in his own research because (a) they were the only data available at the time; and (b) they helped him chart of the proliferation of gangs across the US. His work was the forerunner to the National Youth Gang Survey (https://nationalgangcenter.ojp.gov/surveyanalysis), which was formally launched in 1996 and administered annually through 2012 (and is due to restart again in 2021). The survey asked knowledgeable law enforcement representatives to report whether their jurisdiction had a gang problem and the year when the current iteration of the gang problem emerged. These data have helped scholars track gang continuity and change at the macro level, but also the evolution of law enforcement responses to gangs, information sorely missing in the UK context. Greater readiness to use police data means US criminologists have in recent years fully embraced crime mapping and network-based approaches to understanding gangs, gang members and the relationships within gangs and between gangs and other groups (see Sierra-Arevalo & Papachristos, 2017). Save for a few examples (e.g., Grund & Densley, 2012, 2015; Gunnell et al., 2016; Oatley & Crick, 2015), social network analysis has yet to feature much in British-based studies of gang structure and function, which is a shame given its obvious utility. The Illicit Networks Workshop (https://illicitnetworksworkshop.com/ about-us/) launched by Andrew Goldsmith from Flinders University in 2008 is one way UK gang scholars could integrate themselves more into this line of work. More assessment of gang programming in and out of criminal justice settings also is needed in the UK. Across the Atlantic, many federally funded law enforcement initiatives include a mandate to have a research component or a research partner (e.g., Gangs Resistance Education and Training, Project Safe Neighborhoods, Safe Futures, and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s Comprehensive Gang

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Model). The UK Government must do the same. The National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the US Department of Justice, has offered targeted solicitations on gang research and filled an important role in fostering basic research as well as evaluations of programmatic and criminal justice responses to gangs. We need comparable UK studies that use primary data and/or archived secondary data from evaluations of gang programming to more broadly assess theoretical and definitional issues in gang research. If old (Euro)gang definitions are not fit for purpose in modern times, then let’s prove it; but I suspect many of the record 30 teenagers murdered in London in 2021 and the more than 40 teenagers charged with murder in the capital that same year, were embedded in groups that at least resemble gangs and hail from neighbourhoods where gangs or cliques are a known entity. Even if gang suppression leads, evaluation had better follow. Study the intended effect, but also collateral consequences. To this point, we need more research comparing and contrasting UK and US gang interventions to determine the extent to which the state (institutionally and culturally) influences programming. People joke that in Britain, people have traditions not rights, whereas in the US, the Constitution trumps all. A comparative analysis of UK and US law in relation to gang responses could be instructive. More research on gangs and gang membership in prison (see Maitra, 2020; Wood et al., 2014), which until recently was a gap even in US gang research (Pyrooz & Decker, 2019), in comparative perspective (e.g., Skarbek, 2020), and further research on court processing and outcomes, disparities by gang status and the role of gang membership in the courtroom (e.g., Williams & Clark, 2016) is also encouraged.

What the US Can Learn from the UK Gang Research and Responses Gang research in the US is very firmly anchored in criminology, but it is ‘increasingly specialized’, which means scholarship can feel pigeonholed (Decker et al., 2022). One of the strengths of UK gang research, by contrast, is having a broader mixture voices and disciplines represented

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in the literature. UK gang research is not as dominated by criminology and a related strength is UK gang research staying in conversation in broader trends, such as mental health (Coid et al., 2013; Wood & Dennard, 2017; Wood et al., 2017), domestic abuse and coercive control (Havard et al., 2021), child criminal exploitation (Robinson et al., 2019), and, as discussed previously, county lines. UK gang research has better incorporated behavioural economics (e.g., signalling theory, see Densley, 2012b) and psychological theory and practice (Alleyne & Wood, 2010; Mallion & Wood, 2020). It has more fully explored linkages between gangs and organised crime groups (e.g., Densley, 2014; Harding et al., 2019; Whittaker et al., 2020) and more fully embraced the idea of the ‘reluctant gangster’ (Pitts, 2008), namely how some youngsters selling drugs for gangs are not necessarily ‘gang members’ at all, but rather exploited youth who are coerced into crime through debt-bondage (Robinson et al., 2019; Windle et al., 2020). This has important implications for gang prevention and intervention, which in the US tends to be skewed towards suppression. It pays sometimes to be critical, even sceptical, of certain gang narratives, and this can be the UK’s gift to the US. Critical perspectives offer new insights into gangs and gang responses (Fraser, 2017), including recognition that gang members often have been exposed to extreme trauma. The unprecedented public pressure that US law enforcement agencies feel at this time of writing perhaps could have been avoided had they approached gangs a little more critically (Van Hellemont & Densley, 2021), going back to the more nuanced, ethnographic understandings of gangs that were present in the earliest gang scholarship (for a discussion, see Fraser, 2015). And while far from perfect, one thing the UK has going for it is a nationally coordinated ‘strategy’ around gangs and related harms (e.g., Disley & Liddle, 2016). Gang responses are highly localised in the US and for this reason they often lack strategic vision and direction. There is a systematic side to UK gang policy and interventions and a softer side to their emphasis on ‘safeguarding’ young people. The Home Office leads and others follow (HM Government, 2018).

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Concluding Remarks There is an old adage that Britain and the United States are two countries divided by a common language. To some degree, this chapter argues, this idea extends to gangs, gang research and gang responses. On the one hand, macro processes of globalisation, deindustrialisation, racialisation, technological innovation, and the interplay between media, culture and society have caused gangs, gang research and gang responses in the UK to converge towards those in the US. On the other, certain traditions ensure the UK remains a lonely island in the sea of gangs, unsure whether to fully embrace its special relationship with the US or not. This is not necessarily a bad thing and as this chapter demonstrates, it in fact creates ample opportunities for UK-based gang researchers to lead this field, not just follow it; in so doing, shape the future of gang research and responses on both sides of the Atlantic.

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6 Gangs and a Global Sociological Imagination John Hagedorn and Alistair Fraser

Introduction Around the world, the youth gang phenomenon has become an important and sensitive public issue. In communities from Los Angeles to Rio, Capetown to London, the real and perceived threat from highly visible street-based groups of young people has come to dominate news headlines, policy guidelines and research agendas. At the same time, This chapter was originally published as Fraser, A. and Hagedorn, J. (2018) Gangs and a Global Sociological Imagination. Theoretical Criminology, 22(1), 42–62. https://doi.org/10. 1177/1362480616659129. Reproduced with permission.

J. Hagedorn University of Illinois-Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA e-mail: [email protected] A. Fraser (B) University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland, UK e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Andell and J. Pitts (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Youth Gangs in the UK , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99658-1_6

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the image of ‘the gang’ has become globally recognized and consumed, mediated through film, popular culture and ‘real-life’ TV series. ‘Gangs’ are depicted as an episodic phenomenon comparable across diverse geographical sites, with the US gang stereotype often operating as archetype. Mirroring this trend, academic researchers have increasingly sought to survey the global topography of gangs through positivist methodologies that seek out universal characteristics of gangs in different cultural contexts. In this article, we argue that these top-down definitions privilege a static view of gang membership that neglects the localized meanings, historical antecedents and cultural contexts of gangs. These definitions fail to capture the fluidity and contradiction inherent in gang identification, foreclose the capacity of gangs to develop into either prosocial organizations or more organized criminal entities and create an artificial sense of similarity between diverse cultural contexts. In the process, gang research has become disengaged with the broader current of sociological theory, resulting in a narrowing in the representation and analysis of diverse street-based groups. In this article, we argue that new theoretical and methodological tools are required to understand the global gang phenomenon from the bottom-up. In making this argument, we draw on a transnational research exchange between Glasgow and Chicago which drew on comparative ethnographic observations. Grounding comparative analysis at this level reveals significant divergences in the nature, meaning and history of gang identification in these two contexts, and a corresponding difficulty with employing a common definition or response. In proposing ways to make sense of these differences, drawing particularly from the sociological thought of Mills and Bourdieu, we argue for the need to re-engage the sociological imagination in gang research through engagement with the intersecting issues of social structure, individual biography and cultural context. First, we discuss some of the principal shortcomings of current theoretical and methodological approaches to gangs in a global context and outline the principles and practice of our ‘global exchange’ as an alternative. Following this, we introduce three concepts homologies of habitus, vectors of difference and transnational reflexivity which build from our shared experiences to construct a comparative theoretical framework. In the conclusion, we argue for the need for a new critical

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sociology of gangs in a global context, cultivating a global sociological imagination that is rooted in the history, culture and politics of distinct urban locales while recognizing the intimate connections between social structure and individual disposition. By so doing, we hope to demonstrate the potential of a global sociological imagination in criminological research more broadly.

Gangs and Globalization The interlocking processes that have developed under the heading of ‘globalization’—namely ‘the progressive enmeshment of human communities with each other over time and the complex social, economic and environmental processes that stretch across their borders’ (Held, 2000, p. 394) have had important ramifications for the study of gangs (Brotherton, 2007). While processes of globalization have in some cases led to convergences in lifestyles and behaviours in distal communities, these remain marked by lines of global stratification, in which social, cultural and spatial mobility is a central motif. As Bauman (2000, p. 2) notes, ‘alongside the emerging planetary dimensions of business, finance, trade and information, a “localizing”, space-fixing process is set in motion freedom to move fast becomes the main stratifying force of our latemodern or postmodern times’. Processes of socio-spatial segregation and inequality have cohered in the development of spaces of ‘advanced marginality’ in urban locales across the globe (Wacquant, 2008a). The interconnection between these areas is exhibited in the development of informal ‘grey’ economies, street justice and territorial protectionism; conditions in which the informal social order of gangs can play a functional role (Sanchez-Jankowski, 1991). In this context, academic researchers have become increasingly sensitized to the global nature of gang activity and have sought to survey the global landscape of gangs (Klein et al., 2001; Van Gemert et al., 2008). These efforts are epitomized most clearly in the work of the Eurogang network, a group of European and US gang researchers who have developed a set of common definitional criteria for the purposes of cross-national research, comprising ‘any durable, street-oriented youth

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group whose involvement in illegal activity is part of its group identity’ (Van Gemert, 2005, p. 148). This broad-based definition focuses on the core criteria of durability, street-orientation, youth, identity and crucially illegal activity. According to this definition, there are identifiable gangs or ‘troublesome youth groups’ in a range of European cities, exhibiting similar characteristics to their US counterparts. While the programme of work incorporates qualitative components, in the form of suggested city-level data and ethnographic ‘guidelines’, the comparative programme has tended towards quantitative methodologies. Latterly, this definition has come to form a foundation for transnational, quantitative studies of gang membership and crime through the ISRD-2 programme of research, comprising a comparative study of youth and delinquency in 30 countries (Gatti et al., 2011; Junger-Tas et al., 2012). While comparative research of this kind is instructive insofar as it sketches the outline of street-based groups in a global context, the deployment of a common definition through solely quantitative measures is problematic for a number of reasons. It must be remembered that the term ‘gang’ is an English word that developed to describe a particular social phenomenon in the United States and the United Kingdom. While international researchers have documented street-based criminal collaborations across a range of transnational sites (Hazen & Rodgers, 2014), the term ‘gang’ does not always easily map onto these groups. Translations of the term ‘gang’ risk misinterpretation of different cultural environments; linguistic categories evolve to describe social phenomenon as they exist within the local context. This is not simply a case of the difficulties of translation involved in cross-national research, but the more fundamental problem of the imposition of a categorization of human behaviour developed within a particular Anglo-American criminological context to cultural environments wherein these categorizations have little or no meaning. To take one example, in Mandarin Chinese there are at least four translations for the term ‘gang’, each of which has a different meaning and connotation. The most commonly used, bangpai (帮派), can at times have criminal connotation but at others is neutral; and can be used to describe an independent group as well as a part of a larger organization. As with many languages, moreover, there are a wide range of local dialects that draw on different

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cultural and linguistic roots in categorizing and labelling different aspects of social life. As Webb et al. (2011) discovered in a quantitative study of gang identification between the United States and China, these linguistic and cultural divergences can lead to fundamental problems of comparison. It is also worth noting here that there are uncomfortable convergences of geo-political and intellectual power in the construction of ‘global’ definitions of gangs, as there are in contemporary criminological knowledge more broadly (Aas, 2011). Patterns of ‘global’ research tend to emanate almost exclusively from the United States and Europe, containing inherent echoes of colonial power (Bowling, 2011; Brotherton, 2015). As we will go on to argue, however, even in English-speaking contexts where the term has more cultural resonance and a closer connection with lived reality might reasonably be expected—there are problems with applying a strict definition. In the United Kingdom and United States, for example, both authors studied groups that fulfilled the criteria of durability, street-orientation, youth and illegal activity. In Glasgow and Chicago, street-based groups of young men, associated with particular territories, engaging in some form of illegal activity, have been reported for over a century. We contend, however, that street-based groups in Glasgow and Chicago have followed radically divergent trajectories, and consequently involve fundamental differences in their meaning, form and context. As a result, a quantitative survey seeking to compare these sites through a common definition would simply not be measuring a phenomenon sufficiently similar as to be useful. These differences, we argue, have resulted from the different social, structural and spatial development of the cities themselves, and the national contexts in which they are situated. In Glasgow, there is ‘durability’ insofar as certain gang names have been reported for over a century. However, this is not a selfsustaining criminal organization but a hand-me-down identity that is refitted and recast by successive generations and that cannot be understood outside of the broader economic and social currents of the city of Glasgow (Fraser, 2015). In Chicago, by contrast, durability is constituted by the institutionalization of street gangs in local drug economies, in response to severe social and economic marginalization, yet in some cases evolved into social movements and political parties (Hagedorn, 2015).

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In both cases, it is impossible to make sense of the meanings of gangs without a careful appreciation of the history, sociology and politics of the broader urban context. One consequence of an over-reliance on quantitative comparison, or indeed a qualitative approach with a closed definition, is the relegation of the importance of sociological theory in making sense of gangs in a global context. Where once issues of history, culture and class were at the heart of theories of gangs, latterly, issues of crime, policing and risk management have come to dominate. As a result, gangs are too often reduced to a fixed, static and ‘monolithic entity, with a single-mindedness of purpose and outlook’ (Venkatesh, 2003, p. 8); which is presented as a universal social form. In the context of an increasingly divisive policy environment in both the United States and the UK, in which gangs are often a convenient scapegoat for a broader set of social anxieties, there is a danger that academic research can reify the gang phenomenon as an objective, criminal entity and offering justification for increasingly punitive policy responses. Rather than seeking to refine definitions, we argue that there is a need to reconnect the study of gangs with the social, cultural and biographical processes through which gang identification is constituted a project that is undercut by excessive prescriptiveness in relation to definitions. In making this case, we draw particularly from the rich transatlantic sociological theory of Pierre Bourdieu (1984, 1990, 2005) and C Wright Mills (1959). Though there are significant differences in their approaches, both evidence a disdain for ‘grand theory’ and ‘abstract empiricism’ approaches to the social world that fail signally to connect with what they saw as the principal foundations of a sociological understanding of the world—while seeking to unite structure, culture and agency in understanding the social world (Burawoy, 2010). In an effort to reconnect the study of gangs with a sociological imagination, we seek to develop new methodological lenses with which to recognize and understand difference while remaining grounded in empirical realities.

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Gangs and Global Exchange The reconfigurations of social life wrought by processes of globalization have had far-reaching consequences across the social sciences, engendering a range of novel articulations of theory and method. Specifically, globalization has posed important methodological challenges to criminology as a discipline, as the national borders of crime, security and justice are increasingly traversed and transgressed. These developments call into question the ‘methodological nationalism’ (Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 2009) that has traditionally characterized criminology, necessitating new forms of comparative, transnational and globally informed research. As Bowling (2011, p. 363, emphases in original) notes of these developments: global criminology aspires to bring together transnational and comparative research from all regions of the world to build a globally inclusive and cosmopolitan discipline. Transnational criminology goes beyond comparative analysis to explore problems that do not belong exclusively in one place or another and can therefore be understood by analysing linkages between places.

In developing such transnational links, it is necessary to move beyond a top-down approach to definition and learn from grounded comparisons that are situated within a broader structural context. Rather than starting with deductive reasoning, for example, Wacquant’s (2008a, p. 9) ‘comparative sociology of urban marginality’ between Chicago and Paris seeks to compare geographically disparate sites inductively. As Wacquant (2008a, p. 9) notes, first-hand observation is ‘an indispensable tool, first to pierce the screen of discourses whirling around these territories of urban perdition and secondly to capture the lived relations and meanings that are constitutive of the everyday reality of the marginal city-dweller’. This form of comparative ethnography, however, is exceptionally rare. Long-term engagement with diverse urban milieu requires a bilingual cultural sensitivity and scholarly commitment that is as demanding as it is time-consuming. Burawoy’s (1991, 2000) collaborative ethnographic projects offer an alternative that is rooted in efforts to comprehend the

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global ‘forces, connections and imaginations’ in which increasingly interconnected, yet disparate, social realities can be grasped through in-depth observation. Drawing inspiration from these insights, between 2009 and 2010 the authors conducted a transnational exchange between our respective fieldsites, with the ‘home’ researcher operating as a gatekeeper, guide and critical friend during the field-visit. The purpose was to physically experience a different fieldsite, and be confronted bodily with the similarities and differences with the ‘home’ research site. The beauty of the exchange is its simplicity and efficiency: the hard-won access of the other researcher is shared and collectivized, allowing the visiting scholar a sharp, penetrating insight into a social world that may diverge considerably from their own. The idea came about partly by accident, and partly by design. As a doctoral student, Fraser spent three months in Chicago (September–November 2009), carrying out informal interviews and observations with a wide range of community activists, young people, gang members, police officers and academics. Despite starting from a presumption of similarity, he learned about the vast differences between what are referred to as ‘gangs’ in Chicago and Glasgow, demonstrating unequivocally the sharp divergences in the gang phenomenon in apparently similar contexts. Despite its relative brevity, the experience felt akin to Nelken’s (2000, p. 147) depiction of ‘long-stay’ researchers ‘living there’, who are ‘engaged in a process of being slowly re-socialized [and] may doubt whether they ever really understood their own culture of origin’. Sharing a desire to explore further the differing trajectories of gangs in the two cities, Hagedorn spent a month in Glasgow in December 2010, travelling to fieldsites, reading and talking to scholars and community leaders about Glasgow’s history. For him, the experience was closer to Nelken’s (2000) depiction of ‘researching there’ rather than ‘living there’. Time spent at a site changes perceptions; the sights, sounds and smells of a place sharpen the comparative senses in ways texts can never suffice. It prompted the asking of new questions that may differ or seem naïve if asked by an insider. While gangs in Glasgow and Chicago seemed to have begun in similar ways and both have persisted for more than a hundred years, the experiment was intended to understand how

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these (not so small) differences in gang organization and activities can be understood in radically different contexts (Burawoy, 2009, p. 202). Since this initial physical exchange, both authors have completed monographs on the gang phenomenon in their respective cities; the former premised on the accumulation of 10 years of research and scholarship on the Glasgow gang phenomenon, the latter on 20 years of Chicago-based research (Fraser, 2015; Hagedorn, 2015). In what follows, we reflect on the methodological and theoretical implications of this experiment in qualitative comparative research, and its implications for global and comparative gang research. While fundamentally rooted in our fieldwork experiences, our intention is to ‘extend out’ beyond Glasgow and Chicago to create dialogue with scholars of gangs around the world (see Hazen & Rodgers, 2014). Based on the comparative insights that flowed from the initial exchange, and drawing on these historical analyses of our respective cities, we suggest three concepts homologies of habitus, vectors of difference and transnational reflexivity that seek to cultivate a global sociological imagination in relation to gangs. These concepts seek to shuttle between the levels of everyday experience and disposition, urban history and cultural context to compose an analysis that is both grounded and comparative. In the words of Mills (1959, p. 211), this approach ‘consists of the capacity to shift from one perspective to another, and in the process to build up an adequate view of the total society and its components’.

Homologies of Habitus In Bourdieu’s terms, ‘habitus’ refers to the set of durable character dispositions habits that all individuals possess (Bourdieu, 2005; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). These dispositions are both intellectual and physical and frequently operate at an unconscious, or preconscious level, giving the feeling of being instinctive. Daily interactions are structured by our habitual range of responses within a specific ‘field’ of action be it street-based, bureaucratic or academic (Shammas & Sandberg, 2016) whose logic, rules and forms of ‘capital’ are deeply embedded in our

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daily routines. Bourdieu likens this to a ‘feel for the game’ an instinctive response to learned rules (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 128). Habitus is, therefore, a concept that draws attention to the generative historical structures of inequality, for example, of class, gender and ethnicity through which individual dispositions are patterned, while recognizing the role of individual decision-making and agency within this broader context. Bourdieu (1984) most famously elaborated these ideas in distinction, demonstrating that tastes, beliefs and politics are fiercely patterned by the matrix of class position at an objective level, while simultaneously differentiated and unpredictable at the subjective level. As Wacquant (2008b, p. 267) summarizes: These unconscious schemata are acquired through lasting exposure to particular social conditions and conditionings, via the internalization of external constraints and possibilities. This means that they are shared by people subjected to similar experiences even as each person has a unique individual variant of the common matrix (this is why individuals of like nationality, class, gender, etc., spontaneously feel ‘at home’ with one another).

In both Glasgow and Chicago, street-socialized youth exhibited a deep-seated form of territorial place attachment that reflected a limited and limiting spatial immobility that might be characterized as a form of ‘street habitus’ (Fraser, 2013a). This comparable form of territorial identification in the midst of severely disadvantaged communities was evident across both fieldsites; as was the devastating impacts of social and economic change on the communities visited. Globalized processes of marginalization gentrification, displacement and precariousness were therefore implicated in the habits and traits in young people’s everyday lives. While there were marked differences, we suggest that there are homologies that revolve around persistent inequality, socio-spatial segregation and territorial identity, representing adaptive responses to global economic forces. Approaching the study of gangs in this way allows for an equivalence to be drawn with the structured routines and dispositions within other social fields. As Burawoy (2010) has recently argued, both

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Mills and Bourdieu argued for the necessity of understanding the stratified way in which power is reproduced across various spheres of cultural production, as well as the complex bureaucratic mechanisms that disguise patterns of social reproduction and symbolic violence. As recent work in Bourdieusian criminology has demonstrated (Shammas & Sandberg, 2016), there are comparable patterns of status contest, trading of cultural capital and mystification involved in a range of criminal justice contexts. Approaching gang identification through the lens of street habitus allows a proper appreciation of the role of structural and symbolic violence in the concatenation of street-based identities. Beyond our fieldsites, research carried out on what has been termed ‘inner-city street culture’ demonstrates that similar traits have been documented in other urban contexts. Bourgois, basing his findings on extended participant observation in El Barrio in Brooklyn, New York, distinguishes the set of dispositional qualities that obtain in this community. For Bourgois (1995, p. 8), this street culture has ‘emerged in opposition to exclusion from mainstream society’. Anderson (1999), in Code of the Street identifies a similar set of ‘street’ dispositions in lowincome communities in Philadelphia. Sandberg’s (2008) research in Oslo documents an embodied, streetwise disposition among street-based drugdealers in which bodily capital, language and street smarts are employed to navigate violent social terrain that represents the internalization of the experience of marginality and the strategic employment of forms of available capital. In an evocative account of the life trajectories of three brothers in and out of gangs in Springfield, Massachusetts, Black (2009) underscores the depth, complexity and contradictions in their daily lives, and the structuring role of everyday marginalization in these experiences. Drawing explicitly on Mills, Black (2009, p. 357) makes an impassioned case for a sociological imagination in relation to gangs, via analysis of ‘neoliberal economic capitalism, through the social institutions that organize it, to the immediate milieus of marginalized urban minority communities’. These shared traits between diverse geographical locales represent adaptive responses to convergent economic trends (Richardson & Skott-Myhre, 2012), representing a complex streetbased reality that is not easily approximated through quantitative survey (Brotherton, 2015; Hobbs, 1997; Katz & Jackson-Jacobs, 2004). As Jock

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Young (2004, pp. 25–26) argues, while certain phenomena are capable of definition, ‘there are many others that are blurred because it is their nature to be blurred’. As such, the street-based dispositions of young people in Glasgow and Chicago must be understood as a response to the structural violence that has deeply embedded inequality and disadvantage in both cities. In this context, it is important to note the historical parallels between the two cities as Mills (1959, p. 215) notes, ‘some knowledge of world history is indispensable’. In the late 19th and early twentieth centuries, Glasgow was the ‘Second City’ of the British Empire; Chicago, the ‘Second City’ of the United States. Both experienced huge increases in population to become cities of more than a million inhabitants, as well as mass migration and industrialization: in Glasgow, from Ireland, Europe and the Scottish Highlands (Maver, 2000); in Chicago from Ireland, Italy, Poland and the Southern United States (Burgess, 1961 [1925]). In 1914, Glasgow produced three-quarters of the ships for the British Empire, as well as half of the locomotives (Mitchell, 2005), while Chicago was the railroad hub of the United States and provided the country with meat and steel through its central railways (Duis, 1998). During this period, both Glasgow and Chicago experienced rapid urbanization, increasing population densities and territorial gang conflict. Since this period, despite divergent trajectories, both cities have experienced persistent extremes of poverty and marginalization. In Glasgow, for example, despite successive waves of regeneration and redevelopment, these improvements have not been felt equally. To this day, some 40% of Glaswegians live below the poverty line (Dorling & Pritchard, 2010). While young people’s habits and traits were deeply rooted, however, there was evidence in both settings of internal contradiction and alteration. Across both fieldsites, both authors witnessed the ways in which gang identities waxed and waned over the life-course (Anderson, 1999; Brenneman, 2012), but also the processes through which reputations became difficult to shake beyond the period of ‘youth’ encapsulated in most common definitions. In Glasgow, one participant described the way in which her dad’s friends referred back to his youthful reputation; similarly, a police officer described an incident whereby a man in his 30s was stabbed in a cinema by a man he had fought against in his teens.

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In Chicago, several young adults were struggling between streetlife and ‘going straight’, while others exhibited nostalgia for past days involved in streetlife: The afternoon was spent, nostalgically, in the home of an ex-gang member; reliving days gone by via a video-cassette of his 69th birthday party. Here are the movers and shakers of Westside Chicago in the 1960s, still sharp, still slick and still hip; dancing, chatting and laughing in a club. Now he is getting on in years, there is a tangible sense that he wants—and needs—this approbation to be remembered. His house is festooned with pictures of the glory days—the razor-sharp suits, the people and the still-shot in the boxing ring. (Fieldnote, AF, October 2009)

There were therefore components of habitus that were similar between Glasgow and Chicago: historically embedded and age graded yet at times riven with internal conflict (Venkatesh, 2003). The similarities in streetbased dispositions, in this sense, were deeply rooted in the economic and social history of their respective cities and were not confined to defined age groups. Rather than representing a universal social phenomenon, we suggest that these are best represented as ‘homologies’ to denote the comparability of traits emerging from similar structural conditions, while recognizing their specificity to local contexts. As will be explored below, however, there was at least as much that separated street-based youth in these two contexts than united them. It is these ‘homologies of habitus’—not rigid but flexible, recognizing the interweaving of history, biography and culture—that allow us to recognize gangs in both Glasgow and Chicago as similar, while gang behaviours markedly differ. As we discovered, such convergences are always mediated through the particular cultural and social context of different cities. They constitute a patterned response to structured inertia but the emergent forms of prestige and capital are far from unique.

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Vectors of Difference: A Tale of Two (Second) Cities Glasgow seemed to me a place out of time, more Chicago School than Chicago itself. It appeared so stable. Kids fought for their neighbourhood and told me it wasn’t for drugs or money. I could see why Alistair invoked Thrasher even as I was questioning the old master. I’m not sure I accepted as accurate my one month snapshot of Europe’s leading gang city. But I surely wasn’t in Lawndale anymore (Fieldnote, JMH, January 2011). Our observations demonstrated significant divergences in the nature, meaning and form of gang identification between the two fieldsites. In Glasgow, gang identification was predominantly street based, youthful, territorial, usually representing a single neighbourhood or street and seldom evolving into more organized, economically motivated criminal organizations. Gang formations during different generations have reflected the changing economic and social circumstances of the city, but nonetheless forming an ongoing core that represents a place-based identity above an economic motivation (Fraser, 2015). In Chicago, by contrast, gangs play a major role in the ‘perverse connections’ (Castells, 2000) of the international drug economy; incorporating adults, multineighbourhood alliances and financial imperatives. While also rooted in place, gangs have evolved to play an organizing role in politics and illegal markets (Hagedorn, 2015). In order to understand how the differences in street-based dispositions unfold, we argue that there is a need to ground understanding within the context of the history, politics and culture of specific urban locales—seeking to excavate a ‘history from below’ (Brotherton, 2015) through which the divergences in gang formations can be explained. In what follows, we trace the historical trajectories of gangs in Glasgow and Chicago, pointing to what we term ‘vectors of difference’ around which these differences cohere. Such deeply cast historical trajectories, we argue, are central to a global sociological imagination, yet which tend to be evacuated in the use of common definitions.

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Fields of Crime and Justice The air was bright and fresh. We sat opposite Douglas Park, Lawndale, on milk-crates; people passed by and shot the breeze. But dark clouds were forming—not in the air but on the stoop. John’s friend’s son had been robbed and shot in the back a few weeks previous—dealing drugs on the corner, he had been taken for all he had. There had been retaliatory shootings, and a war was brewing. The man was defiant, staunch and vicious in his talk of vengeance. A slight against his family was a slight against him: no quarter would be given. The same man, frankly, was disbelieving when I told him the way things were in Glasgow: youth gangs didn’t have guns, didn’t deal drugs and didn’t really make money. In stark terms, the similarities I’d thought were there were blown out of the water (Fieldnote, AF, October 2009). While Glasgow-based fieldwork revealed gang identification to be a largely social phenomenon, reflecting long-standing friendships based on area coupled with embedded territorial boundaries and competitive forms of street-based masculinity (Fraser, 2015), experiences in Chicago suggested an economic motivation that was substantially different. This differing raison d’etre between street-based groups in Glasgow and Chicago was underscored time and again during interviews and observations. Unlike in Chicago, illicit opportunity structures for young people are not well developed in Glasgow—youth gangs have seldom evolved collectively into more organized groups through drug sales, racketeering or organized crime (Fraser, 2015). Rather, through a relatively closed loop of street-based age hierarchies—reflecting the persistence of inequality in Glasgow’s communities—gang identification becomes a temporary route to status and distinction that is consistent with the logic of local models of masculinity. In Chicago, by contrast, there is a complex and sophisticated web of relations between street gangs and organized crime (Venkatesh, 2008). While Glasgow’s gangs have institutionalized over a period of a hundred years, they have remained largely neighbourhood based. No lasting alliances or multi-neighbourhood gangs have emerged in sharp contrast with Chicago (Hagedorn, 2015). Part of the explanation for this difference can be found in the role of the state (Wacquant, 2008a). Despite considerable changes over time,

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Glasgow has maintained a robust police force and continues to have one of the highest ratios of police officers to citizens among world cities (Damer, 1990); as well as maintaining a welfarist ethos in criminal justice (McAra, 2008). The picture is radically different in Chicago, where the leading history of the Chicago Police is entitled ‘To Serve and Collect’ (Lindberg, 1998). Chicago’s Mafia, the ‘Outfit’, institutionalized in Chicago after the prohibition era beer wars (Eghigian, 2006) and achieved economic success through corruption of police and politicians. When street gangs took over retail drug markets, they did not inherit the protection of senior police on the Outfit’s payroll but instead began the systematic bribery of individual police and units. A recent report on police corruption in Chicago describes the change in corruption practices as ‘from top down to bottom up’ (Hagedorn et al., 2014). Another important factor is the role of prison. Scotland imprisons approximately 8000 inmates (Scottish Government, 2012b), while the state of Illinois, with double the population of Scotland, has 49,000 inmates, more than six times the number of prisoners. The ‘deadly symbiosis’ between prison and ghetto in Chicago (Wacquant, 2001) has played a critical role in institutionalizing gang structures. In the 1970s, many gang leaders were incarcerated, leading to the creation of prisonled gang coalitions. These coalitions were organized to decrease violence at first inside the prisons and then aimed to control it on the streets; requiring local gangs to organize, to have structure, adhere to various laws and rules of behaviour and enforced neighbourhood market boundaries. While decreased violence was its own reward, reducing violence was also of benefit to illegal businesses. In this sense, Chicago’s gangs became political players to some degree and were conscious social actors (Sassen, 2006), a label that does not easily fit the Glasgow gang phenomenon.

The Conservation of Violence In 2011, Chicago saw 433 homicides, with a rate of approximately 16 homicides per 100,000 population (Chicago Police Department, 2011). For the period 2010–2011, Glasgow reputed as the ‘murder capital of Europe’ (McKay, 2006) experienced 27 homicides, at a rate of

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approximately 4.5 per 100,000 (Scottish Government, 2012a). In this period in Scotland, the majority (63%) of homicides were carried out with a bladed instrument, while only a tiny fraction (2%) involved a firearm (Scottish Government, 2011). In Chicago, conversely, shooting accounted for 83.4% of all homicides, while stabbing constituted only 6.7% (Chicago Police Department, 2011, p. 22). In both contexts, young males make up the highest proportion of both victims and offenders. In Scotland, homicide statistics are not routinely reported by ethnicity, but it is likely that both victims and offenders are ethnically white. In Chicago, approximately 75% of homicide victims and offenders are African American, a percentage vastly disproportionate to the ethnic make-up of the city (Chicago Police Department, 2011). In making sense of these divergences, Bourdieu’s (1998) ‘law on the conservation of violence’ is particularly apposite (see also Bourgois, 2001). Bourdieu (1998, p. 40) equates the strength and weight of different configurations of structural violence to that of individual violence: ‘structural violence exerted by the financial markets is matched sooner or later in the form of suicides, crime and delinquency, drug addiction, alcoholism, a whole host of minor and major everyday acts of violence’. According to this law, the street violence of gangs will accord with the weight of symbolic or structural violence within different urban contexts. While both cities have suffered crushing declines in forms of industrial manufacturing that once breathed life into their urban heartlands, Chicago has been more successful in recreating as a tourist and fiscal centre; but this has come at great cost. While both have experienced the global processes of neoliberalism, urban exclusion and territorial stigma that Wacquant (2008a) terms ‘advanced marginality’ (see also Gray & Mooney, 2011), these processes have been both more advanced and more marginalizing in Chicago. In part, these differences have been driven by the divergent patterning of state formation, welfare policy and criminal justice in the United States and Scotland. The differences in structural violence between Glasgow and Chicago are, however, most evident in relation to race, ethnicity and criminalization. Although Scotland has experienced several waves of immigration— predominantly different groups of Irish, Jewish, Italian, Chinese, East European and Indian subcontinent immigrants (Croall & Frondigoun,

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2010, pp. 112–113)—the country remains an overwhelmingly ethnically homogenous nation, with approximately 4% of the population categorized as belonging to black and minority ethnic (BME) communities; though this increases to 12% in Glasgow (Haria, 2014). To date, statistics indicate a relatively proportionate representation of minority ethnic groups in the Scottish criminal justice system, and that ‘race’ and ethnicity play a less significant role in victimization in Scotland than in other jurisdictions (Croall & Frondigoun, 2010). Fraser (2013b), for example, draws on Les Back’s notion of ‘neighbourhood nationalism’ to describe the situation among young people in the Langview community, in which differences based on ‘race’ or ethnicity are subordinated to a collective loyalty to a geographical area. In contrast, Chicago’s history is one of racialized conflict and discrimination. During the First World War, acute labour shortages were addressed by recruiting thousands of African American workers from the South. Housing policies created ethnic segregations, and at the end of the war, rather than solidarity, territorial racial tensions escalated. As Glasgow saw a class-based solidarity in 1919, Chicago experienced a race riot that claimed 43 lives. A Race Relations Commission, which was co-chaired by a prominent member of the Chicago School, Robert Park, stated that the riot would have ended after one day except for the provocations of the white social athletic clubs. Aside from underlining and reinforcing racist divisions in Chicago, the race riots would result in a pattern of hyper-segregation that has marked Chicago ever since. Hirsch (1983) tells the story of a 1920s–1960s era of ‘hidden violence’ when white gangs, supported by police, kept the black community segregated. Between 1940 and 1960 Chicago’s African American population tripled and could no longer be spatially contained (Hirsch, 1983). The city council decided to build massive high-rise housing in all black neighbourhoods in order to keep African Americans forcibly segregated. Chicago’s gangs entrenched within the projects that became defensible spaces and captive drug markets (Venkatesh, 2008).

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Gangs and Transnational Reflexivity We carry around lenses that are so much a part of us that we don’t notice we have them, yet as social scientists our task is to bring those lenses to consciousness, compare one with another, and to develop from them other more detachable lenses, which we call social theory, so that we can get on with the business of studying the social world (Burawoy, 2009, p. 205). One consequence of the operation of habitus, field and capital is the phenomenon that Bourdieu (1990, p. 20) terms ‘doxa’ namely the narrowing of one’s social universe to the outer limits of the field. As we discovered, academic researchers are not themselves immune to the operations of this form of narrowing. While traditional gang research tends towards sedentarism, with research carried out within researchers’ country of origin, we found that with sedentarism comes a set of institutional, cultural and national boundaries that place limits on understanding experiences beyond that country. In fact, while the concept of ‘global exchange’ was relatively straightforward, the experience itself was challenging in the extreme. We were wrenched out of comfort zones and thrust into an alien social world, in which our points of reference were out-of-sync. As Kenway and Fahey (2009, p. 28) note: ‘the place and movement of the researcher’s body and thought’ represent a central pivot in constructions of knowledge. It quickly became clear that the comparing of gangs in Chicago and Glasgow was the equivalent, in Wacquant’s terms, of comparing ‘heavyweights to flyweights’ (Wacquant, 2008a, p. 150). Our experiences suggest a need to engage in transnational research with honesty and humility. Both Bourdieu and Mills advocated for reflexivity in social research (Burawoy, 2010). In a celebrated postscript, Mills delineates the role that the individual researcher plays in the process of knowledge production. Mills (1959, p. 216) argues that in order to perform sociology as a craft, researchers must ‘learn to use life experience in intellectual work: continually to examine and interpret it’. While reflexivity of the researcher’s race, class and gender has become increasingly recognized within the field of criminology (Lumsden & Winter, 2014), Bourdieu’s notion goes further, in seeking ‘a reflexive return on the sociologist and

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on his/her universe of production’ (Wacquant, 1989, p. 33). For Bourdieu, this form of reflexive analysis is intended to construct the gap between the ‘logic of practice’, in this case the sedimented forms of research practice, and the ‘logic of theory’, namely the development of explanatory conceptual frameworks, as an object of empirical scrutiny (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992; Maton, 2003). Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992, p. 36) summarize as follows: First, its primary target is not the individual analyst but the social and intellectual unconscious embedded in analytic tools and operations; second, it must be a collective enterprise rather than the burden of the lone academic; and, third, it seeks not to assault but to buttress the epistemological security of sociology. When we each travelled to one another’s fieldsites, we experienced these new street-based environments through the lens of a pre-existing, doxic habitus; that is, through an embedded optic that was developed within a specific cultural context (Sheptycki & Wardak, 2005). Both of us had been engaged in prolonged qualitative fieldwork in our respective cities and had developed corresponding theoretical lenses that ‘fitted’ with that particular urban environment. Fraser (2013a, 2015) drew from a historical and cultural perspective rooted in Thrasher (1963 [1927]) and the post-industrial context of Glasgow, while Hagedorn’s (1998, 2008) approach had moved from applying Wilson’s (1987) ‘underclass’ theories to Castells’ (2004) information age citycentred, global perspective in an effort to comprehend the changing dynamics of gangs in a global context. These perspectives, crucially, were deeply embedded—both found it difficult to think outside of their boundaries. For example, on hearing repeated, sharp sounds in the Chicago fieldsite, Fraser asked if these were firecrackers—the notion that gunfire could be heard at almost any time of day or night in the community was far outside his Glasgow experience. Hagedorn, conversely, remained unconvinced that the pattern of racialized discrimination and violence that was so embedded in Chicago could not be replicated in Glasgow.

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As Bourdieu (2005, p. 46, emphasis in original) points out in relation to such contradictions, ‘in all the cases where dispositions encounter conditions (including fields) different from those in which they were constructed and assembled, there is a dialectical confrontation between habitus, as structured structure, and objective structures’. Habitus does not automatically accede to the new conditions of the field as the saying goes, ‘old habits die hard’. Both researchers came to see their own fieldsites with fresh eyes, helping to cultivate an awareness of the social and cultural roots of our own perspectives. Fraser, for example, learned about the ‘silences’ in his own fieldwork the role of race, politics, organized crime and corruption—and was prompted to interrogate the institutional and individual biases that left these questions unasked. As Sallaz (2009, p. 7) notes: The method of comparative ethnography is in this sense not only productive but prophylactic, insofar as it serves as a safeguard against importing into a research study one’s own common sense assumptions about the social world a particularly acute danger when one’s purview is confined to but a single case. The fissures and disjunctures experienced and the debates which ensued brought to the fore new concepts that acted as foundations for the building of new theory. Our shared experience created a discursive space in which the similarities and differences between our fieldsites could be explored. While remaining fundamentally grounded in the two fieldsites of Glasgow and Chicago, we hope that this inductive method of theory building of these concepts might contribute to future global, comparative or collaborative gang research instigating a form of transnational reflexivity that is premised on recognizing and understanding difference rather than attempting to impose similarity.

Conclusion: Towards a Global Sociological Imagination The facts of contemporary history are also facts about the success and failure of individual men and women. When a society is industrialized, the peasant becomes a worker; the feudal lord a businessman. Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood

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without understanding both (Mills, 1959, p. 3). Mills’ delineation of the sociological imagination, over half a century ago, called for the cultivation of an approach that united history, biography and culture in making sense of complex social phenomena. In the context of globalization, scholars have been challenged to incorporate an additional layer ‘the global’ into this trinity. Within the field of gang research, however, rather than seeking out sociological understandings that engage with these structuring forces for individual dispositions, rather gang research can be said to have ‘wither[ed] under the censorship of power’ (Bourdieu, 1998, p. 38) as studies have tended towards a narrow, criminalizing approach to definition. In the process, theoretical accounts of gangs have become disengaged from the critical relationships that pattern the nature and form of gangs in the contemporary era (Katz & Jackson-Jacobs, 2004). In this article, we have argued for the need to re-engage the sociological imagination in understanding gangs in a global and comparative context. Several conclusions flow from our observations. First, efforts to construct and apply top-down definitions of gangs should be treated with extreme caution. Though our exchange focused on traditional sites for gang research, in the United States and the United Kingdom, significant differences in the nature and meaning of the term were uncovered. In Glasgow, the term ‘gang’ referred to territorial youth groups that were rooted in specific communities and did not necessarily involve crime or violence; in Chicago, the term was used to describe large-scale, multi-neighbourhood adult alliances that were institutionalized in some communities. If the term represents such divergence in apparently similar cultural contexts, we suggest that there is a significant margin for error in seeking to translate this concept to other environments. We argue that researchers should be more concerned with recognizing and understanding variability in the forms and activities of gangs in different cities. Critical gang scholars have, for example, recently traced the diffusion of prison gangs to the streets (Weide, 2015) and the formation of gangs’ context of civil war in Honduras (Levenson-Estrada, 2013); as well as documenting the transformation of gangs into prosocial forms in New York (Brotherton & Barrios, 2004), organized crime in Rio de Janeiro (Dowdney, 2007) and policing units in Nigeria (Hagedorn, 2008). These studies reflect the profusion of new international

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studies, particularly in the global South, which have revealed gangs’ capacities to change outside the bounds of static definitional criteria. This narrowing of complexity into formal categories of similarity is also in evidence more broadly in the field of criminology, and we argue that other areas too punishment, legal systems and policing among them would benefit from a greater attentiveness to the relationships between history, biography and culture. Second, we suggest a re-examination of the building blocks of criminological theories of gangs. We have drawn on the sociological insights offered by the ‘thinking tools’ of Mills and Bourdieu to explain placebased differences in gangs, as well as the relation between structural context and individual disposition. ‘Homologies of habitus’ is suggested as a replacement for subcultural theories as a way to mark similarity between gang members in different cities, while exposing differences. ‘Vectors of difference’ represents a way to explain how the history of Chicago and Glasgow manifests itself in gangs that are familiar yet possess very different characteristics. Bourdieu’s ‘law of the conservation of violence’ helps us to understand gangs as social actors, but whose actions are shaped by the historic social structures in different cities. In this way, we explain racialized differences in levels of violence between Chicago and Glasgow. While comparison of other urban contexts may bear differing variables—militarism, state response and media depictions among them (Hazen & Rodgers, 2014) our intention is to begin a conversation around the levers of change and difference in urban contexts around the world. Third, in elucidating these ‘vectors of difference’, we report on our methodology of ‘global exchange’ as a means of capturing this diversity. While this approach is nothing new or unique in and of itself, our time in Glasgow and Chicago allowed us to view our own cities through different lenses and discover patterns of behaviour that had been hidden to us ‘like water for fish’ (Lorber, 1994). In excavating an urban genealogy of space, politics and culture, we have argued that the city operates as a lens through which to understand how broader changes are refracted and articulated, on both the group and individual level. Gangs in Glasgow and Chicago remain rooted to fundamentally local processes, flourishing

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in the ‘space of places’ (Castells, 2000, pp. 408–409, emphasis in original), though processes of globalization had altered these local processes in unique ways. In making sense of similarity and difference between these diverse contexts, we have argued for the importance of reflexivity in recognizing the cultural and national biases in constructing social theory. We join with Mills’ (1959, pp. 225–226) celebrated ‘sociological imagination’ in calling for a reflexive connection of history, biography and culture in gang research that encompasses ‘a fully comparative understanding of the social structures that appeared and that do now exist in human history’. Finally, Bourdieu and Mills were both, in different ways, inured to the idea of the promise and task of sociology to bring about social change (Burawoy, 2010). For both, through the cautious development of carefully honed analytic tools and methods, it was possible to gain sufficient knowledge of the structural contexts in which we live to break out of them. While conceptual clarity is important, definitional straitjacketing results in a view of social life and cultural change that fails to fully recognize the potential for sociology to participate in social change. The narrowing of the definition of the term ‘gang’ to durable, youthful, street-based, illegal activity negates the possibility for understanding the ways in which street-based groups emerge and sustain in relation to structural inequality, socio-spatial marginality and economic precariousness; or indeed the ways in which street-based groups can exhibit pro-social traits, conflicting identities and change over time (Coughlin & Venkatesh, 2003; Dowdney, 2007; Sanchez-Jankowski, 2003). A global sociological imagination of gangs—and of criminology more broadly— is one that seeks to understand the complexities of social structures and everyday life in order to seek out lines of social justice, be it at individual, city or international level. This is, to paraphrase Mills, its task and its promise.

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7 ‘Why Them?’ ‘Why Then?’ ‘Why There?’: The Political Economy of Gangland John Pitts

Introduction In the 1970s, as a result of a massive injection of resources into the ghettoes, many street gangs in United States cities became politically active, developing educational and welfare provision in their neighbourhoods. This was paralleled by a sharp decline in gang crime. With the economic recession in the 1980s streets gangs proliferated in towns and cities across the country. This chapter contends that European gang scholarship has largely ignored the social, economic and political contexts from which street gangs emerge or in which they mutate. It therefore considers instances, in England, France, the Netherlands Spain and Russia where changes in the social, economic and political context have affected the constitution, affiliations and activities of street gangs. J. Pitts (B) University of Bedfordshire, Luton, UK e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Andell and J. Pitts (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Youth Gangs in the UK , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99658-1_7

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The Discovery of the European Street Gang It wasn’t until the late 1990s that mainland Europe discovered that it had a gang problem. Whether this signalled the advent of a media-driven ‘moral panic’ (Aldridge & Medina, 2008; Cohen, 1972), erroneous labelling by state professionals and academic researchers (Becker, 1964; Gunter, 2017; Hallsworth, 2014) or real changes in the behaviour of young people (Andell, 2019; Densley, 2013; Harding, 2014; Pitts, 2008) is still debated. Certainly, the European gang research, pioneered by the Eurogang project around the turn of the twenty-first century contributed to the heightened public profile given to European ‘street gangs’. Eurogang was founded in 1997 by the American gang researcher Malcolm W. Klein. Klein (2008) maintained that he embarked upon the Eurogang project because street gangs were beginning to be recognised in Europe, but also because of his difficulties in conducting systematic gang research in the United States. There, Klein complained, gang scholarship was uncoordinated, with researchers utilising different theoretical perspectives and different research methods. In reality, this ‘lack of co-ordination’ was a product of profound differences of view amongst North American social scientists about the nature and, in some cases, the very existence of the ‘youth gang’ (see for example Hagedorn, 2008; Katz & Jackson-Jacobs, 2004). Undaunted, Klein insisted that this problem would be resolved if social scientists could simply agree on a gang definition that would permit replicable data collection, because If there is such a thing as a street gang we should be able to define it both conceptually and operationally. But such a belief inevitably raises the question of whether this single-minded quest to find the quintessential street gang impedes rather than facilitates our understanding of the emergence of what might be construed as street gangs in dissimilar social, economic and political contexts. As Fraser (2017) has observed: One consequence of an over-reliance on quantitative comparison, or indeed a qualitative approach with a closed definition, is the relegation of the importance of sociological theory in making sense of gangs in a global context. Where once issues of history, culture and class were at the heart

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of theories of gangs, latterly issues of crime, policing and risk management have come to dominate. As a result, gangs are too often reduced to a fixed, static and ‘monolithic entity, with a single-mindedness of purpose and outlook’ which is presented as a universal social form.

To achieve this more nuanced understanding, researchers may need to first identify the conditions which lead to the gang’s emergence, or its transformation, in a particular place at a particular time. Arguably, what makes the gang sociologically interesting, and what earlier gang researchers understood, is that the gang is an epiphenomenon, a function, an effect, a symptom or a sign of other, more sociologically significant, phenomena like migration (Thrasher, 1929), discreditation within the education system (Cohen, 1955) changes in ‘urban employment regimes’ (Sassen, 2007) the denial of legitimate opportunity (Cloward & Ohlin, 1960) or the globalisation of the narcotics trade (Hagedorn & Macon, 1988). This would suggest that in our research, rather than simply asking ‘What are they (street gangs) like?’, we need to ask ‘Why them?’ ‘Why then?’ ‘Why there’. Because, as the sociologist C. Wright Mills (1957) explains, to understand any social phenomenon, our analysis must be rooted in history and must trace the interplay between social structure, culture and individual biography. In a similar vein, Pierre Bourdieu (2020) suggests that to understand any social group we must first understand the historically constituted social fields from which its occupants emerge and in which they are embedded. Drawing upon Marxian political economy, he extends the idea of economic capital to the cultural, social and symbolic spheres (Fowler, 2020). Thus, he suggests, it is not just economic exclusion or exploitation that brings about the ideological subordination of particular social groups and the emergence of something like a ‘gang’ problem. It is what Jock Young Young (1999) calls the ‘denial of recognition’ which Manuel Castells (1997) sees as the catalyst for the emergence of ‘resistance identities’.

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Evolution as Adaptation If conditions are favourable to its continued existence, the gang tends to undergo a sort of natural evolution from a diffuse and loosely organized group into the solidified unit which represents the matured gang and which may take one of several different forms. (Frederick Thrasher, 1929) Cometh the hour, cometh the man. (Old Saying)

Interviewed in 2006, respondents in Waltham Forest in North East London said that they had only become aware of identifiable street gangs in their area around six or seven years previously (Pitts, 2008).Respondents in West Yorkshire also traced their emergence back to the late 1990s (Andell & Pitts, 2010).They were saying that things had changed, and these things included rising youth unemployment (Sassen, 2007), the globalisation of ‘gangsta’ culture (Hagedorn, 2008) and the Tsunami of narcotics flooding European cities (Pitts, 2008, van Gemert et al., 2008). At the turn of the twenty-first century, illicit drug markets run by street gangs in London were concentrated in, or adjacent to, gang affected neighbourhoods or nearby transport hubs (Andell, 2019; Densley, 2013; Harding, 2014; Pitts, 2008, Whittaker et. al., 2017). The street gang was the retailer, supplied by wholesalers with no obvious affiliation to the gang. There were two main types of distribution; street-based ‘Open Markets’ to which customers would travel and ‘Closed Markets’ in which retailers would supply a limited number of trusted clients who placed their orders by ‘phone or text’ (Pitts, 2008). These orders would then be delivered by gang ‘Youngers’, often using ‘pushbikes’ or mopeds.

The Great Escape However, as Simon Harding argues, from 2010, because of the policies of austerity pursued by the Cameron Government, many of the already limited legitimate routes out of poverty for young people in the poorest parts of the inner city vanished. In consequence, more of them drifted

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towards the ‘informal economy’ to try their hand at illegitimate alternatives, the most lucrative of which was drug dealing. Harding writes of a deepening ‘pool of availability’, into which more and more young people were prepared to dive. He notes that: It is important to view this from the perspective of the actors involved. A central feature of county lines drug supply networks is what it offers both young people and those willing to enter it – employability. County lines is compelling for many young people, notably those with limited or zero work experience other than having their CV rejected and their applications unanswered. This offer is essentially unmatched elsewhere in the current economy. (Harding, 2020, p. 270)

But this flight into drug dealing meant that urban drug markets soon became overcrowded. And this in turn led to an intensification of violence between rival gangs as they fought for ‘market share’, with a concomitant rise in homicides, serious injury, arrests and incarceration (Andell & Pitts, 2018; Pitts, 2016; Windle & Briggs, 2015). While ‘Going Country’ had been a minor sideline for drug-dealing street gangs in London from early in the twenty-first century (Harding, 2014; Pitts, 2008), it now appeared to offer a solution to what had become a very serious problem. The ‘Country’ option was attractive for several reasons. Gang ‘Elders’, correctly, anticipated less resistance from the police and local dealers in the ‘Country’. Most of the dealers and runners, while known to the police in the metropolis, were not ‘on the radar’ of provincial forces. Moreover, successful police operations against local dealers in out-of-town locations had created a gap in the market which urban street gangs were all too ready to fill (McSweeny et al., 2008). Additionally, by 2011, advances in mobile phone technology had made the dealers far less detectable while enabling them to ensure their runners were ‘doing the business’ via the ‘Find My Phone’ App (Ayling, 2011). In their study of street gangs in Waltham Forest in 2017, Andrew Whittaker and his colleagues describe the Mali Boys who epitomise the post-2010 iteration of the East London street gang. They observe that whereas previously, gangs would lay claim to, and defend, local territory

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or turf, for the Mali Boys territory was the marketplace. By 2015, the Mali Boys had incorporated members of other Waltham Forest gangs, to fulfil minor roles in their burgeoning organisation which now controlled a substantial part of the illicit drug trade in East London and East Anglia. As Densley (2013) argues, in the second decade of the twenty-first century we were seeing the evolution of the English street gang: … from recreational and criminal stages to financial goal orientation (before reaching) the highest developmental stage, (at which) gangs resemble not just crime that is organised, but organised crime.

But this was not some inexorable progress to an inevitable end point. Charles Darwin’s (1859) breakthrough in solving the mystery of evolution emerged from his studies in the Galapagos Islands. He concluded that variations in the same species were accounted for by their adaptation to different habitats. Thus Thrasher (1929), an admirer of Darwin, concluded that the evolution of Chicago street gangs was not determined by group member’s individual proclivities but by the group’s capacity to adapt to their changing social, economic or political environment.

The Post-Colonial Backlash The chanting I heard was mostly in French: ‘Nik les schmitts’ (‘Fuck the cops’) … But there was another slogan, chanted in colloquial Arabic, which seemed to hit hardest of all: ‘Na’ al abouk la France!’ (‘Fuck France’). This slogan – it is in fact more of a curse – has nothing to do with any French tradition of revolt. (Hussey, 2014 p. 4)

In the 1990s, I accompanied a group of school students from Poplar in East London to meet their counterparts in Val Fouree, a banlieue (suburb) to the North West of Paris (Pitts, 2001). As the coach arrived one of the group waiting to meet us shouted ‘Bonjour, vous êtes en Afrique maintenant’ (Hello you are in Africa now). What he meant was not simply that 80% of the residents in Val Fouree had their origins in the

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former French colonies of Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia or West Africa. He was also suggesting, ironically, that Val Fouree was no longer a part of France. Planned in the late 1950s, and finally completed in the 1970s, Val Fouree was the biggest HLM (Habitations à Loyer Modéré—[subsidised housing at moderate rent]) in France. In the ‘Thirty Glorious Years’ after the Second World War, rapid industrial expansion required a huge influx of labour to rebuild the French economy and, as was the case in the UK, France turned to its colonies and ex-colonies for help (Fourastie, 1979). The Office National de l’Immigration (ONI) was therefore set the task of attracting foreign labourers, which it did by offering residency permits to migrant workers from its colonies in the Maghreb; Morocco and Tunisia, but predominantly Algeria, which had gained its independence following the bitterly fought Algerian War of Independence, that lasted from 1954 to 1962 (Hussey, 2018). In the 1950s, the living conditions of the first migrants were often appalling, and although many of them were officially French citizens, they were openly discriminated against by local housing authorities. As a result, in the 1950s and 1960s, shanty-towns (bidonvilles) grew up around Paris, Lyons and Marseilles. An embarrassed government responded by building large housing estates far from the city centres. These banlieues were bargain-basement versions of Le Corbusier’s ‘machines for living’, but the incoming residents, now evacuated from the bidonville slums, were grateful enough to occupy these futuristic quartiers (Hussey, 2014). However, in 1972, economic expansion in France stalled and many of the workers from the banlieues were laid off. In 1974, the French Government, facing a spike in unemployment and an oil crisis, reversed its policy of attracting labour from its ex-colonies (De Laforcade, 2006). These changes were accompanied by a new political and media narrative that stressed the relationship between unemployment and crime in the banlieue and the threat to the job security of native French people posed by immigration (De Laforcade, 2006). From 1981 Val Fouree first became a ZEP, an educational priority area established to address the problem of low academic attainment amongst its residents. But by 1996, it had also been re-designated a ZUS (a zone

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urbaine sensible—[a sensitive urban area]) in recognition of the problems of crime and disorder it was experiencing, and hence a priority for the government’s urban renewal policies (Pitts, 2001). In 2014, there were 751 ZUS’s, 718 in mainland France, which housed 7% of the French population (4.5 million people). Forty per cent of residents in the ZUS were under 25. Most of them were of North African origin (Picard, 1995). Poor transport links to the city centre, the overt racism they experienced when they got there, heavy handed policing and discriminatory employment practices meant that the spatial exclusion of the residents of the banlieue echoed their social and economic exclusion. In his memoir of growing up in France as a child of Algerian immigrants, journalist Nadir Dendoune (2007) writes: The projects are a glass cage. The frontiers are there; so inscribed in the asphalt, that you have the sense of an implicit message saying, ‘you are not part of society.’ Civilization stops here.

Similarly, the anthropologist Colette Pettonet (1982) suggested that living in what she describes as the (sub) proletarian housing projects of the periphery of Paris (the banlieues): … creates a muted sentiment of guilt and shame whose unacknowledged weight warps human relations.

From the late 1970s, the many frustrations of the young people in the banlieues took a violent turn, but the first event to receive widespread media coverage occurred in the summer of 1981 when 250 cars were stolen and burned in banlieues in Marseilles, Lyon, Roubaix, Nancy and Paris (Jenkins, 2007). These riots, or ‘Rodeos’ as they were called locally, involved stealing cars driving them fast around the housing projects and burning them. Some reports say the cars were stolen from more prosperous areas and taken to depressed neighbourhoods to be burned in order to lure police into street battles. Riots, often provoked by the killing or wounding of a banlieue resident during a police operation, would last for several days, with the young people wearing the North

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African keffiyeh (a scarf fashioned from a square), declaring an intifada (uprising) against the police and besieging police stations to cries of ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is Great). And these riots persisted into the twentyfirst century in the wake of the deaths of young people of Arab, Berber or West African origin at the hands of the police. Most spectacularly however, for three weeks in October and November 2005, there were riots in all the major towns and cities in France. The rioters were mainly young people of North African and Arab origin, burning cars and public buildings and fighting with the police. The unrest started on 27 October at Clichy-sous-Bois, where police were investigating a reported break-in at a building site, and a group of local Muslim youths scattered in order to avoid interrogation. Three of them tried to hide in an electricity substation and were electrocuted. The ensuing riots resulted in more than 8,000 vehicles being burned by the rioters and 2,760 arrests. Commentators on the political right blamed Islamists for fermenting the riots but the French periodical Le Monde Diplomatique (2005), cited de facto ‘urban apartheid’ as the cause. The journalists expressed doubt that a handful of Muslim ‘brothers’ could be held responsible for: … the ghettoization of more than 700 zones urbaines sensibles (ZUS), and their 5 million inhabitants. The problem was ultimately a result of widespread and institutionalised discrimination against Berbers, Arabs and Blacks.

Resistance Identities In her studies of ‘street gangs’ in the Parisian banlieue, the French researcher Coralie Fiori-Khayat reveals a curious crossover between criminality and political consciousness. She describes the development of what Castells (1997) calls ‘resistance identities’ that function to exclude the excluders who are the perceived source of the young people’s discreditation. The groups Fiori-Khayat interviewed corresponded, superficially, with the Eurogang definition of a street gang, being intermittently involved

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in theft, burglary, robbery, drug dealing, arson and assault. However, they were also part of a far broader, informal, national, youth movement demarcated, and held together, by a shared history, religion and ethnicity, as well as the experience of racism, police brutality and social and economic exclusion. But, as Fiori-Khayat observes, any discussion of the ethnicity of the young people involved in youth gangs and the periodic riots was ‘taboo’ in France because of political sensitivities about the disastrous Algerian War of Independence (1954–62). As Andrew Hussey (2018) observes: France remains traumatised by the war in Algeria, which lives on in the festering resentments of the banlieues and prisons.

Fiori-Khayat notes that it is therefore far easier for politicians to discuss the problem of ‘street gangs’ than to confront the far larger problem of politicised disorder in the banlieue. The role of ethnicity in gang formation is one of the more politically sensitive areas that many liberal and radical criminologists have endeavoured to sidestep. While acknowledging the laudable intentions of ‘progressive scholars’ in trying to debunk the notion that gang violence is the prerogative of particular racial groups, Hagedorn (2008) argues that: The deracialising of gangs is one of the most egregious errors of Western criminology, a ‘pernicious premise’, to use Loic Wacquant’s pungent phrase … today’s gangs cannot be understood without an analysis of the history of racial, ethnic or religious oppression and resistance. (p. 54)

Fiori-Khayat’s young respondents were able to distinguish between the low-level crimes in which they were involved day-to-day, and their sustained assault upon ‘political and social symbols’ and representatives of the government and the law. They justified these offences by reference to their history, ethnicity and religion and the fact that in their dealings with the French state, social workers, teachers, the police, judges etc., they were the victims of racism. Fiori-Khayat writes:

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The hate that these young rioters and gang members express is a message in itself … These youth do not see themselves as part of French society. During field research I have often heard serious, violent young street members say, ‘Why should I feel French?’. They assert that such issues as the ‘Muslim veil’ job discrimination, and the implicit racism of Caucasians make them think they are rejected … They express anger at France because of the situation of their brothers in Iraq and Palestine, although France has no troops in Iraq and, until the election of Sarkozy, did not support Israeli policy.

Cultural Resistance It is an interesting paradox that the rejection of Western culture by many Muslim young people in Western Europe often parallels an embrace of hip-hop, a quintessentially Western musical sub-genre which is amongst the most powerful narratives that shape and give expression to their resistance identities. At the height of the 2005 riots, the French hip-hop artist Monsieur R. (real name Richard Makela) wrote a song about the riots that triggered a call from 153 Parliamentarians and 49 Senators in the ruling UMP coalition, led by Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, for his prosecution, along with other ‘political’ rappers, for perpetrating an ‘outrage to public decency’ and inciting the riots. The politicians also demanded action against polygamy, clandestine immigration, mixed marriages and history lessons on French colonialism (Free Muse, 2005). Monsieur R’s song, which became the FNAC music chain’s CD of the month for several months in 2005, was entitled: I will fuck France until she loves me.

The Dutch Disease I want to warn against the Fifth Column which is trying to hinder our free way of life in Holland. … (Theo Van Gogh, murdered Dutch Film Maker)

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Whereas the depredations of the nineteenth-century factory system spawned a politically conscious working class with identities rooted in what they did, in a post-industrial world, the identities of the ‘socially excluded’ are rooted in what they are, and so race and ethnicity become central to self-definition. As was the case in France, so in the Netherlands, racial difference and racism were major factors in the emergence of a nation-wide oppositional youth movement. Following the Second World War, the Netherlands experienced successive waves of immigration. This had three main sources; economic migrants from Holland’s ex-colonies in Indonesia, Surinam and the Dutch Antilles; ‘guest workers’ recruited during the 1960s, primarily from Turkey and Morocco, many of whom became permanent residents and were later joined by their families, and asylum seekers whose numbers peaked in the early 1990s following the war in Yugoslavia, and more recently, refugees from the Syrian Civil War. From the 1960s, the Netherlands was at the forefront in terms of the promotion of gender equality, gay rights and a progressive sexual morality. This fostered an image of Holland as a beacon of progressive values, a gidsland (aguiding nation). But this political trajectory was not just the preserve of the political left and centre, it was also embraced by conservative politicians who were to deploy it effectively in the 1990s in the immigration debates that divided the country (Vossen, 2016). The backdrop to the rise of right-wing parties in the Netherlands was social and economic polarisation. Until the late 1980s, the Netherlands enjoyed unprecedented prosperity from an economy supported by inexpensive foreign labour. It also had one of the most generous welfare regimes in Western Europe and amongst the lowest rates of unemployment, crime and imprisonment in the world. However, a paradox of the discovery of huge deposits of natural gas in the North Sea in the 1980s was what economists now call the Dutch Disease. This was the apparent contradiction that a rapid increase in the production of valuable raw materials like oil and gas can lead to an economic downturn. This is because, as was the case in Holland, a growing Gross Domestic Product (GDP) leads to the strengthening of the currency, thus raising the price of exports and rendering the manufacturing sector much less competitive internationally, leading to rising

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unemployment and falling wages for working class people (Pettinger, 2017; The Economist, 1977; Zwiers et al., 2015).

Racism Refreshed In September 1991, in the aftermath of the Rushdie Affair in the UK and the Islamic veil controversy in France, Frits Bolkestein, leader of the conservative People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie, VVD) launched a debate in the Netherlands about the integration of Muslim immigrants, contrasting Islamic practices with the separation of church and state, freedom of expression, and gender equality in Holland, arguing that liberalism’s fundamental values could not be compromised. As to the reasons for his political popularity he stated that: You should never underestimate how deeply Moroccan and Turkish immigrants are hated by the Dutch. My political success rests upon the fact that I have listened to these feelings. (Buruma, 2006, p. 54)

His campaign gained momentum through the 1990s and in the 1998 general election, the VVD became the second largest party in the Dutch parliament with thirty-eight seats. In 1999, Bolkestein became a member of the European Parliament. In 2004 Geert Wilders, Bolkestein’s ex-speech writer, formed the Party of Freedom to counter what he termed the Islamisation of the Netherlands. He likened the Quran to Mein Kampf and campaigned to have the book banned in the Netherlands. He called for an end to immigration from Muslim countries, a ban on the construction of mosques and a hard line on what he called the street terror exerted by ethnic minorities in Dutch cities, citing contested data which suggested that individuals from a Moroccan background were roughly five times more likely to commit a crime than their native Dutch counterparts (Vossen, 2016). And in November of that year Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh, who had made a controversial film about Islamic culture, was murdered, and

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almost decapitated in an Amsterdam street by a 26 year-old man of joint Dutch and Moroccan nationality. The murder of van Goth ushered in a period of escalating conflict between rival ‘gangs’ of Muslim and indigenous Dutch young people in towns throughout Holland. Most striking for 2004 was the wave of violence in November following the assassination of Theo van Gogh. The series of violent incidents that occurred immediately after the murder on 2 November was reminiscent of those after the terrorist attacks in the US on 11 September 2001. The number of incidents was approximately the same, but they took place within a more concentrated period after Van Gogh’s death. Most of the incidents had to do with violence against Muslims and Islamic property. Just as in 2001. (van Donselaar &. Rodrigues, 2008, p. 5)

The Lonsdales And by 2004 many of these White youth groups, or ‘gangs’, had coalesced into a broader youth movement; the Lonsdales (van Gemert & Stuifbergen, 2008). Historically, youth movements, formed in response to issues of citizenship and social discontinuity, have attempted either to bring about or resist societal change. They are often characterised by a distinctive mode of dress or other distinguishing features (Braungart & Braungart, 2001). The Lonsdales, or ‘gabbers’ emerged in Holland, Belgium and Northern France in the early 2000s. Named after a popular UK sportswear brand, these were indigenous, White, young people aged between 10 and 20 who adopted a skinhead style, wore swastikas and HH (Heil Hitler) badges on their bomber jackets and, in the Netherlands, also sported the Dutch flag. The Lonsdale brand is said to have become popular amongst European neo-Nazis, because a carefully placed outer jacket left only the letters NSDA the initials of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (i.e. the Nazi Party) showing. This enabled young people with Nazi sympathies to bypass laws concerning the public display of Nazi symbols. The Lonsdales were believed to have mounted arson attacks on Mosques and schools and violent assaults on

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groups of Moroccan young people. But young people wearing Lonsdale style clothing were also involved in the usual forms of youth crime. Estimates of the number of Lonsdale affiliates in the Netherlands vary widely. The Humanity in Action organisation (HiA, 2006) initially suggested that the Lonsdales had a membership of between 300 and 1,500, with a hard-core group of up to 150. But Van Donselaar and Rodrigues at the Anne Frank Racism and Extremism Monitor (2008), calculated that between 2002 and 2005 there were 125 Lonsdale groups involved in politically motivated violent incidents, but not routine youth crime. The groups they counted appeared to have between 5 and 50 members, suggesting the politically motivated Lonsdales numbered between 600 and 6,000 persons. However, a 2005 report by the AIVD (the Netherlands Ministry of the Interior, 2005) estimated that between 100,000 and 500,000 young people in Holland had some sort of affiliation to the Lonsdales. At the time, the population of the Netherlands was something over 15 million suggesting that Lonsdale affiliates constituted around 3% of that population. But while HiA and AF were describing the original, high profile, urban and core groups, the AIVD was also counting the far larger numbers of young people in rural areas and small towns who adopted their style and emulated some of their behaviours. As Robert Braun (2011) explains: … waves of xenophobia develop in two steps: they start in large cities and subsequently spread to nearby places through geographically clustered networks and to more distant counties once they become visible and resonate in the mass media, turning violence from local deviance into a supra-local phenomenon. This process sheds light on how scales of protest shift and explains why seemingly tolerant regions can suddenly become xenophobic hotbeds.

Whatever its size and location, the Lonsdale phenomenon was fairly short-lived in the Netherlands. This paralleled the beginning of the fragmentation of right-wing political parties around 2006 (Andringa, 2007). Moreover, in the second decade of the twenty-first century memories of the atrocities which had triggered the coming together of the Lonsdales were fading and:

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Wilders had become the establishment of anti-establishment parties, with a familiar mixed bag of nostalgia, xenophobia, climate-change denial and other national populist zingers that he had been coming out with for decades. (de Vries, 2019)

In France, Muslims were marginalised, both socially and spatially, by an essentially White political system and a White citizenry. In Holland, in the early part of the twenty-first century, a politically significant minority of the ‘indigenous’, White working class citizens, experiencing a worsening standard of living, came to believe that they were being politically, culturally and economically marginalised by what they perceived to be pro-Muslim government policies and a steadily rising Muslim population. And in each case, it was groups of their young people who mounted the ‘resistance’. In their chapter on the Lonsdales, in Street Gangs, Migration & Ethnicity, Frank van Gemert and Jantien Stuifbergen (2008) ask: Are these Dutch groups gangs according to the Eurogang definition … Are they fighting and violent, and is this part of the group identity.

But the characteristics the Lonsdales may or may not have shared with other groups of young people in Manchester, Milwaukee or Moscow were, in the end, less significant than why it was them, why it was then and why it was there.

The Cocaine in Spain The percentage of Spanish youths aged 14 to 18 using cocaine had quadrupled in the previous decade. In an analysis of the cocaine content of sewage between 2011 and 2017 Barcelona emerged as what the popular press described as the “Coke Capital of Europe”. (European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, 2020)

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In 1960 Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin, studied the youth gangs on the Lower East Side of New York and wrote the singularly influential Delinquency & Opportunity. In it they observed that: The disparity between what lower class youths are led to want and what is actually available to them is the source of a major problem of adjustment because it causes intense frustration, and the exploration of nonconformist alternatives may result.

This conception of the origins of gang crime is usually referred to as ‘strain theory’. But how did the young people select this ‘nonconformist alternative’? Here, Cloward and Ohlin turned to the work of the criminologist Edwin Sutherland (1947) who had argued that the ‘nonconformist alternative’ would, of course, be determined in part by the availability of illicit opportunities but, crucially, by the adoption of the motives, values, attitudes and techniques favourable to its commission, from those who already held and practiced them. Sutherland also observed that the earlier in life this association began, and the higher the status of those transmitting these motives, values, attitudes and techniques, the stronger would be the subject’s commitment to this form of criminality. Thus, when these behaviours and attitudes were consistently rewarded within a particular social milieu, criminality was, in effect, normalised.

The ‘Kings’ and the Netas In the 1990s, Spain’s economic boom attracted an influx of migrant workers, from South America. Amongst these migrants were many adults and young people who claimed affiliation to the Almighty Latin King Nation (ALKN).The Latin Kings street gang was formed in Chicago in the 1950s. Initially, presenting itself as a movement designed to improve the quality of life for Latino immigrant families and overcome racial discrimination, it quickly degenerated into a nation-wide criminal enterprise dedicated to the street-level distribution of powder cocaine, crack cocaine, heroin and marijuana. But, in early-twenty-first century

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Barcelona, unlike Madrid, the Latin Kings and Queens, composed largely of Ecuadorean migrants, while claiming some association with the US gang, did not appear to be heavily involved in either crime in general or drug dealing in particular (Fiexa & Oriol, 2014). Seizing the initiative, the authorities in Barcelona engaged the group in talks which culminated in them being declared a ‘cultural association’, with a similar status to the Scouts. The aim was to support the integration of these South American migrants into the social, cultural and economic mainstream and, in doing so, to neutralise the potential threat they were seen to pose. Local researchers were instrumental in brokering the deal between them and the Catalan Government. In an interview, the researcher Carles Feixa et al. (2008) said: Can it work? It can if certain things are clear: One side agrees to give up the clandestine life. Local powers agree to interact and have dialogue.

The Cultural Association of Latin Kings and Queens of Catalonia was recognised by the Catalan Government in July 2006 as a civic group that could apply for money for projects to improve their members’ prospects. To reap such rewards, the ‘Kings’ wrote a constitution, vowing to reject violence, cooperate with the authorities and obey the laws of their new land. Erika Jaramillo (a.k.a. Queen Melody) a 32-year-old Ecuadorean, spoke for the Latin Kings during negotiations that set up the cultural association. She acknowledged that the first meeting with the government was ‘edgy’ because Ecuadoreans, like many Latin Americans, are not used to trusting the government or the police (Feixa et al., 2008). Given the reputation of the Latin Kings for gangsterism and the widespread prejudice in Spain against South American migrants, the decision by the Catalan Government was controversial. However, the Catalan authorities presented the move as an attempt to leave behind the ‘cycle of repression and marginalization’ that had characterised the state’s dealings with South American migrants in the past. At an event in September 2006 in Barcelona, Queen Melody stressed that the birth of the association proved that:

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… there is a willingness on the part of Latino youngsters to build a future, spread human rights and support the integration of all immigrants.

She added that: … we have never considered ourselves to be a gang although in society’s eyes, our name has constantly been discriminated against.

In an interview, David Brotherton (2013), a British criminologist working in New York, who has researched the Latin Kings in Spain said: We wanted to see what was different about this group (in Spain) … why it was called the violent gang in America and yet was so involved in community action projects and what they called “community upliftment.” We wrote all about this in a book called The ALKAN: Street Politics and the Transformation of a New York City Gang (Brotherton & Barrios, 2004). In the end we called this group a “street organization” and not a gang, as is common in the criminological literature …

As one of the young people interviewed by the authors said: We are not a gang, but a nation of organised people.

Brotherton concluded that these groups serve as both a mode of cultural resistance and a second family for young people who are discredited in popular discourse and stigmatised by the media. Heartened by the apparent success of their deal with the Latin Kings, a few months later the Catalan Government endeavoured to broker something similar with the Ñetas. The Ñetas originated in the Puerto Rican prison system in the late 1970s as a mutual protection group, ostensibly committed to improving prison conditions and defending inmates from abuses committed by guards and other prisoners. However, they also controlled Puerto Rico’s illegal drugs trade. In the 1980s, the Ñetas gravitated to the United States where they became involved in peopletrafficking, firearms trafficking, robbery and murder (Bourgois, 1995). Today, the Ñetas claim to have 40,000 members in Puerto Rico, 20,000

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in the United States and nearly 30,000 in other parts of the world (Lamotte, 2016). In Barcelona, the Netas were designated the Asociación Sociocultural, Deportiva y Musical de Ñetas (Socio-Cultural, Sports and Musical Ñetas Association). Using his ‘nom de guerre’ ‘Sagat Torres’, the Ñetas leader in Catalonia explained in February 2007 that the association’s purpose was to improve the standards of living for young Latin Americans in Catalonia, to fight exclusion and to organise training courses to equip members for the skilled labour market (Calvo, 2015). However, for their association to be legally registered, the Catalonian Government required details of their 500 or so members. But the New York-based gang’s leaders would not agree. Speaking from the United States, the Ñetas’ international spokesman, Jaime Rivera, explained: We support the process in Barcelona, but we do not agree at all to provide details about our boys. We do not consider it prudent at all to have the Catalan Government hold information about some Ñetas who may currently be undocumented immigrants or may have committed mistakes in the past. (Calvo, 2015, p. 4)

However, Torres stated that he considered it unlikely that street fights would now take place between Ñetas and Latin Kings, saying: ... this will not happen again, at least in Catalonia, although I do not know whether it will not happen in Madrid either. What may take place are fights with Spanish skinheads. (Calvo, 2015, p. 6)

This innovative approach to the relationship between the gangs and government was pioneered initially in the United States in John F. Kennedy’s Great Society Programme in the 1960s and 1970s. Having read Cloward and Ohlin’s Delinquency and Opportunity, Kennedy was convinced of the need to open up legitimate opportunities and galvanise indigenous local leadership in the Black and Hispanic ghettoes. As John Hagedorn (1998) observes, during that period many street gangs became politically active and began to develop educational and welfare provision

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while gang crime fell to its lowest point in decades. With the economic downturn of the 1980s however, street gangs proliferated. The agreements struck between the Catalan Government the Latin Kings and the Netas were regarded, at the time, by professionals involved in gang suppression as something of a coup. But things were about to change.

The Strain in Spain In the wake of the international financial crisis of 2007–2008, Spain found itself in the middle of its worst economic downturn in fifty years. As Francisco Carballo-Cruz (2011) has argued, although the 2007–2008 crisis was the initial cause, historical imbalances in the economy rendered the situation far worse than in other European countries. Not least of the consequences was that Spain experienced the largest increase in youth unemployment of all 37 OECD nations. In 2015, the youth unemployment rate in Spain reached an estimated 54%, and it was South American immigrants and their children who were hit hardest. With a dramatic contraction of the routes into the economic mainstream for these young people, what Simon Harding (2020) calls the ‘pool of availability’ of young people seeking Cloward and Ohlin’s ‘nonconformist alternative’ became much larger.

The Cocaine in Spain—Again For the past decade, Spain has been ranked joint first in the EU for cocaine consumption. In 1990, it was last. In 2018, the largest ever shipment of cocaine to Europe was intercepted in Algeciras, while in Malaga two shipments amounting to almost 15 tons of Columbian cocaine arrived, hidden amongst bananas (Lois, 2019). If, as Sutherland hypothesised, the newly impoverished Latino young people in Spain had, at an early stage in their lives, been aware of the requisite motives, values, attitudes and techniques that would enable

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them to deal drugs on the street, it is unsurprising that when legitimate opportunities evaporated they would turn to this as a source of income. Moreover, because by the end of the first decade of the twentyfirst century the illicit drugs business in Spain was being orchestrated by South American organised crime groups that deliberately targeted young South American migrants, it was almost inevitable that many would become involved. In 2014, the Mossos d’Esquadra (the Catalan Police Force) arrested 30 members of the Latin Kings and charged them with drug trafficking, arms dealing, armed robbery assault, burglary and obstruction of justice. This was part of a broader investigation of the criminal activities of members of the Latin Kings in Spain. It emerged that their activities were controlled from Barcelona but that they also had a presence in Girona, near the French border, and a number of ‘Reinos’ (kingdoms) in Madrid, the Balearic Islands, Valencia, Murcia and Andalusia, where they aimed to monopolise the sale of narcotics in the night time economies of tourist areas. The police maintained that the groups employed the, by now, sanitised, label ‘Latin Kings’ to obscure their involvement in international drug trafficking. As the drugs business grew the Kings and the Netas were soon joined by members of other South American gangs. Between 2003 and 2014, membership of the notorious Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, had grown in Spain as a result of immigration. And by 2014 it included nationals from El Salvador, Romania, Ecuador, Bolivia, Honduras, Pakistan, Bulgaria and Morocco. Then came the Trinitarios, Dominicans Don’t Play, and the Forty Two Gang, made up of Dominicans, Colombians and Bolivians. Reflecting on Luca Queirolo-Palmas defence of the Catalonian ‘normalisation’ initiative, John Hagedorn (2015) observed: However, my research in Chicago, as well as my survey of gangs across the world, suggests that it is unwise to ignore the penetration of gangs by organized crime and to underestimate the power of its instrumental logic. Drugs are big business in Spain as well as the US and Palmas gives indications of gang involvement in the drug trade as well as prison activity. I’ve found globally that while most gangs remain local peer groups, once gangs institutionalize the pressures to join in the world of organized crime

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are greater than the pull of social movements. The state’s policies and the indignities of capitalism sadly push gangs more toward organized crime than toward a politics of resistance. (p. 4)

Russian Exceptionalism Alexander Shaskin (2008), a Russian social researcher and politician, investigated the social origins of the racist skinheads who emerged in Moscow in the late 1990s. He estimated that there were between 12,000 and 15,000 young people actively involved in these groups. Abandoning narrow definitions of the gang, Shaskin focused on the socio-structural factors that had precipitated their emergence. The post-Soviet economic crisis of the 1990s impoverished many middle and lower class Russians and destabilised their families. Alongside this, the Soviet system of state education and out of school activities was collapsing. Meanwhile there was a rapid and radical ideological shift from a dominant communist doctrine to a condemnation of Soviet totalitarianism and involvement in ‘free market’ ‘free-for-all’. At the same time State violence and, in particular, the savage wars in Chechnya were causing the deaths of many young Russians. Shaskin writes: Some young people emphasised that their acquaintances, friends, boyfriends and relatives actually died in this war fighting in the Russian army and it was for deeply personal reasons that they hate Chechens and are ready to kill them. Sometimes these particular episodes from their personal life become a driving force for particular forms of cultural participation and organisation that involve racism and violence.

Beyond this, of course, the Beslan school massacre in 2004 and other terrorist atrocities galvanised anti Chechen and anti-Islamic sentiment in Russia. These experiences fuelled the ‘everyday racism’ which focussed particularly upon the perceived economic domination of the Moscow economy by Chechens. Meanwhile, increased migration spawned myths about ‘ethnic crimes’ and the view that the state was too weak to control them.

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The collapse of the Russian economy in the 1990s had a particularly grievous impact upon the middle classes. Doctors, nurses, teachers, police officers and academics would sometimes find themselves unemployed or remain unpaid for months and there were many instances in which university students were paying for their education through petty crime and prostitution. Thus, Shaskin’s observations about the social class make-up of racist skinhead groups are, perhaps, less surprising: We understand the differences between the agency of young people and the structural factors that might influence the situation in general. But those structural factors mentioned by our experts can also turn into popular myths. For example, members of skinhead gangs are usually presented as ‘stupid working class aggressive young males who live in Moscow suburbs and have nothing to do’. At the time, about 80% of all skinheads I interviewed (including three girls) had middle class (or lower middle class) backgrounds, study at Moscow universities, read a lot and are interested in history.

Conclusion Each of the youth groups discussed in this chapter are ostensibly similar in terms of their behaviours, the specific kinds of music they like and their distinctive styles of dress. The other less obvious similarity is that they are, or believe themselves to be, people who have been marginalised; pushed to the periphery of their social worlds, as a result of racism, historical enmities between colonialists and the colonised, demographic and ideological shifts and radical economic change. So, unless we contextualise their predicament we have little hope of understanding why is was them, why it was then and why it was there.

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Wars Journal . https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/latino-gangs-in-catalo nia-latest-police-operations-expose-extent-of-the-problem-signal-poli Carballo-Cruz, F. (2011). Causes and consequences of the Spanish economic crisis: Why the recovery is taking so long. Panoeconomicus, 58(3), 309–328. Castells, M. (1997). The information age: economy, society and culture: Volume II, the power of identity. Blackwell. Cloward, R., & Ohlin, L. (1960). Delinquency & opportunity. Routledge & Kegan Paul. Cohen, A. K. (1955). Delinquent boys: The culture of the gang. Free Press. Cohen, S. (1972). Folk devils & moral panics: The creation of the mods & rockers. MacGibbon & Kee. De Laforcade, G. (2006). Foreigners’, nationalism and the ‘colonial fracture’: Stigmatized subjects of historical memory in France. International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 47 (3–4), 217–233. https://doi.org/10.1177/002071 5206066165 Dendoune, N. (2007). Lettre ouverte à un fils d’immigré. Danger Public. Densley, J. (2013). How gangs work: An ethnography of youth violence. Palgrave Macmillan. De Vries, J. (2019, April). Meet Thierry Baudet, the suave new face of Dutch rightwing populism. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commen tisfree/2019/apr/03/thierry-baudet-dutch-rightwing-populism Feixa, C., Canelles, N., Porzio, L., Recio, C., & Giliberti, L. (2008). Latin kings in Barcelona. In F. van Gemert, D. Peterson, & I.-L. Lien (Eds.), Street gangs, Migration & ethnicity. Willan Publishing. Fiexa, C., & Oriol, R. (2014). From local gangs to global tribes: The Latin kings and queens nation in Catalonia. In D. Buckingham, S. Bragg, & M.-J. Kehilly (Eds.), Youth cultures in the age of global media. Fiori-Khayat, C. (2008). Ethnicity & Juvenile street gangs in France. In F. van Gemert, D. Peterson, & I.-L. Lien (Eds.), Street gangs, migration & ethnicity. Willan Publishing. Fourastie, J. (1979). Les Trente Glorieuses, ou la révolution invisible de 1946 à 1975. Fayard. Fowler, B. (2020). Pierre Bourdieu on social transformation, with particular reference to political and symbolic revolutions. Theory & Society, 49, 439– 463. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-019-09375-z Fraser, A. (2017). Gangs & crime: Critical alternatives. Sage Publishing. Free Muse/Artsfreedom. (2005, December 12). France: New onslaught against French rappers editorial. https://freemuse.org/news/france-new-onslaught-aga inst-french-rappers/

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Gunter, A. (2017). Race, gangs and youth violence: Policy, prevention and policing. Bristol University Press. Hagedorn, J. (2008). A world of gangs: Armed young men & gangsta culture. University of Minnesota Press. Hagedorn, J. (2015). Comment on Luca Queirolo Palmas/2 (https://doi.org/ 10.2383/81424) Sociologica (ISSN 1971-8853) Fascicolo 2, maggio-agosto 2015. Hagedorn, J., & Macon, P. (1988). People & folks gangs, crime, and the underclass in a Rustbelt city. Lake View Press. Hallsworth, S. (2014). The gang and beyond: Interpreting violent street worlds. Punishment & Society, 16 (5), 598–600. Harding, S. (2014). The street casino: Survival in violent street gangs. Policy Press. Harding, S. (2020). County lines: Exploitation and drug dealing among urban street gangs. Bristol University Press Hussey, A. (2014). The French Intafada: The long war between France and its Arabs. Granta. Hussey, A. (2018, November 21). The return of the repressed: The bitter legacy of the Algerian War. New Statesman. Katz, J., & Jackson-Jacobs, C. (2004). The criminologists gang. In C. Sumner (Ed.), The Blackwell companion to criminology. https://doi.org/10.1002/978 0470998960.ch5 Klein, M. (2008). Foreword. In F. van Gemert, D. Peterson, & I.-L. Lien (Eds.), Street gangs migration & ethnicity. Willan Publishing. Le Monde. (2005, November 9). “Banlieues en crise: baisse sensible des violences, premiers couvre-feux. Archived from the original on 16 June 2006. Lamotte, M. (2016). The Ñeta law, the Ñeta world: Ethics and imaginaries in circulation between the South Bronx, Barcelona and Guayaquil. Current Sociology. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392116657300 Lois, E. (2019, January 30). Spain becomes Europe’s top interceptor of cocaine. El Pais. https://english.elpais.com/elpais/2019/01/29/inenglish/154 8758371_648245.html McSweeney, P., Turnbull, J., & Hough, M. (2008, July). Tackling drug markets and distribution networks in the UK: A review of the recent literature. The Institute for Criminal Policy Research, School of Law King’s College London. http://drugslibrary.wordpress.stir.ac.uk/files/2017/ 07/Drug_Markets_FullReport.pdf Pettinger, T. (2017, November 15). The Dutch disease. Economics Help. Pettonet, C. (1982). Espaces habités, Ethnologie des banlieues. Éditions Galilée

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Windle, J., & Briggs, D. (2015). ‘It’s like working away for two weeks’, the harms associated with young drug dealers commuting from a saturated London drug market. Crime Prevention and Community Safety, 17 , 105–119. Wright, M. C. (1957). The sociological imagination. Penguin. Young, J. (1999). The exclusive society. Sage Publications. Zwiers, M., Kleinhans, R., & van Ham, M. (2015). Divided cities: Increasing socio-spatial polarization within large cities in the Netherlands (IZA Discussion Papers 8882). Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

Part III Nations & Regions

8 Gangs, Gang Evolution and Young People’s Involvement in Drug Supply and Distribution in Scotland Ross Deuchar and Robert McLean

Introduction This chapter examines the changing nature of youth street gang formation in Scotland. In particular, it focuses on Glasgow and the wider west of Scotland, given the historical prevalence of gang culture, knife crime and violence there. Little more than a decade ago, gang violence contributed to the city being dubbed murder capital of Europe; although by 2015 some commentators pointed out that the city’s gang problem was resolved as a result of intensive intervention from law enforcement, voluntary and third sector parties and other authorities (Deuchar, 2013; Fraser, 2015). R. Deuchar (B) · R. McLean University of the West of Scotland, Paisley, Scotland, UK e-mail: [email protected] R. McLean e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Andell and J. Pitts (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Youth Gangs in the UK , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99658-1_8

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Yet since 2015 there has been a significant increase in drug use, and more worryingly drug deaths, in the country, and among the younger populations (Deuchar et al., 2021). Organised crime has become concentrated around drug supply, and more drug harms are evident at the lower level of the drug supply chain. Drawing on recent interviews conducted with young people between 2019 and 2020, in this chapter we shed some light on these changes and how young people who hitherto may have been more inclined to be involved in youth street gangs focused on territorial violence are now instead focusing on drug supply. Prior to sharing these insights, we explore the distinctive historical and cultural aspects of gangs and youth violence in Scotland before then focusing on the evolution of youth gangs in the west of Scotland.

The Emergence and Evolution of the Gangs Gangs in Glasgow date back to the late Nineteenth Century. Davies (2013) documents how mass Irish immigration during this period led to increased sectarian tension and consequently gang culture. Widespread sectarian disturbances emerged in the 1870s and 1880s, coinciding with the Protestant Irish migrants establishing the Orange Order and the annual ‘Orange Walks’ in the west of Scotland (Deuchar & Holligan, 2010). The formation of the two main football clubs in Glasgow, Celtic F.C and Rangers F.C, only served to further fuel sectarian division. The founding father of Celtic F.C., Brother Walfrid, had a vision to create a football team that would ‘integrate young Scottish Catholics into Scottish society’ (Murray, 2003, p. 139), while Rangers F.C., already had a firm Protestant Unionist identity (see also Holligan & Deuchar, 2009; Deuchar & Holligan, 2010; Deuchar, 2016). However, sectarianoriented gangs like the ‘Muldoons’ and the ‘Penny Mob’ would create a reign of terror in the city until the turn of the Twentieth Century (Davies, 2013). Perhaps the most infamous sectarian gang was the ‘Brigton Billy Boys’ which emerged during the 1930s (Deuchar & Holligan, 2010). Protestant youths were recruited from the poorer areas of the east end of Glasgow and they engaged in ‘bitter, long-running

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feuds with half-a-dozen Catholic gangs across the east end’, including the equally notorious ‘Norman Conks’ (Davies, 2013, p. 198; see also Deuchar, 2016). By the 1920s and 1930s, these gang fought regularly. The open barber’s razor was the weapon of choice, hence they would be referred to as ‘razor gangs’. Gang members enjoyed prestige and kudos in their local communities (Davies, 2013; Deuchar, 2009; Deuchar et al., 2021). During this time Glasgow acquired a reputation as the most violent part of the UK. 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). Police Officer Sir Percy Sillitoe (1956) provided one of the few intimate accounts of the inner workings of the Glasgow razor gangs. Sillitoe identified the gang as comprising two units: those who were ‘core members’ and those who were on the ‘periphery’. Core members were ‘hardened’ criminals, who typically had specialised skills, such as safe cracking, while those on the periphery were considered loose associates who attached themselves to the gang primarily for fighting and social purposes (Deuchar et al., 2021). Glasgow’s violent reputation was cemented in the fictional publication of McArthur and Kingsley Long’s (1935) No Mean City. 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, however, an increasing number of articles on juvenile crime subsequently began to focus once again on the subject of gangs and violence, and it was reported that Glasgow had the worst gang problem in the UK (Bartie, 2010). Much of the gang violence emerged from Glasgow’s post-war housing estates built on the edge of the city. These ‘schemes’ as they are termed locally, typically suffered from high unemployment, poor housing and a shortage of local amenities. Thus, the gang culture of inner-city Glasgow slums of the 1930s had become relocated into the newly built estates. Gang fighting was recreational and centred upon territorial divisions (Deuchar, 2009, 2016; Deuchar et al., 2021). James Patrick’s (1973) ethnographic study in the 1960s identified numerous territorial gangs in Glasgow which centred primarily on

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violence. For young Glasgow boys, the lure of the gang was driven by a dominant male 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 was the template for the ‘archetypal macho city’ (Craig, 2010, p. 144). Macho values, focused on the need to act tough and to place an emphasis on physicality, 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 (Craig, 2010). In the housing schemes, projecting a tough masculine image has often been associated with young men defending their public reputation for valour and virility (Craig, 2010; Deuchar, 2016; Deuchar et al., 2021). Over the past 50 years, de-industrialisation, and the resulting widespread unemployment, has meant that the social construction of masculinity characterised by violent identities has come even more to the fore in disadvantaged areas of Glasgow (Deuchar, 2009, 2013, 2016; Deuchar et al., 2021). In 2009, Deuchar conducted a qualitative study that privileged the voices of those young men who live in some of those communities with prevalent gang violence. Examining their narratives via the explanatory framework of social capital theory—based around the work of Robert Putnam (2000) and Pierre Bourdieu (1986, 1990)— Deuchar found that through involvement in street gangs, young people acquired social capital that was difficult to access elsewhere such as via the family, education or employment. Deuchar argued that the negative ‘othering’ of these youth by overly controlling policing, official surveillance and, criminal justice sanctions, contributed to a constant feeling of marginalisation and ghettoisation. Their tendency towards alcohol excess and (to a lesser degree) substance abuse was explained by Deuchar, as escapism from their bleak social conditions (ibid.). While involvement in gang-related street violence had a recreational appeal in early-mid adolescence, it was something most outgrew as they matured towards adulthood.

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Evolving Gang Culture in Scotland ‘Young crime gangs’ (YCGs) are comprised predominantly of those core members of YSGs that participate in the majority of actual criminal activity. These members eventually break away from the larger and more fluid YSG and instead become more cohesive (McLean, 2017, 2019). This process occurs in response to ageing and the introduction of external threats or pressures. Because criminality appears to be an essential feature of these individuals’ social lives, it becomes an integral feature of wider YCG identity. This is facilitated by disproportionate delinquent association, and the core group’s attempts to engage in more serious organised crime. Thus YCGs are no longer simply territorial in nature. However, while YCGs engage in crime that is organised, as opposed to organised crime per se, gang life retains its social purposes (Mares, 1999). Yet, as YCGs continue to engage successfully in increasingly serious and organised crime, the raison d’etre of the group undergoes a fundamental change. As members become adults and financial gains increase, the purpose becomes primarily ‘business’. Membership may expand at this stage to incorporate wider criminal partnerships so, YCGs may effectively become an organised crime group (OCG) (McLean, 2017, 2019, and see also Harding et al., 2019; Deuchar et al., 2021 and Densley in this volume). One consequence of the evolution of gang culture in the west of Scotland suggested by McLean’s research (2017, 2019) is increased drug consumption and the consequent harm to the growing numbers of adolescents and young adults using them. Moreover, the expansion of drug use means that those associated with the disorganised gang formations below the level of organised crime are also becoming involved in drug supply, as they replicate and imitate certain aspects of the more successful gang and OCG formations in the hierarchy. Drawing upon insights from a qualitative research study involving children, adolescents and young people (aged 13–20) in Glasgow and its surrounding communities, we share the narratives of those youths who have had recent involvement in drug distribution. We focus on the roles that these youngsters say they play in supply and distribution. Related to this, we also explore the phenomenon that is ‘County Lines’

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drug dealing, in the west of Scotland which is becoming more and more prevalent in England and Wales (Harding, 2020). During the winter of 2019/2020, we arranged to meet and hold initial consultation meetings with groups of children and young people (aged 13–20) on the premises of the gatekeeping organisations to explain the focus for the research, to distribute relevant participant information sheets and establish their willingness to participate in the study. We utilised a ‘snowball sampling’ method, in which young people attached to ‘gatekeeping organisations’ identified friends and associates who they knew would be willing to participate in the research.

Drug Supply & Gang Affiliations In the UK, drug markets are currently in a state of flux, indicated by increases in drug-related murders (Black 2020). International shifts in illicit drugs markets have an impact on local markets. Broadly speaking, the geo-political shifts in Columbia and Afghanistan have resulted in increased availability of cocaine and heroin which in turn have influenced the operation of local markets (Andell 2019). In the past, local supply was thought to be primarily held by independent retail-level dealers (McLean, 2019). This is arguably because gangs tended to be less organised, less instrumental and more so because drug dealing was primarily conducted in closed networks, i.e. customers were referred to dealers by trusted customers or affiliates of the dealers (McLean et al., 2019). In more recent times, supply driven open markets and semi-open markets are more susceptible to gang involvement given that the turnover is quicker as drugs are less expensive and more available to a wider clientele. This supply led market ensures a growing demand is established and a division of labour resulting in more specialised roles is created. Due to increased use of mobile phone technology, open drugs markets have shrunk in the UK (see Windle, 2013). These shifts may also be due in part to police activity, cultural differences and a lack of acute ghettoisation of neighbourhoods described by Wacquant (2008). Thus, in the UK, criminally-orientated gangs, like YCGs and OCGs, tend to

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reserve their operational skills for wholesale and importation level positions. YSGs, on the other hand, have traditionally been inclined to be young, recreational, and have little involvement in drug markets directly other than key members being recruited to sell in local areas or for social supply. In addition to a burgeoning gang culture, evidence suggests that drug supply has begun to evolve (McLean, 2019). Drug dealing has gradually begun to adopt a semi-open market modus operandi, typically through the use of social media. To maximise profits, OCGs have begun to recruit vulnerable, and highly disposable, individuals to sell drugs on their behalf (Deuchar et al., 2021). Using non-gang members to sell directly reduces the chance of apprehension as such individuals may know little about the OCG beyond their own point of contact since they are not taken into the gang fold but are kept at the fringe of the group (Robinson et al., 2019). This also reduces loyalty towards those who are apprehended at the lower level. Drug supply has thus moved from a staggered or staged approach whereby product moves between independent but articulated networks from importers to wholesalers to retail-level dealers, to a more connected or continuous supply chain where importers or wholesalers will look to control the whole line of supply (ibid.). This end to end mechanism ensures that profits are maximised (McLean et al., 2019). As such, youths become targeted by older members to sell on their behalf, as our data illustrated: [You do] drop-offs in a … car, bike … the drop fee, it can vary, depends who you are. ‘Cos on weekends, you can get deals on drugs that makes it even more intriguing to get it because at the start you get, just say three ectos [ecstacy tablets], £20 … for two, it’s £15, for one it’s £10. So you can see exactly why someone’s gonna save up another £10 and get three. But on weekends, it can go from 10 to five, 15 to 10, 20 to 15. And then the drop fee can be eliminated as well.—Ed, age 15 The bigger dealer, see this guy I punted for, he was like, ‘when you’re 17, I will pay your driving lessons and you can drop for me.—Eric, age 15

McLean (2019) suggests that youths in Glasgow have traditionally sold drugs independently of any other person/group, and often supply

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socially to friends or purchase drugs outright to sell to peers. Yet the statements above illustrate a significant, change in supply practices, whereby youths may now be selling on behalf of older individuals, providing discounted rates supplied to them by such dealers, and being paid a fee or given rewards for doing so. On many occasions it was drug debt, by getting drugs ‘on tick’ [i.e. on credit, with an agreement to pay later], that resulted in young people unwittingly and, initially at least, unintentionally working for older dealers as a means of paying off what they owed. Or it could be as a result of being manipulated and coerced by the older dealer. Ultimately, this meant that youths were more engaged in, or part of, an existing supply chain and subject to increased control: I: What do you think gets some guys to start supplying? Davie: Probably to try and make money to get drugs, they probably ‘ticked’ something and need the cash. Once they pay their debt back, they then think, ‘may as well sell.’ —Davie, age 15 Kyle: Like, see the bigger dealers, they are like 20-year-olds. They would say, ‘oh, if I sell this I would go to jail.’ So they get the … 12-year-olds to move it about for them. They don’t get stopped and they don’t think about it. They don’t think about [getting sent to a] secure … unit. They just think they are impressing these guys.—Kyle, age 15

As noted by Davie, many youths begin on pathways to dealing through incurring drug-related debts. On some occasions our participants even felt that some scenarios might have been ‘set up’ to specifically ensure young people are indebted to older dealers. In previous years, older individuals were not as interested in using youths to sell on their behalf in the west of Scotland. Young people’s movements were restricted in the past because they would only have been able to move freely around their own territory (see Kintrea et al., 2008). Young people may only have known other youths from their own areas, or from their schools, and their reach would primarily have been centred around similar age groups (Deuchar, 2009). However, two factors have enabled young people to be seen by older dealers as a valuable commodity in drug dealing networks in the west of Scotland. Firstly, there has been the decline of traditional street gangs which has meant that territoriality and territorial conflict has also

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declined (see Deuchar et al., 2021). Secondly, the rise of social media has enabled potentially unlimited contact with others. These factors have enabled youths from the west of Scotland to ‘network’ with people of all ages from all parts of the country (Deuchar et al., 2021; Shabir et al., 2014). While social media has existed for some time, it is now more prevalent and accessible through an increasing range of devices and applications: Fraser: The people I know hang about with people from all over the place … they all get to meet each other [online], and get to make money, start keepin’ in touch.—Fraser, age 16 Sean: It used to be territorial [in the scheme], when my dad was growin’ up. When it was [scheme A], [scheme B] … not an issue anymore. Most of it’s on social media now. I never seen gangs fights n’stuff … a lot of people [use] Snapchat, n’that. People put up fake accounts but just for selling [drugs]. If they have fake accounts, you can’t trace it back to them … if you were trusted, if you were a regular buyer, you have more of a chance selling for that guy. If you are a regular, you can ‘tick’ it, sell it, buy more off him and make the money.—Sean, age 16

Fraser and Sean suggested that, while at one time territoriality was a serious and widespread issue within the housing schemes, this is now no longer the case. Young teams patrolling the streets, primed and ready to attack others, are now quite a rarity. However, as alluded to by Sean, since online apps like Snapchat and/or WhatsApp are encrypted and have group chat features, as well as time limited messages, this allows young people to gain access to drugs and other illicit products and services much more freely and quickly—and with less fear of being apprehended by law enforcement: You can click your fingers and get [drugs] from social media … you don’t go to people’s doors any more, it’s no’ a thing you dae, you don’t go and chap somebody’s door … you text them, you’ll meet them somewhere or they’ll drop it off in the motor … you text them on Whatsapp, Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram … Instagram is the best thing for it.—Ross, age 20

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Using social media directly, or through ‘burners’; untraceable pay-asyou-go-phones (Dodd, 2020), dealers are able to advertise their products over social media applications for customers to contact them directly, at which point ‘drop offs’ can be arranged (McLean, 2019). Of course, open market purchases can be fraught with fraudsters and carry the risk of ‘being bumped’. Furthermore, the use of emoji’s as coded terminology for drug products allows youths today to communicate more freely, without having to have criminalising conversations what is for sale and at what price. 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 to do so, and as such develop their own encoded and mediated language, unique to themselves. Yet the introduction of such apps and the use of the internet in helping support young people to have instant access to understanding such codes and what they mean has resulted in youth becoming an indispensable feature in the arsenal of OCGs and older drug dealers. Mick described interactions between dealers and the youth they seek to exploit: He [the dealer] 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. You will get the jail. I was 15. If I got caught, I would be 16 then and get the jail.—Mick, age 15

Participants suggest that older dealers would now use youths to pick up, transport and sell drugs because young people were easily exploited and manipulated and could be used as ‘fall guys’ in that, if caught, they may be given more lenient sentences by the court due to their age. Regarding the actual practice of drug dealing, many young people discussed young men doing drop-offs in cars but also those who were under 17 (and unable to drive) hiring others to drive cars for them, and in return they would be paid for their time and service: Some people stick to their own patch. Other people will drive down from Glasgow and go through [neighbouring town] … but you can be 15 years old

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and know someone who drives, get a driver and drive about and just give them 50 or 60 quid for driving about, or if they take stuff then just give them a bit of a sniff if it’s coke or that. That sorts your money, really easy mate.—Sean, age 16

McLean et al. (2019) write that, historically in Scotland, drug dealing was seen as being only for those who had gained a criminal reputation (or ‘street capital’, as per Harding, 2014, p. 6). This reputation could then be exploited to sell illegal commodities and services, such as drugs, in the community. The position of having a reputable track record for violence could also be used to assist in monopolising the local market, through extra-legal governance. However, declining territoriality, the rise of social media, improvements in transportation, access to drugs online and the increase in drug diversity have all contributed to drug dealing becoming a much more readily available option for young people: even those who have not established a prior reputation as a ‘hardman’ (Deuchar et al., 2021). Thus, it is no longer an activity or business venture for only gangsters, but rather it is an option to anyone wishing to make some money quickly. Yet, against a backdrop of advanced consumerism in a neo-liberal society, it becomes difficult for those who enter such a trade to leave, as the need to consume becomes a way of life: I think when they start sellin’ it and they’ve got all this 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 used to gettin’ it. You get the ones that won’t get a normal job because they’ll no’ get the money they’re gettin’ on a daily basis. It’s easy money.—Jade, age 18

In reality though, there is never enough money to satisfy all their wants and desires, more so when such wants constantly change, and tastes become more expensive. In a social setting in which acceptable employment and wages are low for many drug dealing has become an acceptable, and in some cases the only, means for sustainable income.

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‘County Lines’ Drug Dealing, Travelling Dealers and Wholesale Collecting Our interview data suggested that it was not uncommon for youths in the west of Scotland to discuss travelling back and forth to England to collect drugs, but also to drop them off. However, while McLean et al. (2019) found some instances of County Lines drug dealing in Scotland which fitted media perceptions, these were few and far between and largely confined to the northern region of the country, where English dealers from Merseyside and Manchester would also travel to coastal towns. Most youths in the study were not sent out on behalf of OCGs, but were involved with existing kinship networks that sometimes used them in an exploitative or coercive manner (McLean, 2019). This is arguably the main, difference between drug dealing in Scotland and England. Mick (see above) felt he had been exploited by an older dealer; however, in Scotland it seems that young people are not being exploited in the same way as in England and Wales (Harding, 2020). Small family-based dealers in the towns and villages operate almost completely independently, with the city-based OCGs generally only being used as 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. A similar process occurs on the east coast, mainly through Edinburgh-based OCGs (see Holligan et al., 2020). Research in England has focused on the use of drill and underground rap music by street gang members, particularly in London, and the way in which it can help members perform gang identities that emphasise their capacities for violence, but also to flaunt illegal substances (IrwinRogers et al., 2018; Lauger & Densley, 2018; Pinkney & RobinsonEdwards, 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 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 (see also Deuchar et al., 2021):

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Fraser: 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.— Fraser, age 16 S: 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.

Discussion In this chapter, we have traced the origins of gang culture in the west of Scotland, and the way in which sectarian rivalry defined the earliest recorded gangs, particularly in Glasgow. 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 de-industrialisation, we have also considered some of the recent research evidence suggesting that gang evolution may have taken place, the transitional and fluid nature of young gang members’ activity and the fact that street gang membership may on occasions lead on to participating in organised crime, particularly in relation to drug supply and distribution. Through drawing on insights from our qualitative research conducted in the west of Scotland, we have considered the role that contemporary teenagers and young people may play in the latter. We have also explored the phenomenon that is County Lines drug dealing, and whether this has impacted young vulnerable people in Scotland. Our interviews with young people in and around Glasgow suggest that territoriality’s decline had coincided with an increase in the illicit drug supply and drug dealing. Our respondents mentioned online platforms such as Facebook, Snapchat, WhatsApp and Instagram and how the presence of digital encryption had enabled the increased acquisition and distribution of illicit substances in the housing schemes. We observed that whereas in the past, it was gang membership that fostered a sense of belonging and masculine status (see Deuchar, 2009, 2013, 2018), now dealing illegal drugs had come to play that role.

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While County Lines continue to expand in England and Wales (Harding, 2020), our participants reported a far more limited version in the west of Scotland. Such episodes tended to involve a young teenager with an older male accomplice who organised the journeys and contacts; however, on some occasions young men who were not yet of driving age became entrepreneurial and actively sought out drivers to help them deliver, subsequently giving them a cut of either money or drugs. However, in the main, drug dealing usually took place in the proximity of the home areas of the dealers. On some occasions, though, networks of kith and kin aided and abetted dealing into more outlying areas (for further details, see Mclean, 2019). In addition, our limited data on the role of social media in enabling young people to flaunt illegal substances through, for instance, drill music, suggested that there was little evidence that the west of Scotland had been influenced and shaped by a London-centric subculture in this regard. Finally, we believe that it will be important in the years to come to pursue research with members of YCGs and OCGs 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 this might have been prevented (Deuchar, 2018; Deuchar et al., 2021). We hope that this chapter and our wider empirical insights (see Deuchar et al., 2021; McLean, 2019; McLean et al., 2019) might stimulate such research.

References Alonso, A. A. (2004). Racialised identities and the formation of black gangs in Los Angeles. Urban Geography, 25 (7), 658–674. Andell, P., & Pitts, J. (2018) The end of the line? The impact of county lines drug distribution on youth crime in a target destination. Youth & Policy [online]. Available from: https://www.youthandpolicy.org/articles/the-endof-the-line/. Accessed 26 August 2020. Bartie, A. (2010). Moral panics and glasgow gangs: Exploring the new wave into glasgow Hooliganism, 1965–1970. Contemporary British History, 24 (3), 385–408.

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Batchelor, S. A., Armstrong, S., & MacLellan, D. (2019). Taking stock of violence in Scotland. SCCJR. Bourdieu, P. (1986) The forms of capital. In J. G. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education (pp. 258–271). Greenwood Press. Bourdieu, P. (1990). The logic of practice. Stanford University Press. Connell, R. W. (2005). Masculinities. Polity Press. Coomber, R., & Moyle, L. (2018). The changing shape of street level heroin and crack supply in England: Commuting, holidaying and cuckooing drug dealers across ‘County Lines.’ British Journal of Criminology, 58(6), 1323– 1342. Craig, C. (2010). The tears that made the Clyde. Argyll Publishing. Davies, A. (2013). City of gangs: Glasgow and the rise of the British gangster. Hodder & Stoughton. Deuchar, R. (2009). Gangs, marginalised youth and social capital . Trentham. Deuchar, R. (2013). Policing youth violence: Transatlantic connections. IOE Press. Deuchar, R. (2016). Scottish youth gangs. In H. Croall, G. Mooney, & M. Munro (Eds.), Crime, justice and society in Scotland (pp.67–81) Routledge. Deuchar, R. (2018). Gangs and spirituality: Global perspectives. Palgrave Macmillan. Deuchar, R., & Holligan, C. (2010). Gangs, sectarianism and social capital: A qualitative study of young people in Scotland. Sociology, 44 (1), 13–30. Deuchar, R., McLean, R., & Holligan, C. (2021). Gangs, drugs and youth adversity: Continuity and change. Bristol University Press. Dodd, V. (2020, January 10). Police call for ban on anonymous pay-as-you-go phones. The Guardian. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/soc iety/2020/jan/10/police-call-for-ban-on-anonymous-pay-as-you-go-phones. Accessed 17 September 2020. Fraser, A. (2015). Urban legends. Oxford University Press. Harding, S. (2014). The street casino: Survival in the violent street gang. The Policy Press. Harding, S. (2020). County lines: Exploitation and drug dealing amongst urban street gangs. Policy Press. Harding, S., Deuchar, R., Densley, J., & McLean, R. (2019). A typology of street robbery and gang organization: Insights from qualitative research in Scotland. British Journal of Criminology, 59 (4), 879–897. Holligan, C. (2013). Breaking the code of the street: Extending Elijah Anderson’s encryption of violent street governance to retaliation in Scotland. Journal of Youth Studies, 18(5), 634–648.

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Holligan, C., & Deuchar, R. (2009). Territorialities in Scotland: Perceptions of young people in Glasgow. Journal of Youth Studies, 12(6), 727–742. Holligan, C., McLean, R., & McHugh, R. (2020) Exploring County Lines: Criminal drug distribution practices in Scotland. Youth Justice [Special Issue: Street Gangs, Group Offending and Violence], 20 (1–2), 50–63. Irwin-Rogers, K. (2019). Drug prohibition, inequality and consumer capitalism: A toxic trap for young people. Critical Criminology, 27 (4), 591–610. Kintrea, K., Bannister, J., Pickering, J., Suruki, N., & Reid, M. (2008). Young people and territoriality in British cities. Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Lauger, T. R., & Densley, J. A. (2018). Broadcasting badness: Violence, identity, and performance in the online gang rap scene. Justice Quarterly, 35 (5), 816–841. Lawson, R. (2013). The construction of ‘tough’ masculinity: Negotiation, alignment and rejection. Gender & Language, 7 (3), 369–395. Mares, D. (1999). Globalization and gangs: The Manchester case. Focaal, 35, 135–155. McArthur, A., & Kingsley-Long, H. (1935). No mean city. Longmans, Green & Co. McLean, R. (2017). An evolving gang model in contemporary Scotland. Deviant Behavior, 39, 309–321. McLean, R. (2019). Gangs, drugs and (dis)organised crime. Bristol University Press. McLean, R., & Densley, J. (2020). Scotland’s gang members: Life and crime in Glasgow. Palgrave Macmillan. McLean, R., Robinson, G., & Densley, J. (2019). County lines, criminal networks and evolving drug markets in Britain. Springer. Miller, J. (2015) In every scheme there is a team: A grounded theory of how young people grow in and out of gangs (Unpublished PhD Thesis). University of West of Scotland. Murray, B. (2003). Bhoys, bears & bigotry: The old firm in the new age. Mainstream. Palinkas, L. A., Horwitz, S. M., Green, C. A., Wisdom, J. P., Duan, N., & Hoagwood, K. (2015). Purposeful sampling for qualitative data collection and analysis in mixed method implementation research. Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research, 42(5), 533–544. Patrick, J. (1973). A Glasgow gang observed . Eyre Muthuen. Pinkney, C., & Robinson-Edwards, S. (2018, April 9). Gangs, music and the mediatisation of crime: Expressions, violations and validations. Safer Communities.

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9 Young People, Gangs and Paramilitary Violence in Northern Ireland John Pitts

While Northern Ireland experiences relative peace and political stability, its violent past is normalized in murals and commemorations, the language and posturing of opposition politics, segregated communities and social life. In “post-conflict” Northern Ireland, children and youth disproportionately experience paramilitary-style attacks and routine sectarian violence. The violence of poverty and restricted opportunities within communities debilitated by three decades of conflict is masked by a discourse of social, economic and political progress. (Siobhán McAlister et al., 2014)

J. Pitts (B) Vauxhall Centre for the Study of Crime, University of Bedfordshire, Luton, UK e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Andell and J. Pitts (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Youth Gangs in the UK , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99658-1_9

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The Troubles Any discussion of youth crime, youth gangs or youth movements in Northern Ireland cannot fail to recognise the profound impact upon young people, particularly those living in the poorer parts of Ulster’s major cities, of the armed conflict in the Province between the late 1960s and 1996, and its aftermath. Despite the conflict often being characterised as a struggle between the Protestant and Catholic communities, it was primarily political. The key issue concerned the status of Northern Ireland. ‘Unionists’ and ‘Loyalists’, who were mostly Ulster Protestants, wanted Northern Ireland to remain within the United Kingdom. ‘Irish Nationalists’ and ‘Republicans, who were mostly Irish Catholics, wanted Northern Ireland to leave the United Kingdom and join a United Ireland. In August 1969, the long-running tensions between the sectarian groups culminated in the Northern Ireland riots during a campaign by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association to end discrimination against the Catholic/Nationalist minority by the Protestant/ Unionist government. The Ulster government attempted to suppress the protests deploying the, largely Protestant, Royal Ulster Constabulary, and they were also violently opposed by Loyalists groups who denounced the Association as a ‘Republican front’. British troops were deployed and ‘Peace walls’ were built to keep the two communities apart. Some Catholics initially welcomed the intervention of the British Army as a neutral force, but after ‘Bloody Sunday’, in January 1972, where British soldiers shot 26 unarmed civilians during a protest march, fourteen of whom died, belief in their neutrality evaporated. This was the beginning of what came to be called ‘The Troubles’ in which more than 3,500 people were killed the majority of whom were neither soldiers nor paramilitaries. The Northern Ireland peace process in 1996 led to a paramilitary ceasefire and talks between the main political parties which resulted in the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. The Agreement restored selfgovernment to Northern Ireland on the basis of ‘power-sharing’ and a commitment to civil and political rights, parity of esteem, police reform, disarmament and the early release of paramilitary prisoners.

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But, in reality, recruitment to sectarian paramilitary groups continued.

Sectarian Youth Gangs & the Paramilitaries The link between young people in communities characterised by sectarian conflict and paramilitary organisations has a long history. The Ulster Young Militants, for example, emerged as the youth wing of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) in 1974 when the Troubles were at their height. The UYM had its origins in the ‘Tartan Gangs’ of the early 1970s (Mulvenna, 2016). They were unofficial loyalist street gangs who gained their name from the tartan scarves and flash of tartan they wore on their denim jackets. The tartan was said to commemorate the 1971 Scottish soldiers’ killings by the Provisional IRA. Ian Wood (2006) has suggested that the fashion may have been inspired by the Bay City Rollers, although the Bay City Rollers did not ‘take off ’ until 1974, by which time the Tartan Gangs were well established. The main activities of the Tartan Gangs were the intimidation of Roman Catholic families in loyalist areas of Belfast and, on weekends, attacks on Catholic youths and businesses in Belfast city centre. These gangs included ‘The Shankill Young Tartan’, ‘Ardcarn Boot Boys’, ‘Ballybeen Riot Squad’ and the ‘Young Newton’ from the Ballymacarrett area of East Belfast. In the Shankill Road area, the Tartan Gang quickly came under UDA control and served as their youth movement, although elsewhere in the city they remained independent and during a series of riots in the east in 1972 they proved notoriously difficult for the UDA leadership to control. In East Belfast, some Tartan Gang members known to John McKeague formed the basis of the Red Hand Commando when he established that group in 1972. During the Ulster Workers’ Council strike of 1974, Tartan Gangs roamed the streets of Belfast, ensuring compliance with the stoppage called by the Ulster Workers’ Council. The Tartans would form the first of three major youth subcultures that formed the basis of the UYM, the others being skinheads in the early 1980s and ‘spides’ in the 1990s.

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Although the exact date of formal establishment of the UYM as an official group attached to the UDA is unknown, it is estimated to have been around 1974. The group was initially restricted to 16 year olds although demand for membership became so high following the Combined Loyalist Military Command ceasefire of 1994 that the age limit was dropped to fourteen. Many prominent loyalists are believed to have been members of the UYM before joining the UDA, Gareth Mulvenna (2016) has written extensively about the origin and evolution of the Tartan Gangs. He writes: Over the last weekend of June 1970, Provisional IRA gunmen killed six Protestant civilians in north and east Belfast during and after Orange parades. Ronnie McCullough, who had just turned eighteen, was one of the Orangemen on the Crumlin Road when marchers and their supporters were attacked. In the aftermath, he and a small group of his friends descended on his mother’s house in the Oldpark area and debated what had occurred. McCullough remembers that the birth certificate of a then unnamed group, which would later become the Red Hand Commando, was verbally agreed: In effect we agreed on two founding principles for this proposed organisation … we would fight to remain British, and we would not be forced into an all-Ireland republic … and secondly that we would fight to defend the Protestant people, or loyalist people - our communities -from republican aggression.

Through 1970 and 1971, the Tartan look became increasingly popular among young loyalists but the subculture gained momentum following Provisional IRA murder of three young Royal Highland Fusiliers on 10 March 1971. From then, Tartan gangs proliferated and became a symbol of militant loyalist resistance. But the Tartans were also involved in the kinds of working-class violence in defence of territory associated with youth gangs in other UK cities. In April 1971, the Belfast News Letter, describing fighting between the Shankill Tartan and another gang, the Rats, declared that the ‘Shankill gang war’ was the new threat to Belfast peace and Gareth Mulvenna (2016) cites an angry resident who told the newspaper that

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the gangs were young hooligans. But, in the June of that year, the Tartan gangs came out in force to marshal and protect the Orange marches. Although the Minister for Home Affairs John Taylor also described them as ‘young hooligans’, the Nationalist politician Austin Currie during a Stormont suggested that the Tartans were a more sinister grouping: I wonder if it is absolutely correct to describe these people as young hooligans. Accompanying this parade was a large number of young men in blue denims … I am told that at a section of the parade … these young men numbering hundreds attempted to goosestep and behave in a disciplined military way. I presume they could be called true blues. These are militants on the Unionist side, and they accompanied this march for the express purpose of ensuring that if there was any trouble they would be able to go into action as a type of military force … there is more than young hooliganism involved in this.

In May 1972, the journalist Max Hastings travelled to east Belfast to record the BBC Twenty-Four Hours programme. On the streets, Hastings found overwhelming support among adults for the Tartan gangs: One woman said that ‘These are our boys of tomorrow’, while another declared that ‘The Tartans are only the start of it. It’ll come to the whole Protestant population will have to come out and do what they’re doing to get anything in the country.’ (Mulvenna, 2016)

Ten weeks later, during an escalation in sectarian violence a group of the young Woodstock Tartans joined the Red Hand Commando, having turned down approaches from the UDA. Recruitment of young people into paramilitary organisations continues. A recently leaked security assessment estimated that there were about 12,500 members of loyalist paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland. An assessment of paramilitary groups carried out for the Northern Ireland Office in 2015 observed that in spite of their ceasefires, the UVF and the UDA were still involved in recruitment.

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Drugs and the Paramilitaries Clare: Look Michelle, drugs are illegal, drugs are addictive. But, perhaps most importantly, in this country you can lose your kneecaps if you’re caught doing them. And I like my kneecaps, Michelle: They suit my knees. Orla: You do have cracking kneecaps, Clare. (Derry Girls, Channel 4)

The link between illicit drug trafficking, the Northern Irish paramilitaries and the criminal exploitation of children and young people in Northern Ireland is well established and as McEvoy et al. (1998) have argued, the issue cannot be examined in isolation from the politics and practices of the protagonists to the conflict. During the Troubles, ‘drug users’ and drug use were regarded by some paramilitaries as a threat to the political struggle. While violent punishment beatings declined somewhat following the ceasefire, ‘systematic beating, exiling and torture remained pervasive’ in both Republican and Loyalist strongholds’ (McEvoy et al., 1998). Alongside this however, it appears that illicit drug use has actually grown as paramilitaries have mutated into ‘cartels wrapped in a flag’ (O’Leary, 2021). Writing in 2010 Andrew Silke noted that: Though the main loyalist groups have now been observing cease-fires for nearly five years, the fund-raising activities of these organizations has continued unabated.

He charts the emergence in 1996, and the subsequent rise and fall, of the splinter group, the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF), estimating that approximately 60% of Northern Ireland’s drug trade had fallen under the control of Loyalist paramilitaries. In its report, the Select Committee on Northern Ireland Affairs (2002) noted that the committee had been informed by the police that: The loyalist paramilitaries, particularly elements within the UDA and LVF, will involve themselves at all levels of drug dealing, from supply and importation to distribution and street level dealing… Elements within

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the republican paramilitaries have involved themselves in the importation and supply of controlled drugs throughout Northern Ireland. Others will tacitly approve drug dealing in their areas on receipt of payment. It is not fully understood whether these individuals are operating on behalf of their parent organisation or whether all the profits are for individual gain. … Of those persons currently subject to Drug Squad investigation, 30% have links to loyalist paramilitary organisations, 15% have links to republican organisations and 11% have links to both.

They also note that murders during the ceasefire by paramilitaries have frequently been related to drugs and that much of what purports to be paramilitary ‘protection’ of the community from undesirables, also serves the purpose in enforcing lucrative franchises (Basra, 2019). Paramilitary groups take advantage of areas they control by charging drug dealers a ‘premium’ to operate on their turf. Labelled ‘bad on bad’ extortion, it is carried out by both loyalist and republican paramilitaries and can involve, variously, thousands of pounds or relatively small sums of money: the UVF, In this way, the paramilitaries can shift the risk of importation and distribution to drug traffickers, while still profiting from the drug trade. Extortion is often carried out in the name of a paramilitary group, but it is not always clear if senior members have sanctioned the act. In 2016, PSNI Assistant Constable Will Kerr stated that involvement, at least among dissident republicans—occurred more on an individual level than as a group-sanctioned practice: Organisationally, [republicans] are not involved to the same extent but individually, some of them undoubtedly are. It’s probably not to the same extent as loyalist paramilitary groups are involved in organised crime: extortion, violence, robbery, drug dealing in the North. But undoubtedly some individual members are.

This therefore makes attribution difficult and organised crime groups may try to exploit the reputation of paramilitaries for their own ends. These groups can also straddle the divide between groups, working with both loyalists and republicans. This was seen during the 2014 trial of Declan Gallagher, charged with 17 drugs-related counts related to the importation of cocaine into Northern Ireland, which revealed that

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Gallagher worked with both republican and loyalist paramilitary groups, with no group aware of his other customers. The late Martin McGuinness, former leader of the Provisional IRA, when he was Stormont’s Deputy First Minister, vehemently criticised dissident paramilitaries involved in the drugs business: What you have to understand is that if you support these people, you are effectively supporting people who are swimming in a sea of criminality and drugs, dressing it up on occasions in a flag of political convenience and you shouldn’t be under any illusions about that … People need to get real. They need to recognise the danger that a tiny number of people can represent to human beings and they need to recognise that the world has changed, that over the course of the last 15 years we have built something, all of us together, which we can be very proud of. And we are not going to let it go, to anybody, certainly not to a ragbag of people who have inspired themselves and others for their own purposes, to fill their own coffers, to engage in criminality and to extort money from drug pushers and drug barons – effectively becoming themselves part of the drug problem on the island of Ireland. (Belfast Telegraph, 2013)

Territoriality & the Psychodynamics of Large Group Victimhood Almost half of the young people interviewed by Siobhán McAlister and her colleagues (2010) in their research in some of the most segregated communities in Northern Ireland said they would not travel through an area housing the ‘other community’ during the day, and this figure rose to 88 per cent at night. Three quarters expressed this fear of the ‘other community’ or entering areas associated with the ‘other’. The anticipated intimidation, verbal abuse and physical violence echoed the ‘no-go areas’ of the Troubles and served to reinforce geographical boundaries. Young people endeavouring to develop identities different from those ascribed by their communities of residence usually encountered ‘social exclusion’. In these communities, belonging, or fitting in, was of prime importance and being ‘different’ was met with hostility. As the researchers observed:

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While shared perceptions of inequality are often a uniting force in areas of deprivation - resulting in mutual aid and solidarity - for some individuals strong communities can be oppressive and limiting. In creating “strong ingroup loyalty” they may also create “strong out-group antagonism”.

This strict demarcation of ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ and the dangers of entering the ‘territories’ claimed by the ‘outsiders’ is evocative of the findings of other UK gang research (Andell, 2019; Densley, 2014; Harding, 2014; Pitts, 2008). The first Northern Ireland Youth Wellbeing Study published in 2020 noted that: Parents may have had parents or siblings murdered during the Troubles and their experience and years of answered questions gets baked into family history and folklore with devastating consequences for the children of the 1998 peace deal.

As Sarah Jankowitz (2018) has observed: ... the construction of the victim as harmed unjustly by an out-group whose members are collectively responsible often leads to a justification of violence against outgroups as legitimate. Both victims and perpetrators act collectively as proxies for group interests and are depersonalised or dehumanised at the intergroup level.

She argues that ‘sectarian violence is committed by individuals but emanates from a social system which provides the rationales and the justifications for the violence’. Action against the in-group is seen as undeserved, and justifies violence committed on behalf of themselves, the vulnerable and innocent victims. Indeed, it may be seen as self-defence. In this way, in-groups frame their violence as morally just which serves to protect their positive social identity. As Jankowitz notes: Without claiming victim status, ‘violence becomes too naked, politically inexplicable, and morally defensible. The acquisition of the status of victim becomes an institutionalized way of escaping guilt, shame, or responsibility’. Continued justification and legitimisation of violence as

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a function of one’s own victimisation leads to cycles of violence which only serve to reinforce groups’ senses of being collectively victimised. This justification of in-group violence leads to the attitude that any harm suffered by the out-group was legitimate, which counters the construction of the ideal victim as unjustly harmed and therefore minimises or denies their claims to victim status.

On the basis of numerous studies of sectarian violence, Vamil Volkan posits the idea that real or imagined trauma experienced by a large group can be transmitted down the generations where attempts to right the original wrongs may either be enacted by the younger generation or passed on to the next. He writes: While each individual in a traumatized large group has his own unique identity and personal reaction to trauma, all members share the mental representations of the tragedies that have befallen the group. Their injured self images associated with the mental representations of the shared traumatic event are “deposited” into the developing self representation of children in the next generation as if these children will be able to mourn the loss or reverse the humiliation. Such depositing constitutes an intergenerational transmission of trauma. If the children cannot deal with what is deposited in them, they, as adults, will in turn pass the mental representation of the event to the next generation. (Volkan, 2001, p. 8)

This intergenerational transmission of beliefs and attitudes is graphically illustrated in an interview undertaken by Siobhan McAlister and her colleagues with a young person in County Derry: At the end of the day, we’re goin’ by what our grannies and granddads are tellin’ us. And they’re putting it on the news and they’re makin’ films about it. And what are we supposed to think when they make a film about Bloody Sunday or they make a film about the bombings and whatnot? ... So of course young ones are goin’ to fight back – ‘Oh you did this to my one’ – you know, war stories you could say it is. (Co.Derry, aged 21) (McAlister et al., 2011, p. 104)

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The Impact on Children & Families in the 21st Century For the families living in the most socially disadvantaged Catholic and Protestant communities the Troubles cast a long shadow. A survey conducted in 2003 found that of the 3,636 people killed between 1969 and 1996, 2,037 were civilians. Half of the respondents to the survey knew somebody who had been killed in the conflict and around 88,000 households were affected by the loss of a close relative. Fifty thousand households contained an injured resident. During this period, 28,000 people were made to leave their place of work, while 54,000 relocated because of intimidation, threats or harassment. But as McAlister et al. (2011) observe, the conflict continues: The Northern Ireland Office maintains 53 ‘peace lines or walls’, three times the number prior to the ceasefires. Although cessation of community-based punishment beatings and shootings was central to the withdrawal of paramilitary activity in communities between 1999 and 2009 there were 1,958 casualties from ‘paramilitary- style’ shootings and assaults ... Threats and intimidation continue to be directed towards children and young people accused of ‘anti-social behaviour’, particularly in economically deprived urban areas associated with high levels of Conflict-related violence. (p. 93)

Kilpatrick (2014) notes that: Two paramilitary-style shootings or beatings are taking place on the streets of Northern Ireland every week. In the 2732 paramilitary attacks in Northern Ireland between 1998 and June 2015, 89 of the victims were children aged 16 years or under, 1,297 were young people aged between 16 and 24 years and 1,346 were adults aged over 24. Most shootings were attributed to the Republican vigilante group RAAD (Republican Action Against Drugs) that targeted those who they claimed were drug dealers. The group’s methods included beatings, shooting the alleged dealers in the arms and legs (‘punishment shootings’); pipe bomb or arson attacks on the property of alleged dealers; and warning, threatening or banishing them. (Montgomery-Devlin, 2020)

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Although paramilitary groups claimed they were protecting the communities they effectively controlled, they were attacking these same communities. Jacqui Montgomery-Devlin (2020) maintains that this can be seen in the lasting physical and psychological damage experienced by the victims large numbers of whom continue suffer from depression, avoidance behaviour, emotional numbing and increased anxiety symptomatic of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The families of the young victims, who usually decide to acquiesce to paramilitary demands, with the parents of those shot having spoken of their feelings of guilt. Basra (2020) cites Donna Smith, the mother of a RAAD (Republican Action Against Drugs) murder victim Andrew Allen, who explains the effects of vigilantism in Londonderry: I actually know of young boys who are sleeping with hammers and baseball bats at the side of their beds because they are so terrified. I know a mother that has a big piece of wood barricaded against her door because her son is under a death threat as she is afraid at night that they will come in.

The chairman of a community group in a Republican neighbourhood interviewed in 2012, said: People in the area have described those behind this [vigilante] attack as having the IQ of goldfish, and I agree … The type of people they are targeting are young people in working class areas, council estates, who have nothing, and local people are left wondering, who is next.’

Although there may be support for these vigilante groups in some communities, the reluctance to inform the police about their activities could be construed as expressing support, but is equally likely to be indicative of fear of reprisal attacks and the ubiquitous culture of silence in communities controlled by paramilitary groups. Loyalist paramilitaries have also been criticised for their role in the illicit drugs business, but as suppliers rather than enforcers of prohibition. In 2013, eight people died from overdoses of drugs allegedly supplied by paramilitaries. The deaths highlighted the well known fact that members

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of the UDA were dealing drugs in the communities they controlled. (Moriarty, 2013)

In August 2021, the Northern Ireland Children’s Commissioner said that children and young people are ‘not being properly protected’ from exploitation by paramilitaries, Koulla Yiasouma said that young people in communities dominated by paramilitary groups were forced into the distribution and supply of drugs. She noted that the closest parallel to the ways these young people were recruited was the ‘grooming’ practised by County Lines organisers in other parts of the United Kingdom (cf Harding, 2020). Speaking about the resurgence of public disorder stemming from uncertainties about the status of the Province following the British government’s withdrawal from the European Union involving children and young people in Protestant communities, in April 2021, Yiasouma said that although these children: ... may be born into peace, but they might hear that Uncle John witnessed a murder or a grandparent was killed and that causes a trauma, anxiety, stress. A recent survey showed that numbers of children diagnosed with mental ill health in Northern Ireland are 20% higher than the rest of the UK and criminal gangs (some with paramilitary affiliations) exploit that by luring them into criminal activity. Do these children have a choice? No, these children probably do not, particularly when we know that shootings, beatings, and ostracisation in their communities by young paramilitary and armed groups still continues in Northern Ireland ... Earlier this week the police said the youngest arrest was just 13 years old, leading to concerns, expressed by many local and national political leaders, over the impact criminalisation would have on their future paths. What we need is a sustainable plan to help our children and our families in these communities that are blighted by the aftermath of the conflict. (O’Carroll & Carroll, 2021)

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Conclusion: ‘Paramilitary Violence is a Children’s Rights Issue’ In their publication, Paramilitary Violence is a Children’s Rights Issue, Paula Rogers and Siobhan McAlister argue that: ... grounding paramilitary abuse against children in the language of rights not only gives voice to children’s experiences, but highlights the obligations of duty bearers to protect, prohibit and respond to all forms of violence against children.

They note that over 20 after the Good Friday Agreement, the United Nations Committee on the Convention Against Torture (UNCAT) expressed concern about the continued exposure of children to paramilitarism through ‘punishment’ and recruitment. It says: The Committee reiterates its concern about reports that paramilitary groups continue to function as alternative authorities in certain areas of Northern Ireland, inflicting punishments resulting in severe pain and suffering against people alleged to have committed criminal offences … the Committee is also concerned about reports that these groups continue to recruit children. (para. 42)

The authors point to the fact that the United Nations Committee for the Rights of the Child have expressed similar concerns that despite children and young people continuing to experience violence at the hands of paramilitary groups, this issue ‘has rarely featured on the government agenda’. They note that it is widely accepted that these abuses are more frequent and more widespread than the statistics reveal and that this is particularly so areas suffering from the combined depredations of trauma, bereavement and poverty. In their research, McAlister et al. (2018) interviewed: ... children and young people who spoke of experiencing intimidation, threats, beatings (with fists and feet, hammers, baseball bats, metal rods, chairs), kidnappings and exiling (exclusions) from their communities.

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Threats often started young, and a significant number of young people had multiple experiences. None of these were reported to the police.

And even when the 317 paramilitary-style attacks between 2013 and 2016 were reported to the police only 3% resulted in formal charges or a court summons. They observe that the children themselves question the State’s ability and willingness to ‘protect, prohibit and respond to paramilitary abuse. They cite a young person involved in a Local Policing Review who said: They [the police] know fine rightly who they are and so if they really wanted to, they would arrest them.’

Another observed that: Police are the ones that give you the warning… if the cops could do something about it, they wouldn’t give you the warning. They would sort it out … They don’t protect you. No.’

The authors note that although children’s rights advocates, youth charities and campaigning groups and United Nations Committees have raised concerns and: ... although the lack of a working Executive may represent a current stumbling block to action, the lack of priority given to these issues more generally raises bigger questions about the low pecking order that children rights issues have for government, and the failure to fully understand the impact of the conflict legacy on children.

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References Andell, P. (2019). Thinking seriously about gangs. Palgrave. Basra, R. (2019). Drugs and terrorism: The overlaps in Europe. European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA). Kings College. https://icsr.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/ICSR-ReportDrugs-and-Terrorism-The-Overlaps-in-Europe.pdf Belfast Telegraph. (2013, November 2). Leaders unite in condemnation. Densley, J. (2014). How gangs work. Macmillan. Harding, S. (2014). The street casino. Policy Press. Harding, S. (2020). County lines. Bristol University Press. Jankowitz, S. (2018). Intergroup struggles over victimhood in violent conflict: The victim-perpetrator paradigm. International Review of Victimology, pp. 259–271. https://doi.org/10.1177/0269758017745617 Kilpatrick, C. (2014, November 3). Two ‘punishment-style’ attacks carried out every week in Northern Ireland. Belfast Telegraph. https://www.belfastteleg raph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/twopunishmentstyle-attacks-carried-outevery-weekin-northern-ireland-30712724.html McAlister, S., Dwyer, C., & Carr, N. (2018, October). Experiencing Paramilitarism: Understanding the impact of paramilitaries on young people in Northern Ireland (No. 1, pp. 1–8). Centre for Children’s Rights Research Findings. McAlister, S., Scraton, P., & Haydon, D. (2010). ‘Insiders’ and ‘outsiders’, young people place and identity in Northern Ireland. Shared Space: A Research Journal on Peace, Conflict and Community Relations in Northern Ireland . Community-Relations.org.uk. McAlister, S., Scraton P., & Haydon D. (2011). Place, territory & young people’s identity in the ‘new’ Northern Ireland. In B. Goldson (Ed.), Youth in crisis? gangs, territoriality & violence. Routledge. McAlister, S., Scraton P., & Haydon D. (2014). Childhood in transition: Growing up in ‘post-conflict’ Northern Ireland, Children’s Geographies. Taylor & Francis. McEvoy, K., McElrath, K., & Higgins, K. (1998). Does Ulster still say no? Drugs, politics, and propaganda in Northern Ireland contemporary issues concerning illicit drug use in the British Isles. Journal of Drug Issues. https:// doi.org/10.1177/002204269802800108

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Mulvenna, G. (2016, August 1). Tartan gangs and paramilitaries: The loyalist backlash. Liverpool University Press. Montgomery-Devlin. (2020, November). Briefing Paper No. 2. The influence of paramilitarism in Northern Ireland on the recognition of child sexual exploitation in young males. Northern SBNI Safeguarding Board of Northern Ireland . Moriarty, G. (2013, July 2). PSNI to investigate possible drug deaths; Police inquiry into whether eight deaths in Belfast are linked to contaminated drugs. The Irish News. O’Carroll, L., & Carroll, R. (2021, April 10), Northern Ireland: Children are being ‘encouraged to commit criminal acts’. The Guardian. https://www.the guardian.com/uk-news/2021/apr/10/northern-ireland-children-are-beingencouraged-to-commit-criminal-acts O’Leary, J. (2021, March 21). South East Antrim UDA: ‘A criminal cartel wrapped in a flag’. BBC NI Spotlight. Pitts, J. (2008). Reluctant gangsters: The changing face of youth crime. Routledge. Volkan, V. (2001). Trans-generational transmissions and chosen traumas: An aspect of large-group identity. Group Analysis, 34 (1), 79–97. https:// www.researchgate.net/publication/247735625_Transgenerational_Transmiss ions_and_Chosen_Traumas_An_Aspect_of_Large-Group_Identity

10 Youth Gangs in Wales: Blocked Opportunities and Broken Transitions—A Generational Evolution from Troublesome Youth Groups to ‘Gangs’ in South Wales? Jenny Maher and Howard Williamson

Introduction With few exceptions, existing UK youth gang research has focused rather narrowly on large cities in England. The serious organised and drug-related violence found among young people in some ‘inner-city’ and socially deprived conurbations is seldom replicated among young people in less densely populated areas, such as south Wales. However, drawing on observations derived from the two principal ethnographic studies of marginalised and deviant young people in Wales (see Maher, 2007; Williamson and Williamson, 1981; Williamson, 2004, 2021), this chapter examines the origins, growth and issues particular to youth J. Maher (B) · H. Williamson University of South Wales, Pontypridd, Wales, UK e-mail: [email protected] H. Williamson e-mail: [email protected]

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‘street’ culture in Wales and considers the applicability of the idea of the ‘gang’ to define and delineate lifestyles, attitudes and activities. While not consistent with structures typically associated with modern gangs, Williamson explored the development and subsequent life course of an overlapping constellation of troublesome youth groups from a deprived Welsh urban social housing estate, at the onset of postindustrialisation. Though he has chronicled the lives of the ‘Milltown Boys’ over almost five decades, his first account (Williamson and Williamson, 1981)—based on both his involvement with them as a volunteer youth worker and then through a participant observation study exploring the relationships between their community and cultural context and the criminal justice system, over more than five years in all—was a memoir, never written with the goal of publication (see Devlin, 2021), depicting their supposed and often nostalgically proclaimed ‘golden years’ of transition from teenagers to young adults. That transition coincided with the collapse of the youth labour market and the demise of traditional pathways from school to work for workingclass boys who celebrated anti-mentalism, machismo and manual labour. Willis’ (1978) analysis of how working-class kids get working-class jobs, on building sites and the factory floor, was dating rapidly as Thatcherite Britain ushered in the ‘post-industrial’ society. It was not clear where the Milltown Boys, with their criminal records and lack of formal qualifications, would end up. Williamson (1978) had himself already argued that their offending, both instrumental and expressive, was usually rationally based, challenging the medical model of delinquency that prevailed at the time; they knew what they were doing. However, Williamson and Williamson (1981) were insistent that the Milltown Boys were not a gang, but rather a mosaic of sub-groups who shared the same sense of place and class but often different interests in sport, music, fashion, style and, indeed, learning, working (officially or otherwise) and offending. Almost three decades later, Maher’s mixed-method, multi-site ethnographic investigation explored the development of youth street formations in south Wales, which coalesced into a typology based on the characteristics and the factors commonly associated with gang membership. The research coincided with the onset of heightened fear over increasing youth violence and criminality linked to the ‘glocalisation’

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(Robertson, 1995) of American-style gangs. Although evidence of stereotypical American-style gang development in Wales was absent, many of the street-based youth formations identified ranged from embryonic to established gang-like groups, which originated among territorial lines delineated by culture and tradition. These formations emerged at a time of gradual disintegration of legitimate opportunity structures arising from globalisation and changes in the nature of the economy and employment, the disengagement (through institutional exclusion or individual self-exclusion) of certain groups of young people from education, training and employment (see Istance et al., 1994), and the slow integration of young people living on the margins into what might be called ‘deviant enterprise’ (such as drugs markets—Dorn & South, 1990). This chapter provides an evolutionary account of what might be construed as youth ‘gang’ development in Wales, first by outlining the historic conditions and rationale for the emergence of the different youth formations, then through research case studies to discuss the nature of these formations and the salient issues affecting the motivation to join and engage in these groups, and finally to reflect on how these link to contemporary debates relating to the street gangs.

Locality in Focus: The Regional Policy Landscape The development of more structured deviant groups of young people and their transition into adulthood needs first to be discussed within the context of the regional policy landscape in south Wales—the broader social, economic and cultural changes that have taken place locally but within the global context. A century or so ago, Wales was central to the global economy. Industrialisation in the late 1800s resulted in the worldwide exportation of Welsh coal and steel, and the resultant transformation of the Welsh landscape, economy, employment and communities. External and internal migration (from other countries and from rural Wales to the industrial south-east) formed the three cities (Cardiff, Swansea and

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Newport) and the surrounding pasturelands into vibrant and multicultural communities, largely composed of working-class families (Davies, 1993). From the 1970s onwards, however, de-industrialisation resulted in the eventual closure of all collieries, a sharp decline in employment opportunities, with drastic implications for wider social and community life (Merrell & Kitson, 2017). The fragmentation of communities was particularly evident in the cities of south Wales and the former coalmining valleys, all of which, following national trends, saw increases in poverty and social exclusion—predominantly concentrated in the more marginalised local authority estates (Bennett et al., 2001; Jones & Adamson, 2001). The demographics of south Wales changed further, with the 2011 Census identifying a 5% resident population increase since 2001. Over ninety per cent of this increase involved non-UK born residents largely from European migration, an 82% increase in non-UK born residents since the 2001 Census. Nearly two-thirds of the population identified as Welsh, and 96% recorded as White (higher than any English region—The Migration Observatory, 2014). In its most recent form, globalisation has brought further population shifts and increased competition from developing countries, creating further pressure on Welsh jobs and communities (House of Commons Welsh Affairs Committee, 2009). It has also increased the reach and influence of criminal organisations in Wales. The Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation (WIMD) is the official measurement of deprivation in Wales. The 2019 Index found both the former coal-mining valleys and cities of south Wales continued (see 2005 index) to have higher concentrations of multiple deprivation (Welsh Government, 2019). Alongside pockets of affluence, south Wales has some of the highest levels of deprivation in the UK, characterised by protracted experiences of unemployment running through the generations, high rates of chronic illness, run-down social housing estates, depopulation, family breakdown, under-performing schools, decaying amenities, poor transport and general community decline. Deprivation is highest among those aged 0–18 years, with the highest rates of UK

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children living in poverty in Wales—particularly south Wales (Children in Wales, 2007; Main, 2021). Fragmented and deprived communities marked both by machismo and social exclusion sit alongside a growing service industry, dominated by trade and wholesale and human health/social work—jobs for which many young males (in particular) lack the skills (2011 Census -ONS 2012) and often, too, the interest and motivation. Notably, a quarter of those aged 16 and over in Wales possess no recognised qualifications (ONS, 2012). Young males continue to be most heavily impacted by the fluctuating labour market in Wales, with youth employment between 2020 and 2021 decreasing by 50% during the COVID-19 pandemic. Youth unemployment (16–24 years) is particularly vulnerable to the economic cycle: with sharp rises of c.12% and c.16% in Wales, for females and males, respectively, between 2005 and 2011/2013 (Welsh Government, 2021). Faced with limited employment and legitimate opportunities, uncertain and shifting futures (most recently austerity, Brexit and COVID-19), young people in these communities—like their parents before them—are having to adapt to dramatic social change and contend with precarious transitions to adulthood and increased push and pull factors towards crime and delinquency. While lacking the established reputation for violent and territorial rivalries which have characterised other industrial cities in England and Scotland, south Wales is marked by largely undocumented, but consistent and recurring youth violence. Milltown itself witnessed public disorder and vandalism as long ago as the 1920s, shortly after its first housing was built as ‘homes fit for heroes’, and found its way into policing history when riot squads were deployed for the first time in mainland Britain on its streets during social unrest there in 1991 (see Campbell, 1993). Despite a steady increase in political and public concern over youth violence in Wales, as in other parts of the UK, concerted research into the nature and dynamics of contemporary peer violence is notably absent (Maher & Williamson, 2009).

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Official statistics identify across all age groups that youth violent crime1 has remained fairly flat, following a long-term fall from 19952 (ONS, 2021). Following a history of particularly high rates of young people (under 18 years) in custody in England and Wales (e.g. 60% increase between 1990s and 2004, to 2,040 in 2010/2011 and 2,807 in 2020/2021—CIVITAS 2012), numbers have declined significantly to 511 in 2020/2021 (Youth Custody Service, 2021). While not exclusively housing Welsh young people, it is notable that Wales has one of the lowest ‘secure estate’ youth populations, decreasing from 63 to 24 between 2015 and 2021. The decreased custodial population may indicate a decline in youth crime; however, it is more likely due to the prevention and diversion strategies which have been applied to all but the most challenging (and often violent) young people.3 Official data cannot, anyway, provide an accurate measurement of youth gang numbers or membership in Wales. Nonetheless, popular media imagery has commonly and classically portrayed young people who offend in a negative and criminal light (Ipsos MORI, 2006), emphasising youth violence, weapon use (Booth et al., 2008; Squires et al., 2008), gangs, drugs and exploitation (see Davis, 1990). Consequently, concern and fear over young people’s behaviour often surpasses our understanding of it. Equally, however, such fears may not be completely unfounded. In recent years, young people have experienced further challenges accentuated by wider social and economic circumstances; the loss of services and resources due to years of austerity followed by COVID-19 pandemic restrictions (BBC News 20.09.2021), the growth in young people’s cultural engagement with the internet and social media and resultant victimisation4 , and increased strain in families and communities, 1 Violence, thefts, criminal damage and motoring offences are among the crimes committed most often by young people (10-17yrs) (Wales Online 2020). 2 Officially there was also an overall downward trend in offences committed by young people in Wales from 2013/14 (5,461) to 2018/19 (2651). 3 Diversionary measures from custody (i.e. cautions, referral order, community sentences) certainly account for some of this decline, for example, in (year ending March) 2020, 58,939 children were arrested, 24,578 proceeded against, 16,898 sentenced, the majority (11,423) received community sentences (Youth Justice Board 2021). 4 More than half of the 12- to 15-year-olds surveyed (in England and Wales) said they had had a negative experience online in 2020. (Online Nation 2021 report).

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resulting in youth homelessness and growing numbers of young people seeking mental health support, and children on child protection registers5 . Simultaneously, these young people are being exposed in new ways to organised drug crime and sexual and criminal exploitation by gangs from cities in England. These groups—labelled ‘County Lines’ by enforcement agencies—specifically target vulnerable 15–17 year olds who display circumstances of poverty, family breakdown, interventions by social services, ‘looked-after’ status, exclusion, frequent missing episodes6 and behavioural and developmental disorders and previous involvement in criminality (National Crime Agency [NCA], 2019).

Research in Focus: The Research Landscape Considering the important influence of situational and global challenges on youth gang-like development in Wales, this chapter provides a unique opportunity to compare ‘gang’ activity across time. Drawing on observations derived from the two studies on street-based youth groups in Wales (Williamson and Williamson, 1981; Williamson and Maher, 2007, 2009), it is possible to consider—across a time frame of some 30 years, or arguably a generation—the origins, growth and issues particular to socalled youth ‘gang’ culture in Wales. Both studies take a critical approach to understanding the development of troublesome youth groups (and perhaps youth gangs) in Wales, setting their research within a broader context of sociological and criminological thinking (that is, in relation to concepts such as marginalisation, inequality, alienation and young people defined as ‘NEET’—Not in Employment, Education or Training), social structure and street culture. Williamson and Williamson (1981) produced what was subsequently described by the BBC as a

5

For example, Cardiff Council (2021) reported the number of children on the child protection register increased from 253 to 458 - a rise of 81% - in the past 12 months. 6 Children who frequently run away or go missing from home or care.

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... ground-breaking study of a group of boys on one of Europe’s largest council estates. At its close, the boys he interviewed were left with few prospects and bleak futures. (see Williamson, 2021, p. 3)

But how bleak, it is important to ask? Williamson had stumbled upon the ‘Boys’ by accident (see Williamson, 2004) but he got to know them well, seeing them most days in a variety of contexts (in the community and in custody) over a period of five years. To all intents and purposes, he ‘hung around’ with them, on the street and in the woods, later going to court with them and visiting them in custodial institutions, only writing a recollection of his time with the Boys after he had left the estate in 1979. By that time, the Boys were around 20 years old and, despite usually maintaining their established contacts deriving from strikingly common origins, their transitions already suggested very diverse ‘pathways’—later discussed in the literature as niches, pathways, trajectories or navigations (Furlong & Evans, 1997; see also Williamson, 2021)— to adult life. Five of the Boys, a close-knit group at the heart of wider networks, were profiled intentionally in order to illustrate the differences between them (in terms of offending, relationships, musical affiliation, sporting involvement, and in two separate cases, parenthood and sexual orientation). There was also, still, considerable overlap between these individuals and between the different groupings of which they were a part. Twenty years later, as public policy in the UK focused in on addressing social exclusion (see Social Exclusion Unit, 2000), including educational underachievement and youth offending, and particularly the phenomenon of young people who were classified as ‘NEET’, Williamson returned to interview 30 of the 60 individuals he and one of the Boys listed from memory (there were 67 on the list, but seven were already dead, none from natural causes). Those tape-recorded interviews covered all aspects of the Boys’ lives up to the age of 40 and generated some half a million words of transcript. The salient point here, and discussed further below, is that this profound qualitative inquiry revealed three quite distinct, though still often overlapping groups among the Boys.

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Maher’s (2007) doctoral research, contextualised by a media fuelled moral panic and calls for political action to crack down on gangs, and a very limited, fragmented and divided knowledge base relating to UK youth gangs, sought to evaluate the prevalence and nature of youth formations in public spaces in south Wales. Taking heed of Short’s (2006) warning about ‘blind spots’ in gang research and the confusion over the spread of gang culture as opposed to gang organisations, the study purposefully included all types of street-based youth groups as units of analysis across the spread of post-industrial landscapes throughout south Wales. The mixed-method and multi-site research approach involved semi-structured interviews, self-completed attitudinal and behavioural questionnaires and ethnographic research over thirteen months on the street (Table 10.1). A key point here is that ‘at risk’ street-based young people are a notoriously difficult population to research and data collected are hard to authenticate (Maher, 2007). There is a tendency in gang research to merge and blur representation and reality (Fraser, 2017). Detached youth workers acted as gatekeepers and provided an invaluable internal and external validation by corroborating the data collected on core features of the groups identified. Adopting a grounded theory approach—that is, with an ‘open mind, though not an empty one’ (MacDonald, 2001)— and almost 400 hours of direct observation and engagement, Maher Table 10.1

Summary of Maher’s methodology and sample

Method Semi-structured Interviews (Pupil Referral Unit youths aged 11–16yrs) Behavioural Surveys (Pupil Referral Unit youths aged 11–16yrs) Ethnographic Observations (young people aged 11–25yrs)

Sample Semi-urban

Urban

29

25

29

25

32 groups identified 16 observed*

74 groups identified 23 observed*

*groups observed repeatedly over course of the ethnographic study

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encouraged young people to voice the narrative of their lives and engagement with peers. Further extensive periods of observation, without direct engagement with ‘gangs’, enhanced understanding of the nature and cohesion of the groups observed and their communities. Whereas Fraser (2017, p. 3) alleges gang research has become “increasingly narrow, selfreferential and crime focused in orientation and [losing] touch with its sociological origins”, Maher’s in-depth fieldwork and triangulation placed the idea of gangs both within the broader social context of inequalities and struggles and in the details of individual lives lived through their groups on the streets.

An Important Note on Terminology Disciplinary and methodological disputes are commonplace in gang research; how gangs, their members and behaviour are defined presents a central point of contestation. The term embodies negative connotations about young people, potentially stigmatising and stereotyping them (Katz & Jackson-Jacobs, 2003) and the ontological validity of this terminology continues to be questioned (Ball & Curry, 1995; Sullivan, 2006). Despite conflicting evidence on the scale and nature of UK ‘youth gangs’ (Bennett, 2007; Muncie, 2004), the term is now in widespread use in the media, politics, practice and academia. The measurement used to define gangs varies widely, giving rise to numerous problems, including how the term has been diversely applied in the UK. Fraser (2017, p. 12), for example, notes a critical approach, whereby “local identity and group conflict represent an enduring feature of life in working-class communities in the UK, and that ‘gang-like’ groups are nothing new”. Yet there are others such as Pitts (2007) who argue gangs are a new and dangerous youth phenomenon resulting in and from the ghettoisation of certain urban areas. For the purposes of this chapter, we have opted for a definition that accommodates troublesome street-based groups of young people who sometimes coalesce into more organised units for instrumental and expressive activities that may be either proactive or defensive, or both. As these groups meld into the latter, there may be reasonable and plausible cause to call them ‘gangs’.

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The Evolution from Troublesome Youth Groups to Youth Gangs Young people in gang-like cultures in Wales have changed and continue to change. When the classic Milltown Boys study was conducted almost 50 years ago, delinquent youth groups were characterised, even in the United States, by depictions of ‘drift’ (Matza, 1964), subterranean values (Miller, 1962), differential association (Sutherland & Cressey, 1966) and sometimes a desire to achieve dominant societal goals through alternative, illegitimate means (Cloward & Ohlin, 1960; Merton, 1968). For many years, only Glasgow, in the United Kingdom, had arguably more structured, cohesive, hierarchical and organised arrangements akin to the classic American gangs characterised and perhaps caricatured in film and print. The youth dimension of these Glasgow gangs has been firmly called into question (Boyle, 1988), despite a study in the 1960s that seemingly confirmed it (Patrick, 1973).The study did at least draw attention to the grinding poverty, grim housing conditions and recurrent unemployment experienced by the gang members and the relentless violence in which they engaged. No doubt the Glasgow gangs spawned youth groups prone to systematic violence and delinquency, almost as a precursor to contemporary gang membership, even if they were not ‘gangs’ already. Maher’s (2007, 2009) research concluded that similar traditional delinquent youth groups also existed in Wales, with well-established delineated territorial lines (dispensing expressive violence and displaying an emotional connection with their ‘patch’), but she also observed the development of contemporary youth subcultures and evidence of more organised, structured, territorial and profit driven gang-like formations (where defence of territory was more instrumentally linked to the protection of drugs markets). The following case studies detail the transformation from troublesome youth groups to more gang-like youth formations in Wales.

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The Milltown Boys (1973) Williamson’s data were gathered through participant observation and casual conversations with the Boys, as and when they were willing to talk. As trust developed, they divulged many facets of their lives, not only about their offending behaviour, but about local and wider rivalries, family life and friendship networks. This revealed a complex mosaic. Some of the Boys’ offending behaviour was spasmodic and relatively harmless. Others engaged in potentially harmful behaviour almost daily, especially those involved in burglary, theft and robbery. Yet others never perpetrated such instrumental offences, getting into ‘trouble’ instead through wanton vandalism or almost unavoidable punch-ups. Over time, the modus operandi of offending among the Boys mutated. Loyalties shifted, new ‘skills’ were learned, new contacts were made, new opportunities arose, new pressures were experienced. None wanted to be incarcerated and when the prospect of imprisonment arose, some curtailed their illegal activities. Yet predicting a custodial sentence was very difficult; as Barbara Wootton (1959) had written in the 1950s, it was, for a juvenile, rather like a drunken man trying to hit a moving object with a wobbling hand. Years later, the renowned labelling theory protagonist Edwin Lemert, on a study visit to Cardiff, queried why a young person might be put into local authority care purportedly for stealing eggs from a supermarket. The Milltown Boys came to take all this uncertainty in their stride. If criminality was embedded in their preferred lifestyle (whether instrumentally for fashion and possessions or expressively to maintain status and face), they got on with it and took the consequences. Nothing particular was planned; much was opportunistic. Only later in their teenage years, as they encountered the adult criminal justice system and as their criminal records strengthened the prospects of custody, did some start to review those lifestyles, if they were not already on a declining slope on account of relationships, employment and parenthood. Others persisted with deviant behaviour, unwilling or unable to find legitimate paths to adulthood, and some have never changed course, accepting various penalties along the way but also developing sophisticated strategies and tactics for avoiding or mitigating the worst of them.

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The salient point here is that three quite distinct, though still often overlapping groups were identified among the Boys. As part of the first generation of those who came to be depicted as ‘NEET’, one might have expected a rather different, and more homogenous story. Instead, around one-third of the Boys steadily escaped their impoverished roots and marginalised youth to do rather well, assisted by Thatcher’s ‘right to buy’ through which they either inherited private property or purchased social housing from the council. They desisted from offending, maintained long-term relationships and held down reasonably well-paid employment. They occupied an increasingly virtuous upward circle. Some had done remarkably well by the time they were 40 and went on to do even better (see Williamson, 2021). In contrast, another third sank further into criminality, had a sequence of fractured relationships and rarely worked legitimately, getting by on a shifting mix of crime, gambling and casual employment. It was a vicious downward circle, though the burgeoning drugs culture both compounded dependency and addiction and provided new entrepreneurial possibilities. Over time, however, this group gradually abandoned more dangerous and more risky offending in favour of the relatively safe territory of shoplifting. Between these two groups was another third who combined elements of the two: passive offending, steady but rather separate relationships, relatively regular but ever-changing employment. Some two-thirds of the Boys interviewed in 2000 had not confirmed the predictions that they would slip inexorably into a lifestyle of criminality and exclusion. There were escape routes, such as the ‘pull’ of new forms of employment, a foot on the housing ladder, and the ‘push’ of relationships with ‘respectable’ partners and responsibilities for children. Such pathways were by no means guaranteed but many of the Boys— despite their lack of qualifications and their criminal records—did not persist with continued, exaggerated, or adapted versions of their teenage involvement in crime and violence. At the age of 60 (see Williamson, 2021) many of the Boys started to reflect more seriously on their lives; hitherto, it has largely been a case of ‘que sera, sera’ (see Williamson, 2004). Very few have actively carved paths—on both sides of the tracks—with purpose and intent, investing time and thought into how they live their lives. Yet, from the most

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law-abiding and successful of the Boys to those who are now afflicted with addiction and unemployment, they have remained together, often supporting each other in difficult times. As Kelvin noted, Yeah, we’re still pretty close. Of course, we have our ups and downs. We still have our arguments, our bickerings. But we’ve had a strong friendship over the years and it’s been a long friendship. I think we’re a group of guys who, if one of us was in trouble, we’d move the earth to help out. You know, if we could do it, we would do it. We’re lucky to know each other. (Williamson, 2021, p. 158)

Despite this, even at the height of more serious criminality pursued by some of the Boys, it is hard to think of them ever as having been a ‘gang’: their relationships were too fluid and free, and there was never any sense of enforced commitment or retribution among them. Even their sometimes tense relationships with neighbouring ‘gangs’, usually inspired by territorial loyalties, dissipated when they met in the city centre or were together in custody.

Youth Gangs and Troublesome Youth Groups in South Wales (2007) At the turn of the millennium, street-based youth friendship and subcultural groups, about which there is a rich and long history in the UK (Brake, 1980; Hebdige, 1979), remained present in south Wales (Maher, 2007). The lives and loyalties of these young Welsh people largely echoed the complex mosaic—of friendships, family, futures, offending and fluidity—of the Milltown Boys. Groups, frequently developed through childhood and community bonds, were routinely deemed a nuisance, and sometimes positively dangerous by their communities and varied considerably in their activities and offending trajectories. The acceptance, or perhaps ‘embrace’ of gang terminology and identities was notably different, as was the engagement of female members. Many young people (52% of those interviewed, including males and females), especially in their mid-teens, self-identified as ‘gang’ members. When described,

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Table 10.2

Typology categories by number and per cent of gangs

Category Street Clique/Friendship Group Subcultural Group Wannabee Gang Collective Gang Traditional Gang Contemporary Gang Total

Numbers Observed N

%

28 12 8 24 20 3 95

29 13 8 25 21 3 100

their gang resembled the Eurogang definition (Klein, 2006, p. 129) of a “durable, street-oriented youth group whose own identity includes involvement in illegal activity”. Maher’s study observed 106 troublesome street-based youth groups, principally located in areas of recorded and visible social deprivation, including the estate where the Milltown Boys had grown up and where many still lived (Williamson, 2004, 2021). These groups lay on a continuum of non-gang to gang-like formations, many of which could be considered embryonic and emergent street gangs. The variation evident in the 957 closely observed groups’ characteristics, structure, organisation and development, triggered the development of a typology—of four gang-like (contemporary, traditional, collective and wannabee) and two non-gang (subcultural and street clique/friendship) categories (see Table 10.2). Almost 60% of the street formations fell within the four gang-like categories. Although few fit the conventional and contemporary ganglike structures commonly portrayed in the United States, each exhibited durability and a group identity that included participation in criminality and violence: Wannabee gangs, characterised as young, mischievous, embryonic, diffuse and closely related to the friendship groups, formed in spaces frequented by established Traditional and Contemporary gangs. They commonly styled themselves on gangsta-rap artists, identified with a territory and were involved in petty crimes and other delinquent activity (often in imitation of older local gangs). Developing status and 7

There was not enough information collected by the researcher and detached workers to compose a profile for the typology, consequently 11 groups were not included in the typology.

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protecting one’s reputation was important, as some groups eventually became a subset of the local older gangs (or their members were groomed to join the gang). Those members not transitioning to older gangs seldom remained beyond fourteen years of age. Collective gangs were loose, diffuse mixed-gender structures, with a wide age-range, a small number of core members and many peripheral and transient member (often from school or clubs). Consequently, they were larger than most other gangs and only occasionally defended ‘their’ space. They most commonly displayed persistent anti-social and nuisance behaviours, but also spontaneous ‘cafeteria-style’ offending and violence. Traditional gangs were usually smaller than Wannabee or Collective gangs. Membership was somewhat fluid, but durable and cohesive, with elements of leadership and organisation in membership and criminality. The predominantly male members habitually engaged in group criminality (including drug sales) and violence (conflict with rival gangs where weapons, such as knives, bats, snooker balls in socks, were carried and occasionally used). Members indicate these formations have existed for generations, commonly linked to ‘traditional’ territorial lines. They were often the foundation for contemporary gang development. Contemporary gangs, solely identified in the capital city, possessed a widely known reputation (and associated territory) for serious instrumental and expressive violence, gang member recruitment and engagement in the organisation and sale of drugs. Smaller than other gangs, they were mostly composed of core, loyal and long-term members, and an identifiable leadership. They were durable, due to their transition from Traditional gangs and their recruitment of Wannabees. While these gangs were the closest to stereotypical youth gangs, essentially, they did not engage in the levels of lethal violence and deviant enterprise identified in urban English gangs. In contrast to many gang studies (but in line with local demographics), few BME gang members or gangs were observed. Arguably, these gangs have formed, not through the displacement and immigration characterising many US/UK urban gangs, but through local friendship groups, community ties and limited legitimate local opportunity structures. The transmission of gang culture was evident, though few spoke about ‘joining’ their gang; rather, membership often resulted from ‘drift’.

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Nonetheless, conflict, stemming from entrenched territorial rivalries was central to gang cohesion. Other than in contemporary gangs, offending was principally motivated by social capital8 or street currency (such as reputation and status) rather than material profit. Putnam (2000) refers to two basic forms of social capital—bridging and bonding—the latter being the focus of the gangs social capital, as it solidifies homogeneity and commonalities and mobilises (aggressive) group solidarity (Deuchar & Holligan, 2010). Violent conflict–indicated to be governed by rules and etiquette (which reduced serious injury) for many gangs—reportedly produced substantial ‘capital’ for males and a few females. Few gangs developed (deviant) enterprise or extra-legal governance. Membership of all gangs was dominated by excluded and marginalised youth, surviving on deviant enterprise and reportedly being content to remain there into adulthood. Young men, especially ‘veterans’, were central to group formation and deviance. Gangs with older membership were more sophisticated in their offending behaviours, their offences being more organised, planned and successful. Despite young women commonly viewed and treated by male members as ‘entertainment, chattel, or sex objects’ (Maher, 2007), in line with the arguments advanced by Campbell (1984) a generation ago, the presence and availability of females influenced the development and durability of the gang and their violent rivalries. The group’s popularity and status among local youths, for example, increased when young women became members; and while some fought alongside the gang, more commonly the girls influenced gang conflict by inciting and organising rival encounters. Over half of the street formations observed were durable groups of socially disadvantaged and marginalised youths who normalised violent behaviour and engaged in a wide range of harms. Where legitimate alternatives for status, social capital, income and belonging were absent (see Antrobus, 2009), and different ‘ways of life’ were being entertained, these formations might reasonably and plausibly be termed ‘gangs’. Gangs which were pivotal to youth identity and transitions to adulthood. 8 Social capital relates to social relationships and social structures that produce benefits for those within the collective (Bourdieu 1986).

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Blocked Opportunities and Broken Transitions—The Quest for Alternative Routes to Adulthood (Identity, Expression, and Income) There was a time when academic research on transitions to adulthood were largely, if not exclusively, confined to the transition from school to work. The focus was firmly on insertion in the formal, legitimate labour market and the role of educational qualifications and appropriate careers guidance. Following the oil crisis of the early 1970s, the hitherto segmented youth labour market suffered a dramatic collapse, as ‘youth’ jobs (including but not exclusively apprenticeships) disappeared and stepping-stones into legitimate work evaporated. Furthermore, many of the unskilled manual jobs undertaken by unqualified young men vanished forever. This was certainly the situation facing the Milltown Boys whose fathers and older brothers had slotted into work in the local brewery, papermill and steelworks as well as more casual employment. But it was still legitimate work, and it also presented opportunities for generating supplementary income, illegally, at the margins (see Henry, 1978; Mars, 1982). Not only did theorists of ‘youth transitions’ indicate that the journey towards secure and legitimate employment was becoming more prolonged (and, indeed, more precarious), there was also increasing recognition that other transitions were taking place simultaneously— from dependent to independent living, and from family of origin to family of destination. Furthermore, any traditional linearity in these transitions—getting a job, leaving home, settling down—was becoming far less predictable. And, on top of this trio of lengthened and reversible transitions increasingly characterised by vulnerability and risk for a growing number of young people, MacDonald and Shildrick (2007) have suggested a fourth, the street transitions from relatively casual teenage delinquency in community space to more planned and structured criminality in economic space. This is precisely the argument that

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we seek to endorse. Broken transitions have increasingly blocked legitimate opportunities for young people (especially, but not exclusively, young men) who have been steadily and often systematically confronted with disengagement and social exclusion. Notwithstanding the precise nuances of youth transitions, Furlong and Cartmel (1997) invoke the metaphor of the ‘car’ journeys that have replaced traditional ‘train’ journeys. In the past, at least the determinant of social class propelled most people down particular tracks to particular occupational destinations—medical practice, the teaching profession or down the pit. They journeyed together, with little prospect of changing course. This has now been replaced by far greater individual self-determination, however much the old ‘grand narratives’ of class, race and gender still exert an influence in determining the type of car and the maps and instruction available (Rattansi & Phoenix, 1997). Nevertheless, contemporary transitions have become more open to possibility, and young people generally have more opportunities. At the same time, however, young people face more risk and greater vulnerabilities; they require skilful ‘navigational capacity’ (Swartz, 2021) to avoid being pushed to the edge. And those at the edge face succumbing to their predicament or finding alternative routes to what Chisholm (1997) once referred to as ‘learning and earning, loving and living’. Young people in Maher’s research arguably did have more possibilities, but these legitimate transitions were also more challenging and problematic for those on the edge—those most susceptible to the attraction of ‘gang’ culture and arguably most prone to connect with it. After all, alternative transitions for identity, expression and income, become more attractive, possible and likely, to young people who are already partly socialised into that way of life and making a living. The parallels between legitimate youth transitions and gang membership are notable; both provide young people with social inclusion and recognition. Pathways into the gang are facilitated, or indeed impeded, by critical moments in young people’s lives, which push/pull young people away from legitimate transitions and towards alternative ones. In many gang studies, geographical dislocation and marginalised heterogeneous cultural conflict (Hagedorn, 1998; Huff, 1990; Spergel, 1995) present such turning points. Both the Milltown Boys and

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those studied by Maher in 2007 lived in and were tied to homogeneous communities and held entrenched local identities. Arguably, this buttress, which contrasts sharply with the experiences of many urban gangs, goes some way to explaining the different trajectories of urban English and Welsh gang development. The limited access to serious illicit opportunities, evident by the limited gang organisation through drug sales and serious deviant enterprise (which we return to later), is undoubtedly another. The gangs and troublesome youth groups of 2007, in contrast to the Milltown Boys, nonetheless did express stronger feelings of cultural dislocation and alienation from their communities. By 2007, local conditions had fused with the global transmission of US gang culture (Hagedorn, 2005) to create a blended culture which valued the acquisition of wealth, individualism, and ways of doing masculinity. This was not, in some ways, strikingly different from the aspirations and identities of the Milltown Boys, whose transatlantic reference point was, if anything, the Fonz from the TV series Happy Days. However, Maher’s research suggests that blocked access combined with aspirations towards conventionality and mainstream goals, informed by media and musical depictions of gang culture, were important factors in shifting young people’s identities away from conventional and crime-free lifestyles, to one that promoted offending. In short, gang membership provided marginalised young people with alternative maps and navigational tools, ones which importantly accentuated the cultures of machismo, manualism and anti-mentalism (which Willis (1978) had suggested prepared previous generations of ‘working-class lads’ for the legitimate manual labour market). Feeling excluded from, and/or apathetic and cynical towards legitimate employment and earning opportunities, these young people are ‘content’ to remain in their gang, increasingly doing so beyond the usual age of desistence/transition to adulthood. [The retention of young people into adult deviant enterprise also prevailed among some, though relatively few, of the Milltown Boys, and their criminality was largely more individualised or conducted in small groups]. Considering the levels of marginalisation, deprivation and broken transitions, it is perhaps noteworthy that Welsh gangs have not become as entrenched as those in other UK cities (Pitts, 2007). It might be contended that Wales has largely experienced what Short (2006) refers

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to as the spread of gang culture as opposed to gang organisations. Linked to this is the absence of existing illegitimate opportunity structures such as those discussed by Cloward and Ohlin (1960). Welsh youth gangs have been characterised by ‘conflict’ (such as territorial violence) and ‘retreatist’ (such as drug-using groups), rather than ‘criminal’, subcultures. Nevertheless, new routes to illegitimate enterprise are being established, alongside increasing difficulties (which have been exacerbated further in austerity and the COVID-19 pandemic) in accessing desirable legitimate opportunities, resources and support. The development of County-lines drug organisations from urban English cities to Wales (Glover Williams & Finlay, 2019; NCA, 2019) therefore creates a dangerous mix of push and pull factors for vulnerable and marginalised young people in Wales. Almost 90% of police areas in England and Wales have identified an established or emerging County Lines problem in their area (NCA, 2019). In one week alone (2021), south Wales Police made 32 arrests and disrupted four County Lines. For young people, County Lines not only opens the door to serious and organised crime gangs but increases the risk of child sexual and criminal exploitation, criminal conviction, violence, drug addiction and trafficking. This is essentially the two sides of the ‘failed transitions’ story; marginalised enterprising young people exploiting marginalised vulnerable young people. The development of County Lines will further alter routes of transition, providing avenues to illicit opportunities not previously available for disengaged and marginalised young people. Such developments are therefore significant and currently dominate political and enforcement attention and funding. But this is the sometimes all too visible tip of the iceberg. Beneath these often alarming developments that capture popular attention rests a wide and deep canvas of illegality generated as a response to exclusion or self-exclusion from legitimate occupational activity, the former on account of attitude and image, the latter deriving from a rejection of degrading, poorly paid or ‘inappropriate’ work.

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Conclusion Making sense of the development of gang-like formations in south Wales is complex. As argued, such developments must be contextualised by the historical perspective of blocked opportunities, fractured transitions and cultural change influenced by glocalisation. They must not be simplified to the point that it is no longer possible to recognise the variation and differences that exist among street formations in south Wales. Nor should we ignore the very diverse routes—whether pathways, niches, trajectories or navigations—that these individuals ultimately take. While many of the street formations observed by Maher in 2007 mirror those encountered by Williamson and Williamson in the 1970s and indeed others who have reported on youth subcultures and delinquent areas elsewhere in the UK (cf. Campbell & Muncer, 1989; Foster, 1990; Gill, 1977; Parker, 1974), it is plausible to argue that embryonic and more established street gangs are evolving in south Wales. They are neither as highly organised and violent nor as widespread as commonly depicted in the media, but this does not mean there is not the potential for them to become so. Indeed, the conclusion of the BBC journalist reporting on the Milltown Boys in 1982 may now have considerably more traction: that marginalised young people “are left with few prospects and bleak futures” (see Williamson, 2021, p. 3)? Recent times have certainly slammed the door tighter on the possibility of discovering or re-discovering legitimate routes to adulthood (as many of the Milltown Boys have done). Simultaneously, more doors are opening to widen illegal routes thereby, for some at least, dangling the promise of better prospects and less bleak futures. For those reasons, they have steadily become more attractive to larger numbers of marginalised and disengaged young people, even when that may require more affiliation to and compliance with different types of ‘gang’.

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11 Gangs in Liverpool: Scouse Soldiers init? Urban Street Gangs on Merseyside Robert Hesketh and Grace Robinson

Introduction This chapter discusses the emergence of the contemporary urban street gang on Merseyside. Drawing on observations from Smithson et al. (2009), Hesketh (2018) and Robinson (2019), Hesketh and Robinson (2019), Hesketh (2021). While Kenyon and Rookwood (2018, p. 501) have noted that ‘Liverpool’s recent problems with youth-gangs have attracted significant national and international media attention’. The same cannot be said for academic research into street gangs, at the time of writing, and despite the high prevalence of gang-related incidents, R. Hesketh (B) School of Justice Studies, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, UK e-mail: [email protected] G. Robinson Black Box Research & Consultancy, Stoke-On-Trent, UK e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Andell and J. Pitts (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Youth Gangs in the UK , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99658-1_11

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these studies represent what are the only three pieces of in-depth gang scholarship focusing on Merseyside.

Merseyside, Urban Street Gangs and Organised Crime For the benefit of an international audience, Merseyside is a Metropolitan County located in the North West of England. With a population of 1.4 million, the county is divided up into five boroughs: Liverpool, Knowsley, St Helens, Sefton and Wirral, the latter of which is situated on the west side of the river Mersey. For most of the twentieth century, poverty as a result of chronic unemployment and social exclusion has made the boroughs some of the most deprived in the UK. In particular, it was during the 1970s-1990s—a period that included the rise of the first British woman Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher—that Merseyside suffered one of the most debilitating periods in its history (Hesketh, 2021). Rapid industrial deterioration and urban decay coupled with high rates of unemployment, especially in many BAME communities including Toxteth culminated in the riots of July 1981. All of these factors had brought a government recommendation of managed decline of Liverpool. With such high levels of deprivation and poverty, criminality unsurprisingly became linked (Webster & Kingston, 2014), and from this context, Merseyside has a long history. With its large port, the region has been one of the UK’s main points of entry for illegal drug trafficking from neighbouring and faraway countries for several decades (Hesketh, 2021).

Mapping Merseyside’s Urban Street Gang Problem In attempting to map the regions gang problem, Thomas (2017) has reported a network consisting of over 200 organised gangs which involve an estimated 3000 members and their associates, these range from lowlevel participants involved in anti-social behaviour to those who have

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been identified as having links to international crime syndicates. Moreover, figures in 2018/19 indicated that social services assessed 16,132 children in the Merseyside County of which 546 were deemed to be either active members of a gang, at risk of joining one, or at risk of being a victim of gang-related violence. Perhaps most concerningly, of the five boroughs that comprise Merseyside, the figures indicated that one, Knowsley had the highest rate of children at risk from gangs in the country, even higher than London. Yet, despite these statistics, complemented further by regular media reports, from the viewpoint of gang scholarship in the UK, Merseyside has been significantly neglected.

Merseyside and the Emergence of the Contemporary Urban Street Gang Like most deprived areas around the UK, urban street gangs on Merseyside have always been part and parcel of the region’s social fabric with the first observations predating Puffer’s 1912 inaugural definition. Macilwee (2007) has traced Merseyside’s earliest gangs back to the 1800s, with two of the most notorious bearing the names of the High Rip Gang and the Cornermen. Both of these groups would become linked to the regions first street gang-related killings, in particular, the murder of a twenty-sixyear-old man, Richard Morgan in what became known as the Tithebarn Street Outrage. The regions contemporary street gang history, however, emerged in the 1980s and like those early predecessors, it was a case of social deprivation and poverty that proved to be the catalysts. Longterm unemployment inevitably saw the rise of organised crime involving the supply of drugs initially centring on heroin and then, ecstasy during the acid house rave years (1987–1991). As a result, violent disputes concerning territory over the next two decades saw some of the cities adult crime figures gain notoriety through regular local media reporting. Such residential rivalries inevitably saw involvement by young people around the more deprived areas of Liverpool (Hesketh, 2021). Interestingly, it was a series of sporadic unrelated shootings in London that encouraged the media’s focus on a resurgence of a ‘gang’ phenomenon, a rolling narrative that young people around the UK had responded to

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(Marfleet, 2008). Nowhere was this more evident than on Merseyside, as the spotlight began to concentrate on two rival Liverpool gangs known as the ‘Croxteth Crew’ and ‘the Strand Gang’. The shooting of an innocent eleven-year-old boy, Rhys Jones by Sean Mercer, an alleged member of the former group had become a pivotal moment in the history of gang culture on Merseyside. Since the murder of Rhys Jones, other street gangs have naturally emerged beyond Croxteth and Norris Green. While it is often difficult to gain access to reliable official information involving the number of both street gangs and Adult Organised Crime Groups (AOCGs) since information surrounding such groups is usually subject to ongoing police investigations and can be exempt from any Freedom of Information application (Hesketh, 2021). However, in terms of gaining an estimate, in 2017, Merseyside Police had identified 193 organised crime groups and gangs manned by 2,989 gang members. Thirty of these groups comprise 189 members who have been designated as leading protagonists in the perpetuation of gang activity with a further 384 as significant figures. Broken down into the local boroughs, half of the 193 were known to be based around the city centre area in the borough of Liverpool itself with 32 connected to Knowsley, 29 in Sefton, 16 in St Helens and 17 across the River Mersey in Wirral. Hesketh (2021, pp. 357– 358) highlights examples across each borough that include: Toxteth, Liverpool borough (‘Somali Warriors’, ‘Park Road Edz’), Huyton (‘Dovy Edz’, ‘Baki-Edz’, ‘Hillside Edz’, ‘Moss Edz’ and ‘Longi Boyz’) Knowsley and Liverpool borough, Bootle (‘Fernhill Crew’, ‘Linacre Crew’) Sefton borough. Moreover, Hesketh (2021, p. 357) notes that ‘each name highlights the strong ties put on residential place and space which have become integral to both personal and social identity. Further, it heavily emphasises the real impact of austerity over the last twelve years resulting in the cutting of youth services and leading to chronic poverty and lack of real legitimate opportunity’. Today, like many socially excluded areas of the UK, a high proportion of criminality on Merseyside evolves around street gangs and AOCGs involved in drugs and gun-related violent crime (Hesketh, 2021). In the summer of 2020, as part of the UK’s largest law-enforcement initiative, ‘Operation Venetic’, senior officers at the National Crime Agency

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(NCA) analysed messages from EncroChat devices, an encrypted chat service. They found that 70% of all links to weapons examined could be traced back to the North West of England and in particular Merseyside (Townsend, R. July 2020).

Merseyside Urban Street Gangs: Identity, Dress and Territory In addressing the issue of territoriality and young people, Kintrea, Bannister, Pickering, Reid and Suzuki (2008) have observed that ‘territorial behaviour emerged where young people’s identity was closely associated with their neighbourhoods and they gained respect from representing them’. Moreover, Kintrea et al. (2008) noted that in particular, young men aged in their 20s showed territorial behaviour, particularly where it was associated with street gangs and criminality (Hesketh, 2021, p. 359). Location, however, is just one of the basic elements that form a street gang. In defining a deviant street group, the Eurogang network (Weerman et al., 2009) distinguishes between definers and descriptors. While a definer is a basic element that can describe a group as a street gang, descriptors they argue form the individual aspects that distinguish one street gang from another as such, they argue descriptors can include: age, gender, location and clothing. However, in challenging the idea of clothing being a descriptor, on Merseyside, Hesketh (2018) observed that within many areas embedded within the five boroughs, young people preferred to be dressed in all-black attire with some of the participants describing this as being ‘blacked out’ in effect de-individualised (Hesketh, 2018, 2021; Zimbardo, 2007). As one participant explained, ‘we do it cos it makes it more difficult for the bizzies (police) to identify us’ (Hesketh, 2018). Importantly, as Zimbardo also contends, such blending also allows for behaviour to be further liberated to the extent that any internal moral dilemma that might arise in individual thinking is eliminated. For this process, Hesketh (2018) identified a combination of black North Face all-terrain hooded jackets with tracksuit bottoms, topped off with Nike Air Max One/Ten trainers. These were in many cases used as a primary

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generic street gang identifier as opposed to a descriptor for an individual group. These brands have not only contributed to the creation of this distinctive identity in effect a potential master status, but have also become part of the motivation of being a street gang member. The early writing of Cashmore (1984, p. 57) still aptly sums up the importance of dress within groups and subcultures by commenting ‘You can’t create a youth culture by yourself; unless others identify you as either one of “us” or one of “them”’. Interestingly, street gang member participants in Hesketh’s (2018) study also highlighted another aspect of being able to blend in with others. As Clarke (2003) notes, with ‘de-individuation, comes much greater freedom and a reduction of personal moral accountability (Bandura, 1990, 2002). The theory is that in a large crowd each person is nameless and personal responsibility is diffused, as each is faceless and anonymous’ (p. 93).

Merseyside Urban Street Gangs and the Media Kenyon and Rookwood (2018) have traced the media’s fascination with Merseyside, in particular, the city of Liverpool to the late 1960s and early 1970s. In what they see as the very beginning of Liverpool’s economic decline, the authors contend ‘the city has developed a media-induced reputation for anti-social behaviour, drugs, crime and more recently youth gang culture’ (2018, p. 500). The contemporary catalyst however came in February 1993, with the murder of James Bulger, a two-year-old boy from Kirkby Merseyside who was abducted and murdered by two ten-year-old boys, Robert Thompson and John Venables while shopping with his mother at the Strand shopping centre in Bootle. The murder which was the first case of infanticide since child killer Mary Bell in 1968 was interestingly noted by Muncie (2015) as a watershed in media, political and judicial responses to youth since it initiated a reconsideration of children, particularly, 10-year-olds as demons rather than innocents, it coalesced with, and helped to mobilise, adult fear and moral panic about moral degeneracy of children and youth in general and, it recast child offenders as devils. Since 2008, such responses have transitioned from

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the idea of single child killers lurking amid families to street gangs, as the media’s relentless pursuit of a new contemporary moral panic has perpetuated without little thought for the actual definitional fragility of the term (Hesketh, 2021) nowhere has this been more evident than on Merseyside. In August 2007, Sean Mercer was 16 years of age when he armed himself with a Smith & Wesson. 455 revolver and set out on his bike to confront a rival gang member who had been seen by the Fir Tree pub in Croxteth. The CCTV images dramatically caught the scene as Mercer dressed in all-black attire, cycled from Carr Lane East, towards the rear of the pub. As Mercer fires, a camera catches dust as the bullet flies off a concrete novelty wishing well, it was one in a series of three shots that would see Rhys Jones mortally wounded as he innocently walked home from football practice. These events undoubtedly represent the key moment when the media’s moral panic street gang crusade became fixed on Merseyside, for most of the central media outlets, it was a chance to put an actual face to this new ‘terrifying’ re-emerging dimension that journalists were hell-bent on insisting was running wild through Merseyside’s youth culture. As Kenyon and Rookwood (2018, p. 501) comment ‘the incident drew significant coverage in the media (see for example Ferguson, 2007; Kelly, 2008; Rossington, 2008) and prompted the filming of two documentaries, Panorama: Young Gunmen (BBC 1, June 2008) and Ross Kemp on gangs (Sky 1, January 2009)’. Regarding the former, however, as Kenyon and Rookwood (2018) further observed, questions started to be asked about the overall reliability with the local press reporting accusations of the BBC documentary crew paying the young men to pose with weapons (Doward & Revil, 2007). Some two years after the Rhys Jones tragedy, in an online article for the Daily Mail entitled ‘The guns go quiet over the Mersey: how 321 police officers in Liverpool slashed firearm crime’, Rose, D (April 2010) notes the comments of the then Chief Constable of Merseyside, Jon Murphy. Observing the powerful influence of the media and its impact on the region’s disaffected youth, Murphy asserted that young people in Norris Green didn’t even realise they were a gang until the media told them they were. Yet, in highlighting what is the most obvious irony for many gang researchers adopting empirical approaches, Smithson et al., (2009,

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p. 8) have commented ‘few of the young people interviewed in Liverpool viewed themselves as belonging to a “gang”, indeed many were scathing of such an attribution. In the light of the emphasis on self-definition in current definitions of “gangs”, it appears that policymakers, practitioners and researchers have overused the word “gang”’. In a similar vein, Hesketh (2018) also found that participants involved in street gangs refused to acknowledge the idea of gang involvement, preferring to use terms like ‘the boyz’ and where such participation involved deviant entrepreneurial pursuits mainly taking the form of drug dealing, the business-like term of ‘firm’ was used. The following year, between August 6th and 10th, the 2011 riots in response to the police shooting of Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old man in Tottenham saw shops looted and cars burnt in several major towns in the UK, including Liverpool starting in Toxteth, Sefton and parts of Wirral. Again, the media was swift in its finger-pointing and condemnation of disenfranchised young people in gangs sweeping the countries’ cities and it was a notion that propagated government discourse at the time. It is an observation that is supported by Densley (2013) who asserted: Prime Minister David Cameron (2011) made tackling gangs his ‘new national priority’ and launched a ‘concerted, all-out war on gangs and gang culture’. It was the kind of rhetoric that the public has come to expect from ‘tough on crime’ law and order politicians who favor individualized explanations for aberrant behaviour over critiques of social structure (Blair, 1993, p. 28). Had the government blamed the riots on social exclusion and social deprivation, it would have implicated itself. By blaming gangs, the coalition instead implicated others. And it worked because the media thrives on simplicity and sweeping generalizations and most Britons have little or no direct experience of gangs but remain frightened and fascinated by them in equal measure. (pp. 1–2)

As early as 1998, Crawford had observed, a certain higher priority was being placed on crime prevention and community safety as opposed to issues embedded in inequality and marginalisation, and it was a case of such political ignorance fuelled further by policies of austerity that led to the 2011 riots. The riots represented a catalyst in the way young people particularly, working-class young people became represented in

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the media, with labels of ‘hoodies’, ‘thugs’, ‘yobs’ and of course ‘gangs’ being reported without little foundation. As Reicher (2021, August 6) contends, David Cameron, had confidently asserted that the riots were a result of ‘criminality pure and simple’, while his Justice Secretary, Kenneth Clarke had gone one step further, by falsely claiming that 75% of those involved had a criminal record and that the rioters were a matter of ‘criminals on the rampage’; in effect, a ‘feral underclass’. Yet, if anything, such statements only served to preserve the notion of outof-touch old-school tie Tories side-tracking real causes, closure of youth services, employment opportunities wiped out as a result of cutbacks and as Drury, Stott, Ball, Barr, Bell, Reicher, Neville (2021) further observe, deprivation as well as interactions between deprived communities and the police.

The Role of Social Media There is little doubt, that the emergence of social media over the last decade has provided street gangs with an important platform. On Merseyside, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Snapchat and most recently Instagram have all been exploited by young people involved in street gangs, and the North Face logo has become one of the most commonly adopted symbols associated with gang culture in the region. Humphries (Liverpool Echo, 2019 February 19) identified what he termed a ‘teenage’ gang (age 15–18) of motorbike thieves and drug dealers flaunting their crimes on Instagram using the name the ‘Repo (Repossession) Gang’ based in Kirkdale (borough of Sefton). In other examples, Coles (2017, Liverpool Echo August 19) observes a YouTube account called ‘Scouse Stolies’ showing high-speed car races with stolen vehicles with the caption ‘no face, no case’, while other footage on the site depicts scramblers and stolen Suzuki motorbikes burning rubber tyres in an underpass. For individual gang members, such performance crimes (Yar, 2012) like this, allow evidence of loyalty, affiliation and masculinity to be demonstrated, aspects that have become integral to social identity. For the gang as a whole, it can promote deviant group branding and thereby

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inadvertently increase recruitment. In June 2018, as part of the governments Serious Violence Strategy, the then Home Secretary, Sajid Javid announced a £1.4 million initiative called the social media hub which was initially established with the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) in London as a result of the volume of gangs concentrated in the capital. Staffed by a team of twenty police staff and officers, the hub aims to flag up any potentially illegal and harmful online content for social media companies to take down. The initiative also includes identifying gangrelated content. While not bearing the specific name, on Merseyside, the police have invested heavily in digital media which has included the capability for such open-source reach. More recently, there has been the emergence of the County Lines Social Media Intelligence Network (SMIN) supporting county lines task forces with the MET, Merseyside Police and West Midlands Regional Organised Crime Unit (ROCU). SMIN’s role includes gathering intelligence and evidence of gang-related activity and violence within social media platforms. This is done either proactively (actual searches of online content) or reactively (the collection of evidence of an incident).

Risk-Taking: Dressing the Part! In his early work, covering the inner dark drives of criminality and risktaking, Katz (1988) contends that part of the allure of criminality is not just the actual crime itself, but also most importantly, the preparation involved in committing the act. It is argued that such allure can also extend to projecting a street identity and that by actually dressing the part of a street gang member, young people can derive a form of criminal (almost erotic) physiological pleasure (Ferrel & Sanders, 1995; Katz, 1988; Presdee, 2000). Drawing on parallels from Hebdige’s (1979) observations, it is further asserted that such young people who mirror this militaristic all-black dress, are projecting a symbolic violation of the social order in true ‘semiotic guerrilla’ of style warfare (Hesketh, 2021, p. 360). To this extent, writing about the power of dress in street gangs and territoriality on Merseyside, Hackman (2010, p. 59) observes ‘tracksuit-clad youths fight over grey council estate litter-strewn patches

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of turf others are desperate to get away from’. Moreover, according to Hesketh (2018) such impression management of representation is not just expressed in attire, but also overlapped in the marking of territory through graffiti which talked of ‘street soldiers’, whose condemnation for state law enforcement was projected through the simple tag of FTM (‘Fuck the Matrix’). Taken from a cultural criminological perspective, such uniformity coupled with ways of talking also adds a very strong, hegemonically masculine and emblematic appeal. In sum, the last fifteen years have seen such dress/style and language emerge, its sub-cultural pattern much in line with Ferrell and Sanders (1995) observations that: To speak of a criminal subculture is to recognize not only an association of people, but a network of symbols, meaning, and knowledge. Members of a criminal subculture learn and negotiate ‘motives, drives, rationalizations, and attitudes;’ develop elaborate conventions of language, appearance, and presentation of self; and in so doing participate, to greater or lesser degrees, in a subculture, a collective way of life. (p. 4)

Researching Urban Street Gangs on Merseyside In attempting to catalogue street gang prevalence on Merseyside, in the first instance, Smithson et al. (2009) addressed the extent and nature of young people’s involvement in gangs and guns in Liverpool. This was later followed by two studies, Hesketh (2018) which explored differences between those young people who became street gang members compared to those of similar background in similar locations who did not, and Robinson (2019) who focused on examining Criminal Child Exploitation (CCE) within street/drug gangs on Merseyside. While the key observations of all three pieces of research will now be discussed, greater emphasis will be placed on the two most recent contributions since both have covered the emerging dimension of county lines.

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Merseyside Urban Street Gangs and the Impact of County Lines In their work examining guns and gang violence, Smithson et al. (2009) identified two distinct types of street gang. In the first instance, there were the ‘loosely interlinked informal peer groups engaged in anti-social behaviour, crime and violence’ (2009, p. 7). This type of group, it was observed had no hierarchy or recognisable structure. It was simply a case of individuals knowing each other as a result of school or locality (restricted friendship networks, Hesketh, 2018, 2021) who would thus congregate in specific key locations such as the local shopping area or around a nearby pub. Secondly, there was a gradually emerging ‘structured and hierarchical criminal group that operated within the illegal drugs market’ (2009, p. 7). This type of group it was noted had ties to organised crime in the city. Both of these observations were consistent with the findings of Hesketh (2018) who like Smithson et al. (2009) asserts that within Merseyside, a clear distinction can be made between loosely knit, relatively informal peer transitional groups involved in vandalism and low-level criminality (Burglary and Taking Without Consent (TWOCING) street-level drug dealing) and more structured forms of street gangs linked to AOCGs. Importantly, however, in looking at these two groups further, Hesketh (2018) observed that participants involved in street gangs in areas such as Anfield, Kensington and Bootle, areas closer to the vibrant night-time economy of the city centre and the high demand for drugs as part of that economy, spoke of what was identified as a form of ‘deviant entrepreneurship’ (Hesketh, 2018; Hesketh & Robinson, 2019). In 2016, the government introduced what was billed as a refreshed initiative that replaced the Ending Gangs and Youth Violence (EGYV) programme (2013). Called the Ending Gang Violence and Exploitation (EGVE) programme, the policy was the first public document to identify child criminal exploitation (CCE) linked to Smithson’s (2009) and Hesketh’s (2018) structured street gang descriptions which the policy termed ‘county lines’. Hesketh and Robinson (2019) argue that such an important aspect further adds to the phenomenon of deviant

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entrepreneurship and provides yet more significant evidence of a transition of such structured groups towards more criminal business model networks based on influence from AOCGs. On Merseyside, as part of this transition to fully exploit the county lines market, the concern has focused on street gangs developing skills that have concentrated on the grooming of children—sometimes with no criminal record, so-called clean skins—who have been identified as the most vulnerable (Hesketh, 2021). Moreover, parents have also been targeted by drug gangs offering incentives such as the payment of Sky TV bills and new designer clothes in return for allowing their children to be used as drug mules. Debt bondage has become a particularly common characteristic of contemporary drug supply networks to leverage compliance from young people. In her recent book titled The Truth About Modern Slavery, Kenway (2021, p. 104) contends that debt bondage occurs when ‘a person is forced to work to pay off a debt, with that debt usually being artificially inflated and extreme control over the individual’. Young people involved in county lines are regularly deceived into believing that they have lost quantities of drugs and/or money and are regularly the target of staged robberies (Harding, 2020) as part of their debt bondage experience. This false perception leads them to believe that the only way in which to pay off this ever-increasing, is to continue running drugs for the group. Such observations have been further reinforced by Robinson (2019) who, between 2016 and 2019 focused on criminal exploitation and County Lines in four out of the five Merseyside Boroughs. Robinson made several observations surrounding exploitation within deviant entrepreneurial business models. The most prominent of which highlighted that exploitation through local drug supply was more common than County Lines exploitation, which appeared to require a certain level of sophistication, trust and respect between actors. Other observations highlighted the role of cannabis in susceptibility to exploitation. Indeed, particularly disenfranchised young people were exploited over cannabis dependencies and subsequently paid in cannabis for their involvement in drug networks. Of note, and perhaps distinguishing from other studies on county lines, Robinson’s findings included the levels of agency and decision-making processes that some young people on Merseyside had

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engaged in prior to their involvement in county lines. Some of these drivers supported the aforementioned work focusing on risk-taking, in which young people indicated their enjoyment around involvement in county lines. Others spoke to the survival narrative that many young people had provided whereby their involvement in drug supply allowed them to provide financially for their families and purchase items that they deemed to reinforce their status within the group.

Young women’s Involvement in County Lines As academic research on violence and gangs focuses on male experience—both from the researcher’s and research perspective, so too does the existing literature on county lines. As a result, little is known about how girls and women enter into county lines environments and their experiences once engaged. Indeed, the experiences of females are not explored in either of the three aforementioned Merseyside studies, the most recent of which (Robinson, 2019) was the most appropriately placed to explore the gender-specific experiences of county lines actors. In 2014, the Centre for Social Justice (2014) estimated that 12,500 girls were involved in gangs, however, stated that these figures were ‘crude at best’. More recently, a Crime Survey for England and Wales estimated that just under half (45.3%) of children aged 10 to 15 years who reported to be a member of a street gang were female (Office for National Statistics, 2018). Few studies have sought to quantify female gang involvement in the UK with those that do often adopting varying gang definitions as a result, the true scale is largely unknown. It is widely acknowledged that women involved in gangs are more likely to have experienced violence and abuse throughout their lives (Beckett et al., 2013; Moore, 1991; Pitts, 2007). Deuchar et al. (2020, p. 23) highlight the subjective experiences of women involved in gangs, suggesting that there are ‘two key models of entry’ into gangs; deficit or credit. Females who enter gang spaces in deficit, i.e., through drugs or debt often experience higher levels of exploitation and violence than those who enter in credit, offering skills, expertise and agency. This reinforces the notion that women largely take on secondary roles to that of

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males, or, deviating from traditional gender stereotypes and becoming ‘one of the lads’ (Batchelor, 2011). In a recent paper on the exploitation of girls in county lines, Tirion et al. (2021) suggest that as county lines networks strive to employ increasingly covert methods of operating, the use of girls—who largely remain under the radar of many statutory services—has become a viable tactic, where men use coercion and control to encourage the compliance of females, often through the guise of a romantic relationship. The COVID-19 pandemic only increased the risk to females, with reports suggesting that a greater number of girls were targeted and exploited into county lines activity during the various lockdowns in the UK. Speaking to professionals with experience of working with young girls and women, Tirion et al. (2021) paid caution to the polarised language used to define gang-involved females, which often places them as violent or passive, or offenders or victims. The result of which often portrays them as either deserving or undeserving of the violence and exploitation that they experience. If further research on gangs and county lines on Merseyside is required, we contend that there is an urgent need to explore the experiences of young females. Not least to quantify the scale of female involvement, but also to ensure that services understand the gendered experiences of those involved in county lines and can begin to address how to meet the needs of young women.

COVID-19 and County Lines The beginning of 2020 saw countries from around the world placed in lockdown and closing their borders in an attempt to stop the spread of the COVID-19 virus that was permeating every corner of the globe. The UK was placed on lockdown in March 2020 and workplace adaptations were made to encourage employees to work from home as much as possible. As many businesses shifted towards new methods of operating, so too did those involved in managing county lines networks. While the academic body was slow to respond, initial snippets of information

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around how COVID-19 affected illicit drug markets were provided in the form of anecdotal and media reports (Grierson & Walker, 2020; Tidy, 2020). Numerous estimations were made by experts and journalists (Daly, 2020; Saggers, 2020) in terms of what they expected to happen but, in reality, predictions around how drug networks would navigate lockdown restrictions were almost impossible to gauge as the pandemic provided modern-day society with a situation comparable to no other experienced previously (Gimmoni, 2020). Unsurprisingly, reports were keen to document how county lines networks circumvented lockdown restrictions and supplied illicit substances at a time when being visible almost guaranteed attention from law enforcement. Indeed, law enforcement reported high levels of success in dismantling county lines networks and identifying cuckooed premises, owing to a reallocation of resources from the closure of the night-time economy (Brewster et al., 2021). There has perhaps been no other time in history that has placed as much emphasis on the need for those engaged in illicit activity to be invisible as during lockdown. Media reports focus on the covert methods employed by drug dealers, such as dressing as key workers (Harding, 2020; Pidd, 2020), alternative modes of delivery (Dietze & Peacock, 2020; Solomon, 2020) and an increased reliance on social media to facilitate their operations (National Youth Agency, 2021). Perhaps the most in-depth study to explore the impact of COVID-19 on the County Lines model in England was conducted by researchers at the University of Nottingham (Brewster et al. forthcoming). Focusing on three main themes, the project explored the detection and enforcement efforts of law enforcement, the safeguarding of children by professionals in frontline roles, and adaptions to the county lines business model. The study highlighted the ever-evolving nature of illicit drug markets and the ease with which county lines networks were able to adapt to market demands and law enforcement tactics. Interviewing professionals from across England, it was established that the county lines model varied from region to region. While some networks implemented minimum spend to ensure their journeys were deemed worth the risk, others shifted their focus from trafficking children from urban cities to exploiting local children who would arouse less suspicion from police

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within those locations; thus, instead of focusing on bringing young runners from Merseyside, grooming was taking place with vulnerable young people located in care homes in such places as North Wales. Moreover, professionals reporting their observations in the North West of England, however, noted a reluctance from county lines networks to travel at all, instead requesting that customers travel to them to purchase their drugs (Brewster et al., 2020). According to this study, and reinforced by media reports, exploitation during COVID-19 remained a key issue for children and young people, only exacerbated by an increased reliance upon social media in which perpetrators could easily identify large numbers of children to groom (Swann & Symonds, 2020), offering them rewards for their involvement in running drugs. While there were many observable changes to county lines during COVID-19, it is difficult to ascertain the extent to which these had been caused by the pandemic, or whether lockdown just provided greater opportunities to spot such developments. For example, it was consistently reported that previously unseen demographics of young people were being drawn into county lines activity (National Youth Agency, 2021). Some of these included children without criminal records (i.e., ‘clean skins’), children from affluent backgrounds (Simpson, 2021a), university students (Marsh, 2020) and females (Saggers, 2020; Simpson, 2021b).

Conclusion Despite the three Merseyside gang studies discussed within this chapter (Hesketh, 2018; Robinson, 2019; Smithson, 2009), there remain a number of areas that require further scholarly exploration. Clearly, since the publication of these studies, there has been an increased awareness of the involvement of females in gangs and county lines activity nationally. Regionally, there has been no enquiry into the roles that females adopt in Merseyside. None of the three studies explored female gang involvement more generally and the experiences of women remain ignored. This

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has resulted in male-centric understandings and the creation of interventions that are not appropriate for addressing the specific needs of women involved in gangs and county lines. Robinson’s (2019) study suggested that criminal exploitation through local drug markets was much more common than county lines exploitation, with the latter necessitating a level of sophistication among actors that is not always evident within contemporary street gangs on Merseyside. Indeed, the criminal exploitation of children in local drug markets was experienced by all young people in her study, with only a small number of those young people being trusted to supply drugs in different localities. With the county lines model rapidly evolving, more research is needed from a Merseyside context to add to the evidence base and improve the responses to those involved in gangs and county lines.

References Bandura, A. (1990). Mechanisms of moral disengagement. In W. Reich (Ed.), Origins of terrorism: Psychologies, ideologies, theologies, states of mind (pp. 161–191). Cambridge, United Kingdom: University Press. Bandura, A. (2002). Selective moral disengagement in the exercise of moral agency. Journal of Moral Education, 31(2), 101–119. Batchelor, S. A. (2011). Beyond dichotomy: Towards an explanation of young women’s involvement in violent street gangs. In Goldson, B. (2011). Youth in Crisis? Gangs, territoriality and violence. Routledge. Beckett, H., Brodie, I., Factor, F., Melrose, M., Pearce, J., Pitts, J., Shuker, L., & Warrington, C. (2013). “It’s wrong…but you get used to it”. A qualitative study of gang-associated sexual violence towards, and exploitation of, young people in England. Children’s Commissioner. University of Bedfordshire. Brewster, B., Robinson, G., Brotherton, V., Silverman, B., & Walsh, D. (2021, February). Policing county lines: Impact of COVID-19. Interim research briefing. University of Nottingham. Brewster, B., Robinson, G., Brotherton, V., Silverman, B., & Walsh, D. (2020, October). The impact of COVID-19 on child criminal exploitation. Interim research briefing. University of Nottingham.

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Brewster, B., Robinson, G., Silverman, B., & Walsh, D. (forthcoming). Covid19 and child criminal exploitation in the UK: Implications of the pandemic for county lines. Trends in Organized Crime. Cashmore, E. (1984). No future. Heinemann. Clarke, D. (2003). Pro-social behaviour and anti-social behaviour. London, United Kingdom: Routledge. Clarke, L. (2008, July 23). Teachers must act as father figures to white class boys, says Ofsted. Retrieved from Daily Mail website: http://www.dailym ail.co.uk Coles, A. (2017). Shameless Liverpool gangs flaunt stolen cars by filming dangerous stunts on social media. https://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=Awr JCNGlA5VheAoAbR5LBQx.;_ylu=Y29sbwNpcjIEcG9zAzEEdnRpZAM Ec2VjA3Ny/RV=2/RE=1637184549/RO=10/RU=; https://www.liverpool echo.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/shameless-liverpool-gangs-flaunt-stolen13496984 Daly, M. (2020). Drug dealers are dressing up as delivery drivers, joggers and nurses to sell heroin during lockdown. Vice. https://www.vice.com/en_uk/ article/n7jgyg/drug-dealers-crack-heroin-coronavirus-lockdown Densley, J. (2013). How gangs work. Palgrave Macmillan. Deuchar, R., Harding, S., & McLean, R. (2020). Deficit or credit? A comparative, qualitative study of gender agency and female gang membership in Los Angeles and Glasgow. Crime and Delinquency, 66 , 1087–1114. Dietze, P. M., & Peacock, A. (2020). Illicit drug use and harms in Australia in the context of COVID-19 and associated restrictions: Anticipated consequences and initial responses. Drug and Alcohol Review, 39 (4), 297–300. Doward, J., & Revill, J. (2007). Ban gang videos, says MP. http://www.gua rdian.co.uk/uk/2007/aug/26/ukguns.ukcrime2 Drury, J., Stott, C., Ball, R., Barr, D., Bell, Reicher, S., & Neville, F. (2021). How the riots spread between cities: Introducing the new police pathway. Political Psychology, 0 (0), 2–19. Ferguson, E. (2007). The grief of Liverpool. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/ 2007/aug/26/ukguns.ukcrime Ferrell, J., & Sanders, C. R. (1995). Culture, crime and criminology. In J. Ferrell & C. R. Sanders (Eds.), Cultural criminology (pp. 3–21). Northeastern University Press. Giommoni, L. (2020). Why we should all be more careful in drawing conclusions abouthow COVID-19 is changing drug markets. International Journal of Drug Policy, 83, 1–3. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2020.102834

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Grierson, J., & Walker, A. (2020, September 29). Gangs still forcing children into ‘county lines’ drug trafficking. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian. com/uknews/2020/apr/13/gangs-still-forcing-children-into-county-linesdrug-trafficking-policecovid-19-lockdown Hackman, S. (2010). Young Guns: Inside the violent world of Britain’s street gangs. Milo Books. Harding, S. (2020). County lines: Exploitation and drug dealing among urban street gangs. Bristol. Hebdige, D. (1979). Subculture: Meaning of style. Routledge. Hesketh, R. (2018). A critical exploration of why some individuals with similar backgrounds do or do not become involved in deviant street groups and the potential implications for their future life choices (PhD thesis). Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/39223463/DoctoralThesis Hesketh, R., & Robinson, G. (2019). Grafting: “The boyz” just doing business? Deviant entrepreneurship in street gangs. Journal of safer communities, 18(2), 54–63. https://doi.org/10.1108/SC-05-2019-0016 Hesketh, R. (2021). Its scouse soldiers init mate? An examination of urban street gangs on Merseyside. Journal of Criminological Research, Policy and Practice, 7 (4), 355–372. Katz, J. (1988). Seductions of Crime. Perseus Books. Kelly, B. (2008). Gangs and guns on Liverpool’s streets. http://news.bbc.co.uk/ 1/hi/england/merseyside/7740265.stm Kenyon, J., & Rookwood, J. (2018). One eye in Toxteth, one eye in Croxteth: Examining youth perspectives of racist and anti-social behaviour, identity and the value of sport as an integrative enclave in Liverpool. International Journal of Arts and Sciences, 3(8), 496–519. Kenyway, E. (2021). The truth about modern slavery. Pluto Press. Kintrea, K., Bannister, J., Pickering, J., Reid, M., & Suzuki, N. (2008). Young people and territoriality in British cities. York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Macilwee, M. (2007). The gangs of Liverpool: From the Cornermen to the High Rip- the mobs that terrorised a city. Milo Books. Marfleet, N. (2008). Why carry a knife? The Howard league for penal reform. Marsh, S. (2020, January 6). County lines dealers ‘posing as students to sell class a drugs. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/ jan/06/county-lines-dealers-posing-as-students-to-sell-class-a-drugs-expertswarn Moore, J. (1991). Going down to the barrio: Homeboys and homegirls in change. Temple University Press. Muncie, J. (2015). Youth and crime. Sage.

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National Youth Agency. (2021). Drug gangs use social media to groom young people in county towns. https://nya.org.uk/2021/03/drug-gangs-use-socialmedia-to-groomyoung-people-in-county-towns/ Office of National Statistics (ONS). (2018). Distribution by sex of children aged 10 to 15 years who are gang members or know a gang member. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/ adhocs/009891crimesurveyforenglandandwalescsewestimatesofthedistributi onbysexofchildrenaged10to15yearswhoaregangmembersorknowagangmem beryearendingmarch2016toyearendingmarch2018 Pidd, H. (2020). County lines gangs disguised drug couriers as key workers during coronavirus lockdown. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian. com/uk-news/2020/jul/05/county-lines-gangs-drug-couriers-key-workerscoronavirus-lockdown-cocaine-heroin Pitts, J. (2007). Reluctant gangsters: Youth gangs in Waltham Forest. Report for the Waltham Forest Crime and Community Safety Partnership. Presdee, M. (2000). Cultural criminology: The carnival of crime. Routledge. Reicher, S. (2021, Aug 6). Why did it take years to appreciate the grievances that sparked the 2011 riots? Guardian. Robinson, G. (2019). An investigation into gangs, violence and child criminal exploitation. PhD thesis. Rossington, B. (2008). Gun teens exposed. Liverpool Echo http://www.liverp oolecho.co.uk/liverpool-news/local-news/2008/06/30/gun-teens-exposed100252-21170794/ Saggers, T. (2020, September 29). How COVID-19 Is Affecting CL. RUSI . https://shoc.rusi.org/informer/part-2-how-covid-19-affecting-county-lines Simpson, J. (2021a, March 2). County lines drug gangs exploit middle-class children of busy working parents. The Times. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/ article/county-lines-drug-gangs-exploit-middle-class-children-of-busy-wor king-parents-g56rqd9kd Simpson, J. (2021b, June 14). County lines gangs ‘give girls to dealers. The Times. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/county-lines-gangsgive-young-girls-to-dealers-6ns6qr9vr Smithson, H., Christmann, K., Armitage, Monchuk, L., Whitehead, A., & Rogerson, M. (2009). Young people’s involvement in gangs and guns in Liverpool (Research Report ). University of Huddersfield. Solomon, E. (2020). Berlin’s drug dealers adapt to life under coronavirus lockdown. Financial Times. https://www.ft.com/content/4c2c149b-af73-4f078b13-67b264f2f7aa

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Swann, S., & Symonds, T. (2020, June 2). Drugs gangs on ‘recruitment drive’ during lockdown. BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-52892917 Thomas, J. (2017, March 19). Gangland Merseyside: The state of play as the spotlight turns on Liverpool’s underworld. The Liverpool Echo. Townsend, M. (2020, July 11). Liverpool gangs dominate gun and drugs trade outside London. The Centre for Social Justice. (2014). Girls and gangs. Centre for Social Justice Report. Tidy, R. (2020, July 17). The ups and downs of dealing drugs during lockdown. Vice. https://www.vice.com/en/article/jgxvqb/the-ups-and-downs-ofdealing-drugsthroughout-lockdown Tirion, H., Densley, A., Whittaker, A., & Wills, J. (2021). Street gangs and coercive control: The gendered exploitation of young women and girls in county lines. Criminology and Crimial Justice. https://doi.org/10.1177/174 88958211051513 Webster, C., & Kingston, S. (2014). Poverty and crime review. A Report for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. http://eprints.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/849/ Weerman, F. M., Maxson, C. L., Esbensen, F., Aldridge, J., Medina, J., & van Gemert, F. (2009). Eurogang program manual background, development, and use of the Eurogang instruments in multi-site, multi-method comparative research. Retrieved from the Eurogang Network website: http://www. umsl.edu/ccj/EuropeanManual.pdf Yar, M. (2012). Crime, media and the will-to-representation: Reconstructing relationships in the media age. Crime, media, culture. Zimbardo, P. (2007). The Lucifer Effect: Why good people turn evil . Random House.

Part IV Race and Gender

12 Supporting Young Women Affected by Gang Association and County Lines Abi Billinghurst and Fiona Factor

‘Being in a gang is not worth it, and definitely not, what I deserve in life. I now know that I am worth so much more than that’. (Abianda Service User)

Introduction This chapter has three clear foci, the first, outlining the political and practice context of the discussion by establishing the parameters of the work undertaken. The second presents a particular model of practice developed by Abianda, a social enterprise organisation in London A. Billinghurst Abianda, London, UK F. Factor (B) Applied Social Sciences, University of Bedfordshire, Luton, UK e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Andell and J. Pitts (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Youth Gangs in the UK , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99658-1_12

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working with young women affected by gang and county lines activity.1 Finally, we consider the key practice challenges faced by Abianda when delivering such gender-specific services, and how learning from our combined experience in research and professional practice, can be helpful to other practitioners and policy-makers working in this space with girls and young women. Both authors are qualified youth workers by background; their experience is located in working with young people in or at risk of entering the criminal justice system and those affected by violence against women and girls. It is our intention to illuminate what our own practice and research with girls and young women, has led us to understand about effectiveness in service design and delivery. We have used the term ‘girls and young women’ to reflect the wide age group of 10–25 years, who are currently in receipt of a range of Abianda’s services. This requires the recognition of the differences in legislative frameworks as well as differing and complex needs of such a wide age range of service users. Moreover, our aim to ensure gender-responsive services remains at the forefront of the thinking of the authors of legislation, policy and practice in this field, some of whom may be reading this, remains paramount.

The Context of This Discussion Firstly, we need to clarify terminology. The term gang remains a contested concept (Factor et al., 2015). Indeed, the young women at Abianda do not necessarily recognise the term ‘gang’ as relevant or helpful to describe their experiences, and they talk more about ‘the lifestyle’ or ‘an environment you find yourself in’. The young women feel the language used about them is often based on unconscious bias about race, class, gender, sexuality, religion and ability, and this can lead to professional blind spots. However, Abianda describes its services as supporting ‘girls and young women affected by gangs and county line activity’ which inevitably attracts attention, collaboration, and most importantly, funding. The organisation uses the term ‘gangs’ cautiously, 1

www.abianda.com

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being mindful of its history, and classist and racist connotations. Additionally, a ‘gang’ can be a very positive thing for young people and does not necessarily warrant intervention; the term is used in the arts and music culture as part of expression, and we should respect it being used in these contexts and challenge the negativity within the discourse where helpful to young people. This chapter will not be an exploration of the different roles of girls and young women in, or associated with gangs, both of these discussions have taken place elsewhere (Batchelor, 2009; Firmin, 2009; Beckett et al., 2013; Choak, 2018), but we believe it is useful to focus more specifically on best practice and recommendations when working in this complex context. This chapter, will signal a shift in conceptualising how services can be delivered rather than the all too common focus on girls and young women’s behaviours, often characterised by gender bias, victim blaming and, frequent non-identification by professionals. Nor will this chapter include examples of traumatic and abusive experiences of young women as while these are sometimes helpful to convey messages of the severity of the experiences, these have been documented elsewhere, (Beckett et al., 2013) and are sometimes used unhelpfully or indeed, gratuitously. Serious, gang-related youth violence is agreed to be an issue predominantly affecting young men in the UK (Pitts, 2008; Walsh, 2021). While this may be the evidence from researchers, criminal justice professionals and policy-makers contributing to such debates, we want to ensure the gendered nature of the discourse is recognised and acknowledged; the absence of a narrative about young women affected still remains (Harvard et al., 2021). Indeed, this is not just related to gang violence, but is historically the case when considering the needs of women, be they young or old, in or on the periphery of, the criminal justice system (Bridge, 2021; Goodfellow, 2019; HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2014; Sharpe & Gelsthorpe, 2009; Worrall, 2000, 2001). Girls and young women come to the attention of criminal justice systems due to the risks they face and their vulnerabilities, which frequently drives their offending behaviour, and it is here that the lack of a gendered lens becomes most apparent in the systems designed to support them (AVA & Agenda, 2017; Bateman & Hazel, 2014). We would assert that these young women are not identified early enough

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to avoid their entrance into the system, and this is often due to victim blaming, generating apathetic responses from professionals and other dynamics in play (Holly, 2017). More focus on trusting and honest relationships with professionals and early intervention could ameliorate some of the harm experienced by extremely vulnerable young women (Davis, 2019; Lefevre et al., 2017). Unsurprising to the authors when undertaking research for this chapter was the paucity of current UK-based literature focusing specifically on gang-affected or associated young women. There are some notable, but now rather dated exceptions, which, while helpfully informative at the time, did not offer the insight required or indeed from young women themselves, but rather relied on the testimony of the men (Kintrea et al., 2008; Pitts, 2008). Young et al. (2007) in their work for the Youth Justice Board did offer an alternative understanding of the role of young women by shifting the perception of their role in relation to the male gang members, e.g. girlfriends, by suggesting the existence of mixed groups and the relationships being based on friendships. Firmin’s report, This is it, this is my life. Female voice in violence (Firmin, 2011) was the first to give voice to the lived experience of girls and young women affected by gang association. Subsequently, the most credible account derived directly from young women’s testimony remains one from 2013, commissioned by The Children’s Commissioner for England, ‘It’s wrong… but you get used to it’: A qualitative study of gang-associated sexual violence towards, and exploitation of, young people in England, (Beckett et al., 2013). From this report sprung a significant number of academic, policy, research and professional developments in the thinking about the role of services in supporting young women affected by gang association more generally. Of particular note, is the focus on peer-on-peer abuse, online communications, harmful sexual behaviours and contextual safeguarding, a reimagining of child protection systems where abuse takes place outside of the family home (Firmin, 2020). Additionally, there was also a strategic response from the Home Office in 2016 through the Ending violence against women and girls strategy 2016–2020. None of this will necessarily be new to the reader, and the introduction of new ways of thinking about such matters is not solely of relevance to gang-affected young people, but obviously

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has much wider resonance across education, children’s social care and youth work services. More recently, the knowledge about county lines activity, child criminal exploitation and trafficking has further sharpened the focus on practice interventions across the criminal justice system (Williams et al., 2020). Multiple research outputs indicate that gang-involved girls and young women are at constant risk of sexual violence and exploitation, (Andell & Pitts, 2017; Beckett et al, 2013; Harding, 2014; Khan et al, 2013; Jay, 2014). Notwithstanding significant previous work undertaken (Pearce & Pitts, 2011; Southgate, 2011), it has been in more recent years that professionals have exercised greater professional curiosity in their assessment of young women coming into services, particularly as a result of child sexual exploitation (CSE) concerns and serious case reviews (Coffey, 2014; Rochdale Borough Safeguarding Board, 2013). This focus has resulted in more light being shone on the harm being experienced in order to uncover the scale and nature of how young women are affected and greater recognition of this in service design and delivery (Eshalomi, 2020; Longfield 2019; Centre Social Justice 2018). The research identified further illuminates the continued invisibility of girls and young women who remain unheard and inevitably, silenced in these debates. This observation has been frequently described by young women when in the care of the professionals who are responsible for their safeguarding and well-being, be it in education, social care or the police (Bridge, 2021; Davis, 2019; Factor & Ackerley, 2019; Office of the Children’s Commissioner, 2019; Women and Girls Network, 2018). This silencing, also positions young women in a typical victim profile, as either powerless, lacking agency and frequently described in the tabloid press as vulnerable, victims of grooming, becoming sex slaves and drug mules, etc. (Firmin, 2013; Larkins, 2019; Young & Trickett, 2017). The alternative view positions them as ‘girl ganstas’, some kind of postfeminist criminal, who is also engaged in violent offending. This is derived from the identification of ‘ladettes’ in the early noughties and explored in earlier research reports (Batchelor, 2001; Young, 2010); we hope to challenge some of these dichotomous debates by presenting a more nuanced and considered exploration of issues.

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The disproportionally high numbers of people from Black and minoritised groups in the criminal justice system has been recognised for decades. David Lammy MP, in his independent review, published in 2017, highlighted the wider structural inequalities faced by children and young people from these communities, for example, school exclusion rates, poverty and victimisation. Needless to say, young women from these backgrounds are further disadvantaged as the wider contextual inequalities related to gender, faith, migration status, sexuality, disability, etc., intersect (Bridge, 2021; Gohir, 2019). Bateman explores this disproportionality in detail in his important report. The state of youth justice 2020, where he concludes ‘Disproportionality within the youth justice system is widespread, longstanding and deep-rooted; the causes are complex and intertwined (NYA 2020, p. 64);’ and calls for the substantial investment of services supporting children and young people from these communities. This extends to the position of Black and minoritised female defendants where prosecution rates are double that of their white counterparts (Ministry of Justice, 2018) and where Black and minoritised young women are significantly more likely to be arrested than white young women (The Howard League for Penal Reform, 2020; Agenda & Alliance for Youth Justice, 2021). Therefore, the intersection of being Black and female is worthy of particular consideration when presenting the context of this chapter (Cox & Sacks-Jones, 2017). In particular, not only in terms of the public perception of particular groups of young people from such communities, but also how this unconscious bias informs the professional discourse when working directly with young women affected by the issues described. This frequently results in unhelpful, and further victim blaming, a view of these young women as innately more violent and less innocent than their white counterparts. This ‘adultification’ of Black girls and young women has been helpfully described by Davis (2019) who asserts that they are deemed to be less vulnerable, less in need of protection and more complicit in their harm. Finally, we need to consider the context of service delivery for professionals tasked with supporting girls and young women who come to their attention. Following multiple high-profile cases of CSE reported

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in the press in recent years, the recognition of the value of participative and relationship-based practices when engaging young women in conversations about risk and safeguarding has gained ground (Brodie, 2016; Factor & Ackerley, 2019; Gilligan, 2016; Warrington, 2010; Warrington & Brodie, 2018). These types of interventions have their origins in youth work practice and many practitioners, the authors included, assert that the destruction of youth services through the years of austerity has exacerbated and worsened the situation for all young people who would benefit significantly from such interventions. This has placed an unreasonable expectation and reliance on social work staff to deliver such interventions alongside their required statutory duty, all within a restricted framework of time and contact with service users, based upon closely monitored thresholds (Hingley-Jones & Ruch, 2016). Additionally, the already limited range of suitable therapeutic educational settings to refer young women to has been significantly diminished in the last decade during austerity. This piece does not intend to apportion blame or point a finger at colleagues in the sector who may not be able to engage in participatory and relationship-based practices because of these constraints.

Abianda’s Unique Safeguarding Model Since their inception in 2011, and incorporation 2014, Abianda’s unique safeguarding model has brought multiple new perspectives to the management of risk and a helpful conceptualisation of the victim– perpetrator overlap and young women’s position within this continuum. As part of its role, Abianda consistently highlights to professionals, the systemic inequalities and oppression that has left young women vulnerable to exploitation by criminals placing further barriers in their ability to access help due to the risks they face. This section intends to scope out the processes and, in particular, the unique nature of the intervention offered by Abianda, whose model of practice brings together youth work and participation principles, with solution-focused therapy tools and techniques. In their practice and organisational infrastructure,

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Abianda endeavour to remain loyal to their founding principles, which are: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Young women are experts on their own lives. Young women have innate resources, competence and resilience. People affected by a problem are best placed to find the solutions. Abianda must shift traditional power hierarchies in service delivery in order to enable young women’s participation in solution-building. 5. Abianda must support young women to have their voices heard in order that they can influence the design and delivery of services. Much has changed at Abianda since its inception and the optics of growth have been impressive. They have moved from a sole trader entity, working with eight young women a year, training 300 professionals and with a revenue of £17,000, to being an incorporated not-for profit company that employs 21 women (including four ex-service users), reaching 150 young women a year, training 1500 professionals with a bottom line of £750,000. Additionally, as one might expect with any start-up organisation that experiences rapid growth, they have faced and continue to face, the all too familiar growing pains in an infrastructure that struggles to keep up with demand. As the organisation has grown, Abianda has developed a range of interventions that endeavour to contribute to a spectrum of change, bought about in the service of girls and young women. Their approach to service design and delivery recognises that it is essential to work with individual young women in context. For example, their 1-to-1 casework and advocacy can only go so far in bringing about the change necessary for young women to live free from harm. A sole focus on the individual, that does not address context, can assume that the change required for the minimisation of harm and risk is the responsibility of the young woman alone. Abianda asserts that this places an unfair and unrealistic weight of responsibility on young women, when so often the harm they experience and the barriers that stop them accessing services, sit well outside of their domain of influence or control. Not working with her in the context of the systems she moves within and between, creates an environment of

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practice where the punitive and victim-blaming culture, that Abianda so often witnesses in practice, can flourish (Hickle & Hallett, 2016).

A Systems Focus Consequently, the organisation has developed a much greater focus on external systems change over recent years, in order to bring about a culture shift in the way services are delivered to girls and young women. This recognises that for change to take for place for an individual, they have to also address the system changes required in order to enable that individual to apply their strategies and skills to good effect and in pursuit of their safety and other desired outcomes. This is done through five key areas of activity: 1. 1-to-1 casework and advocacy services for young women and girls 2. Professional development and training opportunities that signpost the shift needed in how girls and young women are identified and supported. 3. Schools work for early intervention and identification and creating safety in education settings for girls and young women. 4. A gender consultancy offer that critiques and capacity builds external practice and systems. 5. Participation: through the employment of young women programme, leadership and life skills groups and projects, young women’s campaigning, etc. This is underpinned by a continually reflective participation team that lead on internal systems change and forefronts the importance of young women’s voices influencing systemic change, both internally and externally. More importantly than the usual signifiers of organisational success, Abianda also has its own success criteria, including that of remaining loyal to its founding principles and in doing so retaining their integrity (for staff, funders, partners and young women), and their hard fought and highly respected reputation in the field. This is often where the greatest challenges lie when delivering services to high risk and highly

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vulnerable young women, in the dynamic and volatile context of risk and harm and within the legislative framework of safeguarding.

The Referral Process Girls and young women aged between 10 and 25 years old are referred from multiple sources including Children’s Social Care police, health, mental health, solicitors, education and probation. Like other organisations, the triage process will check the young woman’s paperwork for suitability against the referral criteria, and this includes: . Known, or suspected, involvement in county line/gang activity (going missing, plugging, running/holding, shotting, connecting, recruiting, bagging, etc.); . Known, or suspected, association with others who are involved in county line activity/gangs, (boyfriends/girlfriends, family members, peer groups, trap houses and locations of concern, etc.); . Known, or suspected, experiences of CSE, sexual violence and victimisation in the context of county line and/or gang activity; . Known or suspected involvement in criminal activity that may facilitate county line/gang activity; . Missing episodes to locations of concern. At the point of referral, Abianda staff request that the referring agent does not share the young woman’s full case file history. They ask only for information that illustrates how the service can meet the young woman’s needs and circumstances against referral criteria, and the need to know risk information that will allow Abianda to provide a safe service for the young woman and practitioner. Abianda recognise that all too often the young woman’s file precedes them when being referred into services, with young women regularly reporting that professionals respond to what has been written down on paper about them, rather than meeting them ‘where they are’ and learning about young people through the empirical knowledge that the young woman brings. Young women have explained to Abianda that a major barrier to engaging with services is created by a

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fear of being (or actually being) judged by professionals and assumptions being made about the ‘type’ of young person they are due to the often inaccurate narratives that have been created by other professional in their case file history. Central to this process is an inherent respect of young woman’s personal information and in addition, the encouragement to referring professionals to adopt a similar approach.

Relationship Building and Establishing ‘Best Hopes’ During the initial introductory session with the young woman, the Abianda practitioner will set the tone of their work together and the basis of a trusting and respectful relationship. The practitioner will clearly state that the young woman is the expert, that they will be learning from her, as no one apart from the young woman knows what it is like to walk in her shoes and nor do they understand the risk and adversity she navigates on a day-to-day basis. Abianda will only work with the young woman if she consents to being involved. Ensuring that involvement in Abianda’s services is not conditional or related to punitive measures for non-attendance is crucial for young women in being active agents in the work they will do with the Abianda practitioner. A major part of the initial engagement process is establishing the young woman’s ‘best hopes’, integral to solution-focused practice (Ratner et al., 2012). By knowing what the young woman will find useful from their work together, the practitioner and young woman will develop a road map for their work together. While Abianda has its own outcomes that it measures and reports on, the young woman’s desired outcomes drive the work. This ensures staff know what they are delivering is tailored to her life and her needs, rather than imposing any pre-defined, frequently deficit, and one size fits all approach to their work with young women (Deuchar et al., 2020). Once completed, a practitioner will be identified to begin building a relationship with the young woman and co-design the appropriate intervention. Different young women will have different needs and therefore

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benefit in different ways from Abianda’s work. The one-to-one casework provision consists of: . Advocacy: some young women will need immediate or ongoing advocacy to respond to crisis and to bring about stability (housing, safety from violence, mental health provision, etc.) in the wake of trauma and adversity. . Structured programme: some young women will have the capacity and stability to take full advantage of Abianda’s structured programme of work in order to develop resilience, awareness and vital skills in critical thinking. Up until now, the practitioner has shared a redacted referral form with the young woman when they first meet; this is done for multiple reasons. This act recognises that information is power. All too often, the service provider holds information about a service user that they are oblivious to, wielding an invisible power and unfair disparity in knowledge. This allows for professional decision-making which may not be appropriate or fit with the realities of the young woman’s life. By sharing with the young woman all of the information that practitioner has been given about the young woman, they are attempting to start on an equal footing, where all parties have access to the same information and the young woman is enabled to craft her own narrative rather than having pre-conceived ideas being imposed upon her. Young women appreciate this transparency as it provides the opportunity to express whether she agrees or disagrees with what has been written about her. It also provides a useful opportunity to discuss the idea of risk. By sharing the details of the concerns that the referring agent has about the young woman’s ‘risk’ and vulnerability in order that she can explore and share her own perspective on risk and the extent to which there is alignment between the young woman’s view and that of the professional. Through Abianda’s structured programme, young women will develop critical thinking skills, identify the skills and strategies they are already using to keep safe and focus in on issues that are specific to them, all within the parameters of the referral criteria From the outset, the priority is creating a space and relationship that the young women can trust and

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will often feel distinctly different to service provision they have previously received. At the core of this relationship is the recognition that girls and young women are the experts in their own lives and a recognition and understanding of their lived experience, including the belief that the young woman has innate skills and resilience. Such respectful relationships take time to develop and the trust and transparency in this honest conversation can frequently identify additional safeguarding concerns not identified in the original referral process. In some cases, new disclosures require the practitioner to revisit and review the level of risk and re-negotiate the intervention with the young woman concerned, in order to ensure safe practice.

Solution-Focused Practice and Rights-Based Advocacy Adopting a solution-focused approach requires an emphasis on future, skills and strategies rather than a focus on problems and the past (Ratner et al., 2012). By changing the narrative from, ‘What has she done wrong?’ to ‘How has she managed to survive?’ opens up a whole tapestry of skills and strategies that a young woman has been deploying in order to survive adversity. It is important to note that the Abianda model of practice is not ‘problem phobic’ (Kilgour, 2016). They will hear whatever a young woman needs or wants to say. Bearing witness to young women’s trauma and oppression is a key part of her experiences being validated, —a major component of trauma-informed working—especially when working around sexual violence, and however, their solution-focused tools and techniques mean they do not get ‘stuck’ in the trauma and the problem (Ratner et al., 2012). By being curious about how a young woman has survived, the strategies she has used and what she has learnt about herself and her capabilities, help her notice her own strengths and competence that are, and will, get her closer to her best hopes. By remaining solution and future-focused, Abianda keeps their spaces safe for young women. At the outset, it is made clear that young women are never required to share information about their past, their

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current circumstances or their associates. This could create significant risks for the young woman, and could trigger re-traumatisation; sadly, it is frequently a threshold requirement to talk explicitly and disclose such experiences to access services, so understandably, many young women do not engage in this approach. It also recognises that all too often young woman can be used by services to gather intelligence about their male associates who are suspected or known to be gang involved or involved in other criminal activity. Understandably, this would also result in young women not feeling able to be truthful and fearful as to how information will be used by services and the repercussions for herself, her family and her associates. Abianda’s advocacy work is done ‘shoulder to shoulder’ with young women. It is rights-based and places the young woman at the centre of advocacy and safeguarding action planning. The only way Abianda can do this is to ensure the young woman’s voices are heard and acted upon. Examples of their advocacy work include, young women’s voices being represented in child protection processes; ensuring that young women receive the statutory assessments to which they are entitled; recognising young women as victims of trafficking through the National Referral Mechanism; and supporting our professional partners to recognise young women’s complex needs and vulnerabilities. As a result of their advocacy, young women independently navigate services, are an equal partner in the professional network around them and are therefore more likely to engage in efforts to safeguard them. For example, if a young woman says she is not safe in particular boroughs, Abianda would support her to secure housing/accommodation in alternative boroughs—even if there is a lack of local authority resource or inclination to support this. Abianda attempts to disrupt the usual practice, typically in safeguarding processes, where decisions are made independent of the young woman, in an attempt to manage risk and keep her safe. This includes making sure young woman are either present, or clearly consulted in preparation for professionals’ meetings. Practitioners spend a considerable amount of time to elicit and understand the young woman’s perspective about what safety plans will work for her and, what is, or is not realistic or achievable. Consequently, a young woman is less likely to fail because being unable to conform to safety plans designed to keep her

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safe, but which can often create or increase her risk and that frequently fail to recognise the considerable and complex barriers that stop her accessing services and support in the first place.

CASE STUDY Written by Leigh-Anne Rodriguez, Service Lead—Abianda Rescue and Response and Young Woman, Service User Referral Information A young woman aged 15 was referred into Rescue and Response by her social worker; she was thought to have been criminally exploited through county lines and to have experienced child sexual exploitation. She had been missing for long periods and was found in rural areas with an older male. Police had stopped a car she was in where drugs were found. She was placed in a secure unit on safeguarding grounds as professionals around her deemed she was unable to acknowledge her risk and that the older male had coercively controlled her. Before the work began, she told professionals around her ‘I won’t change’ and believed the people she was associating with to be her friends. The young woman had poor relationships with professionals who were trying to keep her safe.

Establishing the Young Women’s ‘Best Hopes’ and Needs Initially, she was quiet and felt vulnerable, having little control over the decisions that were being made in her life. We began by establishing her ‘best hopes’ and what she needed from professionals and services in her life. She explored how she felt professionals viewed her circumstances and what they might say their concerns were. She explained that her best hopes were to have confidence, to say what she felt and to communicate confidently with professionals. She also expressed she wanted to implement boundaries and keep herself safe. ‘I want everyone around me to

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recognise that I am trying to be a better person, for me and my family’. The support that we could offer was discussed, as well as what other support might be needed to be put in place. We also explored what she would like the professional network around her to know. She agreed to engage.

Abianda’s Structured Programme and Specialist Advocacy I have worked with her for one year. We have explored relationship, contextual relationship mapping, gender roles and expectation of males and females in gangs/county lines, and the role and risks for girls in gangs. A major part of the advocacy work was supporting the young woman through legal and court processes in regard to her care. The young woman was supported to create a visual map and timeline, which set out key dates in the criminal justice process. This made clear exactly what she and I would do in the lead up to her court appearance, helping to put the young woman’s mind at rest and allowing her to have oversight and have control of the preparatory process. The young woman established what it was she wanted to say in court, with a focus on what she wanted the professionals to consider, what her concerns were and the progress she wanted to be shared. The criminal justice process was explained clearly and her expectations and fears were managed and alleviated by liaising with other professionals, giving the young woman clarity as to what would happen next in the process. Over time, the young woman wrote her letter to court. This iterative process at all stages focused on her participation and consent. She was consistently reminded that she could submit a letter to the judge rather than reading it out in court. She confirmed that she wanted to participate and read her own statement. Through regular check-ins, moving at her pace and asking her opinions, the court statement was completed. During this work, there was regular communication between the young woman and myself, to make sure she had a space to share any new concerns, questions, or thoughts on upcoming court and meeting dates. I used the Ideas Board, a tool to ensure professionals involve young

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people in decision-making. In the court preparation process, I consistently sought direction and consent from the young women in order to contact other professionals involved such as her guardian, solicitor and social worker. This meant the young woman was in control of, and aware of, the conversations that were taking place among the professionals and adults that were orbiting her.

Leading Her Own Advocacy at Court Prior to the court hearing, we went through the letter one last time and talked through her worries and concerns. The young woman’s letter to the judge was a full page of her own words, crafted, as she has wanted. I sat beside her and the young woman read her letter with confidence and passion. It was a very powerful moment for everyone in the courtroom as she reflected and shared her views on her own life. The court made their decision based on her wishes; it was a great accomplishment for the young woman who explained she had never expressed herself so clearly to professionals.

Leading Her Own Advocacy at Secure Accommodation (SAC) Review Although the young woman did not feel confident enough to share her own thoughts in regard to her secure accommodation placement in the SAC review meeting in front of nine professionals, she had prepared notes during our sessions that she wanted to be shared. The young woman’s considered request was heard and supported by the panellists. She was authorised to have regular visits home to see her grandparents, and that she would play a central role in her new care plan. Before the meeting ended, I asked the professional to pause while she asked the young women if she wanted to add anything else, she chose to ask the social worker questions about her care plan and expressed her view articulately. When the meeting ended, the young woman was pleased to see herself remain in the meeting while some difficult conversations took

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place, but even more importantly, when she changed her mind and was given the space to ask questions she took this opportunity.

Outcomes As a result of the intervention, the young woman has: . Been able to voice her hopes and needs, . Begun to lead her own advocacy, . Been able to identify why boundaries will be good for her and the difference they would make. She has trusting and open relationships with all those involved in her case. She significantly increased her critical thinking and showed insight and awareness into her circumstances and was able to identify unhealthy relationships, risk and harm. In her court statement, the young woman said: I fully regret the stress I have put on the people around me, myself and my future. I have realised that being in a gang is not worth it, and definitely not, what I deserve in life. I now know that I am worth so much more than that.

The young woman showed courage and demonstrated assertiveness and a willingness to be a partner in her own safeguarding efforts, which meant the changes in her life were more likely to be sustainable. Abianda is working closely with her to make sure she has a support network going forwards; she is much happier and confident in herself and is beginning to think about her future dreams and aspirations. She is a paid intern at Abianda and was relocated in the community following her secure placement; she has also started college, has independent housing and is in regular contact with her family. She says: I am not the same girl I was when I entered secure, I have honestly changed and changed for the better, I truly believe that I now have boundaries to keep

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myself safe. I am also still learning how to navigate myself away from negative influences; I just want to be given the chance to live a normal life with my family where I belong.

Challenges to Abianda’s Current Delivery Model Working with complex needs and vulnerability in the fluid dynamic of contextual risk is inevitably challenging. Remaining loyal to their model of practice while tending to the very real and severe risk in young women’s lives is something the team at Abianda work incredibly hard to achieve. Abianda’s unique approach to safeguarding stands them apart from traditional approaches and endeavours to move away from traditional deficit models of safeguarding; however, this comes with multiple challenges.

The Cost-Effectiveness of Safeguarding Strategies Working ‘shoulder to shoulder’ with young women to amplify their voice in safeguarding processes, challenges traditional approaches, particularly in statutory settings who adopt different operational protocols. However, by harnessing the expertise of the young women to make stronger safeguarding decisions that not only fit within her own life, but is also a much more sensible and cost-effective way to safeguard her (Firmin et al., 2021). This method also gets to the desired outcomes of safety quicker, without resorting to depriving the young woman of her liberty by placing her in secure accommodation, which currently costs an estimate of £210,000 per annum (Longfield, 2019). This astonishing amount equates to employing three full-time, Abianda practitioners, each delivering an integrated service in a local authority by doing complex casework with 16 young women each.

Participation as Protection—In Whose Best Interests? Abianda endeavours to remain loyal to its participatory principles, even when navigating the most acute safeguarding issues where a young

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woman requires immediate protection (Hallett, 2016). They consciously question whether they can remain in the role of ‘advocate’ for and with the young woman, or whether they need to clearly move to the role of working in her ‘best interests’—which may involve overriding the young woman’s view of what should happen next -such is the severity and immediacy of the harm (threat to life, etc.). However, as far as is possible, they attempt to hold both of these human rights, gifted to all young people in play at all times (Lefevre et al., 2018). This can be incredibly challenging—especially when Abianda generally operates within safeguarding and policing systems where protecting is often prioritised over participation, in extreme scenarios including deprivation of liberty in order to achieve safety. Abianda takes the view that they cannot effectively and sustainably safeguard a young woman if she is not present and participating in those safeguarding efforts. It is only when staff adopt these participatory principles, and attempt to understand and learn from the young women’s expertise on her own life, that they can establish sensible and longer lasting solutions to the risks she faces. This may include hearing her views on risk, what safety looks like for her, what is a reasonable and tenable expectation for her to meet in the context of the barriers, understanding her complex needs and constraints and finally, the oppression she experiences. As outlined below, this means being comfortable with taking the time and resource to move at young woman’s pace, to illicit their views and act on them. Involving young people in decision- making about their care involves working with and managing risk, as opposed to adopting more risk averse approaches. It involves reframing children and young people’s agency as a resource rather than a problem and requires staff to have access to robust organisational support for help dealing with the challenges and ethical dilemmas that emerge. (Warrington, 2016, p. 3)

This can be an uncomfortable place to sit for professionals when the work done is steeped in risk and trauma and staff often feel accountable for the young woman’s safety, or more terrifyingly, blamed when things go wrong. However, by taking this approach, Abianda has clearly

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committed to the position that ‘participation as protection’ as described by The Young Researcher’s Advisory Panel, 2021. To support young women to think critically, to engage in the safeguarding process, to have their views amplified and acted upon, they are creating the very skills and strategies needed to help them navigate the high-risk circumstances they are experiencing in their daily lives (Horwath et al., 2012).

Failure to Recognise and Support Young Women’s Agency Abianda attempts to support the development of young women’s critical consciousness and understanding of processes, legislation and their rights in order for them to be a partner in safeguarding efforts. This supports her going forwards to navigate services independently and to be less dependent on Abianda. In doing so, staff hope to rectify young women’s past experiences of statutory processes that may have left them feeling ‘failed’ by services and not trusting they will be kept safe, and be an active agent in the safeguarding process. However, young women and Abianda are often confronted by the behaviour and language from professionals that creates significant barriers to her engagement. This includes a lack of belief or hope that she can change, blaming the young woman for her own circumstances. Phrases like, ‘her life style choices; she keeps putting herself at risk; the situations she puts herself in’, are frequently heard from professionals without acknowledging the coercive and controlling dynamics of exploitation (Harvard et al., 2021). Sadly, the judgements and stereotypes of the young woman and her behaviour means the same cycles get perpetuated, professionals are ‘stuck’ and frustrated because nothing changes and they cannot disrupt the risk and make things better. Consequently, by not being part of a sustainable solution for her life in partnership with services, young women remain in dangerous situations, and reluctant to access help.

The Victim and Perpetrator Pendulum The young women Abianda works with oscillate between ‘victim’ and ‘perpetrator’—this is a normal and expected symptom of their complex

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needs and type of abuse and harm they experience. In order to survive the adversity they face, unfortunately, they will be required to go to lengths that may be violent, coercive and put others at risk, in order to minimise the harm and abuse they themselves experience. This may include, bringing other girls into parties, trap houses, at the request of males, and in so doing, avoid being the one who is exploited and/or raped; taking out weapons or MACE spray when dealing drugs in regional locations, often as they have been set up by their associates and robbed of drugs, resulting in a debt bondage. It can also involve being violent towards a drug user in a cuckooed property because the occupant becomes violent, because of their drug use, either coming down or, ‘spinning out’. However, this position frequently generates unhelpful responses from a professional lens, for example, when professionals describe young women as ‘playing services off against each other’ or being manipulative and deceitful. We understand this to be a young woman desperately trying to manage information while having to jump through statutory hoops in order to control the risk levels in her life. If you do not trust services can keep you safe, why would you share the full truth of your circumstances when you know that the standard response could increase your risk? If the truth of your situation is so intolerable and terrifying, and yet the services there to support do not offer a sense of safety but rather contribute to the threat, why would you feel safe to share? Instead young women tell Abianda that they give just about enough information to get services ‘off their backs’ and stop asking questions—as the information young women are being asked to give could significantly increase their risk if it were to be known that they have shared this information. Additionally, young women are often accused of grooming other young women for the purpose of criminal and sexual exploitation. Staff have sat on MASE panels where, on one day the young woman in question is on the list of victims, receiving a welfare response, and the next, she is on the list of perpetrators, deemed to be putting other younger (and possible more obvious victims), at risk; the services’ response from a welfare to a punitive response happens quickly. While the dichotomy of young women being both victim and perpetrator is not new, and within policing there is a shift greater emphasis on working with vulnerability, the danger of this still exists. Service

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providers still seem to find it hard to work across both profiles remaining siloed in their approach, which sees young women getting a response that does not see the perpetuating behaviour a symptom of vulnerability and harm; consequently, the young woman gets a more punitive response (Phoenix, 2012). If the sources of harm are not disrupted, inevitably, the cycle of harm and the behaviour will continue Abianda takes a welfare response to young women and recognise perpetrating behaviour to be a symptom of trauma and survival of adverse circumstances.

The Ambiguity of Sitting with Risk and Assessing Organisational Practices in Tandem The Abianda team regularly reflect on the challenge of sitting with risk and the ambiguity this creates. Rightly, they look to safeguarding legislation (UK Government, 2018), and procedures to give them parameters, guidelines and comfort that staff have taken the appropriate actions and they can be accountable and evidence defensible decision-making. While this is true of Abianda who are very clear on their duty of care and safeguarding obligations, they know that, due to the nature and context of the harm they are working with, they sometimes have to give themselves time to consider the risk and concerns. This requires carefully thinking through the implications of their actions for the young woman, her family, friends and networks, before taking the decision to share the information. It also requires a robust system of internal support and supervision to provide a space to share the burden of decisionmaking in order to avoid the dangers of vicarious trauma, so frequently reported in contributing to practitioner burnout (Helpingstine et al., 2021; Newell & McNeil, 2010; Schauben & Frazier, 1995). Staff recognise they must, and do, share safeguarding information that reaches thresholds of abuse, but what defines their safeguarding approach is that they are comfortable with temporarily holding risk and ambiguity in order to make the right decision, rather than making ill-considered decisions, which may cause further harm to young women. So often the Abianda team have witnessed a sequence of events unfolding, that started with a referral into statutory services due to abuse and or a crime

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being perpetrated and the ‘statutory switch’ is flicked. What follows can be a series of processes and events as set out in the legislative framework of child safeguarding and policing and crime, often without any pause to consider the contextual risk or knock-on effects of the professionals’ decision-making for the young woman (Warrington, 2013). So much emphasis is put on risk assessing the young woman; however, Abianda does not often witness much reflective or self-critiquing with the professionals involved. Abianda encourages professional networks to risk assess their own decision-making, such as the tightrope traversed when making safeguarding and policing decisions in the context of gangs (Fraser & Atkinson, 2014).

Mediating and Brokering Across Professional Networks and Relationships The networked, dynamic and contextual nature of the harm and abuse young women experience, requires a multifaceted, reflective, iterative, and networked professional response. In a recent review of three complex county lines cases, conducted by Abianda’s Gender Consultant, it was noted that: The young women and girls that Abianda supports… usually present with heightened and complex risk due to the fluidity of the context where harm occurs for them. The rate of mental health crisis, sexual trauma, trafficking, violence and complex needs requires a tight wrap around professional network to work alongside the Abianda practitioner. This is in addition to appropriate risk mapping exercises to assess safety for these children. (Yeboah-Newton, 2021, p. 2)

She goes on to note that unfortunately, this approach ‘was not observed in any of the cases that were presented’ (p. 2) and reviewed by her. Also identified in the review, were the repeated missed opportunities for partnership work or to recognise indicators of abuse and provide the appropriate response. She notes that there were multiple examples where the victims were ‘asking for help and taking steps to keep themselves safe… (and where children were) making disclosures of abuse to

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police officers and school nurses…’ (p. 2), with no clear evidence that appropriate action was taken. Sadly, as evidenced through this complex case review, there are multiple missed opportunities to support girls and young women where the evidence of abuse continues, and further embeds young women’s experiences of services not being able to keep them safe, not listening to or believing them; inevitably, they are less likely to approach services in future. Not doing this means young women remain in their circumstances, silenced, creating the conditions for the abuse to flourish; Abianda was established in order to disrupt the cycle. Due to the risks associated with this crime type, rarely does a young woman give a full disclosure. However, the over-reliance on her disclosure and the likelihood of it not being forthcoming, frequently results in no action being taken; the young woman’s perceived lack of compliance being cited for cases being dropped. Other sources of available intelligence are frequently not employed even though crucial information is available, use of travel cards, car registration numbers, etc. Once more, the young woman is punished for her lack of engagement rather than the services reviewing their own systems more critically and, for those services responsible, not focusing on disrupting perpetrating behaviour and criminal networks using the available intelligence. Abianda takes a respectful and diplomatic approach to multi-agency working that aims to increase awareness across a professional network in order that all young women get a better response from services in future. Abianda’s practitioner team spend a considerable amount of time supporting the wider professional network to recognise the needs and rights of the young woman. Abianda is often confronted by professionals across the whole network feeling stuck and experiencing vicarious trauma or burnout, seen as symptomatic of the sector (McFadden et al., 2014). Abianda practitioners often feel helpless and overwhelmed by the weight of responsibility to hold a network together and ensure it responds to the needs and rights for the young woman.

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The Invisibility of Victims Young women not being identified or even considered, remains a major challenge for the Abianda team. Still they find that when people consider gangs and county lines, they are automatically focusing on boys and young men, not thinking about how young women may be involved or affected (Berelowitz et al., 2013). If they do consider young women, it is often through a very one-dimensional lens of child sexual exploitation and not considering the myriad of ways that young women are involved. While Abianda sees exploitative dynamics playing out and normalised in most young women’s experiences, some young women are very clear that they never experienced any sexual violence or exploitation in the context of gangs and county lines and that their role was to facilitate or directly carry out some of the criminal activity. Abianda knows that where there are males, there are young women who remain hidden. Despite their efforts to raise awareness and train thousands of professionals across London, young women still only remain approximately 14% of total referrals into the county lines project for which they provide the gender-specific support for young women (Wilson et al., 2021).

Cultural Context and Cultural Proficiency Abianda recognises that integral to their approach is addressing the inequality and oppression that young women face in their lives and how these experiences are exacerbated by, or derive from, their identity and the systemic inequality that exists in our society. They do this by considering the intersectional nature of young women’s identity and the systemic inequality and discrimination she may face. They actively seek to identify and challenge practice where they believe a young woman is not getting an appropriate or proportionate response to her vulnerability and/or abuse and where this may be associated with her identity. Abianda’s Gender Consultant notes in her recent complex case review, that the children and families in the cases considered had ‘no access to culturally appropriate services to support them’ (2021, p. 2). It concluded that if Abianda are to offer services that work for all young

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women, they need to address the range of barriers linked to ‘language, poverty, immigration and culture of Black and minority ethnic communities’, (2021, p. 2), and that these need to be, nuanced and diverse. However, the organisation also know that they have more work to do in ensuring that their own infrastructure, team and governance is reflective and representative of the young women and communities they serve; Black and minoritised groups of young women are over-represented in their services. Power the Fight’s Therapeutic Intervention for Peace Report (2020), states the importance of developing culturally competent therapeutic provision for young people and communities that have a close proximity to violence, recognising that, ‘marginalised groups often deeply distrust organisations and institutions due to consistent experiences of structural harm through inequality in health care, education and criminal justice systems’ (2020, p. 8).

Transitioning from Young People’s to Adult Services Abianda’s safeguarding children policy reflects others thinking in recognising that, in working with adolescent young women in the context of gangs and criminal exploitation, we must recognise the specific risks and challenges of safeguarding adolescents and those transitioning from youth to adult services. Abianda shapes their safeguarding response on the understanding that the harm experienced by adolescents and young adults through gangs and criminal exploitation often continues beyond the age of 18, however, support services do not. (Hanson & Holmes, 2014; Holmes and Smale 2018). Abianda faces ongoing challenges galvanising services and multiagency professional responses to support young people who are transitioning from youth to adult services, or who are over 18 (Children’s Society, 2018). It is much harder to make the case for having young adults recognised as vulnerable and in need of protecting. They also find that resources available are scarcer for adults and the legislative framework that changes from child safeguarding (involving state and professionals) to safeguarding vulnerable adults, attracts less attention and intervention. It seems services are even more likely to criminalise

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and construct young women as perpetrators and complicit in their own circumstances once they reach 18.

Managing High Risk, Complex Cases Increasingly, the organisation is challenged by the high risk and complex cases being referred, yet Abianda was founded to respond specifically to the paucity in specialist services for girls and young women who face such complex risk and with such high levels of unmet needs. Recently, their learning and reflective approach to their work has identified that transient and pan-London/UK nature of the crime type they are responding to means the complexity and challenge of the work changes and needs an iterative response in how services are developed and delivered. For example, the Pan-London County Line work with girls and young women has generated new challenges. Abianda is not co-located in the borough that holds statutory responsibility for the young woman—this means that they cannot easily build the local knowledge and partnerships required quickly enough to create the network around the young woman that is required to create stability and reduce harm and disrupt perpetrating networks. They do not have the relationships with senior safeguarding and placing officers to whom they can escalate issues and concerns about practice. Consequently, staff are constantly ‘hustling’ in order to hold partners and statutory leads to account and to galvanise the professional network to take action. As a small organisation with limited influence and internal resources, Abianda has faced the challenge of having to close the cases of three young women over the past year who were too high risk. The complexity of their needs in regard to drug use and mental health meant that staff felt that they could not practice safely for the young women or themselves. This was a really sad and difficult decision to take and was based on whether the organisation had the internal expertise and resource available. As a result of this experience, Abianda’s five-year plan includes developing in-house legal, housing and mental health support. On the flip side, Abianda also regularly faces the challenge of not being able to move young women through their service as quickly as

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they would like, as there are not the local services to step young women down into. These include sufficient mental health provision, employment and educational and youth work opportunities, housing stability, support with court and legal processes, etc. (National Youth Agency, 2020). This means young women stay with the organisation longer, generating capacity issues.

Moving Forwards Throughout this period of growth, Abianda have endeavoured to remain reflective and committed to ensuring the direct support offered is safe, respectful and solution-focused. They have recently developed a theory of change model to articulate their approach and underpin the evolution of the service and systems going forwards, based on their experience of the last 10 years’ operation and the need to future-proof the organisation. Their approach is predicated on a number of key principles that coalesce around three key drivers, behaviours and relationships, organisational processes and wider systems in the external environment. In particular, they have identified four intended outcomes for the organisation and developed a three-year evaluation framework to evaluate and measure their impact. These outcomes are: 1. The Abianda team are skilled, supported and energised to carry out their individual and collective role. 2. Young women participate in the design and delivery of Abianda programmes and the strategic direction of the organisation. 3. Young women affected by or at risk of gangs and county line activity experience reduced harm. 4. Local services and professionals are encouraged to create systems change, increase trust, redress power dynamics and include young women in safeguarding processes (Abianda 2021). Abianda’s process of engagement has been reviewed and revised in the light of the challenges described above, having generated a number of ethical issues and prompting serious reflection on their founding

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principles. In particular, how they balance the principles of relationshipbased, participatory and transparent practice, with a need to ensure they are doing all they can to understand and minimise risk remains the overriding and frequent consideration. The recent introduction of their gender consultancy service is intended to undertake a comprehensive review of high-risk referrals prior to allocation to a practitioner. This new layer of analysis will offer a contextual lens to identify the appropriate support network for the young person by building appropriate capacity with other services, allowing the practitioner to focus more specifically on relationship building. It also offers the organisation new insights via case review and analytical capacity to respond more effectively to high risk, complex cases. Abianda is piloting no longer redacting referral forms with young women—they feel the need for the practitioners to be fully informed of risk around the young woman, and safe practice need to be prioritised. This is specifically important in the context of criminal exploitation and organised crime and the subsequent harm to young women and their own networks and families. They will still share with the young woman the reasons for referral and the networks’ concerns—allowing her to respond, be angry, contest and or explore those concerns. For a long time staff have struggled with what they share with young women in terms of the information that is passed on. Professionals always over share—the file proceeds the young person—Abianda are trying to challenge this throughout redaction processes; finding a balance will be a challenge going forward. The young women that Abianda works with are intelligent, courageous and resourceful strategists who navigate and survive risk every day of their lives; these skills and strengths are constantly evident and amplified through the organisation’s solution-focused approach. In the traditional and often deficit model that Abianda is confronted by, there is no room for these skills to be noticed—this reduces the likelihood of young women being recognised as the most important agent in the change process and in the process of understanding, mapping and planning to mitigate risk. Their priority remains their efforts to keep young women safe, maintain their organisational culture of honesty,

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transparency and learning, forefronting the recognition that each safeguarding incident provides a unique opportunity to develop and refine their response, in the service of the young women they support.

References Agenda and the Alliance for Youth Justice. (2021). Young women’s justice project literature review. Agenda and AYJ. Andell and Pitts. (2017). Preventing the violent and sexual victimisation of vulnerable gang-involved and gang-affected children and young people in Ipswich. University of Suffolk. AVA and Agenda. (2017). The core components of a gender sensitive service for women experiencing multiple disadvantage: A review of the literature. Available at https://barrowcadbury.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Mappingthe-Maze-The-core-components-of-a-gender-sensitive-service-for-womenexperiencin-multiple-disadvantage-January-2017.pdf Batchelor, S. (2001). The myth of girl gangs. Criminal Justice Matters, 43, 26–27. Batchelor, S. (2009). Girls, gangs and violence: Assessing the evidence. Probation Journal, 56 , 399–414. Bateman, T., & Hazel, N. (2014). Resettlement of girls and young women: Research report. Nacro, Beyond Youth Custody. Beckett, H., Brodie, I., Factor, F., Melrose, M., Pearce, J., Pitts, J., Shuker L., & Warrington C. (2013). It’s wrong ... but you get used to it, a qualitative study of gang-associated sexual violence towards, and exploitation of young people in England . The Children’s Commissioner for England. Berelowitz, S., Clifton, J., Firmin, C., et al. (2013). “If only someone had listened”: Inquiry into child sexual exploitation in gangs and groups. Office of the Children’s Commissioner. Bridge, M. (2021). I wanted to be heard: Young women in the criminal justice system at risk of violence, abuse and exploitation. Young Women’s Justice Project BRIEFING, Agenda and AYJ, London. Brodie, I. (2016) with D’Arcy, K., Harris J., Roker, D. Shuker, L and Pearce, J. The participation of young people in child sexual exploitation services: A scoping review of the literature. Alexi project, University of Bedfordshire, Luton. Centre Social Justice & XLP. (2018). Girls and gangs. CJS.

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Choak, C. (2018). Young women on road: Femininities, race and gangs in London. PhD Thesis, School of Business and Law, University of East London, London. Coffey, A. (2014). Real voices—Child sexual exploitation in greater manchester, An independent report by Ann Coffey MP, Manchester. Available at www.gmpcc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/81461-CoffeyRep ort_v5_WEB-single-pages.pdf Cox, J., & Sacks-Jones, K. (2017). “Double disadvantage”: The experiences of Black, Asian and minority ethnic women in the criminal justice system. Agenda and Women in Prison. Davis, J. (2019). Where are the Black girls in our services, studies and statistics? Community Care. Deuchar, R., Harding, S., McLean, R., & Densley, J. (2020). Deficit or credit? A comparative, qualitative study of gender agency and female gang membership in Los Angeles and Glasgow. Crime & Delinquency, 66 (8), 1087–1114. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011128718794192 Eshalomi, F. (2020). Gang associated girls: Supporting young women at risk. London Assembly Labour. Factor, F., & Ackerley, E. (2019). Young people and police making “Marginal gains”: Climbing fells, building relationships and changing police safeguarding practice. Journal of Children’s Services. https://doi.org/10.1108/ JCS-01-2019-0001 Factor, F., et al. (2015). Gang-involved young people: Custody and beyond . Nacro, Beyond Youth Custody. Firmin, C. (2009). Girls around gangs. Safer Communities, 8(2), 14–16. Firmin, C. (2011). This is it, this is my life. Female voice in violence: Final report on the impact of serious youth violence and criminal gangs on women and girls across the country. Race on the Agenda. Firmin, C. (2013). Busting the gang rape myth: Girls’ victimisation and agency in gang-associated sexual violence. In M. Horvath & J. Woodhams (Eds.), Handbook on the study of multiple perpetrator rape (pp. 97–115). Routledge. Firmin, C. (2020). Contextual safeguarding and child protection: Rewriting the rules. Routledge. Firmin, C., Wroe, L., & Bernard, D. (2021). Last Resort or Best Interest? Exploring the Risk and Safety Factors That Inform the Rates of Relocation for Young People Abused in Extra-Familial Settings, the British Journal of Social Work, 2021,. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcab106

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Fraser, A., & Atkinson, C. (2014). Making up gangs: Looping, labelling and the new politics of intelligence-led policing. Youth Justice, 14 (2), 154–170. https://doi.org/10.1177/1473225414529047 Gilligan, P. (2016). Turning it around: What do young women say helps them to move on from child sexual exploitation? Child Abuse Review, 25 (2), 115– 127. Gohir, S. (2019). Muslim women’s experiences of the criminal justice system. Muslim Women’s Network. Goodfellow, P. (2019). Outnumbered, locked up and over-looked? The use of penal custody for girls in England & Wales. The Griffins Society. Hallett, S. (2016). ‘An uncomfortable comfortableness’: ‘Care’, child protection and child sexual exploitation. The British Journal of Social Work, 46 (7), 2137–2152. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcv136 Hanson, E., & Holmes, D. (2014). That difficult age: Developing a more effective response to risks in adolescence: evidence scope. Research in Practice. Available at: https://www.researchinpractice.org.uk/children/publications/ 2014/november/that-difficult-age-developing-a-more-effective-response-torisks-in-adolescence-evidence-scope-2014/ Harding, S. (2014). The street Casino: Survival in violent street gangs. Policy Press. Harvard, T., Densley, J., Whitaker, A., & Wills, J. (2021). Street gangs and coercive control: The gendered exploitation of young women and girls in county lines. Sage Criminology & Criminal Justice, 1–17. Helpingstine, C., Kenny, M., & Malik, F. (2021). Vicarious traumatization and burnout among service providers for victims of commercial sexual exploitation. Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, 30 (6), 722–745. https://doi.org/10. 1080/10538712.2021.1938771 Hickle, K., & Hallett, S. (2016). Mitigating harm: Considering harm reduction principles in work with sexually exploited young people. Children & Society, 30, 302–313. Hingley-Jones, H. and Ruch, G. (2016). Stumbling through? RelationshipBased Social Work Practice in Austere times, Journal of Social Work Practice, 30 (3), 235–248. HM Government. (2017). The Lammy review: An independent review into the treatment of and outcomes for, Black, Asian and minority ethnic individuals in the criminal justice system. HMSO. HM Inspectorate of Probation. (2014). Girls in the criminal justice system. HM Inspectorate of Probation.

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Holly, J. (2017) Mapping the Maze: Services for women experiencing multiple disadvantage in England and Wales, Agenda and AVA. Holmes D., & Smale, E. (2018). Transitional safeguarding—adolescence to adulthood: Strategic briefing. Research in Practice. Horwath, J., Kalyva, E., & Spyro, S. (2012). “I want my experience to make a difference”: Promoting participation in policy-making and service development by young people who experienced violence. Children and Youth Services Review, 34, 155–162. Howard League for Penal Reform. (2020). Making Black lives matter in the criminal justice system A guide for antiracist lawyers. Available at https://howardleague.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/A-guide-forantiracist-lawyers.pdf Jay, A. (2014). Independent inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Rotherham 1997–2013. Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council. Khan, L., Brice, H., & Saunders, A. (2013). A need to belong: What leads girls to join gangs? Risk factors for gang affiliation. Centre for Mental Health. Kilgour, B. (2016). Deficit versus solution focussed approach. Abianda. Kintrea, K., Bannister, J., Pickering, J., Reid, M., & Suzuki, N. (2008). Young people and territoriality in British cities. Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Larkins, C. (2019). Excursions as corporate agents: A critical realist account of children’s agency, Childhood , 26 (4), 414–429. Lefevre, M., Hickle, K., & Luckock, B. (2018). “‘Both/And’ not ‘Either/Or’: Reconciling rights to protection and participation in working with child sexual exploitation. British Journal of Social Work, 1–19. Available at https:// doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcy106 Lefevre, M., Hickle, K., Luckock, B., & Ruch, G. (2017). Building trust with children and young people at risk of child sexual exploitation: the professional challenge. The British Journal of Social Work, 47 (8), 2456–2473. Available at https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcw181 Longfield, A. (2019). Who are they? Where are they? Children locked up. Office of the Children’s Commissioner. McFadden, P., Campbell, A., & Taylor, B. (2014). Resilience and Burnout in child protection social work: Individual and organisational themes from a systematic literature review. British Journal of Social Work, 2014, 1–18. Ministry of Justice. (2018). Women and the criminal justice system 2017 . HMSO. National Youth Agency. (2020). Hidden in plain sight: Gangs and exploitation— A youth work response to COVID-19. National youth Agency

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Newell, J., & McNeil, G. (2010). Professional burnout, vicarious trauma, secondary traumatic stress, and compassion fatigue: A review of theoretical terms, risk factors, and preventive methods for clinicians and researchers. Best practices in Mental Health, 6 (2), 57–69. Office of the Children’s Commissioner for England. (2019). Keeping kids safe: Improving safeguarding responses to gang violence and criminal exploitation. Available at https://www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/wp-content/ uploads/2019a/02/CCO-Gangs.pdf Pearce, J. J., & Pitts, J. (2011). Youth gangs, sexual violence and sexual exploitation: A scoping exercise for the office of the children’s commissioner for England . University of Bedfordshire. Phoenix, J. (2012). Out of place: The policing and criminalisation of sexually exploited girls and young women. The Howard League for Penal Reform. Pitts J. (2008). Reluctant gangsters: The changing face of youth crime. Willen Ratner, H., George, E., & Iveson, C. (2012). Solution focused brief therapy: 100 key points and techniques. Routledge. Rochdale Borough Safeguarding Board. (2013). The overview report of the serious case review in respect of young people 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 . Rochdale Borough Council Schauben, L. J., & Frazier, P. A. (1995). Vicarious trauma: The effects of female counselors working with sexual violence survivors. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 19, 49–64. Sharpe, G., & Gelsthorpe, L. (2009). Engendering the agenda: Girls, young women and youth justice. Youth Justice, 9 (3), 195–208. Southgate, J. (2011). Seeing differently: Working with girls affected by gangs. The Griffins Society Research Paper. The Children’s Society. (2018). Support falls short for vulnerable older teenagers. The Children’s Society. UK Government. (2018). Working together to safeguard children: A guide to inter-agency working to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. Walsh, C. (2021). Violence: Missed opportunities within the UK Serious Youth Violence Strategy Youth and Policy. Warrington, C. (2010). From less harm to more good: The role of children and young people’s participation in relation to sexual exploitation’ youth and policy, 104, 62–79. Warrington, C. (2013). Partners in care? Sexually exploited young people’s inclusion and exclusion from decision-making about safeguarding. In M. Melrose, & J. Pearce (Eds.), Critical perspectives on child sexual exploitation and trafficking. Palgrave Macmillan.

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Warrington, C. (2016). Young person-centred approaches in child sexual exploitation (CSE)—Promoting participation and building self-efficacy. Available at https://tce.researchinpractice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Youngperson-centred-approaches-in-CSE-promoting-participation-and-buildingself-efficacy.pdf Warrington, C., & Brodie, I. (2018). Developing participatory practice and culture in CSE services. In H. Beckett & J. Pearce (Eds.), Understanding and responding to child sexual exploitation (pp. 121–133). Palgrave Macmillan. Williams, E., Iyere, E., Lindsay, B., Murray, C., & Ramadhan, Z. (2020). Therapeutic Intervention for Peace (TIP) report. Power the Fight. Wilson, W., et al. (2021). Rescue and response county lines project: Supporting young londoners affected by county lines exploitation. Year 3 Strategic Assessment, MOPAC (unpublished). Women and Girls Network. (2018). Seeing the inner me: What young women want from child sexual abuse and exploitation services. Women and Girls Network. Worrall, A. (2000). Governing bad girls: Changing constructions of adolescent female delinquency. In J. Bridgeman, & D. Monk (Eds.), Feminist perspectives on child law. Cavendish Publishing. Worrall, A. (2001). Girls at risk? Reflections on changing attitudes to young women’s offending. Probation Journal, 48(2), 86–92. Yeboah-Newton, J. (2021). A summary of learning from complex rescue & response cases: Implications for future practice. Abianda. Young, T., & Trickett, L. (2017). Gang girls: Agency, sexual identity and victimization ‘on road’. In K. Gildart, A. Gough-Yates, & S. Lincoln et al. (Eds.), Youth culture and social change (pp. 231–259). Palgrave MacMillan. Young, T. (2010). Girls and gangs: ‘Shemale’ gangsters in the UK? Youth Studies, 9 (3), 224–238. Young Researchers Advisory Group. (2021). Participation as protection model, University of Bedfordshire. Youth Justice Board. (2007). Groups gangs and weapons. Youth Justice Board.

13 ‘The Alchemy of Race and Rights’: The Logic of Historicizing the Contemporary Racialized Youth and Gang Phenomenon Esmorie Miller

Introduction Over the last five years 22,000 [Black Asian Minority Ethnic] BAME children have had their names added to the Police National Database. This includes for minor offences, such as a police reprimand. The result in adulthood is that their names could show up on criminal record checks for careers ranging from accountancy and financial services to plumbing, window cleaning and driving a taxi. (Lammy, 2017, p. 5) As long we keep ducking that fact, he said, we won’t be able to find solutions or aim resources where they are most needed: at troubled black youth. Just what those solutions are is hard to say. Dozens of worthy programs and heaps of earnest reports have fallen short. Mr. Singh, a University of Toronto student and former Green Party candidate, thinks that the roots of E. Miller (B) Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK e-mail: [email protected]

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the problem lie in the legacy of slavery and ongoing systemic racism that pigeonholes young black men as losers or troublemakers. The last thing he wants to do is contribute to that stereotyping. “This is not an excuse for people to come out and say, ‘Look, blacks are killing blacks so they’re all criminals and they’re all gangsters.’” Instead, “This is an opportunity to say, ‘Blacks are killing blacks. Why?’ “Until we grapple with that question instead of tiptoeing around it, we won’t have even a ghost of a chance at progress. (Gee, 2013, Hereafter also the Globe & Mail, 2013)

In the United Kingdom (UK), race scholars continue to reinvigorate (Nijjar, 2018; Phillips et al., 2019) long established criticisms (Gilroy, 2008; Hall et al., 1978) on the need to historicize contemporary concerns about race, crime, and punishment. Scholars remark on apprehensions with an entrenched racialization of crime, particularly the typification of racialized peoples as normalized suspects and consequently subjects of punishment. As Phillips et al. (2019) note racialized peoples have become inextricably linked with deviance, in the public consciousness. Meting out extraordinary punishment for the racialized has been rationalized on this basis, to appease a public for whom penalty indicates the greater likelihood of the social stability purportedly threatened by the so-called typical deviant (Cox, 2018; Gilroy, 2008; Hall et al., 1978). The opening quotations emphasize the entrenched intersection between race, youth, and punishment, signifying how calls to historicize can also be read as calls to expand the customary explanatory scope, prioritizing concerns for youth’s vulnerability over their normalization as risky. This relational distinction between vulnerability and risk is crucial: while risk informed approaches rationalize amplified punitiveness (Miller, 2020, 2022), vulnerability approaches rationalize judiciousness, protection, and care (Bottoms, 1980; Honneth, 1995, 2003). Against this backdrop, this chapter explores statutory approaches to the contemporary, urban youth gang phenomenon as a relevant case for historicization. Indeed, within the UK, scholarship references a ‘race-gang nexus’ (Williams, 2015, p. 18; see also Nijjar, 2018), contending the phenomenon has been given a Black and or ethnic face (Hallsworth & Young, 2008, p. 185), despite knowledge that consumption of concomitant, contributory cultural artefacts like rap [and drill]

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music ‘include youths of all races, classes, and nationalities’ (Tatum, 1999, p. 341). Guided by corresponding concerns, the chapter draws from the critical race theory (CRT) tradition, particularly CRT scholar Patricia L. Williams’ influential ‘Alchemy of race and rights’ (1991, p. 6) logic, to historicize an account of the racialization of contemporary youth gang concerns. Williams’ thesis corresponds with the CRT (Bell, 1992; Crenshaw et al., 1995) position that racialized peoples were excluded from expanding universal rights, flowing from the enlightenment, and instituted coterminous with modernity. Williams’ thesis allows observation of statutory responses to the youth gang—particularly the gang’s racialization—as a process constituted by the contemporary reproduction of a historic race, rights paradox. According to this, expectations for a synthesis of race and rights represent an ‘Oxymoronic oddity’ (Williams, 1991, p. 6), signifying how young black men, in particular, suffer the suppression of rights never conferred in the first place, to racialized peoples. The chapter is structured in two parts. Part I establishes the significance of historicization, particularly its usefulness for expanding the explanatory scope from the crime and punishment approach customarily employed in discussions of racialized youth’s plight, towards greater concerns with exclusion from resources and opportunities, including but not limited to lenience. It adapts and applies Williams’ logic allowing that the amplified punishment meted out to the contemporary racialized youth indicates a historic antithetical exclusion from the normal resources and opportunities of judicious care informing the early modern institutionalization of youth justice itself; this is illustrated in their continuing transformation from an initially troublesome category of pesky ‘social time bombs’ (Cox, 2018, p. 167) to their contemporary criminal placement. Exclusion, thus, becomes a cognate for penalty—rendering the contemporary withholding of lenience one example among continuous iterations of racialized youth’s historic antithetical positioning. Here, the racialization of the contemporary youth gang is neither an uncanny nor new form of exclusion. Part II draws on a qualitative study conducted in London, England and Toronto, Canada, with professionals working with racialized youth, to enable the

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development of the capital undermined by entrenched, historic social inequalities. This is an account of what sustains youth’s contemporary status, elucidating the ways penalty intertwines itself into racialized youth’s lives, in the daily normalization of law enforcement activities in their communities. Here, the relational distinction between risk and vulnerability approaches is underscored. This approach places the contemporary normalization of punishment for racialized youth within a historic trajectory of exclusion from judicious care, ahead of the crime and punishment narratives to which it is customarily bound (Miller, 2022). The benefit in this approach is that it indicates prerequisites for decoupling race and deviance, starting with decoupling race and penalty—observing penalty and exclusion as synonymous.

Methodology The chapter is supported by a qualitative study conducted between 2011 and 2012, in London, England and Toronto, Canada. The research, therefore, observes an important recent history of contemporary concerns (Garland, 2014) with the youth gang phenomenon, remarkable for the emergent racialization in two urban contexts where such strategies were unique. Indeed, this was the basis of my original study, which concluded that such policy approaches to racialized youth undermines the conditions of their agency, through policing practices that surveilled them as risky instead of vulnerable (Miller, 2015). Moreover, occurring at a historic juncture when such policies and practices were emergent institutional strategies, the study continues to hold relevance allowing this chapter to explore a retrospective on their unremitting impact (Andell, 2019, 2020; Whittaker et al., 2019; Fraser, 2015, Fraser & Hagedom, 2018), particularly as a form of self-fulfilling prophecy (Becker, 1973; McAra & McVie, 2010). What is remarkable for this chapter’s retrospective is that the contemporary institutional and wider societal concerns with youth, race, crime, and punishment have continued to position youth as individuated, autonomous actors. However, consistent with CRT, the chapter observes the continued rationalization of penalty; and this is a key antithesis to the benefits coterminous with modernity.

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The data came from practitioners working within organizations located in structurally deprived communities, with young people and their families. Practitioners provide a range of services to support young people, including prosocial opportunities such as education, recreation, and employment. While these opportunities were often framed as responses to both gang divergence and gang desistance this was against the backdrop of criminogenic policy narratives and practice reoriented in correspondence with approaches defining youth as risky (Goldson & Muncie, 2007; Goshe, 2015). Practitioners adopted and adapted such top-down framing as their ability to access public and private sector funding crucial to supporting their work was contingent on this. Because the participants worked within a cross section of communities in both cities, they informed a broader understanding regarding the ways ever expanding gang informed policies impacted the youth and their families, who are gang adjacent, and thereby struggle against indices of structural inequality, including the policing surveillance deployed in response to the gang. The engagement with practitioners took advantage of their positioning across various communities as ‘crystallization points for practical insider knowledge [and] as surrogates for a wider circle of players’ (Bogner et al., 2009, p. 2). In both the UK and Canada, definitional variations were as common between state agencies (like the police) as they were between the civil society organizations operating within communities. For instance, during the time that the research was conducted police forces in various jurisdictions, within each country, were known to define what it meant to be a youth gang according to local, regional, and international youth crime trends. Since the research aimed to understand the criminogenic statutory approach, no single definition of the gang was utilized; instead, a variation of definitions which informed the broader institutional approaches were collated and relied upon to guide the analysis. The data was analysed using thematic coding (Bryman, 2012). Ethical approval for the study was obtained from the Queen’s University Belfast research ethics committee for doctoral candidates. The data, in covering the more recent history, connects longer histories corresponding with the CRT approach. A remarkable benefit is the ability to trace racialized youth’s nefarious contemporary positioning as a

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historic continuity; but crucially there is also what can be gleaned from being able to trace this deviant positioning. Corresponding with CRT, the denial of lenience observed in the contemporary arrangement, where punishment is meted out to racialized youth at levels disproportionate to that received by non-racialized youth, represents but one example of how modern rights have been withheld from racialized peoples. In the historic arrangement of the early modern period, while statutory involvement in youth’s lives occurred through a range of institutions, corrections ostensibly represented only one part (Hendrick, 2003; Heywood, 1965). Importantly, the denial of care in this arrangement should necessarily be observed as punitive since it places youth in an oppositional positioning whereby access to opportunities for prosocial participation offered as normal to non-racialized youth were not considered normal for them. In this early modern context, an observation from a prominent report supports this point, concluding that ‘These families have a low standard of life, morally and economically, and there appears to be little future for the children’ (Fletcher, 1930, p. 26). According to another, ‘The environment can be altered if we will, the heredity is an established and unalterable fact’ (Fleming, 1930, p. 263). The distinction made in these observations attributed a transformative potential to the White, working-class youth, while placing racialized youth at a transformative impasse. This is the wider relevance of Williams’ logic to this chapter: while modern benefits include lenience, lenience represents only one way the racialized have been positioned in opposition to otherwise normal recipients of rights. Thus, my more recent study usefully illustrates the lack of lenience in the present, against the backdrop of a longer history of exclusion.

Historicizing the Present: From Troublesome, to Pesky, to Criminal A developing literature emphasizes contemporary UK gang policy and practice as continuities of the historic racialization of crime and punishment, pinpointing the existence of a ‘race-gang nexus’ (Williams, 2015, p. 18). Nijjar (2018, p. 147), for instance, offers an analytical framework

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for situating ‘Britain’s war on gangs’ in a historic, colonial trajectory. Narratives equate gang policy and practice to a ‘resurgence of a colonial racism’, consequentially legitimizing ‘the construction of Black communities as networks of criminality’ (Nijjar, 2018, p. 150). Placing statutory approaches to the contemporary youth gang within wider histories crucially allows contemplation for what it means for race to remain a ‘central modality of British colonial control, punishment, and exploitation’ (Nijjar, 2018, p. 150). The opening quotations invoke a starting point for contextualizing and thereby concretizing what is at stake for the populations for whom historic practices central to colonialism remain rationalized. Both sentiments reveal that the youth who are typified as punishable also disproportionately populate the ranks of those excluded from prosocial resources and opportunities. Exclusion signifies both a material and moral position (Honneth, 1995, 2003): materially, subjects are actively excluded from prospects such as employment (according to Lammy), likely because morally (consistent with Gee), there is a dialogical association (Phillips et al., 2019; Honneth, 1995, 2003; Taylor, 1992) linking Blackness and deviance, thereby positioning Black subjects as a threat to self and to society. Exclusion from opportunities can therefore be read as an attempt to safeguard normative populations, from working alongside those purportedly deviant and thereby threatening to them. Corresponding with a CRT logic, exclusion must necessarily be read as penalty, since modernity promised proportionality and exclusion confounds it (Bell, 1992). Within the context of youth justice, the importance of historicizing contemporary concerns has been exemplified in the extant deviance invention criminological canon (Bottoms, 1980; Heywood, 1965; Kohli, 2003; Platt, 1969a, 1969b; Shore, 2003, 2011). But this prioritizes class and gender. Indeed, Ward’s (2012, p. 2) admonition that where race, youth, and punitiveness is concerned the extant criminological literature reads as though ‘juvenile justice was suddenly overcome with race problems in the final quarter of the twentieth century’ is illustrative of current efforts to problematize the invisibility of race in these academic histories, decrying the consequent individuation and distortion of contemporary issues faced by racialized youth. Ward draws on Platt’s (1969a, p. 202) formative work, in this area: first, this corroborates

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the importance of chronicling continuities and transformations (attested by the rich histories of class and gender), for expanding the analytical scope on contemporary matters; and second, like Platt before him, Ward encourages racial specificity in these historicization efforts. Consistent with Platt’s logic, Ward draws attention to how the remarkable amplification of punishment in contemporary youth justice, characteristic of the latter twentieth century, can be understood as continuities of pathologizing institutional rules, constructing acceptable insiders and punishable outsiders. Consistent with Platt and Ward, this chapter exhorts the importance of racial specificity in historicization, proposing that race (like class and gender) suffice as an analytical lens to expand the explanatory scope when observing contemporary phenomenon like the racialization of the gang (Miller, 2022). Expansion, through historicization, necessarily reorients customary majoritarian couplings of race and criminality, towards the more invisible, entrenched relationship between race and criminalization (Gilroy, 2008; Young, 2006), a positioning synonymous with exclusion from modern benefits (Miller, 2022). Cox’s important work on Race, Delinquency and Difference in Twentieth Century Britain (2018) elucidates this proposal, contributing an atypical insight of race in the longer history from which it remains largely hidden. The chapter draws on Cox’s example which enables a chronicle of racialized youth’s contemporary criminal positioning as one constitutive of a longer historic trajectory, consistent with deviance invention. It allows for a reading more consistent with criminalization, whereby youth’s positioning is linked to the broader institutional processes overseeing the policies guiding individual action and thereby pathologization. The racialized youth on whom Cox’s analysis focuses populated the early modern period, from which extant deviance invention scholarship borrows its insights. The youth were the progeny of White, British women and men from a cross section of British outposts, including the African and Asian continents, and the Caribbean (Bland, 2005). After their demobilization following their contributions in the First World War they lived and worked in port cities in the UK, forming families along the way. The Fletcher Report (1930) noted a ‘colour problem’, as the youth population increased. Yet, it was noted that while ‘Actual crime rates within this juvenile group were recognized to be very low’, however,

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‘The mixed-race child, then, was certainly seen as a “social time bomb” of sorts, albeit with a long fuse’ (Cox, 2018, p. 167). Notwithstanding, as noted by Fletcher (1930, p. 38), The problem of the half-caste child is a serious one, and it appears to be growing in most of our towns. The coloured families have a low standard of life, morally and economically. It is practically impossible for half-caste children to be absorbed into our standard industrial life and this leads to grave moral results, particularly in the case of the girls. The white women themselves mostly regret their marriage with a coloured man and their general standard of life is usually permanently lowered.

That this was a deviant outsider positioning, institutionally prescribed, is crucial. This is the categorization I argue, first, embodying the alchemic oddity of race and rights, and second, the modern beginnings of these youth’s coupling with deviance. Indeed, racialized youth’s contemporary criminal positioning, I argue, commences its journey here. Consider that such conclusions represent antithesis in an era when youth justice reform efforts prioritized youth’s malleability (Miller, 2022). The deprivation of the White, working-class youth, for instance, was deemed amenable to change if mitigated by the capacity of environments to support a transformative potential. Yet, racialized youth’s categorization as social time bombs and their family status as permanently lowered, by virtue of their race, indicates their placement beyond the redemptive allowance of malleability. Christian’s (2008) observation that such decisions had no basis in scientific or moral reasoning references the now discredited eugenics, pseudo-science promulgating superior and inferior racial categories, defining early modern policy and practice (Peel, 1997). Instead of the malleability attributed White, working-class youth, racialized youth were deemed troublesome and pesky. Consistent with Christian’s reflection that despite the absence of scientific objectivity that historic conclusions reproduce themselves in the institutional and social recognition of racialized peoples, I argue that the social time bomb categorization rationalized in the early modern

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period has transformed into the criminal status known today. The troublesome, pesky youth, therefore, has become ones for whom punishment has been rationalized in the contemporary period. As elaborated in Part II, this is particularly true against the backdrop of statutory approaches to the urban youth gang containment, where the phenomenon has been racialized. Other notable examples in this trajectory, predating the gang, has been Hall and colleagues’ (1978) exposition on the racialization of mugging, in the 1970s. I argue that the history Cox explored, as with the gang phenomenon, similarly informed the mugging crisis (Hall et al., 1978); this history represents the soil in which the myth of Black criminality (Gilroy, 2008) was sewn. Like Hall et al., Gilroy’s logic calls for a recognition of the expanding, historic politicization in the pathologization of Blackness as criminal and punishable. What follows is a CRT distillation of racial specificity not often linked to the positioning of race, youth, and justice. As Williams’ alchemy of race and rights logic indicates, this is a framework from which distortions of Blackness as anathema is linked with established historic, socio-political shifts legitimizing the typification and transformation of racialized youth as objects of suspicion, scrutiny, and control: from the historic troublesome, pesky, social time bombs to the contemporary punishable, criminal youth.

The ‘Alchemy of Race and Rights’: Racialized Youth in the Epoch of Punishment and Rights What Ward (2012) and other proponents advocating historicizing contemporary race struggles (Bressey, 2002; Bristow et al., 1994; Maynard, 2017) allow is that there is danger of reinforcing the coupling of race with deviance, without such important contextualization. This coupling informs Williams’ caution that belief in rights, like lenience and restraint for racialized youth, in an era where punishment operates as a disciplinary tool in youth justice, is like belief in alchemy. This chapter draws from this logic to expand the scope for understanding punishment as exclusion and historicization emphasizes this synonymity. Seeing punishment as exclusion develops the analytical scope beyond the

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customary focus on racialized youth’s purported criminality, to emphasize the role of criminalization; seen from a historical perspective this is consistent with the deviance making apparent in the early modern period, previously discussed. The CRT lens, in expanding the analytical scope from criminality to criminalization, foregrounds concern about racialized youth’s access to, or relegation from, resources and opportunities crucial to their transformative potential. Extrapolate from Lammy’s allusion to racialized youth’s damaged employment prospects, in the presence of criminal labelling. Historicization, therefore, allows that where contemporary punishment is concerned lenience stands among a multitude of crucial resources from which these youth are excluded. da Silva’s (2007) work on the denigration meted out to racialized peoples across modern society contributes to the goal in this section. Like Williams (1991) da Silva challenges the broken system understanding (my emphasis) (Feagin, 2013), found in public narratives like that in Canada’s Globe and Mail purporting racialized youth’s deficit positioning as the most punished as an outcome of a system which has lost sight of its own aims. However, this understanding effectively downplays racialization and misleadingly implies error or inadvertency on the part of systems. Indeed, da Silva argues that, For the arsenal of raciality does precisely that when it produces both (a) the affectable (subaltern) subjects that can be excluded from juridical universality without unleashing an ethical crisis and (b) the self-determined things who should enjoy the entitlements afforded and protected by the principle of universality said to govern modern social configurations. (da Silva, 2007, p. 35)

da Silva’s analysis of race in modernity reiterates the CRT approach, admonishing how the lack of proportionality in the treatment of Black peoples can occur without an ethical crisis. This alludes to the general taken for granted acceptance of Blacks as the most punished and the most punishable. da Silva harks back to the very tenets on which modern concerns with universality were defined and deployed, ultimately arguing that the expansion of universal rights was a project devised based on the exclusion of racialized peoples.

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This emphasizes the role of entrenched structural deficits. In lieu of an ethical crisis, potentially triggering reform, individual blame, and shame is foregrounded. This is to say that the contemporary system supports the status quo established in modernity’s wake. According to this perspective, it is unsurprising that Black youth in modern Western society are subject to disproportionate levels of punishment (Razack, 2014). Conceived according to da Silva, the representative branches of modern institutions, including the YJ system, were built on principles and practices excluding such peoples from the universal category of citizens, persons, and recognized social partners. It is this exclusion from ‘juridicial universality’ (da Silva, 2007, p. 35) which this chapter takes as its point of departure for emphasizing the importance of understanding the synonymity between contemporary punishment and exclusion from rights. In an analogous example, Razack (2014, p. 1) demonstrates the relationship between the principles and practices constituting modern institutions and the levels of ‘terror’ and ‘violence’ normalized against racialized youth in contemporary society. Razack draws on da Silva, in her analysis detailing that Silva’s emphasis on violence against racial Others as constitutive of modernity yields the question that is central to her book, namely, how are modern subjects produced who can be excluded from the universal “without unleashing an ethical crisis?” (2007, p. xxxi). (Razack, 2014, pp. 3–4)

The example returns readers’ attention to a main concern held by CRT scholars about universal equality: prima facie efforts to eradicate difference. Razack alerts us to the fact that the racial and the cultural delineates a state of difference purportedly placing individuals at an evolutionary impasse, alluding to the expectations of neutrality informing assertions of difference blindness. This echoes from history, attested by the proliferation of pseudo-science about race, upon which YJ was inaugurated (Fleming, 1930; Peel, 1997). This is key to youth’s antithetical placement at a transformative impasse: race is characterized by difference itself. This draws attention to one of universality’s chief limitations with achieving racial equality: positioning racialized peoples outside the domains of justice, as ones whose differences render them

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‘unable to progress out of nature’ (Razack, 2014, p. 3). Here, Taylor’s (1992) analysis of two competing approaches to justice, the difference blind account and the cultural recognition account, has relevance. The wider implication is that justice premised on notions of difference blindness does more than relegate that which is labelled distinct, like race. This is seen in the wider justification for, and acceptance of, disproportionate punishment, despite the simultaneously wider recognition of restraint and rationality (Delgado & Stefancic, 2007; Crenshaw et al., 1995). According to Razack (2014, p. 3) ‘The treatment meted out to each one secures a social order in which whiteness and rationality are the defining features of citizenship’. In this conception, the neutrality and rationality on which universality is premised, is epitomized as White, Western, and male, and this is the subject for whom proportionality is intended. Williams’ alchemy thesis aligns with da Silva’s admonition on the absence of an ethical outcry regarding the continued normalized denigration of racialized peoples, despite the arrangement of universal rights. The logic of an alchemic oddity of race and rights is central to Razack’s (2014) exposition on YJ as an institution rife with literal ‘terror’ for racialized youth. In an arrangement whereby the inclusion of punishment as a disciplinary instrument, in YJ, is principally mitigated both by proportionality’s promise of restraint and additionally by the humanizing tenets of expanded rights, where is the great, guttural protest, rejecting the brutality (denoting the normalized encroachment of penalty) meted out to youth? This question reveals the need for greater racial specific analyses alongside the extant condemnations of the punitive character of contemporary YJ, particularly the palpably fragmented disconnect between principles informing the rights ethos and the actual practice, for youth in general (Fitz-Gibbon, 2016; Goldson, 2005; Lacombe, 2017). The understanding informed by this question is crucial to the illustrations from the field, offered in the Part II of the chapter, demonstrating what is meant by the normalization of penalty as exclusion, in the lives of racialized youth.

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Part II Continuities of the History: From Troublesome and Pesky, to Social Time Bomb, to Criminal This final section of the chapter begins with reference to the opening quotations. The alarm at racialized youth’s positioning, evident in each representation, corresponds with stereotypes coupling race and deviance, that neither representation alleviates. Crucially, both commentaries on youth’s deficit positioning reveal a customary lack of clarity on the deeper socio-historic continuities confounding youth’s contemporary reality. Both commentaries are indicative of wider socio-political equivocality binding youth’s identity to deviance, obviating the pathologizing role of institutional practice, like policing surveillance. In the context of the gang policing example informing this chapter, scholars reference this normalization as ‘Collateral Damage’ (Aldridge et al., 2011, p. 72) alluding to this as an essentializing outcome of racialization (Aldridge, et al., 2008; Peterson et al., 2006; Young, 2006), thereby conceding to the methodological shortcoming in the tendency to focus research on communities predominantly populated by working-class, racialized peoples. At the heart of these extant analyses are methodological concerns with decontextualization, with which this chapter is similarly engaged, denoting the aim to historicize the present. What follows, therefore, are accounts of the experiences which can benefit from the wider explanatory scope historicization enables, foregrounding what it means by my earlier claim that historically judicious care was not extended to racialized youth. This treatment reflects continuity in their contemporary typification as risky instead of vulnerable, a contemporary sample of withholding judicious care. Viewed customarily (absent historicization), contemporary experiences are understood according to the equivocality noted in the Globe and Mail narrative. However, the historicization proffered in this chapter indicates that such experiences be assessed as part of a trajectory consistent with systematized deviance making, from

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historic categorizations of troublesome and pesky, social time bombs to the contemporary punishable criminal.

Experiences of Criminalization and Exclusion: London, England In the remaining sections, I rely on data collected from field interviews in Toronto, Canada and London, England. The explanation does not begin with youth’s purported criminality, but with a look at structural intransigence, as an outcome constitutive of a longer history discussed previously. Attendance to the institutional element moves beyond the customary tendency to individuate and stereotype Black youth as problematic, all the while downplaying totalizing lack of lenience, signifying that penalty is normalized beyond criminality and more aptly represents the oppressive tenets of criminalization. My conversation with a youth sector worker, in London England, reveals an account of the labelling and stigma informing the contemporary structural intransigence (Field Interviewee 17, 2011—London). EM: Give me an example of public policies that you feel have been most negative? EB: Stop and searches. EM: Give me a brief account of youth’s encounters with labelling and stigma, associated with stop and searches. EB: The hoodie issue. There was an MP who referred to young people wearing hoods as criminals, as ‘hoodies.’ Labelling young people ‘hoodies’ is like telling everyone that all youth are criminals. The young people have taken this onboard. EM: What is the relationship between labelling, stigma, and risk from the police, for youth in general? EB: Youth think twice about what they wear. It takes away their freedom of choice a little. They want to disassociate. EM: How does labelling and stigma affect the identity of youth in general? EB: Imagine if your style is the hoodie. If you are labelled as a criminal for loving that style you start to feel like the world sees you as lesser. In some cases, they live up to the label that has been given to them.

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EM: How does labelling and stigma affect rehabilitation and reform for gang youth who have offended? EB: How can a youth offender move on and make a change when youth are kept in the same spot from being labelled? It leads to reoffending. It affects their employment prospects. They are not given a second chance by the system. Anytime someone goes for a job the employer looks at a CRB check, this is a criminal reference bureau check. This can severely hinder the individual’s chance for employment. EM: How do you anticipate that your work will transform the situation of youth? Do youth have the desire to leave their ‘at risk’ communities? EB: Yes. Quite a few of them do. A lot of them want a new start. They can’t get this from their old environment. EM: Comment on whether the state’s reliance on punishment increases domination for youth, from the police, due to an association with criminality and youth? EB: Youth are always on their toes looking out for undercovers. It affects their lives; it affects their trust for everyone. They want to know what your motives are. The stop and searches become a source of domination. Think about the riots. I think this is what sparked off the riots. This was almost like an attack on the police and on the government. The rioters were not thinking of those living in their communities.

This CRT logic allows for an assessment of the historical contingencies at work, in this account (Crenshaw et al., 1995). According to that logic, histories of disrespectful policy practices continue to inform contemporary interactions between institutional agents, like the police and racialized youth (Delgado & Stefancic, 2007).

Foregrounding Criminalization and Exclusion: Toronto, Canada The characterization of the intersection between race and rights as an alchemic oddity is an important point of departure for contextualizing the issue of criminalization and exclusion. As with the English context, my conversation with a youth sector worker, in Toronto Canada, bears

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this out (Field Interviewee 18, 2011—Canada). This account demonstrates the normalized encroachment that risk narratives rationalize, in racialized youth’s lives. Consider that such encounters occur, while youth are blamed for the failure of programmes put in place to purportedly support their needs (Gee, 2013). From a CRT perspective, it is this article’s claim that encounters like the one detailed below exemplifies youth’s historic placement outside considerations of judicious care. Williams’ CRT (1991) conception allows that these interactions are neither new and nor uncanny but are indeed historically contingent. EM: Talk about how the broad aims of law enforcement and other state authorities overlap with your organisation’s work with youth? KO: A couple of years ago we had an old TV in the centre. My husband [a youth worker], who is from Africa and is a big brawny guy, was carrying the TV out with two or three youth. They put the TV in the car, and they all get in. They are all messing around and play fighting and in no time, they were surrounded by four cop cars. They [the police] were speculating that they [the youth worker and the youth] were stealing a TV and that they had guns in the car, so they [the police] had to search the car, pull it apart, because our youth worker was leaving our building carrying an old TV that was going to the dump. Our youth experience similar discrimination. We have a kid that was given a ticket for not having a light on his bicycle in the middle of the day. We see this labelling because of where we are located. We live in an area with a lot of subsidized housing etc. Labelling is definitely a problem, but it is both external and internal. KO: Technically the aims of the Toronto Police is to serve and to protect and nowhere does it say punish, control or dominate. But still, I think that our aims conflict. We have similar stated aims. But we are all about relationship building, community building. But we understand that the police will not go away, so we need to be that bridge. EM: How do the strategies that the police use in their interaction with youth affect community transformation? KO: It is disabling and slows down transformation. We would move faster if they were more progressive in their interactions. They initiate relationships that are based on chumminess but then quickly they descend back into domination. They have a job to do so it is hard to berate individual officers, but they need twenty times more training. But I think they slow down the process. Their attitude with my husband and those youth for instance is a

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good example. If something starts to happen, they [the police] don’t know how to back down. They feel like they will lose face or power. I think sometimes having the skills to back down is very important. I could understand why they jumped to that conclusion, that there was some criminal activity going on, but I think even entering into that interaction with respect is important. They are coming in with big cars, rifles, bulletproof vests, and they are challenging five scared teenagers and a guy that gives his life to serve the community. So, I think it is important to enter into the situation with respect is very important. Without the contextualization of logics, it is possible to blame troubled Black youth for the failure of programs to ameliorate the troubles nefariously linked with Blackness, as a by-product of Blackness. In this sense, being disproportionately excluded is equated with individual failure, when notions of criminality are foregrounded ahead of concerns with criminalization. Accordingly to this, being a so-called troubled Black youth equals individual failure, due to lack of engagement with opportunities availed. The conversation with Field Interviewee 18 continues below. EM: Give me an example of public policies that you feel have been most positive. KO: One policy that has been given out by the state these days is given out by the courts, to give a lot of community service instead of giving a lot of jail time. That had great potential. It has not been fully utilized to the best of its potential. For instance, someone can get community service hours and then end up in an organization where they are asked to sweep the floor for one week. They don’t learn anything or interact with anybody, so nothing really changes. It could be a work in progress. With the right kind of thought and support it could be useful. Right now, the City of Toronto has a lot of programs and initiatives in support of youth, and it is a great trend, but I am don’t know what will come of these things. The issue that youth are facing is a lack of direction, support, or mentorship. It is not that they are missing out on peer lead initiatives. This is not really a policy. But I believe in investment. To see more investments being put in grass root organizations. I am a bit biased because we are a grassroots organization that focuses on relationship development. But so often every policy is judged on numbers and statistics. But that’s not really where we see success. We see success in terms of relationship stories and those are reflected in trends and numbers but not necessarily judged in that.

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One final account looks at Black youth’s experiences in education, particularly the normalization of penalty in their education (Coard, 1971; Gillborn, 2008). The earlier proposal that penalty be considered a cognate of exclusion is exemplified here. This draws attention to the systemic processes sustaining youth’s placement outside considerations of judicious care and their normalization as risky. Corresponding with Lammy’s indictment regarding youth’s exclusion from employment, this account draws attention to the widespread character of penalty as exclusion. In this sense, youth’s positioning as disproportionate recipients of penalty is more aptly explained according to the more expanded concerns with deviance making, denoting the ways by which penalty binds their identity to risk in the contemporary arrangement. EM: Tell me the fate of a youth that has been expelled from school? KO: It is really difficult to engage back in school again because you have to find a school that is willing to take you. And again, you are asking fifteen- or sixteen-year-olds to do this leg work. But they won’t necessarily have the wherewithal to do this. Self-advocacy is something that is taught and slowly built into you. It is not something that youth are born with. So, there are these special schools called section 21. You have to find them, they are alternative schools, with smaller classrooms and great environment, technically. But by this point you are a young adult, and no one is checking up on you and holding you accountable. You could also apply to the Catholic School Board, but once again that requires self-advocacy. So that’s what we do here, we try to help youth re-engage with school. We support them with finding the schools and doing enrolment and driving them to and from. We advocate for them. These narratives emphasize that it is not that youth fail to transform, it is that their transformative potential is undermined. Racialized policy initiatives like those targeting the gang phenomenon, thereby rationalizing penal excess into youth’s lives, sustains this. These accounts from the field reveal the insidious processes, whereby youth’s normalization as suspects against this backdrop unfolds. The CRT lens expands the scope, aptly demonstrating such experiences to be historic.

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Conclusions The chapter explored the perspective that extant explanations of the racialized youth gang are dehistoricized and instead proffer majoritarian understandings reinforcing links between race, crime, and punishment. Corresponding with the historicization logic, the chapter integrates Williams’ ‘Alchemy of Race and Rights’ thesis with an aim to emphasize the institutional dynamics of policy and practice often absent from majoritarian gang narratives. The alchemy of race and rights thesis allows an expanded logic, whereby the racialization of the contemporary youth gang can be read more aptly within a longer trajectory of racialized youth’s historic placement outside considerations of judicious care. Consistent with the deviance invention logic which allows historic contextualization on the contemporary issues of class and gender, this chapter historicizes through a racially specific lens. It does so by linking racialized youth’s contemporary normalization as risky, criminal, and punishable to a longer historic positioning as troublesome, pesky, social time bombs. Guided by the CRT historicization logic, in general, and Williams’ Alchemy of race and right thesis, more specifically, this expanded understanding demonstrates more aptly what is at stake for racialized: this concerns their enduring positioning outside the domain of judicious care, and while this speaks to the disproportionate punishment rationalized, historicization widens the lens to demonstrate that penalty goes beyond youth’s purported criminality and instead concerns their criminalization. Thinking of youth’s positioning in this way, denoting punishment as exclusion, it becomes possible to see that youth’s positioning is one that continues to relegate them from a range of prosocial resources and opportunities necessary for their transformative wellbeing. While the opening quotations offer insights into breadth of this exclusion, indicating the material and moral scope, narratives from field participants in both London and Toronto offers accounts of the surveillance processes implicated in these contemporary continuities for racialized youth. To reiterate two earlier points: racial specificity in historicization, aptly suffice as an analytical lens to expand the explanatory scope when observing contemporary phenomenon like

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the racialization of the gang. Expansion, through historicization, reorients customary majoritarian couplings of race and criminality, towards the invisible, entrenched relationship between race and criminalization, a positioning synonymous with exclusion from modern benefits.

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Williams, P. (2015). Criminalising the other: Challenging the race-gang nexus. Race & Class, 56 (3), 18–35. Williams, P. L. (1991). ‘The alchemy of race and rights: Dairy of a law professor. Harvard University Press. Young, V. (2006). Demythologizing the “criminalblackman”: The carnival mirror. In R. Peterson, L. J. Krivo, & J. Hagan (Eds.), Inequalities of race, ethnicity, and crime in America: The many colours of crime (pp. 54–56). New York University Press.

14 Race and Gangs: Towards a Black Criminology Suzella Palmer

Introduction For the last 50 years or so in the UK, the relationship between race and crime has been the focus of much research and ongoing debate. Since the 1970s, criminologists, politicians, the police, the media and black populations themselves have been pre-occupied with the issue of the over-representation of black males in the criminal justice system and over the years have put forward a range of explanations. For the most part, these explanations fall into two categories; firstly, that they experience differential treatment at the various stages of the criminal justice system in that they are more likely to be suspected, arrested, charged and subjected to harsher sentencing because they are black (Alexander, 2008; Hallsworth & Young, 2008) or that there are disproportionately higher rates of offending amongst this group. It is the case however that the two S. Palmer (B) University of Bedfordshire, Luton, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Andell and J. Pitts (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Youth Gangs in the UK , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99658-1_14

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explanations are not necessarily mutually exclusive, thus, while racism and discrimination in the criminal justice system account for some of the elevated figures of young Black people in the criminal justice system (Bowling & Phillips, 2007; Lammy, 2017), there also appears to be some evidence of disproportionally higher rates of offending and victimisation (Dodd, 2010; Lea & Young, 1993; MORI Youth Survey, 2006). On the issue of higher rates of offending, some commentators, including the former Prime Minister Tony Blair, have been accused of racialising youth crime and pathologising black youth culture (Meer & Modood, 2009). For example, following a succession of deaths involving mostly young black victims in London in 2007, Tony Blair said that rather than a consequence of wider societal disadvantages, ‘gang’ violence was a product of a ‘distinctive’ black culture wherein (black) children were being both poorly raised and socialised. When are we going to start saying this is a problem amongst a section of the black community and not, for reasons of political correctness, pretend that this is nothing to do with it? Wickram and Dodd (2007)

His view is not too far removed from that of the American right wing political commentator Charles Murray who claimed that crime and violence in poor neighbourhoods was a direct result of an underclass culture in which single parenthood, welfare dependency and criminality are promoted in place of marriage, hard work and educational aspiration (Murray, 1984). Concerns that the racialisation of gangs has had a damaging impact on black communities and black young males have been raised, most notably by Williams (2015) who demonstrates that the over-attribution of the term ‘gang’ to groups of black young males has served to legitimise the over-policing of these young people and their communities. Williams gives voice to the deep rooted, historical and unabating concerns shared by many within the UK’s black communities regarding the racist, unfair and brutal treatment that black people experience in their interactions with the police (MacPherson, 1999; Palmer & Pitts, 2006; Scarman, 1986). Increased use of stop and search, particularly towards black young

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men (a practice which has been contentious since the 1970s due to its improper use and racial profiling), armed police patrols within inner city neighbourhoods significantly populated by black and ethnic minority communities and various ‘operations’ targeting black ‘suspects’ are also justified by the furore around dangerous gangs and serious youth violence (Palmer & Pitts, 2006; Williams, 2015). Williams points out that in North-West England, the location of his research, ‘gang’ talk’ appears to precede the actuality of gangs, a finding consistent with my own research in North-West London almost a decade earlier (Palmer, 2011). This is not to suggest that gangs did not exist in these locations, but rather that the term was applied too casually to particular groups of young people in the inner cities by the police and the media which I suggest had a deleterious impact on current practices and the future aspirations of affected communities. While there is evidence to suggest that the term gang is misapplied, particularly to black youth, some academics have questioned the very existence of gangs (Hallsworth & Young, 2008) which can be equally problematic as it detracts from the real lived experiences of victimisation (Lea & Young, 1993) amongst young people and communities who live in gang affected areas (Fitzgerald, 2009; Palmer, 2009; Pitts, 2008). Less controversially, and arguably the most widely accepted explanation for the disproportionate numbers of young black males involved in many forms of crime, including gangs and serious violence more specifically, is that they are much more likely to experience multiple forms of socio-economic disadvantages which strongly correlate with offending behaviour (Palmer & Pitts, 2006; Pitts, 2008). The Greater London Authority (2019) found strong correlations between violent offending and a range of socio-economic disadvantages, reporting that in 2019 three-quarters of the London boroughs with the highest levels of violent offending, were also amongst the most deprived, as well as having the highest number of children under 20. These boroughs were the most ethnically diverse. And more recently, the Social Metrics Commission (2020) reported that: nearly half (46%) of people in families with a Black head of household and 37% of people in families with an Asian head of household are in

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poverty, compared to 19% of people in a family with a White head of household’ and that ‘People in Black and Minority Ethnic families are also between two and three times more likely to be in persistent poverty than people in White families.

Factors, such as poverty, poor educational attainment, school exclusion and unemployment, have long been associated with youth offending (and acknowledged in policy although progress on the ground remains wanting as successive generations continue to experience the same socioeconomic challenges as their forbears) (Cashmore & Troyna, 1982; Palmer & Pitts, 2006; Power & Tunstall, 1995; Pryce, 1979). As well as high levels of poverty, black children and young people today are significantly overrepresented in school exclusions and educational underachievement, face relatively high levels of unemployment and are also concentrated in high crime neighbourhoods (Pitts, 2008) much like each generation that preceded them (Palmer & Pitts, 2006). Therefore, even when these factors are acknowledged within policy, particularly where structural racism has been found to be instrumental in perpetuating these problems (MacPherson, 1999) young black males continue to experience high levels of disadvantage. Yet the level and intensity of their disadvantage and subsequent consequences are largely unacknowledged and under-researched, resulting in the administration of strategies and interventions based on a skewed understanding of the problem. As Williams (2015) has suggested, much of (mainstream) research and scholarship on gangs in the UK has served to obscure the ‘relevance of racism’giving way to the pathologisation of groups of young black males who are conveniently ‘othered’ while also fuelling the current ‘gang industry’, whether as an intended consequence or not. Despite the various positions in the race and crime debate outlined in this chapter, finding ways of reducing serious youth violence (which it is assumed is the foremost aim of most researchers in this field) is hampered by a lack of research and theory development that can comprehensively capture the lived realities of young black males, how they make sense of their experiences and how this informs their world view and subsequent behaviour. Furthermore, the research that does exist is often side-lined (Palmer, 2009; Williams, 2015) in favour of scholarship that presents

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black young people as a problem that needs to be solved. In essence, when it comes to responding to the problem of serious youth violence and it is impact on black communities (or in fact any other negative impacts) policies and practice interventions often run counter to the actual needs of black communities. As I have argued elsewhere: Despite the numerous studies commissioned and conducted, numbers crunched, analysis and re-analysis of official statistics, and papers churned out on this issue, mainstream criminology in Britain is, for the most part, ‘out of touch’, with the Black communities that it has repeatedly scrutinised’ (Palmer, 2009)

Who Feels It Knows It The argument being advanced in this chapter is that we urgently need a UK-specific ‘Black criminology, a concept defined succinctly by Russell (1992) in a US context as: An alternative perspective […] that seeks to identify the unique, racially specific conditions that only Blacks experience […] these conditions are rooted in historical racial oppression experienced by African Americans, whose contemporary legacy includes concentrated disadvantage in segregated communities, racial socialization by parents, experiences with, and perceptions of, racial discrimination, and disproportionate involvement in and unjust treatment by the criminal justice system. (Unnever et al., 2019)

Initiated and developed largely within the US, this approach has gained traction within British criminology and there has been a slow but steady pace of its adoption by black criminologists in both theory development and research (Bowling & Phillips, 2003, Palmer, 2009). Adherents of black criminology in Britain and the US are not only attempting to understand and make sense of black experiences but are also aware of the need to situate and examine these experiences in their

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broader socio-historical contexts leading to a much more holistic understanding. From this standpoint, it becomes clear that the overall impact of racism, both current and historical, on young black males and black populations more generally, has not been given the attention that it deserves. The ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement, which has recently brought the issue of ‘anti-black’ racism in policing and in society more broadly to the forefront of the public imagination, has provided an opportune moment for social scientists and policy makers to reflect on and enhance the ways that they engage with the issue of race and to seek potentially useful ways of understanding and addressing racial disadvantage and anti-black racism because attempts to date have been largely ineffective. Thus, to address racism in policing, solutions that have been implemented include initiatives geared towards, increasing the representation of ’BAME’ people within the police, improvements in applicant selection processes and racism awareness training. Yet the unjust treatment of black populations by the police remains consistent (House of Commons Home Affairs Committee, 2021; MacPherson, 1999; Scarman, 1981). Unsurprisingly what is not considered in these strategies is the enormity of racism, how deeply it is embedded in British society and how it impacts on individuals over their life course. This reality validates the argument for a criminology that is decolonised and that values equally a range of worldviews. Referring to ethnocentrism that dominates mainstream criminology and is perceived as scientific and therefore objective, Glynn (2014) argues that this assumed ‘colour blind’ approach ‘renders the black contribution to criminology invisible’, which in turn ‘means that the expression of my ‘blackness’ is seen at times as lacking in objectivity’. Yet, he argues, ‘Seldom have I experienced a questioning about white male researchers researching white men’. The assumption is that White male researchers are somehow unbiased, which must be particularly perplexing for non-White but also female scholars. Nevertheless, within mainstream criminology, research that seeks to address problematic gang involvement and serious youth violence within black communities also falls short as there is a dearth of understanding about what it is like to be young and black and growing up in Britain, how these experiences are processed, and how they might

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connect to both their criminalisation and criminality. The preoccupation with youth violence during the last three decades has giving rise to research exploring the nature of black youth crime, the material deprivation that they encounter and how they become drawn, seduced or groomed into illicit lifestyles (Densley, 2014; Harding, 2012; Pitts, 2008; Robins, 1992). These studies, however, demonstrate little understanding of the multiple layers of oppression that young black people experience and obscure experiences of racial oppression. Left-realist positioned scholars have been particularly culpable as they over-estimate the agency that is exercised by young black males in the way they respond to their disadvantaged socio-economic position. In short, they underestimate the role and impact of racism. Consequently, the role of class takes precedence and issues of race become subsumed within issues of class (Kalunta-Crumpton, 2004). While the two share a close intersectional relationship, ignoring the important distinctions between race and class identities and experiences can lead to indifference to one or the other (Burgess-Proctor, 2006) and in this instance, a greater indifference towards issues of race. How individuals make sense of their world is to some extent shaped by their social, economic, political and cultural environment and their racial/ethnic group histories. Within black communities, issues of racial identity and racial oppression are a central feature of discourses on black youth crime (Palmer & Pitts, 2006; Williams, 2015). Racism in all its forms is seen to be a major contributor to black youth offending and a barrier to achieving effective solutions. In my own research for example (see below), many of the black participants believed that serious youth violence and problematic gang involvement was a symptom of the injustices that young black males were continuously experiencing, particularly within the education system, in employment and in their interactions with the criminal justice system. Some respondents linked present-day experiences of racism to racist ideologies that justified the enslavement of Africans during the Atlantic slave trade and believed both historic racism and the experience of racism had had a profound impact on them as descendants of an enslaved people (Palmer, 2011).

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Racism as a Multi-Faceted Risk Factor Within my research exploring the changing shape of black youth crime, I set out to try to understand their experiences of racism and to examine the extent to which these experiences impacted on their offending. But my research also sought to contextualise their experiences more widely by exploring the impact of wider structural conditions and how these help to shape how young Black males make sense of their world and subsequently how this informs their life choices, including their choices about engaging in crime and violent behaviour. As Agyeman (2008) suggests, to contextualise (Black) experiences researchers should seek to go ‘beyond current day economic, social and cultural contexts’ and ‘extend this into political and historical contexts’, thereby acknowledging that discourses on the ‘Other’ are ‘embedded in historical conditions of slavery, colonialism and racism’. (Agyeman, 2008, p. 269). A growing body of scholars in the USA have argued that there is clear link between contemporary ‘Black on Black’ violence and the historical legacies of slavery and racial oppression that have afflicted successive generations of Black people in the USA and elsewhere in the Black Diaspora. They have found that it is impossible to unyoke the recent history of Black people from that of their ancestor’s experiences of racial oppression and slavery (Crawford et al., 2006; Leary, 2005; Pinderhughes, 1987; Wilson, 2009). These scholars view the long-standing oppression experienced by people of African descent as a form of ‘traumaand by doing so, they not only highlight the magnitude of this ‘assault’ but create a framework for making sense of many of the symptoms of that trauma which sometimes permeate Black communities and, in particular, low self-esteem, grief, rage and violence (Leary, 2005). While the economic implications of slavery and colonialism are much more obvious and go some way to explain contemporary economic disparities between the descendants of slavery and the descendants of (White) slavers and other beneficiaries, understanding the psycho-social impacts on is rather more complicated but needs recognition. As Collins (2019) argues: The slave trade may have been abolished two hundred years ago, and slavery itself may now take different forms, but the contemptible and

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largely unacknowledged ideology that galvanised it continues to fester in the sub-conscious of its descendants.

In developing her theory of ‘Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome’, Leary (2005) demonstrates the profound impact of the legacy of slavery on the consciousness of Black people, past and present, in Europe and North America and she also shows how this manifests in criminality amongst young Black males. Leary argues that the hundreds of years of unpaid labour, subjugation and oppression that black people experienced under slavery guaranteed that successive generations of Whites would inherit wealth and privilege while the descendants of Africans inherited debt and suffering. For Leary, however, the emotional and psychological impacts of slavery not only on slaves but also their descendants need to be acknowledged, and she highlights that racism and the racist ideologies that underpin it have been internalised by White and Black populations alike. Thus, while successive generations of White populations inherit a sense of superiority and privilege over black and other non-white people, their black and non-white counterparts inherit a sense of inferiority and disadvantage. For Black people, their displacement from their homelands and their culture, and the internalisation of ideas around Black inferiority, along with their experiences of contemporary racism have contributed to low self-esteem and a sense of hopelessness which Leary argues has resulted in some of the currently debated issues around identity, masculinities and status or ‘respect’ amongst young Black males. Applying Leary’s thesis to the experiences of Black Caribbean communities in Britain today, Trotman (2012) argues that: The Transatlantic Slave Trade tried to reduce Africans from human beings to the status of commodities or cargoes. African lives were considered dispensable, to be used, abused and cast aside once they had served their purpose. Black life has continued to be viewed as cheap and expendable in both Africa and the Diaspora with scenes of death and destruction on the continent often treated with indifference. Some people of African origin have internalised this apparent disdain for their lives resulting in the upsurge of so-called ‘Black on Black’ or lateral violence. This violence, which is sometimes linked to criminal activity, has become a blight within

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Black communities where there is no understanding of the struggles of forebears to win the freedom.

In this analysis, Trotman is not only drawing our attention to the negative self-perception of young black males, but the internalised disdain towards others who look like them. There can be little doubt that the media, in all its forms, plays an important role in propagating racist stereotypes and negative representations of black males (Cushion et al., 2011; Gerbner, 1998; Malik & Nwonka, 2017). In their study on Children’s Television Use and Self-Esteem, Martins and Harrison for example (2012) found that televisual exposure led to a decrease in selfesteem amongst black boys and an increase in self-esteem for their White counterparts (Martins & Harrison, 2012). It is also worth noting that negative media representations also impact on the way that black males are perceived and treated by others. Following their analysis of UK television programmes falling within the ‘Black urban crime’ genre, Malik and Nwonka (2017, p. 424) conclude that: mainstream media and state agents play a key role in instituting representations of black criminality and, specifically, the contemporary ‘black gang, gun and knife crime’ consensus.

Yet despite these impacts, the negative media representation of black males which contributes to their oppression in both the impact it has on their self-perception and self-esteem and the impact on how they are treated due to the negative labels attached to them is rarely recognised as an ‘adverse childhood experience’ to be mitigated, or as a risk factor for offending. Building on the ideas of scholars such as Leary (2005) and Poussaint and Alexander (2000) who are concerned with the psycho-social impact of slavery, Aird (2015, p. 9) expands on the multiple impacts of this legacy arguing that the ‘lie’ of black inferiority which can be traced through the generations has had a negative impact on black selfworth and efficacy, that it undermines black male/female relationships and between parents and children, and restricts black children’s opportunities. It also leads to ‘destructive behaviours in the black community’.

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More specifically, Aird suggests that growing rates of suicide, depression stress-related illnesses and (intra-racial) homicides amongst black people in the USA can be attributed to a communal self-hatred, anger, self-loathing and a sense of hopelessness that leads black young men to devalue their lives and the lives of other Blacks. While much of this research speaks to the African American experience, the legacy of slavery, internalised notions of black inferiority and white superiority, and racial oppression are phenomena that impact on black AfricanCaribbean populations in the UK and in terms of the impact of these on young black males in the UK, there seem to be many parallels.

The Impact of a Failing Education System on Black Young People and Gangs Alongside the media, schools and other educational settings have been instrumental in promulgating notions of white superiority and black inferiority. Reflecting on their experiences in the school system, a few respondents in my study felt that Black children, but mainly boys, were failed by the education system. Aside from being presented with a ‘colonial’ curriculum that erased them or presented them as ‘uncivilised’ and primarily the descendants of slaves, they also had to contend with issues surrounding low teacher expectations, high and discriminatory school exclusions and unjust treatment by teachers who internalised the negative stereotypes about black people. Similarly, some of the young black males involved in Robins’ (1992) research into inner city youth crime two decades earlier believed the schools had failed to equip them with the skills that would enable them to lead productive lives and that that any attempts to adapt to the schools’ norms had been ignored. This significantly disadvantaged them in terms of their employment prospects, and for some, engaging in criminal activity was a more viable option (Palmer, 2011). While the impacts of racism in schools and the racist attitudes of some White teachers have been acknowledged within research and successive educational policies, (Coard, 1971; Crozier, 2005; Department for Education & Science, 1985), the poor socio-economic circumstances that successive generations of young Black people themselves

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are also believed to be responsible for their academic underperformance (Department for Education & Science, 1985; Joseph-Salisbury, 2020; Mac an Ghaill, 1988). Within the Department for Education and Science, there has been clear acknowledgement that Black students are discriminated against, particularly in terms of school exclusions: Every year 1000 Black pupils are permanently excluded and nearly 30,000 receive a fixed period exclusion. Black pupils are three times more likely to be excluded than their White peers, after all other background factors are taken into account. Although the absolute exclusions gap narrowed somewhat during the late 1990s, at a time when overall exclusion rates were falling, the size of the gap appears to have stabilised, and shows no signs of going away. Exclusion is an iconic issue within Black communities and is routinely cited by academics as an example of the way the education system discriminates against Black pupils. Despite this acknowledgement, calls to address racism in schools, in the curriculum but also in ome teachers attitudes, continue but there has been little progress over the last 20 years in reducing the high and discriminatory exclusion rates amongst boys and, increasingly, black girls. (IRR News Team, 2020)

As Dempsey (2021) has pointed out ‘exclusion is a well-recognised risk factor for gang involvement’, accordingly racism in schools along with the discriminatory exclusion of black boys needs to be acknowledged as key risk factor for black youth offending if we are to circumvent the School or ‘Pupil Referral Unit to prison pipeline’ (IRR, 2020). Exclusions however also pose a risk in terms of the impact they have on the mental well-being of children and young people; in particular, exclusion can cause feelings of rejection leading to poor self-esteem, depression and other mental health concerns (Ford et al., 2017; Stanley & Arora, 1998). For young black people whose socio-economic conditions are already poor, school exclusion only compounds their predicament. For Alex, the youngest respondent in my study, this sense of rejection was clear and he knew it was because he was black:

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I know they never wanted me in their school. They don’t like us, and that’s why they do what they do to get us out. I’ve been excluded fourteen times. One of the times it was for wearing my hat in school, that’s all. A next time, it was for fighting, it was a White boy and he told the teacher I started it and she believed him and said I was lying and so I got excluded for that. (Palmer, 2011)

Racist stereotypes and negative perceptions of black males within the criminal justice system should also count as both adverse childhood experiences and key risk factors for offending. The 1970s was a period in which there were heightened concerns amongst the police, media and some politicians about black youth criminality though arguably, this was to some extent a reflection of the hostility that was directed towards immigrant communities by the state, its institutions and some of the Whites that they came into contact with, although a significant proportion of the people who were experiencing these hostilities were British born Black males (Fryer, 1984; Gilroy, 1982; Pitts, 1988).

The Impact of Racist Law Enforcement on Young People and Gangs In her research in the 1970s and 1980s, Cain (1973) and others drew attention to prevalence of deep-seated racist attitudes amongst police officers (Gilroy, 1982; Holdaway, 1997; IRR, 1979; London Borough of Lambeth, 1981; Smith & Gray, 1983). In her research on the police, Cain (1973) found that it was common for Black people to be treated with contempt and even brutalised by the police. Their actions were rationalised by the belief that Black people were ‘different’, ‘separate’ and ‘incomprehensible’and therefore there was ‘no good reason for not being violent if the occasion arose’ (Cain, 1973). And there is little reason to doubt that this ‘othering’ was to some extent a consequence of internalised negative stereotypes about black people held by white police officers. Reports containing extensive accounts of police intimidation, harassment and brutality against Black people highlighted the

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problems that Black people experienced in relation to policing and they demonstrated that harassment and verbal abuse by the police were commonplace (IRR, 1979; London Borough of Lambeth, 1981). These reports not only provided extensive details on some of the physical attacks experienced by Black people at the hands of the police, and police harassment in the form of unlawful raids on Black households and clubs, and they also provide an insight into other forms of police malpractice such as their unwillingness to protect Black people against racist attacks, treating Black victims as perpetrators, the medical negligence of detained suspects, fabrication of evidence and the use of forced confessions. According to Fryer (1984), the content of these reports exposed the ways in which ‘criminal procedure was being used to harass [Black communities]’ and although the problem of unjust policing was a significant issue for the Black people who were often the victims of police mistreatment, ‘Hardly anybody outside the black communities was prepared to listen, let alone believe’ (Fryer, 1984). Despite the growing evidence of the unjust and often brutal way in which Black communities were treated by the police, this matter received little media and political attention and was a ‘non-issue’ for much of Britain’s White population. Instead, ‘White’ Britain and its key institutions remained pre-occupied with the issue of ‘Black youth criminality’ and drawing upon American data, key figures within government, the media, the criminal justice system and the universities came with increasing frequency to identify Black people in general and young Black men in particular, as an inherently criminal underclass (Moynihan, 1965; Murray, 1984; Wilson, 1975). For many young Black males, their first point of contact with the criminal justice system is often through stop and search and it is in these encounters that black young males experience being seen as a ‘criminal other’. As well as the fact that they are more likely to experience being stopped and searched, research by the Centre for Social Justice (2009) shows that overall, interactions between young Black people and police were particularly problematic. According to their report: Teenagers speaking to the Working Group in the London Borough of Lewisham referred to Greenwich police’s ‘rough squad’, and all eight

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of them could (allegedly) name someone who had been physically assaulted by police. All had personally had a negative experience with police, including inappropriate and ‘sly’ comments, failure to provide any documents after a stop and search and not turning up when a crime was reported. Similar observations were made by young people in Roehampton. Nearly all young people interviewed also noted the frequency of stop and searches. In Lewisham they felt that, as young Black men, police unfairly stereotyped them as gang-involved/criminal, and as such they were stopped far more often than others. (Centre for Social Justice, 2009, p. 118).

While the disproportionate rates of stop and search and institutional racism within the police is now widely recognised (Macpherson, 1999; Scarman, 1999), the impact of this on those who are on the receiving end is largely ignored and only becomes acknowledged when the ‘victim’ is a high-profile black celebrity or when the ‘racist’ incident results in a death and triggers a public protest or acts of public disorder (Scarman, 1981). Turning attention to the impacts, something that is often overlooked by those outside of the black community, is the trauma that racism in policing causes on those who experience it but also those who witness it. While this has been acknowledged and the focus of some researchers in the US, in the UK the research is far more limited. A fairly recent study in the US examining the relationship between aggressive policing and mental health found that intrusive police stops and exposure to police violence, verbal threats and racist taunts led to PTSD (Geller et al., 2014). As well as stop and search, other examples of discriminatory treatment of black populations also demonstrate the influence of racial stereotyping and over-policing, thus reinforcing the perception of black youth as a problem and somehow more criminal or dangerous. In my research, poor treatment by the police was very apparent amongst all cohorts. Recounting interactions with the police in the 1970s, Steve claimed: I also experienced police, how would I say, police erm, vindictiveness. When I was 16, I was taken off the streets by a police officer and brought into a police station and beaten up. I got beaten up by a police officer, and I had done nothing wrong. I was walking past the (local) hospital.

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They kept driving up beside me and I thought I’m going to run, I’d done nothing wrong, so I thought I’m gonna run and try and get home. As I was running, I saw my mates mum and I jumped onto her and said ‘Mummy! Mummy! There gonna take me!’ They came out of the car and told her to go about her business and they took me in the car and beat me up at the station. I went to the hospital, and they took Xrays, my dad took them to court and at the end of the day the case was found not proven guilty and my Dad was ordered to pay court costs and compensation. And we had all the pictures and everything. There was no record kept at the police station, which is illegal even though I was in the police station. They didn’t sign me in or sign me out. All through my youth I had experiences like that […]. In fact, I got to talk this out! I got a criminal record, when I was 15, for something I did not do, right, which started me off (in developing a criminal record). I got loitering with intent to commit an arrestable offence, in places unknown, with persons unknown, yeah? That was the charge, that’s called ‘SUS’ that was one of my first convictions. In fact, I could go as far as to say I’ve got 14 convictions for SUS. And that was all by the time I was 18 and I had served 2 prison sentences, all for SUS. (Palmer, 2011).

Another of the young respondent described a more recent incident where during a police drugs raid outside the shopping area on the estate, he was set upon by the police and assaulted. He was beaten badly and still had the bruises at the time he was interviewed. He also claimed that they had broken his arm. Another of his friends was also attacked in the incident and tasered five times despite being co-operative throughout. Some of the adults on the estate had confirmed their version of events, and neither of the boys had been charged. Another example from a respondent in my study, Gregory, who had never been in trouble with the police recalls an incident where while out on the estate where he lived, he saw a group of policemen running towards him and it looked as if they were coming to get him. His instant reaction was to run because he was afraid of the police. However, he fell and when the police caught up to him, he was beaten up, detained on the street for over an hour and then released without charge by the police for no reason. It is these kinds of experiences that many innocent young black males are exposed to, and these

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incidents that shape how they view and interact with the police but it also shapes how they see themselves. As Gregory attested, I look at myself now as they see me, as a criminal. They make me feel like a criminal. (Palmer & Pitts, 2006).

For some young people, it is during their adolescence that rumours and stories about police brutality within their communities become a reality. This became apparent in my own research, hence according to Marvin: A lot of people, they hear these stories about the police and when I was growing up I used to think why do I hear so much about the police and why do they hate the police so much? I was open minded, I wasn’t thinking yeah, pigs and this stuff I used to hear until they started harassing me. And I’ve seen the same officer being so polite to the everyday white person, the same one in the area and it’s the same officer who’s handcuffed us behind our back, stepped on our back and started kicking my friend in his face ... If you could be a fly on the wall and see when they get together. (Palmer & Pitts, 2006).

Furthermore, all of the young people in my research who had negative encounters with the police were very reluctant to make complaints against the police as they believed that it was a ‘waste of time’, as ‘nothing would be done’ because the police ‘are the law’. This sense of powerlessness can cause feelings of anger, frustration and hopelessness which for Steve, and others like him led him to lose respect for the law and those in authority. As Steve suggests’ in a situation where your liberties have been taken away from you and you’ve been left to live like a dog, you’ve got nothing to lose.

Foster et al. (2005) found that in some areas the animosity between the police and Black young people was so acute that officers appeared to have a genuine fear of patrolling certain areas. Often, the strategy

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adopted by the police to deal with minor incidents in neighbourhoods where large numbers of young Black lived or frequented was to send in a large group of officers. He also found that some young people were openly hostile towards the police. In terms of their interactions with young Black males, Foster suggested that some officers tended to over-react and behave more aggressively towards them and were generally more confrontational and that these police reactions were actually a response to their feelings of vulnerability. Exposure to the heavyhanded policing of communities can bring about a collective trauma, a psychological reaction to police aggression and heavy-handed tactics (McGuffey & Sharpe, 2015). Yet, Foster et al. (2005) also argues that when approached by the police in that manner, it creates a feeling amongst Black young people that they have been ‘disrespected’, causing them to respond in a way that perpetuates the hostility. These examples of how enlightenment ideas about race have permeated both black and white populations in Britain (and the US) today clearly demonstrate how the media, the education system and the criminal justice system have created a hostile environment in which black boys and young men are presented and treated as a problem which black boys and young men internalise, leading to multiple forms of trauma. And when we are trying to understand the phenomena of black boys engaging in gangs and serious youth violence, as O’Donnell and Sharpe have observed: The negative and self destructive behaviour we are currently witnessing may therefore created by ‘an internalisation of negative stereotypes which have been generated by the dominant culture. (O’Donnell & Sharpe, 2000).

As Amos Wilson (1978) has pointed out, when a people lose their identity as a consequence of slavery or colonisation, this creates a void leaving them vulnerable to the absorption of Eurocentric values and a White culture that does not accept them. Wilson argues that it is an over identification with their white counterparts, particularly in terms of the

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value of black lives, that leads them to view their own life as cheap, but also the lives of others who look like them.

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15 Black Lives Matter in Gang Research Paul Andell

Introduction Invigorated by the death of George Floyd, a black man killed by a white police officer, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement continues to highlight the current crisis in criminal and social justice. In the US, public demonstrations have been met with attempts, to deploy active duty troops under the 1807 Insurrection Act against the wishes of state and city authorities (Borger, 2020). These events and others like them have prompted questions across the globe about the role and accountability of state agencies in relation to black and working class communities. Aligned to this, further questions are raised about the kinds of knowledge that might be utilised to guide future policy and practice to improve the community safety of populations ‘at risk’ from ‘over-policing’. P. Andell (B) University of Suffolk, Ipswich, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Andell and J. Pitts (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Youth Gangs in the UK , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99658-1_15

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In the US, Alex Vitale (2017) has argued for changes in police service responsibilities which is echoed in controversial calls to ‘defund the police’. In the UK, this has prompted less strident calls to politicians that social problems are better addressed through social responses (ElliottCooper, 2020) rather than repression (Simon, 2007). Thus, Vitale (2017) questions whether the police are the most appropriate agency to deal with social problems of drugs, disadvantaged young people, homelessness, mental illness, immigration and sex work, arguably a position many police officers would agree with. The ‘anti-colonial’ calls from the Black Lives Matter movement also prompts a challenge for academics to consider how knowledge is produced and utilised particularly in gang studies (Liyanage, 2020) and for subsequent approaches to be informed by an acknowledgement of the ideological origins of racism (Chakravartty & Zhao, 2008; Freedman, 2008). This chapter raises questions regarding the role and focus of gang research in order to advance ideas to underpin socially just policy responses, it argues that emergent ‘Critical Realist’ and ‘Southern’ criminologies can greatly assist this endeavour (Andell, 2019a).

Surveillance and Opaque Legal Redress When our legal rights are thought to be infringed upon, we rely on complaints procedures sometimes presided over by ‘independent’ government regulators. In the UK, regulators are often non-departmental public bodies which report directly to the Parliament. Privacy rights are part of a legal tradition which intends to deter government overreach into our lives (Sundquist, 2013). Recently in the US and UK, there have been attempts, via the courts, to ensure that the right to privacy is upheld. This legal freedom is enshrined in the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution and Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR). For now, in a post Brixit UK the government remains committed to adhering to international human rights treaties and conventions, including the ECHR. With regard to privacy and gang intervention policy in the UK, the Gang Violence

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Matrix (GVM), which arguably inaccurately produces lists of people believed by the police to be gang members, has become a major bone of contention which has led to the following broad finding by the regulator, the UK Information Commissioners Office: Anyone in the UK has the legal right to find out what information is held about them by organisations and ask for a copy free of charge within one calendar month. This is known as a subject access request (SAR)…There is no requirement for a request to be in writing…Although police forces must consider every request, you may limit the amount of information provided if, for example, it would prejudice an investigation or legal inquiry. (Suzanne Gordon, Director of Data Protection Complaints and compliance at the ICO, 25 June 2019)

Race on The Agenda, EQUAL and the Runnymede Trust alongside other black led organisations have mounted campaigns to either abolish the GVM, or challenge its ethnic disproportionality, because the overwhelming majority of individuals on the GVM are young black males. These issues are frequently raised at the Mayors Office for Policing And Crimes’ (MOPAC) Reference Group, chaired by the Deputy Mayor for Policing and attended by the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS). Campaigners emphasise that young people should be aware of what the GVM is, what steps are needed to obtain their data from the MPS and the processes necessary for the deletion of personal information from the Matrix. Moreover, young people also have a right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) if these requests are responded to unfairly. However, campaign groups claim that processes are opaque since freedom of information (FOI) requests to both the MPS and the ICO for data regarding complaints received have been met with a negative response on the grounds that these requests would incur excessive costs. The Metropolitan Police are reported to have argued that there is no published list of names; hence, no requests for the removal of names have been logged (personal communication with a campaigner). It is thought by some groups that this may be because the name of the

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Matrix data base has simply been changed. Others believe that practices which infringe on rights has been deemed legitimate because lists of names are incorrectly associated with data on drugs, violence, weapons, etc. and kept in a ‘Concern Hub’. Thus, once information enters the MPS system it is treated as de facto ‘intelligence’ even if not initially stored as part of the Matrix. And intelligence cannot be disclosed and is therefore exempt from the usual data legislative controls because it is said to serve a ‘policing purpose’ (section 44 4 (a) (b) (e) of the data protection Act 2018). The perceptions of campaigners prompt questions of public confidence regarding the clarity and utility of top down complaints procedures and legal redress regarding individual rights when it comes to the policing of gangs. In the absence of policy clarity or in situations of a mismatch of opinions about effectiveness academic oversight, in the form of evaluation, is sometimes deployed to provide lucidity. It is to some current examples of this type of oversight that we now turn.

The Limitations and Challenges from Academic Oversight Academia has attempted to redress breaches of privacy through evaluative oversight but it is suggested that such evaluation can be difficult due to corporate, secrecy (Friedman, 2016). Guerin et al. (2018) argue that accountability is at the heart of democratic control because it increases the trustworthiness and legitimacy of the state in the eyes of the public. Bradford (2020) argue that technologies of control are acceptable to the public if they believe that the police will behave in their best interests. However, not all academics take this position. Hempel and Töpfer (2009) argue that the justification in deployment of surveillance technology is often taken for granted which acts as a kind of ‘surveillance consensus’ thus, the deployment of surveillance technology becomes normalised. In the UK, the police use of contraversial tactics such as S60 stop and searches can exemplify a ‘surveillance consensus’. Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 (S60) gives police the right to

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search people in a defined area during a specific time period when they believe that serious violence may take place. This power arguably amplifies an already inherent biased focus of policing towards minoritised communities in the operationalisation of stop and search. According to UK Government, between April 2019 and March 2020, there were 563,837 stop and searches in England and Wales (excluding vehicle searches). This means that there were approximately 11 stop and searches for every 1000 people. However, while there were 6 stop and searches for every 1000 white people, there were 54 for every 1000 black people. Despite this disproportionality, the police have little or no evidence to suggest stop and search actually works in reducing crime (Bradford & Tiratelli, 2019). Moreover, when evidence of this kind is presented it is often ignored by policy makers. For example, the UK Home Office evaluation of Blunt 2, a Metropolitan Police initiative aimed at reducing knife crime (McCandless et al., 2016), reported that when stop and search interventions were significantly increased, utilising s60 powers, to the equivalent of a nationwide average for stop and search of 1 undertaken every 20 seconds, there was no appreciable increase in arrest rates. However, despite this evidence the former Home Secretary Priti Patel proposed plans to permanently relax conditions under which section 60 stop and search powers could be used. Recently in 2022, pilot areas for a less controlled use of S60 have been evaluated and extended by the Home Office which was found in favour of the perceived operational benefits for the use of the power, despite objections from campaign and community groups. Nevertheless, academic insight should and can raise important human rights issues, such is the case with evaluation of Live Facial Recognition.

Surveillance and the Racialised Lens In the UK, an independent evaluation of trials of Live Facial Recognition technology (LFR) by the Metropolitan Police (Fussey & Murray, 2019) raised human rights concerns about ethnic disproportionality. The research suggested that police deployment of the technology may in fact be unlawful, due to a lack of explicit legal authorisation

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in domestic law. The evaluation also highlighted operational failures including inconsistencies in verifying the matches made by the technology and presumptions regarding when and how to intervene. The ethics group concerned with the trial (Facial Recognition Working Group, 2019) further suggested that the technology prompted concerns regarding potential racial and gender bias within LFR systems and its potential for biased outputs and biased decision-making on the part of system operators. Specifically, the report argued that particular types of faces (e.g. Black, Asian and Ethnic Minority faces or female faces) are under-represented in LFR training datasets, which feed this bias in the technology’s human operators. These issues come into sharp relief when emergent interventions to address serious violence are considered. In the UK the introduction of new civil orders, Serious Violence Reduction Orders (SVROs), to facilitate easier stop and search for known weapon carriers may inadvertently increase technological surveillance, particularly in relatively deprived areas where populations tend to be more mixed. The orders allow for multiple stops and searches of individuals, who are deemed by the courts to be persistent knife carriers and therefore given the policy record on S60 outlined above, it is reasonable to assume that if knife crime continues to increase and if a number of SVRO’s are granted by the courts in specific areas, it is likely that technologies of control will be further rolled out to police the orders. Without considered evaluation such strategic developments could further jeopardise the rights to privacy of relatively deprived communities (cf Bridges v. South Wales Police, 2020). In the US, Browne (2015) utilises a cultural and historic iteration of the racialised lens to argue that the tactics used to place black subjects under surveillance represents the continuing domination of subaltern communities through new forms of surveillance. Browne also discusses how facial recognition technologies produce higher fail rates for darker-skinned users. This she suggests prompts us to think critically about our biometric present with regard to a biometric past. It appears that mass surveillance gazes upon us all, but not equally so disproportionate attention is paid to communities that are disadvantaged by their poverty, race, religion, ethnicity and immigration status (cf Emple & Sprague, 2013, 2017). Hallsworth and Stephenson (2011)

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describe controls of specific populations in what has been termed ‘interzones’ or third spaces; places where the law is vague and legal norms are blurred. Thus, the deployment of technologies of control, in neighbourhoods without full legal consideration or consensus can be viewed as ‘zones of exemption’, where, for particular groups, the normal rules are suspended and the right to privacy and due process are in abeyance. Surveillance and the gang have been the subject of a long standing debate in criminological research which has also culminated in legal challenges (Amnesty International, 2018). The use of broad brush interventions prompts further consideration of the types of knowledge underpinning these types of policy and practices.

Gang Surveillance and Risk In the UK, risk tools are utilised by enforcement agencies for compiling lists of gang nominals. Nominals are assigned a risk categorization based on intelligence relating to their potential harms and as such can be seen as a version of the Risk Factor Prevention Paradigm (Farrington, 2000). Nominals are given weighted scores which generate a total ‘harm’ score which then determine their harm banding and the type and level of intervention they receive (MOPAC, 2018). Concerns have been raised as to the accuracy and outcomes of these risk tools (cf Amnesty, 2018; Andell, 2019a, 2019b, 2019c, 2019d; Williams, 2018). In the US, similar concerns have also been raised (cf Chesney-Lind et al., 1994; McCorkle & Miethe, 1998; Spergel, 1995) including disquiet regarding the non-removal of data (Esbensen et al., 2001; Klein, 2009) which can result in punitive criminal justice interventions. As discussed above, in the UK the ICO has served notice against the Metropolitan Police Service after an investigation found multiple and serious breaches of data protection law regarding the Gangs Matrix which relates to the static storage of information about individuals which is seldom updated or removed as time and circumstances change (MOPAC, 2018). The knowledge production processes in which young people’s actions are reduced to risk calculations have long been contested and often critiqued (Bateman & Pitts, 2005; Goldson & Muncie, 2006) for

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imposing discipline ‘from above’. The Risk Factor Prevention Paradigm is said to have become the globalised knowledge base of both how we understand and how we prevent crime (Goddard, 2014). However, the Risk Factor Prevention Paradigm’s purported methodological strength of ‘avoiding difficult theoretical questions regarding the direction of causality’ (Farrington, 2000, p. 7) paradoxically can lead to misinterpretations which marginalise, exclude and criminalise, social groups deemed to be’at risk’ (Garland, 2002; Gray, 2009; Kelly, 2001, 2012; Riele, 2006).

Problems with Positivist Paradigms Knowledge production by the Eurogang Research Group in their search for a universal comparative typology of gangs has been criticised as a top down over-generalisation (Fraser & Hagedorn, 2016; Hallsworth, 2013; Medina et al., 2013). Eurogang’s research tends to utilise qualitative methods at a city level but quantitative statistical methods for international comparison. Such positivist approaches to gang studies are what Roger Matthews has termed a ‘naive realism’ (Andell, 2019a, 2019b, 2019c, 2019d; Matthews, 2013) because the behaviours which these studies observe are not fully explained and the social context and the cultural meaning ascribed to the behaviours of the participants are lost. This decontextualised approach foregrounds a static view of gang membership that ignores local meanings, historical differences and the cultural contexts of gangs. Fraser and Hagedorn (2016) argue that these types of approaches are blind to fluidity in gang identification, and exclude the capacity of gangs to develop into either pro-social organisations, or more organised criminal networks. Overly positivistic methods construct inaccurate similarities between differing cultural contexts which can lead to sweeping, generalised, policy interventions. Flowing from this type of analysis, policy transfer of ideas about gangs from the US has sometimes led to short-term repressive interventions rather than addressing root causes of gang formation and membership. For example, enforcement led ‘gang call-ins’ (Kennedy, 1997) which are reliant upon statistical risk matrices often fail to address community

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disadvantage, and can result in racial profiling (Centre for Crime and Justice, 2015). A significant problem with this type of approach appears to be an over-estimate of what constitutes a gang problem and misapprehensions about the characteristics of ‘gang members’ (Andell, 2019a, 2019b, 2019c, 2019d).

Constructivism and Partial Analysis It is often argued that the lens of gang policy and research is firmly focussed towards brown and black bodies. Rob Berkeley suggests that ‘it is clear that the public debates around gangs and youth violence are viewed and projected through the lens of race and ethnicity’. Joseph and Gunter (2011) assert that it is the stigmatising effects of labelling on black and ethnic minority young people that misinterpret everyday, mundane youth activities as deviant or anti-social; who are then more likely to be subject to punitive control. According to this, outlook the processes of ‘deviancy amplification’ in the ‘gang’s industry’ alongside the moral panics in the media transform ‘road culture’ or ‘black street culture’ into gang culture. From this perspective it is the administration of crime which produces and confers the ‘master status’ of gang membership upon black and ethnic minority young people. Clearly, deviancy amplification does occur and the responses based upon it may generate a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’, but this can only offer partial explanations of the aetiology of youth gangs and gang crime. Moreover, if the existence of gangs and gang crime is reduced to mistakes made by the media, state agencies and academic ‘gang talkers’ there is a danger that we ignore widely reported structural factors such as poor housing, low income, lack of legitimate opportunity and widespread racial and class discrimination. These factors provide the deeper causal tendencies for the formation of youth gangs. If these causal tendencies are ignored the policy world is more likely to focus on individualised psychological factors, rather than the historic, geographical and economic dispositions of socially situated actors and the progenitors of gangs then remain intact. What is needed is a public criminology to

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excavate the deeper mechanisms that connects to the structural roots of presenting gang phenomena so that they may be addressed.

Redirecting Local Gangs Policy Flows with Critical Realism in Action Matthews (2013) reminds us that recent developments in social control have incorporated a range of spatial strategies, which involve a blurring of state and civil distinctions. He argues for a politically informed criminology to provide a conceptual backdrop against which the policies of crime and disorder are developed. Kingdon (1999) describes policy making as a fluid and interconnected journey, which can be understood by a systemic analysis. Hancock (2009) has drawn our attention to the local state and its importance in regulating crime and anti-social behaviour. It is this local governance that has the potential to provide a ‘bottom up’ push back against ‘top down’ ineffective policy transfer. Stenson’s (2005) work has significantly contributed to this conceptual model as he argues for increased local governance of crime to bring about a less top down instrumental approach to facilitate local policy development. During past times of ineffective central policy gang denial and gang blame local action research projects have been utilised to address the harmful consequences of the actions of, and reactions to, gangs. These projects have gone some way to inform localised interventions to counter negative impacts on communities (Andell & Pitts, 2013, 2017). These research activities consist of cyclical interventions, initially based on existing evidence, which provide real-time assessments of current issues to assist with the building of social capital in communities. This can be thought of as a post-positivist realism as it utilises a priori knowledge in which racism and discrimination is acknowledged. Go (2016) suggests that such initial standpoints are not essences with clear pathways to better knowledge but structural entry points for developing ‘situated knowledge’ which is dependent on ‘partial but objective truths’ about the social world.

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In this model (Pawson & Tilley, 1997), our partial knowledge about gangs is acknowledged and then developed through techniques of coproduction. This process involves researchers working alongside ‘teams’ of ‘activists’ to engage in cycles of planning, action and fact-finding to enable ‘activists’ to identify the key causal mechanisms that sustain gang-related problems to be addressed and, by identifying and analysing these mechanisms, and the contextual variables which shape their impact, it becomes possible to devise alternative mechanisms designed to disable or circumvent the circumstances responsible for the original problem/s. Although there are no claims for total success as the process is long term and iterative, to date evidence suggests closer working relationships and improved outcomes for young people have occurred in reducing some gang-related harms (Breilmann, 2020).

Conclusions from the Local to the Global Fraser and Hagedorn (2016) provide a framework of analysis for transnational research work in opposition to more orthodox comparative approaches. To avoid universalism, or mere descriptions in differing cultural contexts, they rely on ideas of social homologies which develop in differing directions which are then reflected upon transnationally to draw out similarities and differences. They draw upon Brotherton’s work (2015) to suggest that patterns of ‘global’ research tend to emanate almost exclusively from the United States and Europe, and contain inherent echoes of colonial power. To avoid these pitfalls, they utilise mid-theories which transcend theoretical conflicts between the general and particular, between generalising sociological theory and historicism (Merton, 1949). In returning to the original challenge of decolonisation many proponents of decolonisation do not wish to abolish the criminological canon; they want to critique its assumptions and develop a vision to include a wider and deeper range of perspectives. This chapter has provided a critique of some of the recent and recurring issues in gangs research and policy development and has questioned the utility of some top down reforms. The chapter has assessed ideas and practices from the

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Risk Paradigm and critiqued the dualism of positivism and classicism when applied to gang related problems. The chapter asserts that ideas of Southern Criminology and Critical Realism are useful vehicles to identify problems in order to develop a deeper appraisal of the causal tendencies of gangs so that local strategies can be coproduced to address them. Further exploration of the possibilities of comparative transnational localised action research projects, which avoids the dominance of Eurocentric criminology, is a future challenge for gang studies (Fraser & Hagedorn, 2016).

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16 ‘The Boys’, Their Identities and Dynamics Mohammed Qasim

Introduction This chapter investigates the identity, substructures and dynamics of the young men known as The Boys. The Boys were a group of young British-born Pakistani Muslim men aged between 25 and 33 who lived in Bradford, England, and who were involved in a range of offences, ranging from drug dealing, violence, robbery and gun crime. It is important to point out that whilst The Boys did not consider themselves to be part of a ‘gang’ rather a social group of friends, many however would disagree and would argue that The Boys were in actual fact a ‘gang’ given Originally published in Mohammed Qasim, Young, Muslim and Criminal: Experiences, Identities and Pathways into Crime. Re-published with permission of Policy Press (an imprint of Bristol University Press, UK)

M. Qasim (B) University of Bradford, Bradford, UK e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Andell and J. Pitts (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Youth Gangs in the UK , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99658-1_16

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that they were a group of individuals who created an atmosphere of fear and intimidation and were involved in organised crime. Amongst The Boys, there was a core group (made up of nine individuals) and a more fluid, marginal, group (made up of five individuals) whose social lives overlapped with The Boys, but who at other times conducted their social lives independently. In addition, there was a third group which consisted of five younger males aged 18 to 20 who were variously referred to by The Boys as ‘The Kids’ or ‘the younger ones’. This group were in many ways replicating the lives of The Boys, and we discuss their relationship with The Boys further on in this chapter. The Boys were a well-known group of friends, recognised locally by other young people, elders and even the local shopkeepers. This was to become apparent early on in the study when I accompanied some of The Boys on a walk through the neighbourhood to their local phone shop. On the way, they stopped several times, greeting a group of elders stood near the mosque with the Muslim greeting ‘Aslaam Alaikum’ (peace be with you), later acknowledging youths on the other side of the road by simply nodding their heads before stopping to talk with several young men whom they knew. One reason why The Boys had this level of familiarity in the neighbourhood was because the local Pakistani population formed a close-knit community. This would see some of the Pakistani elders occasionally referring to The Boys by their father’s name, Son of Wahid or Son of Khan, for example. Some of The Boys’ families were also remarkably close in their friendships, as was the case with Nav and Salman, who would walk into each other’s houses as though they were their own. When one day I asked whether they were related, Nav replied: Nah [no], we’re not cousins or owt, it’s just that my family and Salman’s family have known each other for ages. When we were small, he [Salman] used to always come to our house with his mum and that, and ever since then we’ve been like family.

One of the strongest characteristics of the neighbourhood’s Pakistani community was that, for a variety of reasons, there was a strong sense of mutual support, both psychologically and practically. Whilst this was

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clearly an obvious response for first generation migrants in an alien and largely hostile land, this characteristic seems to have continued down through the generations.

Membership of the Social Circle of The Boys As I mentioned above, The Boys comprised a core group and a marginal group. The most significant difference between them was that the core group would hang out together more often than the marginal group. In addition, the marginal group was far less likely to be involved in delinquent behaviours than the core group. As Burke (2008) suggests, a small group of offenders continue to offend well into their adult life whilst most others desist. Nevertheless, between The Boys themselves, any distinctions made no practical difference to the way they saw each other: if you were one of The Boys, then you were one of The Boys, no matter how often or how rarely you hung out. Membership of their social group appeared to be quite straightforward. In order to be considered as one of them, you had to have known each other for some time, have hung around together and have even demonstrated solidarity to each other.

Solidarity Amongst The Boys It was clear that loyalty and solidarity were significant aspects of their friendship, and there is considerable research that suggests that solidarity is the delinquent group’s primary characteristic (Chu et al., 2012). It was normal for The Boys to share stories depicting their solidaristic support whilst hanging out together. These stories were often told to remind others that they had stuck by them and that they expected the same if and when such an occasion arose. At other times, they were told to show appreciation or even to have something to talk about when they would socialise together. One evening as we were sat in Jameel’s car, The Boys were having ‘a smoke’ (smoking cannabis), Shaf, who was drinking alcohol, started telling the others how he ‘had a lot of love’ for Jameel.

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He then reminisced about a time when he had been attacked by a group of boys from a nearby neighbourhood and how Jameel had helped him: Shaf : If it wasn’t for Jameel, I would have been knocked the fuck out. He came out of nowhere and just laced into one of them, he gave him a right blow across the face, knocking him to the floor. There was a particular and outstanding solidarity between The Boys which transcended blood kinship. Where such a close bond existed, The Boys would refer to each other as ‘bhai’ (brother). They would even talk of each other’s parents as if they were their own, reinforcing their alliance to one another. The Boys replicated their solidarity in ways similar to the parental generation who formed their own tight knit communities. Previous studies with young offenders have noted how their shared identity can often provide them with an advantage in terms of establishing trust and solidarity (Grund & Densley, 2012). In the same way, shared identity, shared ethnicity and religious identification created a powerful sense of solidarity amongst The Boys. Ahmed and Salman were two of The Boys who appeared to be particularly close. They had been friends since primary school and would, over the course of the study, demonstrate considerable solidarity to one another. Salman, unlike most of the other boys, spent a lot of time working out in the gym and was forever trying to convince some of the others to go to the gym with him, but this usually fell on deaf ears. Although the other boys would occasionally work out, they appeared less keen on wanting to spend their time in this way. But Salman loved the gym and was especially conscious of his food intake, in particular the need to consume food which was high in protein. Having said that there were times when he would abandon his usually strict diet in order to show solidarity with The Boys by sharing food with them, but this then made him the butt of their mockery—for example, Ali telling Salman. I thought you were on a diet blud [bro], you’re back on them chips you twat.

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Ali was someone who The Boys referred to as a ‘joker’, as he was almost constantly playing pranks on the others, with his target a lot of the time being Shaf. Personality-wise, however, Ali was a very complex individual because even though he would fool around from time to time, there were many times when he would be surprisingly reflective. Psychologically, this is not an unusual personality construct. Often profoundly sensitive and reflective men will conceal their sensibility behind a humorous exterior—the so-called tears of the clown, whereby the joker of the pack is also the most sensitive. The most outstanding quality of Ali was his sense of decency, honour and solidarity with The Boys, which was not apparent to those who did not know him well but permeated his every thought. He had a strong code by which he lived and with which he treated others, even when joking around with them. This would often be demonstrated when hanging out with The Boys. What can be seen here is that amongst The Boys there was great diversity of character and personality; but notwithstanding that, there was a strong sense of cohesion that over-rode personality differences. Meanwhile another feature which stood out in the lives of The Boys was their attitude to women and relationships with women, and we discuss this in more detail below.

Not Taking Relationships with Women Seriously The Boys approach to relationships with women was that one should avoid getting into a ‘proper’ relationship but instead have ‘a bit on the side’. There were a number of reasons why they chose not to take these relationships seriously. There was, for some, a realisation that being in a relationship had the potential to change their behaviour. Another reason for not taking their relationships seriously was because The Boys generally viewed the girls who they knew or with whom they hung out as ‘slappers’ and ‘slags’. Many a time, they would speak negatively of these girls and say they felt that most of these women had been ‘with half of the men in Bradford’. There was an astonishing obliviousness to the double standards at work here, since The Boys would take up with

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girls, enjoy their company and yet be sexist towards them. The idea of it taking ‘two to tango’ with both being on an equal moral footing was not a perception that The Boys understood. There was considerable peer pressure between them to behave flippantly with the women with whom they associated and to see them as sexual objects rather than as equals. However, despite the attitude that most of The Boys demonstrated towards women, Ahmed was in some ways different to the other boys. He had feelings for his girlfriend, although this was never something that he would openly admit to any of the others. But there were occasions when he would make excuses that he had other things to do or would even disappear without telling any of The Boys where he was going. One evening, as we were walking through the park, Ahmed received a phone call. He answered it and stopped walking with us. The rest of us continued walking, as we were under the impression that Ahmed would catch up with us upon finishing his call. To The Boys’ disbelief, they realised that he was nowhere to be seen. They knew why Ahmed had left sheepishly: he had gone to meet his girlfriend. Salman furiously said to Kamran: He’s gone to see that fat bitch again, he’s never gonna get his head out of her arse. Man’s fucking blind.

As we continued walking Salman mentioned how, in his view, Ahmed would never learn, and he even questioned whether his girlfriend was being faithful to him: He’s never changing; he’s always been like it, he just gets shafted [used] by them and they just take him for a right ride. Bet you anything she’s fucking someone behind his back.

The Boys clearly did not like Ahmed, or any of the others, leaving them to see a girl. In their eyes, it was wrong to openly admit that any of them preferred to spend time with their girlfriends rather than hang out with The Boys.

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Ahmed was a particularly interesting character. Unusually for The Boys, he was exceptionally romantic and caring, and formed deep attachments to women. At the same time, he made disastrous choices in the women to whom he gave his love and loyalty. Thus, on the one hand he experienced disapprobation from The Boys, who thought he should ‘fuck em and leave em’; that women were commodities to be used unemotionally, used for the physical pleasure that could be derived. On the other hand, he repeatedly chose unsuitable women, so time after time had his heart broken when he discovered that they were, in fact, using him for his generosity and supportiveness whilst going behind his back to have liaisons with other men. Ahmed stood out in particular for his supportiveness towards the children these women had already had from previous relationships. He had the gift of treating them as if they were his own. It was painful to see him caught in this way and becoming more hurt as time went by and he repeated the same errors of judgement. He slowly came to believe that it was women in general who were at fault and not to be trusted, rather than acknowledging that it was his own choice of specific women that needed to be adjusted.

The Prevalence of Anger Amongst The Boys A further feature that characterised The Boys behaviours was anger. Previous research with young male offenders has shown how they have higher levels of anger compared to non-offenders (Sukhodolsky & Ruchkin, 2004) and this tendency was certainly evident amongst The Boys. A low level of emotional intelligence was a characteristic of many of The Boys, and they were quick to resort to violence as their way of resolving disputes. They were unable to see that violence almost always exacerbated the original problem. Although Shaf was a relatively quiet person who generally only spoke when spoken to, he would, in the words of The Boys, ‘get brave when drunk’. Shaf clearly had a problem with his temper. He would often deliberately stare at people in an aggressive and threatening manner, and there were countless times during the study when he would get drunk and start behaving aggressively, shouting and swearing uncontrollably. It was common for some of the other boys to

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deliberately ‘wind him up’, finding it amusing to then see Shaf ‘go off on one’ (get angry). In the same way, it did not take much to see Kamran lose his temper, and in doing so he often turned to violence. There were even times when some of the other boys were very wary of him and careful not to say anything that could upset him for fear of him losing his temper. Kamran was a blunt type of character: he was known to be direct, and to say exactly what was on his mind. In one instance early on in the study, he found himself in a heated argument with someone from the neighbourhood. The argument had escalated after Kamran had told the other person, rather openly, that he thought that he was a ‘prick’ (idiot) and that he did not like him. Several weeks before the study, after an argument with his girlfriend, Kamran smashed her house up. On another occasion, he was involved in an incident with a few of the local lads. The incident had started when a group of boys had parked their car outside his house, and this had annoyed him to such an extent that he decided to follow them in his car, resulting in a confrontation. Later that evening, whilst hanging out with some of the others at Bash’s flat, Kamran received a phone call from his father telling him that his car windows had been smashed. This infuriated him even more, as he was convinced that it was the same boys with whom he had been involved in a fight earlier: They don’t know who I am, I’m gonna deal with ‘em, fuck that, no one gets away with smashing my windows. I know it’s them fucking little shits, they ain’t got the bottle to come see me, they know I’ll fuck them up.

Kamran now wanted revenge, and there was a risk that this feud could go on until someone was badly hurt. Jameel was another one of The Boys who appeared to have anger problems. He had a solidly built physique and an intimidating appearance, but most of the time he was a pleasant individual. Having said that, he did like to portray himself as a ‘bad boy’, even down to the way in which he drove his car. A few months before the start of the fieldwork Jameel was in a fight with someone due a roadrage incident. On another occasion, this time during the study, as we

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were one afternoon stood by his car, Jameel saw someone drive past, he hastily jumped in his car and appeared to follow him. We watched on and after a short whilst he drove back to where we were still standing, got out of the car and in an aggressive way told us that he was going to get him one day: I’m gonna fuck that bastard up; he ain’t got any tatte [bottle] to come fight me, has he? Is he gonna hide for the rest of his life from me?

I later found out that the reason why Jameel wanted to hurt this particular individual was because, after having fought with him previously, he had smashed Jameel’s house windows. Jameel was not the type of person to let things go and was annoyed that this individual did not have the ‘bottle’ to fight him and was running scared. In his attempt to try and calm Jameel down, Ali said: Bro, forget him, he’s regretting it man, I bet you he is. Did you see his face? He looked fucking scared or what. If I was you I’d just let it go now bro, get him to pay for the windows and fuck it.

However, Ali’s response notwithstanding these examples indicates the extent to which The Boys would go to if they were angered by the actions of others. There was pressure on them to not lose face amongst their peers and others and for this reason they would perpetuate feuds and would try and win at all costs. This was especially true where reputation and material goods were at stake. Bash was another one of The Boys who appeared to have temper issues. He would lose his temper often, but this generally appeared to be with those who he was able to intimidate. He had a tendency to pick his fights, so to speak, aware that to pick a fight with someone stronger than him may mean risk of defeat. In short, Bash’s life experiences had turned him into a bully. Bash was also referred to by some of The Boys as ‘old school’, and he was a few years older than the other boys and was considered to be someone who had ‘been there and done it’. According to Bash, there was nothing that he had not done, which was clear from listening to his many (and often over-exaggerated) stories. Although Bash

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was older than the other boys, he looked younger than most of them and had a tendency to behave childishly. Bash, like so many of The Boys, enjoyed banter, which sometimes could be childlike.

Banter Amongst The Boys The Boys would frequently enjoy banter; in fact, it was almost expected whenever they got together. They would try and outdo one another in their mockery, and comments were at times offensive, but this was typical behaviour amongst a group of young men who knew each other exceptionally well. It is well documented that banter amongst men is extremely common: as Lampert and Ervin-Tripp (2006, p. 52) point out, ‘men are said to be more likely to tell jokes, especially jokes with sexual and aggressive themes’. The fact the banter was often aggressive and offensive was linked to the sense of machismo The Boys had. The idea that anyone would show sensitivity would be interpreted as a failure of masculinity and make the individual a target for being picked on. Therefore, there was an invisible boundary: banter could not be too aggressive as it would spill over into confrontation; nor could it be too gentle as it would spill over into a failure of masculinity. All of The Boys would banter in the hope of outscoring each other with offensive comments and in doing so try to make the others who were listening laugh. Afzal was one of The Boys who would be on the receiving end of considerable banter from the others. There were even times when banter would lead to The Boys doing silly pranks. There was one particular occasion during the study when Ahmed, Jameel and Salman were bantering with Afzal, telling him somewhat aggressively how lazy he was. They then decided to teach Afzal a lesson and physically picked him up and forced him into the boot of Ahmed’s car. They then drove around with him in the boot until Afzal pleaded to be let free. The Boys found it hilarious, particularly when Ahmed drove the car at speed around sharp corners and suddenly slammed on the brakes so that Afzal felt the force of the car braking. Afzal was one of the boys who appeared to have mental health problems.

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Underlying Mental Health Issues A number of The Boys demonstrated personality traits which seemed to be indicative of underlying mental health issues which may explain some of their behaviours. Previous research suggests that young offenders are three times more likely to have a mental health problem when compared with the general population (Harrington & Bailey, 2005). Research also suggests that ethnic minority offenders have higher rates of post-traumatic stress (Harrington & Bailey, 2005). Afzal was not someone you would have naturally placed with The Boys, and he spent most of the day sleeping and was considered by The Boys to be a ‘lazy shit’. Afzal also suffered from mood fluctuations: there were occasions when he appeared outgoing and upbeat, but other occasions when he could be down and depressed. This would suggest a psychiatric condition, it seemed as he had severe depression or even bipolar but it had not been explored by him nor suggested by the others as worthy of investigation. It is fair to say that acknowledgement of mental health in the British Pakistani community is stigmatised. Previous research has found that there is fear, shame and secrecy surrounding mental health issues amongst the Pakistani community in the UK. As a result of such stigma, those with mental health problems would often be tolerated rather than encouraged to seek appropriate medical help. The Boys would sometimes talk about people they knew and had grown up with who were in ‘The Mount’ (Lynfield Mount, a mental health hospital in Bradford). It seemed that for this reason, The Boys did all they could to ensure that Afzal was encouraged to spend time with them. They felt that the more time he spent on his own had a negative impact on him and his mental state. As a result, The Boys were not prepared to take no for an answer from Afzal. There were times when they would resort to going into his house and physically dragging him out of his bed. The Boys were friendly with his parents, and Afzal’s father would sometimes encourage them to wake Afzal up and get him to go out. Nav was someone you could call an adrenalin junkie. He was always involved in what The Boys referred to as ‘crazy shit’. Having been banned from driving, he continued to drive and was careless about getting caught by the police. He had been arrested for dangerous driving on countless

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occasions and had been in prison so often that he could not remember the exact number of times. In some ways, Nav was more childlike than the others. Frequently, he would be seen driving his car through the streets like a maniac, going as close as possible to other cars. There was a side to Nav which in some ways set him apart from the other boys. He was a lot more emotional than them, and The Boys thought he had not been the same since his father’s death several years earlier. There were times when he would become emotional, particularly when talking about his father.

The Boys on the Fringe The marginal group consisted of five individuals who had grown up with The Boys and who had, over the years, spent time hanging out with them but had gradually drifted away and ceased associating on a regular basis. It was apparent that, for some of the marginal boys, their lives went in a slightly different direction to the core group. The turning point for some came at school-leaving age, as was the case for Bilal. He was someone who stopped hanging out with The Boys as often as he used to when he reached the age of sixteen. His father became fearful that he could end up in prison and consequently enticed him to work for the family business. Bilal remembers getting arrested in town for shoplifting when he had told his parents he was at college. On the way back home after attending the police interview, Bilal recalls his dad telling him, ‘There’s no more college for you. You’re working every day from now on with me. You can say goodbye to education’. Since then, Bilal had worked in the family business and now helped his father manage it. Even though he spent most of his time at the business, Bilal would still find some time to hang out with The Boys. Others from the marginal group got married in arranged marriages and soon after started their own families. Umar was someone who, according to the others, was ‘under the thumb’. The Boys would often mock him by claiming that he was only allowed to hang out with them when his wife was away at her parents’ house. Umar had got married when he was eighteen and spent most of his time with his family.

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Mehmood and Tanny were also married. Both of these boys had been involved in offending, but had eventually moved away from hanging out with The Boys all the time, resulting in desistence from offending. At the age of eighteen, Mehmood’s parents had arranged for him to marry a girl from Pakistan. Being in a stable relationship, living with his wife and children, limited the time that he spent with The Boys. This supports the argument made by Sampson and Laub (1995) that marriage or being in a relationship can allow the offender to step back from his peer group, having the potential to stop him from further offending. In some cases, age and maturity can explain the marginal boys’ desire to lessen involvement in certain activities which could cause trouble. For others, it appeared to be the acquisition of responsibilities such as jobs and families which promoted desistence. A further explanation may have been reflection on the problems being experienced by friends who persisted in such activities. All encounters with the courts left a longlasting shadow over the lives of The Boys, getting arrested, going to court, spending time in prison and some realised that the fewer problems with the police the better their chance of achieving a normal and straight life. Given that the marginal boys were well respected and trusted, this enabled them to move in and out of the circle as they pleased. The general view amongst The Boys was that once you were one of them you remained so unless, of course, you did something that went against their principles. Whilst, for the most part, the marginal boys had desisted from offending, there were times when some of them would behave just like the core group. This highlights Farrington’s (1997) argument that there is always a risk that those who have desisted will go on to re-offend.

The Kids—A Younger Group of Boys Coming on the Streets The Kids lived in the same neighbourhood as The Boys. Wahid was Afzal’s nephew, and a few of the others were distantly related to Salman and Tanny. Whilst the social group of The Kids was extensive, those who

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The Boys were friendlier with were Zahir, Majid, Wahid, Yass and Ilyas. These boys were unemployed and spent a lot of their time socialising on the streets. It is important to point out that The Boys association with The Kids was limited however because they did not like to be seen hanging around with them. The reason for this was because they viewed the streets as the place for The Kids and no longer a place for them. As The Boys perceived it, standing on the street corners at their age (in their mid to late twenties) was embarrassing; as they felt that it would give others the impression that they were ‘down and out’, had no money and nothing better to do. The Boys, however, were in many ways role models for The Kids. The Kids aspired to be like them, and for this reason, they would imitate many of the things that The Boys did. For example, driving around the neighbourhood one afternoon with Ali, we saw Yass. Yass was one of the younger boys who frequently hung around the streets. Ali stopped his car and asked Yass ‘How’s Wahid doing?’ (As Wahid, Yass’s friend, had recently been sentenced and was in prison). Yass: I spoke to him the other day, he says he’s doing alright and that, he’s up north [referring to the prison he was in]. He’s a dopey shit though, used to think he’s clever but he weren’t clever. People who are clever don’t get caught. Look at me, I’ve never been down [in prison] and I been doing ‘KoKa’ [selling Cocaine] for a while now. Yass was clearly trying to impress Ali, as was often the case with The Kids. Too often, they would try and impress The Boys by showing them that they were not scared and were on the ball when it came to making money. The Kids aspired to be like The Boys and wanted to please them and earn their respect and The Boys, it appeared, loved the admiration that they received from The Kids. However, this also had a curious effect on The Boys as it made them very conscious of their age and the sense that they were being edged off the street and were no longer the dominant group. There was one occasion when an argument broke out between one of The Boys and one of The Kids. This started from some messing around in which Nav took Wahid’s phone and then refused to

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give it back to him. Wahid was annoyed that Nav would not give him his phone back and was conscious that he [Nav] could go through his messages. ‘Give it to me you dickhead, give it back, its mine not yours’, shouted Wahid to Nav. This quickly turned into a heated dispute from which both were clearly not prepared to back down from. ‘Who the fuck you talking to like that, I’ll slap you, you twat’, said Nav, at which point Wahid started losing it—‘Go on hit me, go on, I’m not scared of you’— whilst continuing to swear at Nav. ‘I’m not hitting you as there’s too many faces around, I will come find you’, Nav replied calmly. Later that evening, Nav turned up at Wahid’s house, adamant that he wanted to teach him a lesson, for, as he put it, ‘getting funny with me’. However, as both families knew each other, they helped sort the issue out without anyone getting hurt. Although it was rare to see any of The Kids challenge The Boys, some of them felt that they were no longer prepared to tolerate any disrespectful behaviour from anyone.

Do a Job for Us? Whilst the relationship The Boys had with The Kids was in many ways restricted, this did not stop them from trying to get some of The Kids to do odd crime-related jobs for them. Previous research has highlighted how it is a common theme for adult offenders to lure adolescents into involvement in crime and particularly into drug dealing. The types of crime-related jobs that The Boys would entice The Kids to do could range from smashing someone’s car windows to dropping drugs off to waiting customers. In return, The Boys would look out for or even protect The Kids, ensuring no one troubled them and, if anyone did, then coming to their defence. One day, I was with The Boys driving through the local area when Zahir (one of The Kids) flagged us down to stop the car. We stopped, and Zahir explained that a person known to them had punched him in the face. Salman was furious at what he heard, he could not believe how this particular person would hit someone so much younger than him and said:

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Don’t worry bro, I will deal with him, he’s a fucking mug. I will show the short arse cunt how to hit kids.

Salman saw this person a few days after and interrogated him about the incident. He soon learned that the reason Zahir had been beaten up was because he had sworn at this person’s mother. Upon hearing this, Salman decided to leave the discussion at that, but warned him that if he ever was to lay his finger on Zahir again he would not be so kind to him. One of the qualities of The Boys that was difficult for outsiders to understand was that, although they were involved in criminal activity, there was a deep sense of morality and honour which pervaded their street culture. A key element of this was the respect shown to elders, and particularly to women within the family, especially their mothers. This was both a religious and a cultural attitude. The Prophet Mohammed taught that ‘paradise lies at the feet of your mother’, and deriving from that teaching is the idea that mothers should be treated with extreme respect. Therefore, the idea that anyone would disrespect anyone’s mother was considered an extreme offence within the community. In summary, it can be seen that the relationship between The Boys and The Kids was reciprocal to varying degrees, but usually to the advantage of The Boys, whom The Kids wanted to emulate, but The Boys viewed The Kids as being more criminalised, more ruthless and more risk taking than them. Another factor that encouraged The Kids to impress The Boys was that it was only through imitating such behaviour that they felt they could achieve prosperity as well as status. Whereas there were few legitimate avenues to wealth, status and material goods, the few legitimate opportunities available offered only modest rewards, the apparently instantaneous results of crime were extremely attractive, encouraging The Kids to mimic the actions of the older ones. One reason why the young men felt that there were few legitimate avenues to wealth was because they had very poor educational backgrounds.

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Education Whilst the young men in the study obtained few if any qualifications, Pakistani youth in the UK on the whole have, it seems, made the least progress when it comes to educational achievement. Webster (2007, p. 124) states: Although for most ethnic minority groups the second and third generation have made significant educational progress – especially some ethnic groups such as African, Asians, Sikhs and Indians and African Caribbean women – Caribbean, Pakistani and Bangladeshi boys have made least progress.

There are a number of factors which have contributed to why British Pakistani youth have struggled with achieving educational standards. Pakistanis are one of the poorest groups living in the UK. This was apparent amongst The Boys who came from very deprived households and lived in a deprived neighbourhood. Parents having low levels of education and low expectations for their children has meant that second and third generation British Pakistanis have struggled to achieve educationally, and this was apparent amongst The Boys whose parents had little or no qualifications. Moreover, parents who are unable to speak English fluently creates barriers to communication with schools and impairs their ability to offer their children educational support. According to some commentators, a further reason why many British Pakistani youth have not obtained higher educational standards is that there is more of a focus on business than education. Bolognani (2009) in her study found that Pakistani groups in Bradford had a more businessoriented mentality than an education-oriented one. This in some ways was also apparent from observation of the lives of The Boys. The Boys took a keen interest in business, they would on occasion discuss setting up businesses themselves although this never transpired. Some of The Boys did not even get as far as taking their GCSEs. Nav was excluded from school at the age of fourteen for fighting. Afzal was also excluded for fighting, Jameel just did not bother turning up for his GCSEs and Ahmed, who was only entered for one GCSE, did not turn

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up either. Ali went to Pakistan at the age of fifteen because his parents felt that his behaviour was becoming uncontrollable. As for the others who did complete school, these boys achieved low grades. Shaf admitted that when he discovered that his GCSE results were not good, before he went home he took a detour via the local library where he altered his results, and then went home to show his parents the forged rather than the real results. Those of The Boys who did go on to study at sixth form and college later dropped out, either because they did not like the course or they were excluded. Ahmed, who had only been given a place at the school sixth form because his father had pleaded with the deputy head to give his son a chance, lasted only a few weeks. He was later excluded for stealing another student’s mobile phone, but he could not understand why the school excluded him when the incident had taken place off school premises: Ahmed : Me dad had to beg the deputy head to let me come back and I was really happy he gave me a chance but then they kicked me out. It wasn’t even like I did anything in school, we were near Toller Lane and I saw this guy who was in school with me, he was a right cheeky fucker in school so I taxed (stole) his phone and told him to do one, and I then I got kicked out (of school). Due to his poor behaviour at school, Salman went on to study at college as the school did not allow him back into the sixth form. However, he only lasted a month in college before he was excluded for fighting with another student. Shaf, who went on to do a business course at Bradford College, told me that he spent more of his time in the arcade shops than at the college and later dropped out.

School Days and Delinquency In addition to the lack of education that The Boys received during their school days, it was truancy from school that appears to have been an

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important factor precipitating their early offending. Although, at the time of this study, The Boys were in their mid-twenties, they remembered their school days well; The Boys would frequently discuss them whilst ‘hanging out’, fondly reminiscing on their experiences of school. School days were generally seen by The Boys to have been ‘a good laugh’, a time when they built friendships, misbehaved and regularly played truant. Previous research has noted how truancy is a stepping stone to criminal activity (Farrington, 2002; Williamson & Webber, 2006). Whilst school was considered as having been a pleasant time by The Boys, some remembered it as a place where there was considerable tension and hostility between groups of British Pakistani boys and groups of White boys. Ali: Every day we used to fight against the goras [white lads]. It was proper nuts at school, they were mainly from Haworth Road sides, proper racist fuckers and some days they used to get the better of us, and other days we would get the better of them; there used to be bare [a lot of ] tension. Experiences of racism led to a need to stick together and demonstrate their loyalties to fellow Pakistanis when dealing with hostility from racist pupils. The racist tension experienced by them at school and the perceived need to resort to violence in a school environment were clearly important features of early adolescence for The Boys. Salman, who attended a different school—one closer to the area in which The Boys lived and which was predominantly attended by Pakistani students—remembered school as an enjoyable time: Salman: School days were a buzz, ‘Kasam se’ [Honestly] I used to get up, get dressed, jump onto bus then I’d meet the boys near top park. We’d make the plan for the day, then we’ll all go to class and sign in so the teacher sees us in, then just like sneak out for the day, go to town and that. Salman explained how whilst truanting in town The Boys would get involved in offending:

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Salman: We’d go to Boots and spray nice aftershaves; then we’d go around just shoplifting and chilling, we’d just chill mostly in Kirkgate (shopping centre). Truanting from school and spending the day in town led some of The Boys to get involved in fights, as was the case for Ahmed who recalled his first ever fight in Bradford town when truanting from school. Ahmed : I was knocking off this one time and this gora [white person] bumped into me, so without thinking or anything, I just turned around and punched him twice in the face. Next minute he was out cold, he was laying on the floor, you know what, I was shocked to see him drop so quick, I felt like I was Mike Tyson or something (laughing). Whilst truanting, some of The Boys would routinely get up to ‘daring acts’ and this could be as extreme as stealing cars and driving them on the roads around school in order to try and impress their peers. One evening as we were sat in Bash’s flat, some of them were recalling how they would drive the cars that they had stolen into the school car park. Kamran: We were mad ones playing hide and seek (with the cars) around the school, should have seen man’s faces at school. The Boys recalled a time when they were arrested in stolen cars near to the school. Ahmed :

Mawe (police) were watching us from this house, they then waited for us to be in the cars and then all a sudden they jumped on us. Salman: Should have seen it, there was about nine of us in the cells, we were shouting like fuck in there (police cells), doing the cops heads in. On another evening whilst hanging out at Shah’s girlfriend’s flat, The Boys started talking about their days at school, the conversation having

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started when Shah was proudly telling his girlfriend how he had ‘knocked out’ (beat) a particular individual at school who was now living nearby. He asked the others whether they could remember seeing the fight. The conversation quickly moved on to a number of other fights that some of The Boys were involved in, and Ahmed then asked them if they could remember when he stole a teacher’s handbag before explaining how he had stolen it: Ahmed : It was break time and I sneaked into her class, I looked around and there was no-one there so I went to her drawer and saw her bag and quickly looked through it, grabbed her purse and chipped [ran] before someone saw me, the next thing everyone was getting blamed in the class (laughing away) The Boys quickly became disillusioned with school itself and stopped making an effort and yet many of them demonstrated very high levels of intelligence. They applied their intelligence to surviving on the streets and to entrepreneurial skills, sometimes within and often outside the law. The majority of The Boys were presently unemployed, and there were several reasons why this was the case. One explanation was of course their lack of educational achievement, and another, however, was their selectiveness about which jobs they felt were suitable for them.

Work Cannot Affect ‘Street Cred’ This section examines the reasons why The Boys were so particular about the type of jobs they were prepared to undertake. One reason for this selectiveness was because The Boys had a different outlook on work compared with their parents who, as we know, were prepared to take any job that came their way, often working long hours in poor conditions. The Boys felt that mill work, takeaways or restaurants were good enough for their parents and their cousins, but such jobs were not suitable for them. In The Boys’ eyes, nothing was worse than degrading dead-end work. In the search for street credibility, most of The Boys became very selective about the types of jobs they were prepared to do.

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Some of The Boys hoped to find decent, well-paid jobs which carried credibility such as, for example, working as managers of shops. Bourgois’s (2003) noted how it was common for delinquents to associate managerial or professional jobs with success in life, but did not anticipate obtaining them. Subsequent studies have similarly found that status is fundamental amongst young males who offend and which motivates them to pursue a criminal career instead of finding employment. Bash and Shaf made it quite clear that they would rather remain unemployed than work in jobs which were poorly paid, referring to lowpaid jobs as being more suitable for Mangies (a nickname for people who have newly arrived from Pakistan) or Eastern Europeans than for them. Bash was proud of the fact that he had not worked and he would often make it known that the type of job he was prepared to undertake had to be one which was well paid and one that did not affect his standing on the street. One evening at Bash’s flat, the other boys went out to buy some ‘smoke’ (cannabis), I noticed how different Bash was on his own—far less boisterous, and a lot more open about himself. His cooker was not working, and I got the feeling that he was struggling to make ends meet financially, although I was aware that he would not admit this openly in front of the others. It was a point of pride for many of The Boys to appear to be financially stable. The idea that if the others knew that one was impoverished this would be perceived by many of them as shameful. They would rather be in denial about their frail financial situation than to admit poverty with a risk of losing face. When I suggested to Bash that perhaps he should find a job, whilst he seemed interested, he reminded me of his requirements: Bash: I’ll never work in a job that pays basic wage. Don’t get me wrong, if I find a job that pays like three or four hundred pounds a week, I’ll take it but you know what, I won’t even get out of bed for anything less than it, you must be mad to think I would. I was intrigued to know why, and Bash explained that: Bash: If you do then you make yourself look like a right crank [fool]. What’s the point in trying to make a name for yourself then just throwing it away’.

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Clearly, image and reputation were tremendously important to The Boys. A number of them mentioned that they would not work in a job which interfered with their standing on the street. Similarly, studies have reported how boys will refuse or quit jobs which interfere with gang life, and the long hours on the corner with customary pursuits of wine, women and ‘rep’ are involved in tardiness and absenteeism which contribute to job failure (Sandberg & Pedersen, 2011). Street cred was immensely important, and for those of The Boys who considered themselves to have it, it was crucial to maintain it. The Boys felt that, by working in low-paid jobs, they could seriously jeopardise their standing on the street. This became apparent to me one day when Ali and Shaf, who were parked up in their car waiting for some of the other boys, were talking about how someone they knew had recently been released from prison. This person was considered to have built a good name for himself and had credibility on the street but was now working in a warehouse: Ali:

I seen Raza, he was coming out of Farmers Boy [warehouse]. I didn’t know man would get a job in there?’ Shaf : I think he’s gone all straight and that, I spoke to him and he was like, fuck this shit, I just want to keep me head down. He’s getting too old for going in and out of prison, eh? Ali: Yeh but it’s ‘baseti’ [insulting] to work in there, he was meant to have a name for himself. The Boys felt that one way of enhancing their reputation on the streets would be if they were able either to make ‘good money’ legally or without working hard for it. But they would frequently speak about who from the area was ‘smashing it’ (making a lot of money illegally). Those who were would even boast to others, saying how much they had made, as was the case with Kamran, who, in the first year of the fieldwork, proudly told me how he was making good money from selling drugs: Kamran: I’m making money right now as I speak to you; I got man’s driving around for me who I pay a wage to. They bring me the paper (money) at the end of the night.

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Kamran had what The Boys referred to as ‘a round’, a name given to a business delivering illicit drugs to users. The users phone a particular number, and the drugs are delivered to them. This was clearly a complex and well-organised business. There were conversations amongst The Boys about how some youths in the neighbourhood would build their line (get as many phone customers as possible) and later sell the phone line on to other drug dealers.

Stigma Clearly, The Boys had some business skills, they were intensely loyal to each other and they showed a strong moral sense with regard to their families. Thus, in many ways they showed qualities that are deemed socially desirable. However, having once been imprisoned, the stain of criminality proved indelible. Once the label of criminal had been attached to them, it became a master status. The idea that serving a prison sentence was the punishment itself completely misses the point in the case experience. The master status of ‘criminal’ effectively continued to exclude them from gainful employment, from regaining their place in society and putting their past behind them, or allowing them to be rehabilitated in any way. So the sentence in some ways became a life sentence and forced them back to the environment they were in beforehand, thus effectively guaranteeing re-offending, for which The Boys would find themselves blamed.

Conclusion What becomes clear from this chapter is that The Boys are a diverse group of friends who through their shared experiences and identity have formed strong attachments. One of their strongest characteristics is the solidarity they demonstrate to one another. This solidarity is born from a need for survival, and to uphold self-worth in what they perceive to be a hostile environment. Meanwhile what also characterised The Boys was happiness in life, a boisterousness that was often without any harmful

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intent but which could be seen as daunting to people who did not know them personally. The vigour of their speech, the earthiness of vision and expression, the loudness and the larger-than-life quality was something that was common to all of them. At the same time, their past experience of hostility from others (especially outside the community) made them quick-witted in their response and determined not to show any weakness whatsoever to anyone. In turn, this led to a level of aggression which bubbled under the surface and broke out very quickly. It led to confrontations within the group, but also allowed The Boys to bond together, especially when faced with any perceived threat from outside.

References Bolognani, M. (2009). Crime and Muslim Britain: Race, culture and the politics of criminology among British Pakistanis. IB Tauris. Bourgois, P. (2003). In search of respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio. Cambridge University Press. Burke, R. D. (2008). Young people, crime and justice. Willan Publishing. Chu, C. M., Daffern, M., Thomas, S. D. M., & Lim, J. Y. (2012). Violence risk and gang affiliation in youth offenders: A recidivism study. Psychology, Crime & Law, 18, 299–315. Farrington, D. P. (1997). Human development and criminal careers. In M. Maguire, R. Morgan, & R. Reiner (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of criminology (2nd ed., pp. 511–584). Clarendon Press. Farrington, D. P. (2002). Risk factors for Youth Violence. In E. Debarbieux & C. Blaya (Eds.), Violence in schools and public policies (pp. 13–32). Elsevier Science. Grund, T. U., & Densley, J. A. (2012). Ethnic heterogeneity in the activity and structure of a Black street gang. European Journal of Criminology, 9 (4), 388–406. Harrington, R., & Bailey, S. (2005). Mental health needs and effectiveness provision for young offenders in custody and in the community. Youth Justice Board. Lampert, M. D., & Ervin-Tripp, S. M. (2006). Risky laughter: Teasing and self-directed joking among male and female friends. Journal of Pragmatics, 38(1), 51–72.

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Sampson, R. J., & Laub, J. H. (1995). Understanding variability in lives through time: Contributions of life-course criminology. Studies on Crime and Crime Prevention, 4 (2), 143–158. Sandberg, S., & Pedersen, W. (2011). Street capital: Black cannabis dealers in a white welfare state. The University of Chicago Press. Sukhodolsky, D. G., & Ruchkin, V. V. (2004). Association of normative beliefs and anger with aggression and antisocial behavior in Russian male juvenile offenders and high school students. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 32(2), 225–236. Webster, C. (2007). Understanding race and crime. Open University Press. Williamson, T., & Webber, R. (2006). Schools, behaviour and young offenders. British Journal of Criminology. Advanced access published 28th July 2006.

17 The Pakistani Muslim Community, Street Gangs and the Heroin Trade Mohammed Qasim

Bradford, West Yorkshire’s woolen textile industry encouraged immigrants from Asia, most notably from the city of Mirpur in Pakistan during the 1950s and 1960s to come and work in the woolen mills, eventually joining subsequent family members arriving from the subcontinent to form close-knit communities, while working low-paid jobs in the city’s huge textile mills. Now, the city has the largest proportion of people of Pakistani ethnic origin in England. It is estimated that one in five people (20.3% of the population) today is of Pakistani origin. Due to the city’s substantial Pakistani population, it is at times referred to satirically as ‘Bradistan.’ However, when it is very long established woolen textile industry began collapsing from the 1970s onwards, Bradford’s economy nosedived. Unlike other cities in the region, such as Leeds, it failed to establish a viable post-industrial economy. According to the M. Qasim (B) University of Bradford, Bradford, UK e-mail: [email protected]

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latest figures, out of 317 local authorities in England, Bradford District is the 13th most deprived; six places lower than it was in 2015 (Muckle, 2021). It is in the top six most income and employment-deprived zones in the country. Bradford’s employment rate is now worse than it has been for 30 years. Between 2015 and 2019, the proportion of children living in poverty in Bradford East and Bradford West rocketed to almost 50%, compared to a national average of one in six. The city has one of the worst educational attainments in the country. This mixture of child poverty, poor educational attainment and poor employment opportunities, in a city with the youngest demographic in the Britain—almost a quarter of people are under 16—is a recipe for antagonism, anger and cranked up racial tension, in part reflected in increasing segregation between White and Asian communities (Casey, 2016). This chapter starts by examining the Pakistani Muslim community of Bradford, focusing on some of the early incidents that led to British Pakistani Muslim men becoming closely associated with criminality. It moves on to explore some of the reasons for the increase in their offending. Lastly, the chapter explores the relationship a group of young British Pakistani Muslim men, also known as, ‘The Boys’ (A street-based social group of friends who according to many were considered a ‘gang’) had with drugs. This chapter examines how The Boys would go about their drug dealing and what motivated them to be involved with drugs.

Pakistani Men and Civil Unrest British Muslim men first came into the public eye in Bradford in 1989 with the Satanic Verses controversy. The publication of Salman Rushdie’s book angered many British Muslims, which led to a large group of Pakistani Muslims publicly burning copies of the book. According to Singh (2008), it was only after the 1989 book burning that British Muslim men started to be seen as possessing a type of deviant masculinity, one that easily endorsed Islamic fundamentalism, along with other perceived negative traits such as aggression and the propensity for violence. Archer (2003) highlights that the Satanic Verses controversy also heralded a major shift in British debates around the politics

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of race and nation, provoking a debate over whether Britishness and Muslim identities were compatible. In 1995, British Pakistani Muslim men again came into the public eye for aggressive behavior, this time for their part in the Bradford riots of that year (Alexander, 2000). The riots had started after rumors spread through the neighborhood that a policeman had attacked a Pakistani woman, resulting in large groups of men (mostly young British Pakistanis) coming out onto the streets to demonstrate their anger and resentment at what they thought had been heavy-handedness by the police (Webster, 2007). However, an independent report into the Bradford riots commented on long-term problems in relations between the police and local British Pakistani youths, who were allegedly regularly subjected to ‘inappropriate, unfair, or racist treatment by individual officers’ (Allen & Barrett, 1996). According to Macey (2002), the police mishandled the situation by failing to understand the Muslim community and being unable to differentiate between genuinely concerned people and criminal gangs. Criminalization of young British Pakistani men was brought to the surface a few years later with the race riots in 2001. Although these riots took place in several northern towns and cities, the largest of these was in Bradford (Macey, 2002). Alexander (2004) suggests that despite the Rushdie affair in 1989 and the 1995 riots, young British Pakistani men were still largely invisible in terms of crime but, following the 2001 race riots, there was a greater emphasis on their criminality. The riots created a negative image of Bradford and of Pakistani Muslims in the UK in general. It was difficult for those seeing TV pictures and reading the popular press to comprehend why so many young British-born Pakistanis could behave in this way; fighting with the police and rampaging through the streets, throwing petrol bombs, burning cars, smashing windows and looting (Hussain & Bagguley, 2009). In the aftermath of the 2001 race riots, several commentators attempted to explain what the underlying reasons were. Professor Ted Cantle’s report on the 2001 Bradford riots noted that Bradford is one of the most segregated cities in the UK (BBC News, 2011). Webster (2007, p. 105) noted that ‘the main basis of explanation and subsequent discussion about the 2001 disorders in northern English cities were claims of residential concentration, self-segregation and polarized communities.’

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David Smith (2009, p. 30) highlights that ‘the supposed lack of integration of young Muslims of Pakistani origin in Britain was a concern for government even before the riots in the north of England in the spring of 2001.’ In her Guardian article, Samia Rahman observed that ‘one aspect of racial segregation in Bradford that provoked huge concern across all communities was that of segregated secondary schools. Examples of a school being all-Asian while the school down the road was mostly white were depressingly common’ (Rahman, 2009). Some argued that a process of self-segregation had taken place, whereby Pakistanis—for social, cultural and religious reasons—had settled together. Bradford’s Pakistani residents, however, argued that the segregation of their communities was not down to them but attributable to ‘White Flight’ (Dorling & Rees, 2003; Phillips, 2002; Valentine, 2005), a term used to refer to white people leaving neighborhoods of non-white settlement. Of all the Pakistani neighborhoods in Bradford, Manningham (the area where the 1995 and 2001 riots took place) is often considered to be one of the most segregated. It is an area where very few white people live today. According to the 2011 census, over 75% of its residents are Muslims (Census, 2011). Some commentators have even gone as far to say that today Manningham is a no-go area for whites. This was highlighted in an incident in which the local newspaper described how a young Pakistani man attacked a white male while shouting ‘Manningham belongs to Muslims. We don’t want whites. We rule Bradford. We are going to get you out.’ He subsequently received a five-year prison term (Wright, 2009). Although incidents like these are few and far between, they nevertheless leave a lasting impact, creating further segregation between people of different ethnic and religious backgrounds.

The Growth of Crime One of the key signifiers of change in Manningham and in Bradford generally is increasing crime and, with it, an increase in the fear of crime. There are concerns that crime is increasing, and on a scale that has not previously been seen. Young British Pakistani Muslim men are

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today frequently depicted as being violent, aggressive and closely associated with a range of criminal behavior, including drug dealing, gun crime, and gang violence (Qasim, 2018). There has been an upsurge in ‘Pakistani-On-Pakistani crime’ between rival groups, some of which are linked to drug ‘patches and which have seen young British Pakistani men lose their lives.’ A community which was once recognized as being on the whole law-abiding has seen its reputation transform. As Benson (1996) points out, despite the odd scare of illegal immigration, Britain’s Asian population were seen as holistic, coherent and law-abiding, and were regarded as largely unproblematic. British Pakistani Muslims were once seen as more likely to be victims of crime rather than offenders (Maguire et al., 2007). In one of the earliest studies of ethnicity, Asians and Crime: The Bradford Experience, conducted by Mawby and Batta (1980), the British Asian community were commended for their low levels of offending behavior and were perceived as being far less likely to be involved in serious offenses than other groups. So the question that arises is why such a large number of young men from a religiously and culturally conservative Pakistani community are today turning to crime. There are even concerns today that factors which were previously regarded as protective against criminality for British Pakistani Muslims— such as strong family bonds, a sense of tradition, and powerful religious faith—are now presented as causes, or at least facilitators, of criminality, and as being bothersome aspects of Pakistani culture (Croall, 2011).

Drugs and Drug Dealing From 2001 onwards, there has been an increase in the numbers of Muslim men, particularly those of Pakistani ethnicity, arrested for selling drugs, mainly heroin (see also Qasim, 2017). Home Office data relating to South Asian drug offenders in custody show a predominance of Pakistani, as opposed to Indian and Bangladeshi (Ruggiero & Khan, 2006). While it is difficult to obtain precise figures for the numbers of British Pakistani men arrested for drug offenses, there is nevertheless considerable media attention highlighting the surge in Pakistani heroin dealers and particularly those from Bradford. For example in 2017, 35

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criminals linked to a Bradford-based drug network were caught smuggling heroin into the UK from Pakistan in the lids of pens and were jailed with sentences totaling almost 200 years. In 2016, a West Yorkshirebased British Pakistani gang were jailed after shipping heroin from Pakistan concealed in boxes of tables. Drug conviction data revealed that, in Yorkshire and Humberside, more British Pakistanis were convicted for importing Class A drugs into the UK in 2013 and 2014 than White British people and this, as some commentators have previously suggested, may be related to the fact that, other than cannabis, heroin is the most commonly used illicit drug and Pakistani Muslims have ready access to it in Pakistan (Spalek, 2002). Bolognani (2009) noted that, whereas in the past the drug markets in some Pakistani areas like parts of Bradford were controlled by individuals of African Caribbean origin, they have now been taken over by young men of Pakistani origin. For example, some Pakistani neighborhoods in Bradford are said to have drug dealers standing around on the streets and selling drugs openly. This was highlighted in a case in which Judge Roger Thomas QC was sentencing Class A drug dealers who were caught in the police Operation Stalebank. He said that ‘Street dealing in heroin and crack cocaine was so commonplace in parts of Bradford, it was almost considered the “social norm”’ (Loweth, 2013). After jailing a young British Pakistani man for 15 years for a violent attack on one of his own drug dealers, Judge Alistair McCallumwent as far as to say that ‘One million pounds of heroin is sold on Manningham Lane every day, it is a shocking situation and a lot of our young folk are ending up as heroin addicts’ (Carter, 2002).

Generational Tensions Between the Elders and British Pakistani Youth The apparent increase in the numbers of young British Pakistani men trading drugs in Bradford is not only worrying for the authorities but also deeply concerning for the Pakistani parental generation. Bolognani (2009) who looked at the deep roots of cultural conflict lying at the heart of the Bradford’s Asian community found that the Pakistani parental generation were constantly voicing concern about crime in general and

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both the selling and use of illicit drugs, feeling that they represented a serious danger for their community. For their part, a generation of young Pakistani Muslims living in Bradford have become embittered by their experience of poverty and lack of legitimate opportunity. They are not only alienated from the authorities, but also from the older generation of Muslims too. Many of Bradfords’ older Pakistani residents feel that the younger generation has rebelled against traditional ways and feel that this is one of the main reasons why increasing numbers are involved in criminality and particularly drug dealing. According to Webster (2012, pp 65–86), ‘it has been suggested that tensions exist between the generations with the first generation eager to maintain the values and customs practiced back in their country of origin; and the younger generation (mostly born in this country) unaware of and indifferent to this original culture.’ Many Pakistani parents have tried to maintain cultural continuity by trying to raise their children in the same manner in which they were raised but this in itself has created conflict as their children struggle to reconcile their British identity with an identity that their parents are trying to impose upon them. Some commentators have previously highlighted how British Pakistani youth respond to this by living double lives, whereby they adhere to cultural and religious norms in the home and the community, but lead essentially Western lifestyles away from the home (Anwar & Hussain, 2014). So the question that arises is why such a large number of young men from a religiously and culturally conservative Pakistani community are today turning to crime. There are even concerns today that factors which were previously regarded as protective against criminality for British Pakistani Muslims—such as strong family bonds, a sense of tradition, and powerful religious faith—are now presented as causes, or at least facilitators, of criminality, and as being bothersome aspects of Pakistani culture (Croall, 2011; Hudson, 2007). However, what is interesting to learn is that despite increasing speculation around the increased offending behavior of British Pakistani Muslims, little attention has been given to the views of those on the inside (Hargreaves, 2014). In contrast to the sensationalized and negative stereotypical representations of Muslim masculinity, relatively little work has attempted to address young British Muslim men’s own views and experiences. Similarly, Mythen and colleagues (2009, p. 740) argue

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that ‘it would not be stretching the truth to state that young Muslims have been talked at, talked for and talked around. They have not been talked to.’ This, as some commentators have previously highlighted, has left a gap in contemporary British criminological academic contributions to the understanding of the qualitative experiences of young Pakistani Muslim men and crime (Qasim, 2017). This chapter illuminates a little understood area of criminological research, through hearing the voices of young British Pakistani street dealers themselves.

The Boys and Hustling Hustling [selling drugs] was seen by The Boys (street-based drug dealers who operated largely in Manningham and who were the subjects of research I undertook in 2018), as one of the few ways they could make money, but also as a way to enhance their ‘rep’ and credibility on the streets. Their drug dealing was similar in many ways to how one might run a legitimate business. It was important to know the market prices; to buy the cheapest and best quality drugs available and then market them at an attractive price while recognizing that there was considerable competition from other drug dealers in the neighborhood. As Sandberg (2008) in the same observed that to be a successful drug dealer requires skills and competences which are very similar to those of running a business. In their thinking about drugs, The Boys frequently exhibited shrewd commercial acumen which, had it been applied to the supply of a product like vacuum cleaners, would have aroused admiration from others. Since supply was unpredictable, The Boys often had to show inventiveness and enterprise in locating their supply. They showed great flexibility in switching from drug to drug to sell, from time to time selling cannabis and cocaine instead of heroin and Crack, depending on which was most easily available and which was selling well. In legitimate lines of business, this ability to respond to the laws of supply and demand would be seen as admirable as it took considerable skill to accomplish this successfully.

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Making Money The Boys were (at the time of research) in their mid-20s, and now their illegal activities were all about monetary gain. There were some who, like Bash, felt that instead of having offended like they did in the past (which was usually out of sheer boredom or thrill-seeking), they should have put more of their efforts into trying to make money. Bash: If I didn’t go on so many benders [get drunk or be take drugs] and fuck around on the streets and, spent more time hustling [drug dealing], then I would be a made man today. I knew peeps [people] in Manchester, Leeds, everywhere. I could have had banging maal [drugs] in and sold it in no time but no, I used to like going on benders and that.

This sense of regret was because, like all young people who reach adulthood, there was an expectation to provide for themselves and in some cases for their families. The Boys also felt that the earlier in their career they started selling drugs the more established they would be today and this was compounded by the fact that status within the group consisted in appearing to be able to hold one’s own financially. The more money that one was able to make illegally would mean the higher one’s status among one’s peers. This reinforced competition among The Boys, concerning who had the most money. This was certainly the case of Shaf, who would make sure that the other Boys knew that he had more money than they did, reinforcing a sense of hierarchy within the group. There was one occasion when Shaf and Tanny started arguing. Shaf, who was drinking alcohol, started yelling at Tanny: You’re a fucking nobody. Who’s got more money, me or you? You’re fuck all, you ain’t got a proper ride [nice car], and look how old you are.

This was typical behavior for Shaf who when sober was quiet but when drunk would become violently aggressive, randomly seeking confrontations with anyone over anything. The Boys were always on the lookout for ways to make money. While we were eating food in a local takeaway, The Boys were deliberating

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about which car was better—an Audi R8, which was parked outside the takeaway, or a Porsche that Jameel’s friend owned and which he would occasionally borrow, when someone who Shaf knew walked in. The newcomer saw Shaf and came over to talk with him. Although nobody other than Shaf appeared to know this person, he shook hands with all of us, which is customary among The Boys, and among Pakistani men in general. Shaf introduced him to The Boys, and then, the conversation moved onto drugs, with the newcomer asking Shaf if he knew anyone who was selling good quality cocaine. Shaf ’s immediate response was: Yeah bro, I know loads of peeps [people] with good things. You should have come to me, and I would have got it for you. Well, you got my number now: put my digits [phone number] in your phone and next time you need it give me a tinkle [call]. I swear it will be a good thing, none of this bashed-up crap. Just give me a call, yeah?

Shaf was quick to spot a money-making opportunity, and he, like most of the others, was not the type to let such an opportunity go. For him, it was a matter of a few phone calls, arranging to buy drugs from one person and selling them to another for a slightly higher price. Shaf was proud that he could make money from being a middle man, often boasting that he was able to do it in a such a way that he would not have to ‘get his hands dirty’ [touch the drugs]: I used to make a grand a week before and I never even used to touch anything. I used to get next mans to run around for me and all I used to do was sit in one place and count the paper [money].

Those of The Boys who were shrewd enough, as was the case with Shaf, were able to move drugs around without even seeing them by asking some of the younger boys to collect and deliver them or by arranging for the customer to pick them up from somewhere they had placed them.

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Jobs Were Difficult to Come By The main explanation why The Boys sold drugs was because they felt that there were no other avenues to make money. It has long been documented that drug dealing is an attractive line of work in deprived areas because there are few legitimate avenues for success in these places. In the eyes of The Boys, jobs were difficult to come by, mainly due to the high levels of unemployment in Bradford. Despite Bradford once having been a magnet for employment, the picture today is very different. In 2010, the figure for unemployment was 5.2% for Bradford compared with 4.2% nationally (Recession, Poverty and Sustainable Livelihoods in Bradford, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2011). It is important to highlight that whereas the first generation of Pakistani migrants who arrived in Bradford in the 1960s and 1970s found work relatively easily in the thriving textile trade, this trade has all but diminished in Bradford today. Bradford is one of the worst affected areas in the country for rising unemployment, as recent figures reveal (Winrow, 2020). Ahmed, one of the boys spoke of how he had been searching for a job for a while as he was eager to move away from selling drugs. He was now in a relationship and spoke of wanting to settle down, realizing that selling drugs risked him getting caught by the police and returning to prison: Ahmed : I’ve looked everywhere, you name it, I’ve been there looking for a job, there’s fuck all out there, Bradford has fuck all compared to Leeds, there’s no hope here, no work, nothing to be honest, what else am I to do to make money, can’t go on the doll that’s not even enough to cover my cigarettes and fuel in car for the week.

Another factor that the boys felt made finding decent well-paid employment difficult for them was because of racism. It has been well documented in previous research with ethnic minority street dealers that they feel that racism prevents them from finding employment (see also Sandberg, 2008). A number of The Boys spoke of how the negative perception that Muslims constantly received from the media had created considerable public fear of Muslims among the wider public which consequently impacted on the jobs market so much so that significant numbers of employers did not want to employ Muslims only if they had no other choice.

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Shaf : I bet you anything if I put down on the application like my name is John or something English, I would get an interview but then when they’d see me they be like he’s a Muslim, we can’t give him the job, he may be a terrorist.

A Criminal Record Makes Finding Work Difficult The Boys had lengthy criminal records, some had been to prison on countless occasions and a key reason why they struggled to find employment was because of their criminal records. It is well documented that having a criminal record makes finding employment difficult for exoffenders, as crime decreases the chances to find work, experience job stability and have good earnings. One day while at the gym Salman spoke rather openly of how he was once blatantly turned away from a job and all because of his criminal convictions: Salman: In one of the interviews I thought that I might get the job until the bastards asked me about my criminal record, and I had to be open with them ‘cuz they do CRB checks on ya everywhere now. I told them that I had been to prison but that I ain’t been in trouble with the law for over 2 years now, but the fuckers wrote to me a few days later saying: I’m sorry you ain’t successful. I know what the bastards were thinking when I told them about my criminal record. I could see the way they were looking at me, like if I’m a proper crook or something.

Having a criminal record left The Boys feeling that they would never find suitable jobs, this for many gave them a feeling that they had little alternative in which to make money other than to be involved in drug dealing. Some aspired to move up the drug chain so they could make more profit and move away from street dealing, conscious that street dealing risked detection from the police and this could see them returning to prison.

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The Lure of a Lavish Lifestyle While the boys did not make a huge amount of money from drug dealing, they aspired to live lavish lifestyles, wanting to drive expensive sports cars, own the latest phones and wear expensive clothes and jewelry (watches, necklaces). One particular reason for this was that they were conscious that this would enhance their standing among their peers. Research with young male offender’s highlights that many of them aspire to lavish lifestyles in order to enhance street credibility. Ali hoped to make enough money from hustling to buy a new car. Bash was driving an old car, one which had been damaged, and he too would often talk of how he planned to buy a new sports car: Ali: I’m buying a nice ride soon, probably Golf, R32. Bash: Nah, you should get something else, bro. I’m thinking of getting one of those, I told you before, you muppet. Why don’t you just get an A4 or summat [something]?

While The Boys would regularly talk about buying new cars, this never transpired, but talking was one way of demonstrating to the others that they had the money to do so, even if this was not the case. The materialism of The Boys also led to them being easily impressed by conspicuous consumption, though some of them were astute enough to wonder how their peers had been able to buy expensive goods, such as a £14,000 car. Jameel : I didn’t think he had that sort of paper [money],but he’s done all right for himself now. Got to say he’s pulled, got a sick [nice] RS4 [an expensive Audi car]. Bet you anything, he’s gonna kit it out and get it ready for the summer. Ali: Yeah, he’s a show off, he’s just bought it to show mans that he’s doing well.

A further ostentatious manifestation of wealth (or trying to impress others) was the custom of hiring expensive cars. There was an occasion when Jameel, Shaf and Ali hired a high-performance sports car for the weekend. However, only having the car for the weekend meant getting the most out of it, it was no good it being parked as it was necessary to be seen in it by as many people from the neighborhood as possible.

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But cruising around in a car with a powerful engine was not cheap, which meant having to think of how to obtain fuel. One evening as we sat in the car, Jameel asked Ali if he had got the ‘plates.’ Ali replied: ‘Nah, they’re not in my car, they’re in Ahmed’s car.’ Jameel then phoned Ahmed asking him to bring the plates. A short while later Ahmed turned up, parked his car parallel and handed two car registration plates to Ali through the car window. The Boys then hurriedly got out and changed the registration plates on the hired car with the ones that Ahmed had just handed them. They then drove to a petrol station, a few miles away from their neighborhood. Once at the petrol station, Ali, who was sitting in the passenger seat, got out and filled the car up with a full tank of fuel before calmly getting back into the car, at which point Jameel, without paying for the fuel and drove away. As The Boys drove off, they laughed gleefully because the person working in the petrol station did not even notice that they had driven off without paying for the fuel. It was surprising to see just how calm The Boys were when doing what they referred to as ‘a petrol legger.’ They seemed to enjoy the thrill of driving off without paying and perceived it as an amusing prank which also had a monetary reward.

Easy to Become Drug Dealers One particular aspect of street drug dealing that this study highlighted was the ease with which the young men were able to become involved. One did not even need to be a ‘proper’ drug dealer because you could simply act as a middleman. However, while it was relatively easy to become a drug dealer, there was fierce competition from the more established dealers. As a result novices, and particularly the younger street boys, took risks when trying to find new customers. This meant that they were likely to be detected by undercover police operating a ‘buy and bust’ operation. Beyond this, young people were sometimes lured into selling drugs by established gangs. For this reason, involvement in drugs was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they could be pushed by older boys into becoming street dealers while on the other they had to be constantly vigilant to avoid being caught by the police. While younger

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dealers could get out of this bind by informing the police of those individuals who pressurized them into selling drugs, becoming a ‘snitch’ was also a dangerous option. While it would of course seriously damage one’s street credibility, it could also put the young person at risk of violent attack or worse. Consequently, many of the younger dealers considered it better to pay the price and suffer the consequences if caught with drugs by the police rather than inform on the dealers for whom they were working.

Getting ‘Stitched Up’ As suggested above, the police would catch local young people by posing as junkies [drug addicts]. However, this was something that The Boys found troubling as they felt that the police were deliberately targeting men of Pakistani origin. One evening as we sat in the car, The Boys were laughing at what they considered the sheer stupidity of one of the ‘local kids’ (a younger group), who had been arrested for selling heroin to the same undercover police officer on more than one occasion. While The Boys found this amusing, they were also furious with the police tactics. Some of The Boys blamed the police for deliberately going out and enticing Pakistani youth into selling drugs to them. Shaf, who was drinking alcohol at the time, made it known what he thought: Shaf : The police jus’ love stitching up people, they ain’t fucking stupid. Don’t tell me they don’t know that some of these lot [younger boys] aren’t even, like, proper dealers. Nav: You’re right, bro. I bet you anything if a smack head [addict] came to anyone around here and wanted to buy drugs, they [youth] would say to them ‘yeah, I can get you it’, and then they will phone around and try and make money, but the thing is that doesn’t make you a dealer. That’s fucking anyone seeing like an opportunity to make a bit of money.

There was a perception among The Boys that some of the local youth would do anything to make money. Even those who were not, in their view, ‘proper’ dealers would not let opportunities to make money pass them by. A person did not even need to know a great deal about how the drug-dealing business worked, for all he needed to know was that

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there was a potential customer who wanted drugs, and that he was able to get them for him from someone else. Salman spoke one day of how the younger lot did not, in his view, have a clue what they were doing at times: Salman: You see, like, the boys on the streets and they ain’t got a clue what they’re doing or owt [anything], they take stupid risks. Some of them are going up to people they don’t even know, and who they think are smack-heads [addicts], asking them if they want to buy maal [heroin].

The ability to identify plain-clothes police is a fundamental aspect for street dealers. However, the above incident highlights the inexperience of some of the young British Pakistani dealers who aspire to make money from drugs but who are, a lot of the time, unable to detect undercover police among their genuine customers. On another occasion while we were cruising, Ahmed stopped the car and went into the shop to buy the Telegraph and Argus, the local newspaper. In it, he saw someone from the area whom he knew who had been caught by the police with a substantial amount of drugs and had been sentenced to a lengthy spell in prison. Ahmed informed Ali and Jameel about the length of his sentence, and they all appeared stunned, with Nav shouting: What the fuck, can’t believe that. He didn’t even have a clue what he was doing. He weren’t a fucking dealer. That’s bullshit.

According to The Boys, the individual concerned was working for someone else and, despite him having been in possession of the drugs, he was not the dealer. There was a feeling among The Boys that the police often knew that the younger boys worked for older dealers but felt that they were not interested in that. This was a real issue for Bash, who was convinced that the police rarely took out the major dealers in Bradford: Bash: Mawe [police] just try and do any mans over. They know that some of these lads ain’t proper dealers but for them it’s not about that, it’s ’bout getting a promotion and making out that they’ve just taken out Mr Big, when they just take out people who ain’t got a clue what they’re doing and who get used by peeps [bigger dealers].

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The value system of the younger generation was that to be associated with drug dealing and older established dealers was a badge of honor. However, there was, at the same time, a feeling among some of the younger boys that because they were younger and did not drive around in cars, they were not suspected of being drug dealers by the police. This was illustrated when cruising with The Boys. We saw a group of younger boys standing near a shop. Wahid who was by now standing by the car was counting a small bundle of £10 notes and was annoyed that he had lost money, telling the others, ‘I’ve lost some money out of me pocket, I don’t know where it’s gone.’ Salman, who knew how Wahid was making money, told him, ‘Be careful, you don’t want to get banged up.’ He was implying to Wahid that he should be vigilant so that he was not caught by the police. However, Wahid replied confidently to Salman: I’m always careful. The thing is, I’m always on foot walking around, and this way nobody even thinks I’m doing owt [anything] dodgy.

Conclusion There is often a lack of understanding of the path that leads so many British Pakistani young men in places like Bradford to become involved in drugs. This chapter has shed light on this process, essentially highlighting the motivation for The Boys to become involved with drugs. It was not because of cultural or religious explanations but instead because of their economic situation. Deprivation was a key factor in the creation a black economy, with The Boys trapped in a situation from which they saw no escape. A need for status was a further factor explaining their involvement with drugs and drug dealers. To be associated with drugs and drug dealers gave status in a neighborhood where reputation was seen to be paramount. Once involved with drugs and drug dealing, it was difficult for The Boys to leave behind the cycle of drug dealing, as criminal records made finding legal employment exceptionally difficult. Therefore, many of The Boys pursued a life of drug dealing even when they were fully aware that if caught by the police with drugs they

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risked going back to prison. Furthermore, what this chapter has highlighted was the ease with which The Boys were able to turn to drugs to make money, often starting their own career by selling drugs for the neighborhoods older astute dealers. For this reason, as highlighted in this chapter it was in many ways like being faced with a double-edged sword—on the one hand, being pushed by older boys into street dealing and then on the other hand having to constantly be vigilant so to avoid getting caught by the police. It is important to remind ourselves that The Boys had very highly developed entrepreneurial skills, but the direction they had taken was because of a number of underlying reasons. Though stigmatized and regarded as outcasts by mainstream society, The Boys demonstrated many outstanding qualities: not just entrepreneurial skills but intense, if fractious, loyalty, a strong sense of duty to family, and a strong, if eclectic, moral code. In many ways, The Boys are admirable though their good qualities are rarely visible to themselves and even less often visible to the outside world.

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Carter, H. (2002, September). ‘£1m a day’ drug road damned by judge. https:// www.theguardian.com/society/2002/sep/16/drugsandalcohol.drugs Casey, D. L. (2016). The Casey review: A review into opportunity and integration. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/ uploads/attachment_data/file/575973/The_Casey_Review_Report.pdf Croall, H. (2011). Crime and society in Britain (2nd ed.). Pearson Education. Dorling, D., & Rees, P. (2003). A nation dividing? Some interpretations of the question. Environment and Planning A, 36 (2), 369–373. Hargreaves, J. (2014). Half a story? Missing perspectives in the criminological accounts of British Muslim communities, crime and the criminal justice system. British Journal of Criminology, 55 (1), 19–33. Hudson, B. (2007). Diversity, crime and criminal justice. In M. Maguire, R. Morgan, & R. Reiner (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of criminology (4th ed., pp. 158–171). Oxford University Press. Hussain, Y., & Bagguley, P. (2009). The Bradford ‘riot’ of 2001: The diversity of action. In D. Waddington, F. Jobard, & M. King (Eds.), Rioting in the UK and France: A comparative analysis (pp. 71–80). Willan. Loweth, J. (2013, September 3). Concerns over ‘social norm’ drug dealing in Bradford. Telegraph and Argus. www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/106 49418.Concerns-over-social-norm-drug-dealing-in-Bradford/ Macey, M. (2002). Interpreting Islam: young Muslim men’s involvement in criminal activity in Bradford. In B. Spalek (Ed.), Islam, crime and criminal justice. Willan. Maguire, M., Morgan, R., & Reiner, R. (2007). The Oxford handbook of criminology (4th ed.). Oxford University Press. Mawby, R. I., & Batta, I. D. (1980). Asians and crime: The Bradford experience. Scope Communications. Muckle, S. (2021). Report of the strategic director, health and wellbeing to the meeting of the Health and Social Care Overview and Scrutiny Committee to be held on 16 February 2021. https://bradford.moderngov.co.uk/documents/ s32833/Hlth16FebDocV.pdf Phillips, D. (2002). Movement to opportunity? South Asian relocation in northern cities (End of Award report, ESRC R000238038). School of Geography, University of Leeds, Leeds. Qasim, M. (2017, April). Explaining young British Muslim men’s involvement in heroin and crack. Journal—Criminology & Criminal Justice, 18(3), 349– 363. Qasim, M. (2018, January). Young, Muslim and criminal, experiences, identities and pathways into crime. Policy Press.

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Rahman, S. (2009, December 21). Segregation in Bradford. The Guardian. www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/dec/21/bradford-islamwhite-flight-segregation Ruggiero, V., & Khan, K. (2006). British South Asian communities and drug supply networks in the UK. International Journal of Drug Policy, 17 , 473– 483. Sandberg, S. (2008). Black drug dealers in a white welfare state: Cannabis dealing and street capital in Norway. British Journal of Criminology, 48(5), 604–619. Singh, A.-M. (2008). Policing and crime control in post-apartheid South Africa. Ashgate. Smith, D. (2009). Criminology, contemporary society and race issues. In H. Singh Bhui (Ed.), Race and criminal justice (pp. 30–48). Sage. Spalek, B. (2002). Islam, crime and criminal justice. Willan. Valentine, S. R. (2005). Muslims in Bradford, UK (Background paper for COMPAS). University of Oxford. Webster, C. (2007). Understanding race and crime. Open University Press. Webster, C. (2012). The construction of British Muslim criminality and disorder. In P. Wetherly, M. Farrar, S. Robinson, & Y. Valli (Eds.), ‘Islam’ in ‘the West’: Key issues in multiculturalism. Palgrave. Winrow, J. (2020, August). Bradford is one of worst affected areas in country for rising unemployment, figures reveal. Telegraph and Argus. Wright, S. (2009, August 20). Manningham man shouted racial abuse before attack. Telegraph and Argus. www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/ 4555469.Teenager_gets_five_years_for_race_stabbing/

Part V Gangs and the Justice System

18 Policing UK Street Gangs Tom Davies and Nigel South

Introduction The last decade or so has seen an expansion of academic research on street gangs in the UK, from provenance and prevalence to detailed policy critique (Densley, 2011; Hallsworth, 2013; Joseph & Gunter, 2011; Pitts, 2008, 2017). Despite this, empirical research on the policing response in the UK is surprisingly sparse. Interest in the terminology of gang discourse (Smithson et al., 2013), the impact of labelling on ethnic groups and individuals (Bridges, 2015; Medina, 2014; Smithson et al., 2013; Squires, 2016a; Williams, 2015), and the legal mechanisms used against gang members (Squires, 2016b; Williams & Clarke, T. Davies Mayor of London’s Violence Reduction Unit, London, UK N. South (B) University of Essex, Colchester, UK e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Andell and J. Pitts (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Youth Gangs in the UK , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99658-1_18

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2016) have not been complemented by academic insight into policing perspectives and practice. Although gang databases have received some recent scrutiny (Amnesty, 2018; Densley & Pyrooz, 2020; MOPAC, 2018), the observation of Ralphs et al. (2009, p. 485) over a decade ago that ‘controversial US gang interventions have slipped unquestioned into mainstream policy and practice’ continues to ring true. This chapter seeks to help to fill this knowledge gap, focusing on London and the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) to present insights from a critical perspective regarding the processes and mechanisms which have combined to shape the MPS understanding of and response to gang-related criminality over the last decade. The chapter begins by providing a brief review of the origins and evolution of gang policing in the UK, before exploring strategic and intelligence developments such as the MPS Gangs Violence Matrix. Barriers to and benefits of current approaches are discussed in the context of the evolution of gang forms and fluid networks, and in some cases, the blurring of boundaries with organised crime. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the current landscape, an increased focus on exploitation and vulnerability, and the idea of a public health approach to violence reduction.

Politics, Policing and the Gang In early August 2011, England experienced its worst outbreak of civil disorder for two decades, after protests over the fatal police shooting of Mark Duggan in Tottenham boiled over and rioting broke out across the country. Then Prime Minster David Cameron was quick to lay blame for the riots on ‘gang culture’ as the cause of ‘a major criminal disease that has infected streets and estates across our country’ (Cabinet Office, 2011). Although research swiftly cast doubt on the extent of gang involvement (Lewis et al., 2011), such assertions marked a crescendo in gang-centric policy from ‘no such problem’ in 1999 to ‘national priority’ in 2011 (Smithson & Ralphs, 2016); a policy shift which was to significantly impact upon perceptions and responses regarding youth and weapon-enabled violence and criminality across criminal justice and partnership agencies.

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Over the decade since that pronouncement, the subject of ‘the gang’ has become thoroughly embedded in both the discourse and operational practices of agencies addressing a wide range of criminal behaviours from anti-social behaviour to organised crime (Hallsworth & Brotherton, 2011; Harding, 2020; Hobbs, 2013; Joseph, 2011). As gatekeepers to the criminal justice machine, the police have played a vital role in both shaping and responding to this ‘new’ social threat. Set against a climate of financial constraints and an increasing emphasis on the management of risk, the London MPS utilised a range of processes and mechanisms spanning organisational and partnership boundaries to inform their response to gangs. The ‘gang’ is a phenomenon that has been discovered and rediscovered at various points in history, generally as a recognition or description of groups of young, working class men engaging in activities that were disapproved of by those who were ‘socially superior’ or that actually broke laws of various kinds (Hobbs, 1997; Pearson, 1983). Hales et al. (2006, p. 60) describe the idea of ‘the gang’ as ‘loaded with emotive terminology and powerful social ‘folk devils’ such as football hooligans and East End gangsters along the line of the Krays’, yet it was the power of American cultural representation which initially shaped British conceptions of gangs, generating an influence that would stretch far beyond media stereotypes and into all areas of policing policy and practice. The American understanding is itself complex and often misunderstood, suggesting a heterogeneous, situationally dependant concept which does not lend itself to a universal definition (Fraser & Hagedorn, 2016; Katz & Jackson-Jacobs, 2004), and with an empirical evidencebase stretching back over a century (Cloward & Ohlin, 1960; Hagedorn, 1988; Klein, 1997; Thrasher, 1927). Both the academy and Government in the UK had been reticent about applying the gang tag to youth collaborations, fearful of the connotations and impact this labelling might have. Unrestrained by such concerns, it was the UK media that led the defining of the ‘gang problem’, particularly following several high-profile murder cases involving young victims (Alexander, 2008). In the absence of any political consensus on definition and terminology, the press had looked to America for inspiration and relayed a media construction of

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gangs as monolithic, male and black, urban but spreading, hierarchical with leaders and rules, and violent, with a sartorial style inspired by inner-city youth emulating US rappers (Hallsworth, 2013). Importantly, at this point, ‘gang statistics’ were not being produced by police but by the media. However, although the gang-related tag was liberally applied in news reports, serious violence was not a media construction. In London, police focus had been on gun crime, initially the very low prevalence but extreme internecine violence of a tiny minority of predominantly Jamaican-born young men involved in disputes over inner-city crack markets (Davison, 1997). Throughout the 2000s there was a marked change in the demographics of those involved in firearms violence, both victims and suspects becoming increasingly younger and British born, with a peak of eight teenagers being fatally shot in 2007 (Davies, 2010). Although the MPS and Manchester police had noted the significance of street gangs, Government proved slower to react, despite increasing media attention and public concern regarding knife, gun and gang crime. Inevitably, Government came under increasing pressure to take action to address a problem of weapons-based violence that could no longer be blamed on the organised criminal infighting of ‘alien others’ (Hobbs & Antonopoulos, 2012) on the one hand, or anti-social behaviour of ‘out of control youth’ on the other (Young, 2016). Although ‘gangs’ had featured in the public lexicon for years, the Government had been reluctant to adopt the terminology and in 2004 the Home Office was still using the term ‘Delinquent Youth Group’ (Sharp et al., 2006). The tipping point appears to have been the murder of eleven-year old Rhys Jones in Liverpool in 2007, caught in crossfire between two teenage ‘gang members’ (Smithson & Ralphs, 2016) resulting in a public outcry and a swiftly convened ‘gang summit’ at Downing Street. Shortly after, the Government embraced a new terminology with the launch in September 2007of the ‘Tackling Gangs Action Programme’ (TGAP) (Home Office, 2007). Guns and gangs were the prominent policy pairing, with TGAP adopting objectives to target and reduce youth violence, and focus on gang-related firearms offences in London, Merseyside, West Midlands and Greater Manchester (Dawson, 2008).

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TGAP and the subsequent ‘Tackling gangs: A practical guide for local authorities’, Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships, and other local partner initiatives (Home Office, 2008), all drew heavily on the unevaluated ‘best practice’ of the specialist ‘gun and gang’ units that had previously been set up in London and major cities (discussed below). As with strategic and operational responses to drug-trafficking in the 1980s and 1990s (Dorn et al., 1992), these were modelled heavily on the American experience, both in terms of enforcement tactics and prevention. Nonetheless, resistance to application of the ‘gang’ label remained apparent across criminal justice partners (Young et al., 2007), and it was not until the publication of the influential Dying to Belong report by the UK Gangs Working Group (Centre for Social Justice, 2009)—itself heavily influenced by the work of the US Department of Justice—that the Government decided to adopt a universal definition of ‘the gang’. The Government’s response to youth violence—the ‘Ending Gang and Youth Violence’ (EGYV) programme—was hastily rolled out within three months of the 2011 Riots with an explicit aim of dealing with ‘damaging and destructive gang culture’ (HM Government, 2015). This pivotal period is described in the next section.

The Evolution of the Police Gang Unit in London In the week following the riots in north London, on 15th August 2011, Prime Minister David Cameron delivered a speech in which he promised his Government would commence a ‘concerted, all-out war on gangs and gang culture’ (Cabinet Office, 2011). As with other ‘wars’—against crime, drugs and terrorism—it was to American approaches that attention turned, with a very well-publicised example of transatlantic gang ‘knowledge transfer’ being organised when former New York and Los Angeles Police Department Commissioner and US ‘gang expert’ Bill Bratton was flown to London to advise on use of specialised policing tactics (Smithson et al., 2013). The specialist policing of gangs in the UK is a relatively new phenomenon but one in keeping with an overarching move towards

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specialism across all areas of policing (Roberts & Innes, 2009). Densley (2012, p. 148) identified the emergence of anti-gang taskforces as evidence that Britain had at last moved ‘beyond its state of denial about gangs’ and the very public launch of Trident Gang Crime Command in 2012 certainly provided a strong signal that gang crime was to be seen as a ‘problem’. Yet in fact, what was being presented was not the creation of a new ‘gang busting unit’ but a rebranding of a long-established specialist unit with a past focus on firearms crime ‘in London’s black communities’ (Densley, 2013, p. 148). Secretive specialist units had long existed to tackle specific criminal activity, notably Operation Lucy (colloquially known as the ‘Yardie Squad’) was formed of a dozen detectives running in the 1980s but disbanded in 1989 (Kalunta-Crumpton, 2003). In the 1990s, a spate of violent shootings involving mainly Jamaican-born males competing over crack markets led to media coverage of a ‘new type of criminal’ with predictably racist undertones, drawing public attention (Davison, 1997). At the same time, the MPS—and UK policing more generally—were under pressure related to systemic failings in handling of crimes involving black and ethnic minority communities identified through a series of enquiries culminating in the damning MacPherson report (1999) which labelled the MPS ‘institutionally racist’ in 1999 (Lea, 2000). The policy response was dramatic, controversial and expansive; a specialised operational command unit (OCU) was set up. Trident was a major initiative consisting of some 400 officers and staff and officially launched on 24th July 2000. Its publicly stated aim was to tackle ‘black-on-black gun and drugs-related violence’, soon adapted to focus on ‘all firearms murders and shootings within London’s black communities’ (Home Affairs Committee, 2007, p. 368). The rush to provide a tailored response to firearms homicide investigations (but not other types of homicide) meant that initially at least, the unit’s approach was not well thought through but instead evolved in vivo; first developing a proactive element based on the Flying Squad model, and later a focus on partnership and intervention (Roberts, 2011). Over time, Trident gained a reputation as a successful police unit but also as a publicly recognised ‘brand’ familiar to Londoners and the media. In 2004, the introduction of Operation Trafalgar directed efforts to ‘investigate all non-fatal shootings where there is evidence of discharge of

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a lethal barrelled weapon, regardless of ethnicity’ although confusingly, Trident still had Major Investigation Teams (MITS) that were assigned ‘all homicides where both victim and offender are from London’s black communities’. In practice, this resulted in the need for delineation of investigations based on ethnicity, in part due to significant support from individuals with influence in London’s black communities (Webbe, 2012). The changing demographic of those involved in gun crime to predominantly young, British-born black males both drove and facilitated an emphasis on community engagement. A Trident Independent Advisory Group had been set up from the outset to act as a ‘critical friend’— with community activists going so far as to take credit for Trident’s creation (Webbe, 2012) and was highlighted as a successful model of engagement (Centre for Social Justice, 2009). Trident’s focus on black violent crime was not universally welcomed however and the Trident brand has been (and continues to be) referenced in derogatory terms in London-produced musical commentary and other offerings and has come under attack from community activists who were not party to the original consultations. In February 2012, to much media fanfare, and with a grinning (then) Mayor Boris Johnson and a giant ‘do not cross’ police barrier tape (Camber, 2012), Trident was rebranded ‘Trident: Gang Crime Command’, with a new logo with the ‘T’ of Trident forming a crosshair, and an array of merchandise—from sweatbands to mugs—shipped in for promotional and community events (and the staff kitchen). The launch—and subsequent disbanding of its still ethnically focused murder teams in 2014—aroused criticism from founding members of the original advisory group (Webbe, 2012), for ‘abandoning’ London’s black communities, and for hijacking Trident as part of a political stunt by Mayor Boris Johnson, aiming to ‘co-opt London’s black community into his enforcement led war on gangs’ (Jasper, 2012, 2013).

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Mapping Gangs: Policing in the Intelligence-Driven Crime Control Paradigm The adoption of increasingly ‘actuarial’ mechanisms within policing, aimed at managing risk and harm, has been identified by many as a key facet in the transformation of policing practices (Feeley & Simon, 1994; McLaughlin, 2007), regardless of how quantifiable that ‘risk’ actually is, and how much it is influenced by politically determined priorities (O’Malley, 1998). The rise of ‘Crime Management’ in the form of ‘Intelligence Led Policing’ and ‘Problem Orientated Policing’— strategic, target orientated approaches—was presented as modernising, increasing efficiency, improving resource allocation and helping to meet performance targets. All of this placed policing within an ‘intelligencedriven crime control paradigm’ (Reiner & Newburn, 2008, p. 352) which assumes that complex understanding of ‘the gang’ can be ‘built’, crime control ‘opportunities’ will be identified through adoption of ‘precrime’ techniques, and pre-emptive targeting is an appropriate means of meeting goals of ‘prevention’ (Zedner, 2007). Mapping requires data, and in 2003, the MPS began systematically surveying boroughs to gather gang-related information. At this point framing was still an issue, there was no operational definition of a gang, and centralised gang-specific databases were non-existent. In 2006, the MPS produced the first Pan-London Gang Profile, which suggested the number of known ‘gangs’ had been increasing, now numbering 169, and these might be responsible for 21% of all youth crime (MPS, 2006, p. 4)—a claim needing additional intelligence and further analysis.

Documenting Gang Members There are various ways in which an individual can be ‘documented’ as a gang member in the ‘system’, including raw intelligence logs, profiles or social network analysis, and open source or partnership intelligence. Gangs are ‘risk assessed’ and priority-rated. Crime reports can

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contribute to this if flagged as gang-related but this process can suffer from inconsistent application across boroughs meaning reliability may be distrusted. Deployed nationally, Organised Crime Group Mapping, is another law enforcement tool aimed at systematically capturing organised criminal activity but suffering from difficulties and confusions that arise from the assumed ease of linking street gangs to organised crime (NCA, 2018). Different agencies adopted differing definitions of gangs and measures of harm (Mulholland & Cole, 2021), inevitably amplifying inconsistencies, disagreements and difficulties in robustly identifying gang affiliation. Furthermore, the nuances, fluidity and evolving nature of gangs in London could be overlooked. What is clear is that these processes and mechanisms are deeply embedded in ‘the system’—and the system is, of course, dependent on input. Once established as a legitimate threat, ‘the gang’ presented the MPS with an archetype which appeared perfectly suited to policing in the ‘intelligence-driven crime control paradigm’ (Reiner & Newburn, 2008, p. 352). With an overarching framework already in place, the creation of gang databases was a logical step and one that appeared straightforward, not least because gang members initially seemed easy to identify. However, the impression of order, control and objectivity presented by MPS gang monitoring processes belies the fact that documenting gang members is a subjective process, reliant on the interpretation of data which is already likely to incorporate perceptual bias. The variation in the views of practitioners of what constitutes a gang, and the varying degrees of confidence they may have in being able to accurately establish gang affiliation are testament to this. Individuals can be gang ‘labelled’ at a variety of different levels: from raw intelligence ‘on the system’, to identification via tasked intelligence products, through to intensive monitoring and targeting if placed on the Gangs Violence Matrix (GVM).

Gang Databases Until recently, gang databases and official processes for gang member identification had received relatively little academic or public scrutiny in the UK although once underway, obvious questions were raised

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concerning factors influencing differing or competing perceptions, priorities and labelling (Smithson et al., 2013; Williams, 2015). Studies have also highlighted administrative problems in policing gangs on a borough basis and the difficulties of centralised mapping of localised problems (Densley & Jones, 2016) and explored how individuals have been affected by targeted policing activity, with a specific focus on the disproportionate policing of young black males (Williams, 2018). In the USA, where research is far more developed, the ability to accurately identify gang affiliation has repeatedly been questioned (Chesney-Lind et al., 1994; Spergel, 1995), leading to suggestions that interventions should focus on individual and group (as opposed to gang) harms (Kennedy, 2009) which can also mean individuals can be offered diversionary opportunities (Short, 2009; Spergel, 2009), or those presenting the most ‘unacceptable’ risks can be focused on (Ericson & Haggerty, 1997).

The MPS Gangs Violence Matrix The Gangs Violence Matrix (GVM) has been central to gang policing in London since its creation in 2012. It has also attracted criticism in relation to civil liberties (Amnesty, 2018), disproportionate representation of young, black males (Williams, 2018) and data protection regulation (ICO, 2018), leading to a commitment by the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, to conduct a detailed review of the GVM. Published in 2018, the review argued that the GVM had been necessary and successful in reducing offending but recognised the validity of various complaints and recommended a comprehensive overhaul of the Matrix Operating Model both to restore trust and to comply with data protection legislation (MOPAC, 2018). Over the last decade, the Gangs Violence Matrix has become thoroughly embedded in operational practice, taking locally generated judgements about gang affiliation (and harm) and inserting them into the central intelligence cycle as fact. It also serves as a key external signal that the gang phenomenon is mapped and controlled. Inclusion on the GVM may be influenced by a range of factors within the institutional environment of each different borough, from key stakeholders (e.g. the Local

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Authority) to local force policies and priorities, including the weighting attached to risk aversion, operational activity, resourcing, recording of offending activity and intelligence, or the perceptions and beliefs of police officers involved in Matrix administration. In light of the Mayoral Review, a move towards more standardised and rigorous processes has been seen—most notably in terms of governance and oversight, although robust evidence on the impact of non-enforcement interventions is still lacking (MOPAC, 2021).

Police Gang Tactics When Trident first morphed into a specialist gang unit, its primary role was to provide advice and co-ordination to local gang responses. Provision was made to investigate serious gang-related violence other than shootings as ‘the exception rather than the rule’ (MPS, 2012). Driven by external pressures, this approach rapidly expanded into a wider remit, with increased resources, generating bidding wars from local units to have them on their patch, encouraging an emphasis on attention to gangs. Proactive gang enforcement is predominantly carried out in two ways. First, the targeting of individuals using an array of tactics dependent on their harm score and willingness to engage with diversionary services. High-harm ‘nominals’ (the term for those included on the database) are often subject to daily enforcement and partnership activity against them, weekly home visits, increased ‘attention’ when on the street and considered for all types of proactive development using ‘Achilles heel’ tactics (MPS, 2020, p. 19). Second, gangs and gang locations are targeted via suppression-based proactivity. Tactics are selected from a variety of options and might include weapon sweeps, increased stop and search, vehicle stops as well as more individually tailored targeting. While the Gangs Violence Matrix has so far survived almost a decade in operation, Trident Gang Crime Command was quietly and unceremoniously disbanded in 2019 as part of the latest ‘transformation’ programme (MPS, 2018), with Trident returning to its original focus on gun crime. Gang policing is now undertaken with a predominantly

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local focus, the uneven distribution of local gang units being supplemented with ‘surge capability’ from a dedicated Violent Crime Task Force (VCTF) with Specialist Crime involved in targeting the highest harm offenders and gangs linked to organised crime (MPS, 2019).

Community Engagement, Violence Reduction and Public Health Approaches While many of these organisational changes have been imposed with efficiency in mind, they are also intended to send signals to both the general public and to those involved in criminality that law enforcement is being improved and is taken seriously by the Government. Trident had been built on a model of community engagement designed to provide legitimacy for enforcement actions by building trust and it was hoped that this would encourage a flow of crucial intelligence from affected communities to police agencies, enabling focused targeting of those causing the most harm. The later, broadened remit of Trident to encompass gangs—and the ‘identity crisis’ this engendered—was to impact on Trident’s external signals, and this was manifested in complex ways. On the one hand, the portrayal of the unit as an elite squad focused on the serious and ‘professional end’ of gang and gun crime was designed to assure communities that the most serious criminals are being targeted, as well as signal to the criminals that Trident was on their case. On the other, the widening of the enforcement net to young people on the periphery of gang involvement—or who simply live in the areas in which Trident or the VCTF predominantly operate—has caused community tensions and accusations of ‘easy pickings’ from the affected population. These reactions have been recognised within senior officer ranks. Barriers raised by well-documented, historic and organisationally endemic examples of the ‘silo mentality’ are well recognised (James, 2014; Sheptycki, 2004), and though they do not easily disappear, the benefits of partnership working in the gang domain were welcomed. These benefits have often originated with the youth and gangs workers who have direct contact with the individuals involved or come from the

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work of local authority analysts ‘bridging the gap’ to develop rich understandings of the life worlds of young gang affiliates rather than just their offending behaviours. This broader perspective has been important in other ways. As Shepherd and Farrington (1993, pp. 89–90) observed, for a long time, ‘assault’ was not treated as a public health problem, ‘despite the fact that it is a major threat to health and a major cause of disparities in health between richer and poorer segments of the community’. A growing body of work on ‘epidemiological criminology’ and public health approaches to crime (Akers et al., 2012) has developed to address this and has featured in violence reduction and prevention initiatives. One such strategy with a predominantly ‘gang’ focus is that of focussed deterrence (Braga et al., 2019). In practice, this approach may rely on a unified message from the authorities and the community affected by the violence, coming together to offer opportunities to leave the ‘ganglife’, while emphasising that if the violence continues robust enforcement for any misdemeanours will follow. There has been sporadic application of focussed deterrence approaches in the UK—in 2002 in Manchester (Bullock & Tilley, 2002, 2008), in 2008–2011 in Glasgow (Williams et al., 2014), and in London with the 2009 Pathways programme (MPS, 2011) as well as several local initiatives (Densley & Jones, 2016). Aspects of the strategy also informed Trident’s approach across its various incarnations. The most recent attempt in London in 2015–2016, Shield, was beset by familiar issues around community engagement, partnership buy-in, project understanding and balancing competing priorities. The evaluation of Shield found ‘that the challenges in implementation resulted in no clear test of the model (Davies et al., 2017, p. 29). Over time, public health influence on gang policing has primarily been the result of shifts in understanding and approach to policing drug markets, fitting a policy focus on exploitation and vulnerability, while allowing for the sharing of risk and resources in enhanced partnership working (Van Dijk et al., 2019). The recent roll out of Violence Reduction Units, based on the Scottish model, suggests a further embedding

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of such a public health approach (Home Office, 2020). While configurations vary considerably between cities (the London version has only limited police involvement), collaborative approaches such as ‘focussed deterrence’ are being piloted once again, with drug dealing ‘gangs’ a primary target (Home Office, 2021).

County Lines Many reports refer to County Lines and gangs together as if synonymous (Harding, 2020; Jaensch & South, 2018; NCA, 2015), though there is not necessarily such a clear connection. The popular linkage is inextricably tied to the wider definitional debates, and subsumes the significance of drugs supply within the popular concerns about ‘gangs’. When EGYV was replaced by Ending Gang Violence and Exploitation (EGVE) in 2016 (Home Office, 2016), ‘County Lines’ became a central feature of gang policy, with a shift in focus towards the vulnerability and exploitation associated with young people who may be coerced into transporting or dealing drugs, whether locally or further afield. Focus shifted from suppression tactics to long term operations aimed at completely dismantling what might best fit—from a police perspective at least—the super-articulated gangs model described by Pitts (2008). In other accounts, gang involvement in County Lines may mean that money made from the lines was being funnelled into organised crime. Seen through this lens, the street gangs suddenly became networks of organised professional criminals and with links to ‘modern slavery’ (NCA, 2017), such ‘gang talk’ obscuring wider debate around the structural conditions which arguably generate such activity (Spicer, 2021).

Conclusion: The ‘Gang Industry’ Whatever position one takes on the evolution of gang policing in London, the influence of key stakeholders needs to be emphasised, including Government, the Mayor’s Office, local authorities, special

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interest and community groups, and criminal justice partners. Although the creation of the original Trident gun crime unit was in part a response to calls from London’s black communities, such pressure was largely absent when it was rebranded as the MPS lead body for gang crime in 2012 and some viewed this as a cynical political move by the then Mayor of London Boris Johnson (see for example, Jasper, 2013; Webbe, 2012), designed to appropriate the legitimacy that Trident had gained in some circles and be seen to be responding to growing political and public concern around gangs. The specialist gang unit approach adopted by the MPS can be seen as mimetic. The mimicking of ‘best practice’ in gang policing—regardless of the specific local problem—has been evident both nationally and within London, as specialist gang units emerged across the country at the end of the last decade, themselves based on American approaches. A chain reaction can be observed whereby both the structures and tactics of these nascent units were adopted by others whatever the localised environmental contingencies. DiMaggio et al. (1991, pp. 67–68) argue that mimetic processes may occur if the environment ‘creates symbolic uncertainty’, and the different interpretations of the ‘gang’ provide just that. This same environment brought with it a rush of literature, gang summits, training, and conferences; as Hallsworth (2013, p. 93) describes, a ‘gang industry’ was created, and one that senior officers wholly engaged with. In London, Trident disseminated detailed operating procedures and manuals outlining guidance across all elements of the approach, from structure and governance, to enforcement and intervention tactics. The adoption of specialist gang units was what was expected in policing practice and Pitts (2017) highlights the possibility that practitioners may be simply replicating this ‘received wisdom’. The monitoring and accountability of wider police performance is becoming more sophisticated, for example, the last ‘Policing and Crime Plan’ abolishes pan-London performance targets in crime reduction seeking instead to monitor localised priority issues (MOPAC, 2017). However, this does not translate to the specialist and local operational activity of gang units, predominantly based on apparent rather than actual performance. There is a continued unquestioning reliance on the various ‘proxy’ measures which are liable to considerable distortion. It

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may be that the police are reluctant to subject their operational activities to robust evaluation because they are worried it will erode hard won legitimacy. Equally, little has actually changed in the way that violent criminality has been policed; the usual suspects are still targeted in the usual ways. The police inhabit a unique role in regard to ‘success-claims’ in the gang field and one that is made more difficult by their traditional role as arbiters of control. There is a tendency for them to excuse themselves (or be excused by other stakeholders) from robust evaluation of their activities because of the confidential, sensitive nature of operational activities and the intelligence that is supposed to direct them. This is particularly true of all aspects of police intelligence work, especially that which focuses on high harm or serious violence and criminality. Police ‘success’ has therefore been defined in the form of outputs—measurements of enforcement activity such as arrests and commodity seizures. As Rostami et al. (2015, p. 214) urge, it is imperative that assertions of success be based on a critical analysis of operational outcomes.

For gang policing, this line of thinking has been starkly apparent, particularly in the early years of EGYV. ‘Prevention’ appeared to become confused with pre-crime and predictive policing; thus, success was measured by the amount of control and incapacitation directed at those believed to be the most harmful—yet gun and gang crime did not decrease. Since the ‘perfect storm’ of political pressures, media-induced social outrage and economic precariousness which gathered in the aftermath of the 2011 riots and gave birth to the current policing approach to gangs, there is little doubt that the MPS has been ‘governing through gangs’ (Fraser & Atkinson, 2014, p. 167). The MPS fully embraced the gang as the ‘suitable enemy’ suggested by its key stakeholders (Hallsworth, 2013), creating not only an array of specialist gang units, but a set of gang databases to map gangs, gang members and their associated risks. However, the numerous influences on the construction of police gang data might suggest that the value of data as a tool to understand

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the nature and prevalence of gangs and gang members in London is limited. Such a conclusion is neither novel nor surprising; the deficiencies of police gang data have been previously noted both in America (Chesney-Lind et al., 1994; Meehan, 2000; Spergel, 1995) and to a lesser extent in the UK (Densley & Pyrooz, 2020; Smithson & Ralphs, 2016; Williams, 2015). The imposition of ‘process’ over ‘analysis’ in the policing of gangs leads to a paucity of available intelligence, influenced a continuing mistrust and lack of engagement between the communities most affected by serious street orientated violence and those policing it. According to practitioners deeply involved in the process of policing gangs, the gang of 2021 is very different from the gang of 2011. From their perspective, the evolution of the gang has been extraordinary in its rapidity, and the mechanisms to monitor it have not caught up. Ultimately, the question is whether ‘the gang’ should be given the priority it currently receives in the policing of youth and weapons-enabled violence in London? The nodes of distortion, internal and external influences affecting data and understanding, create a situation where it is impossible to accurately evaluate the efficacy of the police response. The result is that very different people and very different problems become subsumed in a messy and uncoordinated agglomeration which is publicly presented with a veneer of order and control (Hobbs, 2013, p. 53).

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19 Crown Prosecution Service Decision-Making and Gangs Stephen Colman

Introduction This chapter will examine some of the legal issues related to the prosecution of gang-related offences in England and Wales. As there are no specific ‘gang’ offences, the focus of this chapter is how the prosecution may present evidencethat general offences are gang related and how the rules of evidence can be used to allow this to happen. After a brief overview of the role of the prosecutor in the adversarial legal system, there will be an examination of why the parties, most commonly the prosecution, may wish to admit evidence to show that an offence was gang related. The focus will then shift on to three types of evidence which may be used to prove that there was a gang dimension to the offence, namely expert evidence, bad character and social media evidence. Finally, S. Colman (B) University of Suffolk, Ipswich, UK e-mail: [email protected]

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some of the risks and issues associated with introducing such evidence into the prosecution will be considered. The adversarial structure of the criminal justice system in England and Wales is directly relevant to the way in which gang-related evidence is used in prosecutions. The adversarial system operates on the basis of a two-party contest between the prosecution and the defence with the judge undertaking a neutral umpire role (Johnston & Smith, 2020, pp. 2–3). As a result, the offence is investigated and prosecuted by the ‘prosecution team’ who present evidence to the court in support of their particular version of events. Similarly, the defence challenges the evidence of the prosecution and presents evidence in support of their own case theory. Therefore, neither party is under an obligation to present evidence to the court that does not support their own case although the prosecution and defence must comply with their disclosure obligations under the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996. A fundamental feature of the adversarial system is that the burden of proof is on the prosecution to prove its case to the criminal standard of beyond reasonable doubt. The onus is therefore on the prosecution to collate and produce evidence which is capable of discharging the burden of proof at trial. If the prosecution fails to persuade the jury (or bench of magistrates) that it has proved the allegation to the criminal standard of beyond reasonable doubt, the defendant must be acquitted as per Woolmington v. DPP [1935]. The prosecution will present evidence that the offence was gang related to prove its case. The defence, by contrast, do not generally have to prove anything; they are entitled to hold the prosecution to their obligation to prove their case or they may positively put forward a defence such as self-defence. Either way, the defence is under no obligation to present evidence to allow the court to determine the truth of what happened. Essentially, the prosecution version can be challenged without persuading the court of an alternative version of events.

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The Role of the Public Prosecutor Although historically most prosecutions were brought by individual citizens, most prosecutions are now brought by the State. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) was created by the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985 and now prosecutes the majority of criminal cases in England and Wales on the basis of evidence collected by the police or other criminal justice agencies. The prosecutor exercises discretion over whether to prosecute, and this discretion is shaped by The Code for Crown Prosecutors (CPS, 2018) and a range of prosecution policies. The code (CPS, 2018) establishes a two-stage test called the ‘Full Code Test’ which is applied in every case to determine whether a prosecution should be brought. In order for a prosecution to proceed, both the evidential and public interest stages of the ‘Full Code Test’ must be met. Firstly, the CPS must be satisfied that there is a ‘realistic prospect of conviction’ based on an objective analysis of the evidence. As part of that assessment, the prosecutor should consider whether the evidence is admissible (whether the rules of evidence allow it to be used), reliable (accurate and trustworthy) and credible (believable). The prosecutor only applies the public interest stage of the test if the evidential stage is met. The public interest stage recognises that not every allegation of criminal misconduct should be prosecuted and that some matters can be adequately dealt with by way of out-of-court disposals, such as simple or conditional cautions although these still form part of the defendant’s record. In assessing the public interest, the prosecutor will consider factors such as the seriousness of the offence, the level of the suspect’s culpability and the degree of harm caused to the victim. The Code for Crown Prosecutors (CPS, 2018) does not provide guidance on specific criminal offences. As a result, a raft of offence-specific prosecution policies has developed one of which relates to decision-making in gang-related offences. The ‘Decision Making in Gang Related Offences’ policy (CPS, https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/gang-related-offences-decisionmaking, n.d.) does not provide guidance on the prosecution of specific criminal offences, but provides an overview of key principles which are relevant to offences that are alleged to be gang related. It recognises

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that there is no formal, legal definition of a ‘gang’ although it attempts to provide some explanations of terms such as ‘urban street gangs’, ‘organised crime groups’ and ‘county lines’. However, the policy itself acknowledges that ‘gang’ is a negative term and carries the risk of making assumptions, unconscious bias and net widening. Whilst the policy states that ‘prosecutors must not use the term ‘gang’ unless there is evidence to support that assertion’, it also affirms that ‘prosecutors must also ensure that where there is admissible evidence of gang membership, the case is put on a basis that reflects the often serious gravity of the offending’. The fact that an offence was gang related is likely to be treated as an aggravating feature by the court when sentencing. Therefore, prosecutors are under an obligation to consider whether there is relevant evidence of a gang dimension to the case, but their decision to argue that the offence is gang related must be evidence-based.

Why Might Evidence that the Offence was Gang Related be Presented? Although prosecutors should present their case in a way that reflects the seriousness of the alleged misconduct, the reasons for putting forward evidence that a particular offence was gang related are complex and not solely related to the seriousness of the offence. It is important to note that although in the majority of cases it is likely to be the prosecution who produce evidence that a particular offence is gang related, the defence may also do so. It is possible that the defence may wish to produce evidence that a third party, such as a prosecution witness, was part of a gang or had been involved in gang-related activities previously as part of the defence case. As a result, there are a number of reasons why the issue of whether there is a ‘gang’ dimension to the case may be relevant; some of these reasons will be examined below. In many cases, there will be more than one reason for a party presenting evidence that an offence is gang related. In some cases, the party proposing to rely on ‘gang’ evidence may simply be doing so as part of the factual narrative that they are putting forward to the jury. In other words, the claim that the offence was gang

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related is central to their case and without that evidence the case would not make sense to the jury. In these types of case, the gang dimension is so fundamental to the case that to omit it would leave a significant gap in the factual evidence presented to the jury. Gang evidence may also be used to assist the jury in understanding the case by, for example, providing evidence of motive to explain why the defendant is alleged to have committed the offence. Alternatively, such evidence could be introduced to prove or disprove a specific element of the offence, such as intention. For example, evidence of gang affiliation may be relevant to whether the defendant had an intention to kill or cause GBH which is an essential requirement of the offence of murder. It could also be in support of, or in rebuttal of, a particular defence such as self-defence or duress. Some of the more common reasons for adducing ‘gang’ evidence will now be examined in more detail.

Assisting the Jury to Understand—Motive As indicated above, a common reason for presenting ‘gang’ evidence is to establish the defendant’s motive for committing the offence. Although there is no legal requirement to prove motive, it may assist the jury in understanding the case. An example of a case in which evidence that the defendant was a gang member was produced by the prosecution to establish motive is R v. Dixon-Kenton [2021]. The appellant was alleged to have stabbed the victim to death with a kitchen knife in the street in August 2019. The prosecution case was that the appellant had murdered the victim in revenge for another gang-related murder. The issue of violent rivalry between the two gangs was, therefore, central to the reason why the defendant might have murdered the victim. In R v. Awoyemi [2016], the prosecution used gang evidence to show the connection between the defendants and two shootings on the basis that they had the ‘hallmarks of gang violence’.

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Proving an Element of the Offence—Intention Although the prosecution does not have to prove motive, a number of essential elements have to be proved by the prosecution for each offence. These elements consist of both actus reus (the criminal act) and mens rea (the mental elements of the offence) elements (with the exception of strict liability offences which do not require a mental element; these tend to be regulatory offences such as motoring offences). Sometimes gang evidence is presented in order to prove one or more of these elements, usually the mental element such as intention. In R v. Stewart [2016], the appellant was convicted after a trial at the Central Criminal Court of an offence of possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life (Firearms Act 1968, section 16). He had also pleaded guilty to offences of possessing a firearm without authority and possession of cannabis. The factual background to the offence was simple; the appellant was detained by the police after the taxi that he was travelling in was stopped and he was found to be in possession of a sawn-off shotgun. Although he initially made no comment in the police interview, at the trial he subsequently accepted that he was carrying the gun. The issue in dispute was whether he had the intention required for the offence of possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life. The prosecution case was that evidence of an intention to endanger life could be inferred from ‘the nature of the weapon itself, the appellant’s actions on the night, and the surrounding circumstances’. The prosecution presented evidence of the appellant’s involvement in a gang, the fact that he had previously been a victim of gang violence, and had images on his mobile telephone which suggested an interest in guns and that he was more than simply a courier of the firearm. By contrast, the defence case was that the prosecution could not prove the intention to endanger life and that he was doing nothing more than delivering the weapon; he denied that he was a gang member or knowing that the person who had asked him to deliver it was a gang member.

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Rebuttal of Defences The prosecution may also seek to admit evidence of gang affiliation as a way of rebutting a defence put forward by the defendant. In R v. DixonKenton [2021], the defence accepted that the appellant had killed the victim, but argued that he had done so in self-defence. It was also argued that the appellant lacked the intention for murder and that he had lost control. The prosecution used evidence of the appellant’s involvement in gangs to rebut his defences that were essentially based on the other party being the aggressor. A further example is R v. Khan [2018] in which the prosecution relied upon gang evidence to refute the appellant’s claim that he was simply an innocent courier. The gang evidence was used to show the connection between the appellant and his co-defendant who was in physical possession of two weapons. The appellant and his co-defendant were both detained by police whilst travelling in a taxi. The co-defendant had a samurai sword concealed in his trousers and was wearing a bag containing a revolver and ammunition. The appellant was not carrying any weapons, but was wearing body armour and had a balaclava hood with him. The case was brought on the basis that both were jointly in possession of both weapons. The prosecution relied on evidence that both males were members of a violent gang called the Harlem Spartans. Khan was convicted despite the fact that he was not personally carrying any of the prohibited items. In a similar way, the defence may wish to present gang evidence in relation to a co-defendant or third party; the power to present such evidence is not limited to the prosecution. In R v. Dixon-Kenton [2021], the defendant did not have any previous convictions and was arguing that the deceased was the aggressor. As part of his defence, he argued that the deceased victim and a prosecution witness were members of a gang to give weight to his claim that the victim had attacked him.

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The Seriousness of the Offence From the prosecution perspective, if there is evidence that the offence was gang related this could result in the offence being treated more seriously by the court. This could lead to the sentence for the offence being increased following either a guilty plea or a conviction after trial. Essentially, the courts are required to sentence the defendant based on the seriousness of the offence which is calculated by reference to the principles of harm and culpability (Sentencing Act 2020, section 63). If an offence is gang related, this is likely to result in the court’s assessment of the defendant’s culpability for the offence being increased. In relation to some offences, this could amount to a specific aggravating feature under the sentencing guidelines. For example, in relation to knife crime the sentencing guideline for ‘bladed articles and offensive weapons’ specifically lists that an offence ‘committed as part of a group or gang’ is an aggravating feature of the offence (Sentencing Council, 2018). The issue of whether an offence had links to gang membership could also be relevant to aggravating features which may be slightly less obvious, such as whether the offence was committed in revenge. The sentencing guideline for GBH and wounding lists ‘revenge’ as a factor which increases the culpability of the offender and, therefore, potentially elevates the offence to a higher sentencing category (Sentencing Council, 2021a). Similarly, the sentencing guidelines on drug supply offences specifically address the exploitation of children and vulnerable people which could be as a result of drugs being moved across county lines by gangs (Sentencing Council, 2021c). The case of R v. Stewart [2016] (see above) is an example of a case in which a factual basis was put forward by the defence which was different from that put forward by the prosecution: he was a simple courier of the firearm and did not have an intention to endanger life. Possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life is a serious offence punishable by a maximum of life imprisonment with a normal sentencing range of 4–22 years (Sentencing Council, 2021b). The guideline refers to ‘offending as part of a group activity’ as a factor to be taken into account when assessing the defendant’s culpability. If there was evidence that the offence was gang related, this would be likely to result in the

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offence being categorised as part of a group activity and the extent of his role within that activity would affect sentencing. When gang evidence is used to increase the seriousness of the offence, there is a possibility that the case moves into the realm of deterrent sentencing as were sentences imposed in the context of the August 2011 riots (R v. Lewis [2014]). Although this is not unlawful as deterrence is one of the purposes of sentencing (Sentencing Act, section 57), there are arguments against this based on both the lack of empirical evidence that is effective and whether, in principle, it is justifiable to impose disproportionate punishment for this purpose (Ashworth & Kelly, 2021, pp. 69–70).

Evidential Considerations The public prosecutor also has to prove their case in accordance with the law of criminal evidence. Because there is an inherent imbalance of power between the State as the prosecutor and the individual defendant many of the rules of evidence can be viewed as attempting to redress this imbalance by ensuring that the State is only permitted to produce evidence which is relevant and probative to the issues in dispute in the case. Otherwise, there is a risk that material which is of limited evidential value, but may be heavily prejudicial to the defendant, could be relied upon by the jury in reaching their decision. It is often argued that a rationale for excluding particular types of evidence is to prevent lay jurors or magistrates from placing too much weight on evidence such as hearsay, bad character or expert opinion evidence (Keane & McKeown, 2020, p. 3). Relevance is therefore a central concept in the law of evidence. To be relevant, evidence must help prove one of the facts which are in dispute in the trial. As Lord Simon of Glaisdale stated in DPP v. Kilbourne [1973], ‘Evidence is relevant if it is logically probative or disprobative of some matter which requires proof ’. However, in contrast to some legal systems, not all relevant evidence is admissible. Relevant evidence is only admissible if it is not excluded by the rules of criminal evidence. This chapter will now focus on the admissibility of three types of evidence which are particularly pertinent to the prosecution of

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gang-related offences: expert evidence, bad character and evidence from social media. These three types of evidence are often used individually or collectively as part of the prosecution case. A combination of these three types of evidence involves expert witnesses on gangs being called to give an opinion on why offences are gang related and to establish connections between the defendant and a particular gang. This opinion evidence may also draw on evidence from social media and the defendant’s previous criminal history or participation in gang-related activities.

Expert Evidence The adversarial system depends heavily on witness evidence which is given orally before the court. However, the majority of this is direct evidence from witnesses who are describing what they experienced or observed first-hand. Generally, witnesses are not permitted to offer opinion evidence. In other words, witnesses are not allowed to interpret or speculate on factual evidence as this would intrude on the role of the jury. One of the exceptions to this general rule, however, is expert evidence which has been frequently relied upon in gang cases. Firstly, expert evidence must be relevant to an issue in the case; it must be capable of assisting the jury or bench of magistrates in determining an issue at trial. However, relevance alone is not sufficient; the evidence must also be admissible in accordance with the rules of evidence. A witness may be permitted to give opinion evidence provided that they are an appropriately qualified expert in the area and the evidence that they are providing is within their area of expertise. However, the court has taken a restrictive stance on when expert evidence is allowed. In R v. Turner [1975], Lawton LJ stated that ‘An expert’s opinion is admissible to furnish the court with scientific information which is likely to be outside the experience and knowledge of a judge or jury’. If the issue can be properly understood by the jury and a decision made based on their experience and knowledge, then expert evidence would be superfluous and should not be admitted. Although many experts are called to give scientific evidence that would not be readily understood by lay people without an expert witness to

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explain the significance of it to them, the range of disciplines from which expert witnesses are drawn is ever expanding. There are several cases which establish that expert evidence can be given in relation to gang culture and affiliation. The leading authority is case of Myers v. The Queen [2015] in which the Privy Council heard three conjoined appeals from the Court of Appeal of Bermuda on whether gang evidence had been properly admitted. Each of the three cases involved shootings, two of which resulted in the death of the victim and were charged as murder. In the first two appeals, it was the prosecution case that the shootings were retaliatory attacks as part of a long-standing feud between two rival gangs. In the third case, the prosecution was seeking to prove ‘intra-gang loyalty’ between the defendant and an associate. In each case, the prosecution had called a police officer from a specialist unit which investigated gang crime as an expert witness in gang culture in Bermuda. The purpose of producing the evidence was essentially to prove why the defendants had motives for the shootings. The appeals raised a number of issues in relation to the admission of gang evidence including the extent to which it should be admissible and whether such evidence can be given by a police officer who has sufficient experience of gangs. The court held that gang evidence could be admissible provided that it was relevant to helping the jury resolve one of the issues in the case. Clearly, the precise nature of this would depend on the circumstances of the individual case, but it could be used to prove that the defendant had a motive for committing the offence or by providing important background information which would allow the jury to properly understand the case. The court also ruled that police officers could be accepted as expert witnesses and referred to cases in other contexts in which they are relied upon for expert testimony. For example, it was established in R v. Hodges [2003] that police drugs officers with sufficient expertise may be permitted to give opinion evidence on whether a drugs seizure was consistent with personal use or indicative of commercial distribution. Essentially, the drugs officer would be able to provide the jury with an insight into possession and supply of drugs which would be outside of their knowledge and experience of the majority of the individual members of the jury.

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In a similar way, an expert with knowledge and experience of how gangs operate may be able to assist the jury with understanding the particular culture, structures and behaviour of those involved in criminal gangs. It is critical, however, that police experts are appropriately qualified to act as experts. The court stated in Myers v The Queen [2015], ‘the officer must have made a sufficient study, whether by formal training or through practical experience, to assemble what can properly be regarded as a balanced body of specialised knowledge which would not be available to the tribunal of fact’. Therefore, police officers are not automatically accepted as experts and their use must be justified and can be subject to challenge by the defence. Expert witnesses have specific obligations under Part 19 of the Criminal Procedure Rules 2020. The expert is required under rule 19.2(1) to give an opinion which is ‘objective and unbiased’ and ‘within the expert’s area or areas of expertise’ by actively assisting the court in its case management role. Furthermore, this duty overrides any obligation to the party that instructed them as an expert; essentially, the expert’s primary duty is to the court, not to the party that called them. R v Dixon-Kenton [2021] provides an example of expert evidence being used in this jurisdiction. The prosecution called a police officer with experience of South London gangs as an expert witness. This evidence set out the background of the different gangs operating in the area including the associations and rivalries between the different gangs. He also gave evidence of the connection between the different parties and the relevant gangs. In addition, the police expert gave evidence that the current offence was a revenge attack for a previous murder relating to a long-standing conflict between two rival gangs. The defence had appealed the conviction on the grounds that the expert evidence of the police officer ought not to have been admitted and that there was insufficient evidence that the previous murder of a gang member was the trigger for the second one. The appeal was ultimately dismissed as the court was satisfied that the evidence was properly admitted and that the conviction was not unsafe. As will be discussed in the final section of this chapter, there are risks associated with the use of expert evidence to prove a gang connection, particularly when the expert is also a police officer.

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Bad Character Evidence Bad character evidence is also commonly used to prove that an offence is gang related. Indeed, it can be inextricably linked to expert evidence if the expert is giving evidence that the defendant has previously participated in gang-related offending or other reprehensible behaviour. Until the bad character provisions of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 came into force, the circumstances in which evidence of the defendant’s bad character could be presented were very limited. However, the legislation established a number of statutory gateways through which bad character can be admitted against defendants. Furthermore, bad character evidence is not limited to relevant previous convictions, it includes ‘other reprehensible behaviour’ such as matters pending trial, acquittals and other matters which have not been subject to prosecution. In more limited circumstances, it is possible for the prosecution and defence to apply to produce the bad character of a non-defendant which could include prosecution or defence witnesses and third parties such as the character of the deceased in a murder case. Bad character evidence is misconduct other than evidence which ‘has to do with the alleged facts of the offence with which the defendant is charged’ or ‘is evidence of misconduct in connection with the investigation or prosecution of that offence’. This therefore means that evidence of misconduct that is to do with the offence itself is not bad character evidence and can be admitted under section 98 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003. This can be particularly relevant to gang-related matters as there may often be an argument about whether the defendant (or a nondefendant) is part of a gang. However, if the connection between the alleged offence and gang-related misconduct is insufficient for it to be part of ‘alleged facts of the offence’, an application may still be made to admit the evidence as ‘bad character’ under one of the other statutory gateways. The most relevant gateways for admitting evidence of the defendant’s bad character are that the evidence is either ‘important explanatory evidence’ under section 101(1)(c) or it is ‘relevant to an important matter in issue between the defendant and the prosecution’ under section 101(1)(d).

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Important explanatory evidence is evidence that, without which, the jury ‘would find it impossible or difficult properly to understand other evidence in the case’. However, it must be of substantial value to understanding the case. The alternative ground that the evidence is relevant to an ‘important matter in issue’ can include whether the defendant has a propensity to commit offences of the kind charged or some other important issue in the case. Applications to admit bad character evidence can be made on more than one ground and can include both section 98 and the statutory gateways under section 100 as alternatives. In R v. Dixon-Kenton [2021], the prosecution argued that the defendant’s gang membership fell within section 98 on the basis that it was so closely connected to the offence itself in that it provided the motive for committing it. Additionally, it was also argued that it was ‘important explanatory evidence’ as it provided important context to the actions of the defendant and was also relevant to ‘an important issue in the case’, namely whether the defendant was acting in self-defence. The defence argued that the gang evidence was neither relevant or probative (i.e. that it was not useful for determining the issues in the case) and so should not have been admitted. The Court of Appeal determined that the evidence was admissible and should not be excluded under section 78 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 as unfair to the defendant. The Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 provides the court with a power to exclude prosecution evidence which ‘would have such an adverse effect on the fairness of the proceedings that the court ought not to admit it’. The court also has discretion to exclude evidence which has been admitted as relevant to an important matter in issue if the evidence ‘would have such an adverse effect on the fairness of the proceedings that the court ought not to admit it’ (Criminal Justice Act 2003). Essentially, if the evidence is prima facie admissible, the defence has a further opportunity to argue that it should be excluded if its admission would undermine the fairness of the proceedings. Although there are risks to the defendant associated with admitting bad character evidence, the legal bases for doing so are sufficiently wide that unless the connection is particularly tenuous it is likely that evidence of the defendant’s participation or connection to gang activities will be

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admitted by the court. Therefore, a critical issue for the parties and the court is the amount of weight that should be placed on this evidence.

Social Media Evidence Evidence from social media is increasingly being used in prosecutions that are being brought on the basis that the offending is gang related. This can include evidence that the defendant has participated in drill or other types of music which have been linked to gangs. In R v. Awoyemi [2016], part of the prosecution evidence against the defendants was an extract of an online video featuring the defendants and other gang members which it was argued demonstrated their attitude to firearms and gang violence as well as their membership of a gang which participated in criminal activities. Rap music lyrics recovered from one of the defendant’s bedrooms referring to violence, firearms and membership of a particular gang were also admitted into evidence. Despite being challenged by the defence, the court ruled that this evidence was admissible as it connected the defendants to gang and gun culture; it also provided a link between the defendants and the alleged crime. A video was also relied upon by the prosecution in R v. Dixon-Kenton [2021] to prove that the defendant was part of a particular gang. These cases demonstrate that the prosecution has successfully presented such evidence to the court as part of its case that a particular offence is gang related. The CPS guidance on gangs claims that drill music and social media can be used by gangs to ‘promote gang culture, glamorise the gang lifestyle and the use of weapons’. However, commentators have warned that participation in a particular genre of music does not necessarily mean that those involved are also committing offences. Ilan has argued that the relationship between music and criminality is ‘ambiguous’ and ‘part of social exchange as opposed to evidence of real intention’(Ilan, 2020, p. 1003). Lynes et al. (2020) accept that there is a relationship between particular genres of music and street gangs, but that it is a ‘complex and multifaceted relationship’ and that there is a risk that the nexus between the two can be over-simplified in the media.

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The important evidential issue is perhaps what the purpose of admitting it is, in terms of which facts in issue in the trial it assists in determining. If the video or social media material is being produced because it directly connects the defendant to the alleged offence, it is perhaps more justifiable than if it is circumstantial, demonstrating only that the defendant has participated in music of a particular sub-genre which can loosely be connected to gang culture. In R v. Awoyemi [2016], a number of different pieces of social media type evidence were admitted including handwritten rap lyrics referring not only to gang membership and violence but containing specific references to the particular gang that it was alleged the defendants were affiliated to. A video clip showed two of the defendants with other gang members referring to violent acts which connected them to the particular gang involved. The court concluded that this evidence ‘went far beyond simple membership of a gang, the love of RAP music, hyperbole or appearance on a video’. This evidence, essentially, linked to the specific gang in question and ‘indicated the extent to which the individuals concerned had signed up to gang and gun culture’. It is clear that this type of evidence is dependent on the particular circumstances of the case, and has the potential to be highly prejudicial, but also highly compelling. The stronger the links between the evidence and the specific offence alleged, the more potent this evidence may be. The difficulty is distinguishing that evidence which is valuable in proving an element of the allegation from that which purely demonstrates an interest in a particular music genre and culture without making any substantive links to criminality.

Risk and Issues Associated with Gang Evidence Although the prosecutor may have a number of reasons for deciding to introduce gang evidence as part of their case, this should not be acceded to without careful consideration of relevance, admissibility and whether it should be excluded as there are clear risks to the defendant of doing so.

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The most obvious risk with permitting the prosecution to present evidence that the defendant is affiliated to a gang is that the jury will convict them on the basis of that association rather than the direct evidence relevant to whether they committed the offence. The defence would probably argue that the admission of such evidence is likely to be highly prejudicial to the defendant’s case. However, unless the connection to gangs is particularly weak, such evidence is likely to be admitted. Expert evidence, in particular, has a number of risks associated with it, some of which are more obvious than others. One of the concerns in relation to expert evidence is that the jury may place too much weight on their testimony; the expert is there to aid the jury’s understanding, not to usurp their function of reaching conclusions based on the evidence presented to them. This issue is not limited to expert evidence relating to gangs, but is a difficulty with the use of expert evidence generally. Roberts and Zuckerman (2010, p. 473) describe this as ‘juror deference’ when the jury ‘simply accept and adopt’ the expert’s evidence without question. As the expert gives evidence with authority and expertise, it may be very difficult for jurors to reject their evidence. Ward and Fouladvand (2021) emphasise the importance of the defence testing the reliability of such evidence to ensure that it is properly scrutinised by the court. However, expert evidence of this nature is also potentially quite difficult for the defence to challenge. Expert witnesses in other contexts are often challenged by the defence instructing their own expert, for example, scientific or road traffic collision opinion evidence. However, because of the nature of the expertise, it may not be easy to locate a suitable expert evidence to instruct. Although on occasions the defence has called academics and researchers with expertise in gangs as defence experts, they are unlikely to have knowledge of the specific gangs in the case and be limited to more general, contextual evidence on gang culture and membership. Ward and Fouladvand (2021, p. 443) argue that ‘the danger of unbalanced anecdotal experience being accepted as expertise remains very real’ and that there is a need for a ‘more rigorous approach’ to expert evidence. This can include ensuring that the expert’s evidence is properly based on an appropriate body of knowledge. There is a risk that as expert evidence in this context becomes more common, there is

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tendency to accept it without testing the evidential bedrock of knowledge upon which the witness is relying. The dangers of expert evidence in this field are augmented by the fact that the witness is likely to be a police officer from a specialist unit, who may or may not have been involved in the investigation in some other capacity. In any event, despite the requirements of the Criminal Procedures Rules 2020 to act objectively and not to be influenced by the fact that they were called by the prosecution, concerns because of the proximity of the expert to the investigation are likely to remain. The more the witness shifts from giving general or contextual evidence of gang crime to specific evidence of the defendant’s particular involvement in gang crime, the more controversial their evidence is likely to become. Moreover, if they have been involved in the investigation, there could be a blurring of the witness of fact/witness of opinion boundary. Arguably, part of the difficulty with police expert witnesses stems from the adversarial structure of the prosecution process in England and Wales: the expert is instructed and called by the prosecution and there have previously been calls for experts to be instructed jointly by the prosecution and defence or independently by the court (Spencer, 1991). However, such an approach does not fit comfortably within the adversarial system particularly as this could be viewed as outside the role of the court. Furthermore, it would not in the context of gang evidence overcome the difficulty of locating a suitably neutral expert that was not connected to either party. In many cases, the court is likely to rule that gang evidence is relevant and admissible. Therefore, the issue of how much weight should be placed upon this evidence becomes particularly prominent. Although it is for the trial judge to determine legal issues such as the admissibility of evidence, it is for the jury to decide the issues of fact which includes how much weight to attach to evidence. Keane and McKeown (2020, p. 33) describe weight of evidence as its ‘cogency or probative worth in relation to the facts in issue’. However, the judge is not entirely disconnected from this process as the issue of evidential weight of particular pieces of evidence is likely to be the subject of directions in the judge’s summing up. These potentially provide a safeguard against too much reliance being placed upon certain evidence. The Crown Court Compendium (Judicial College, 2020, pp. 10–13) provides guidance to judges on the content

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of directions on expert evidence including the ‘extent and quality of the data on which the expert’s opinion is based’ and that ‘the jury do not have to accept the expert evidence even though it is uncontested’. Guidance and example directions are also available in relation to bad character evidence (Judicial College, 2020, pp. 12–15) to instruct the jury on the purpose of the evidence and what they may use it for. Defence counsel should, of course, in many cases address the weaknesses of the evidence in their closing speech. The use of particular forms of social media evidence such as videos and lyrics from rap music as part of the prosecution case should be treated particularly carefully. In some cases, it may not provide direct evidence of involvement in a criminal offence, but may be presented as forming part of the surrounding background. This could have the effect of introducing severely prejudicial evidence into the trial that has limited probative value. Empirical research is being conducted into the use of rap as evidence to investigate the risks in its use: ‘Because the young people who make rap are often poor and black, the danger is that rap music works in inflammatory ways for the prosecution, confirming stereotypical ideas for majority-white judge and jurors about young black men. Preliminary findings suggest that rap can work powerfully as a pathway to conviction, even sometimes in cases in which there is a shortage of conventional evidence’ (UK Research and Innovation, n.d.).

Conclusions Although the introduction of evidence that an offence is gang related is well established, it remains controversial because of the risk that disproportionate weight may be placed on evidence which may not directly relate to the issues in dispute. There are a number of justifications for admitting gang evidence and that it is likely to be appropriate to do so if it is central to the alleged case in terms of the decision on whether the defendant committed the offence or is relevant to the seriousness of the offence. However, because of the inherent risks of such evidence, the parties should not be complacent as to whether such evidence should be presented. It is crucial that the relevance, admissibility and reliability of

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this evidence are scrutinised by the prosecution, defence and the court before it is admitted and to ensure that only appropriate weight is placed upon it.

References Ashworth, A., & Kelly, R. (2021). Sentencing and criminal justice (7th ed.). Hart. Criminal Justice Act 2003. Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996. The Criminal Procedure Rules 2020. (SI 2020/759). https://www.legislation. gov.uk/uksi/2020/759/contents/made. Accessed: 10 August 2021. Crown Prosecution Service. (2018). The code for Crown Prosecutors. https:// www.cps.gov.uk/publication/code-crown-prosecutors. Accessed: 10 August 2021. Crown Prosecution Service. (n.d.). https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/ gang-related-offences-decision-making. Accessed: 10 August 2021. DPP v. Kilbourne [1973] AC 729. Firearms Act 1968. Ilan, J. (2020). Digital street culture decoded: Why criminalizing drill music is street illiterate and counterproductive. The British Journal of Criminology, 60 (4), 994–1013. Johnston, E., & Smith, T. (2020). Criminal procedure and punishment (2nd ed.). Hall and Stott. Judicial College. (2020). The Crown Court Compendium: Part 1: Jury and trial management and summing up. https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/ uploads/2020/12/Crown-Court-Compendium-Part-I-December-2020-ame nded-01.02.21.pdf. Accessed: 10 August 2021. Keane, A., & McKeown, P. (2020). The modern law of evidence (13th ed.). Oxford University Press. Lynes, A., Kelly, C., & Kelly, E. (2020). Thug life: Drill music as a periscope into urban violence in the consumer age. The British Journal of Criminology, 60 (5), 1201–1219. Myers v. The Queen [2015] UKPC 40. Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. Prosecution of Offences Act 1985.

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R v. Awoyemi [2016] EWCA Crim 668. R v. Dixon-Kenton [2021] EWCA Crim 673. R v. Hodges [2003] 2 Cr App R 15. R v. Khan [2018] EWCA Crim 2893. R v. Lewis [2014] EWCA Crim 48. R v. Stewart [2016] EWCA Crim 447. R v. Turner [1975] 2 WLR 56. Roberts, P., & Zuckerman, A. (2010). Criminal evidence (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. Sentencing Act 2020. Sentencing Council. (2018). Bladed articles and offensive weapons—Possession. https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/offences/crown-court/item/bladedarticles-and-offensive-weapons-possession/. Accessed: 10 August 2021. Sentencing Council. (2021a). Causing grievous bodily harm with intent to do grievous bodily harm/wounding with intent to do GBH . https://www.sen tencingcouncil.org.uk/offences/crown-court/item/causing-grievous-bodilyharm-with-intent-to-do-grievous-bodily-harm-wounding-with-intent-to-dogbh-2/. Accessed: 10 August 2021. Sentencing Council. (2021b). Firearms—Possession with intent to endanger life. https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/offences/crown-court/item/firearmspossession-with-intent-to-endanger-life/. Accessed: 10 August 2021. Sentencing Council. (2021c). Supplying or offering to supply a controlled drug. https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/offences/crown-court/item/sup plying-or-offering-to-supply-a-controlled-drug-possession-of-a-controlleddrug-with-intent-to-supply-it-to-another/. Accessed: 10 August 2021. Spencer, J. (1991). Mischief and the expert witness. Arbitration, 57 (3), 185– 186. UK Research and Innovation, Prosecuting Rap: Criminal Justice and UK Black Youth Expressive Culture. (n.d.). https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FT 000058%2F1. Accessed: 10 August 2021. Ward, T., & Fouladvand, S. (2021). Bodies of knowledge and robes of expertise: Expert evidence about drugs gangs and human trafficking. Criminal Law Review, 6 , 442–460. Woolmington v. DPP [1935] AC 462 (HL).

20 Gangs in Prisons Dev Maitra

Introduction Any study of prison gangs should attempt to situate them within the wider context of the penal environment. Prison is inherently characterised by power dynamics and the imbalance of power between prisoners and the prison as an institution (Foucault, 1975). Prisons contain within them ‘captive audiences’ (Sykes, 1958) who are unable to escape the prison’s panoptic gaze, as well as the debasements, humiliations and rituals which are intrinsic to captivity (Childs, 2015). Sykes (1958) terms these the ‘pains of imprisonment’, with such emotions affecting and texturing the daily interactions and activities of prisoners. Prison gangs can be viewed as being both a reaction to these pains—offering support, protection and camaraderie—as well as being a manifestation of such pains. This chapter presents data that were collected from serving D. Maitra (B) University of Suffolk, Ipswich, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Andell and J. Pitts (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Youth Gangs in the UK , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99658-1_20

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prisoners, the majority of whom were prison gang members. Through conducting qualitative interviews, the study found my research sample to be affected by these deep, powerful emotions arising from the specific conditions of confinement: many prisoners whom I interviewed identified violence, hyper-masculinity and conflict as being amplified by imprisonment, as well as occupying a central role within ‘the gang’. Violence was learnt on the streets and within the street gang, developing with one’s progression within the gang. Such values were then often ‘imported’ into the penal complex. From the outset of this chapter, it should be made clear that most gang members who were interviewed had ‘re-joined’ or reformed their street gang upon entering custody. Accordingly, there was a high level of gangs being ‘imported’ into the sample sites from the streets. This illustrated the interconnectedness between the internal carceral space and its surrounding regions (see also Jacobs, 1977), heightened by the fact that both prisons which acted as my sample sites predominantly served as ‘local’ jails. Although there were a limited number of gangs which had been formed within custody for the first time, the preponderance of what terms ‘prison street gangs’ meant that the values learnt by gang members on ‘the street’ were often transplanted into prison, and there were, therefore, parallels between the compositions of many of the region’s street and prison gangs. These linkages which exist between street gangs and their prison counterparts are attributed to the ease with which prison gang members can adjust, socialise and operate upon entering custody (Jacobs, 1974, 1977; Maitra, 2013; Maitra et al., 2017). This chapter scrutinises the practices of the prison gangs which operated within two adult men’s prisons in the North of England. Rather than providing a narrative account of their compositions and activities, much of this chapter focuses on how gang members constructed and transplanted their identities in prison. Through drawing on sociological accounts of self and identity (e.g., Goffman, 1961), one of the principal themes I foreground in this chapter is the way in which gang members negotiated the penal landscape. I describe the practices in which prison gang members engaged to navigate prison life: how members emitted signals to demonstrate what I term ‘violence potential’, how the symbolism of gang affiliation was utilised in varying ways during

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imprisonment, and how actions depended on whether an individual was gang-affiliated, as well as on gang ‘rank’ and personal history. Through combining testimonies of both current and former gang members, I aim to show that the performance of gang identity was not only a display of deviance/criminality, but rather a wider cultural identity. I have chosen to focus on the ‘signalling’ acts of prison gang members for two reasons. First, there is a distinct lack of criminological literature on this topic. Second, throughout my research, I found that many gang members pro-actively discussed topics around the presentation of self, reputation and image: these themes are all interconnected to the broader theme of signalling.

Research Methodology and Background The data presented in this chapter were collected during fieldwork at two prisons in the North of England, both of which had very different histories and institutional cultures. Although the two prisons are only approximately 3½ miles apart, HMP Manchester is a public prison built over 150 years ago, whereas HMP Forest Bank is a much newer private prison, built just 21 years ago. HMP Manchester, more commonly known as ‘Strangeways’, is probably most synonymous in the British public consciousness with the riots which occurred within the jail in 1990. The Strangeways Riots were part of a series of disturbances which occurred across English prisons due to prisoner grievances regarding their treatment within custody and led to the widespread destruction of prison interiors, and violence towards both staff and prisoners (Carrabine, 2004). HMP Forest Bank, however, is not as well known by the public. Nevertheless, the prison has recently faced several problems in the form of high levels of violence (between prisoners and between prisoners and staff ), staff corruption and allegations of staff malpractice, malfeasance and misfeasance. This chapter presents data collected from gang members imprisoned at both sample sites, and, as the results illustrate, there were remarkably few differences reported by gang members at the two prisons. There are several potential reasons for this, some of which were offered by

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prisoners and prison officers. First, due to their relatively close physical proximity, many of the same gangs operated at the two prisons. Second, and linked to this, both prisons contained a largely similar prisoner population composition. This may be one explanation why relationships between gang members and non-gang members were similar at both sample sites, and why gang members’ accounts of both prisons were similar. For the purposes of context and wider information, the two sample sites are named. However, for the purposes of maintaining participant confidentiality, all prisoners and gang names are anonymised. The data were collected during a two-week period of intensive research at the two sample sites, once ethical approval was gained from the British Society of Criminology and HMIPs’ National Research Council (NRC). Data were recorded on Dictaphones during interviews, and copious field notes were compiled after each day’s research. The interview transcripts were, thereafter, fully and manually transcribed, and later manually coded.

Signalling in Prison: ‘Who Do You Chill With?’ In light of the numerous gangs which existed in the region, it was not surprising to discover that a large numbers of gang members existed in both prisons: the prison authorities were conscious of the impact these gangs had on the dynamics within their prisons, and on contemporary prison life. However, alongside the formal mechanisms in place to manage gang members were informal systems of governance deployed by gang members, who needed to devise systems and schemes to verify whether individuals really were affiliated to the gangs to which they claimed allegiance. It was in this regard that signalling was an important means of verifying one’s claims to gang membership. ‘signals’, which primarily refer to external displays of emotions and specific acts, are integral to offenders maintaining their identities and have a particularly heightened role within prison in a carceral setting, projections of ‘toughness’ and hyper-masculinity serve a protective role, as displays of such acts make an individual less likely to be the target of victimisation (Levan, 2012).

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From the moment a prisoner began his sentence, his ‘status’ was verified by other prisoners, and this was not just in relation to potential ‘gang ties’: rather, it included confirming who he was, what crime he had been convicted of, who he knew, and who he associated with on the streets. For gang members, the last of these was of crucial importance, signals often provided a means of explicitly demonstrating one’s gang affiliation, and, at times, verified all the other information available to prisoners. ‘Hard to fake’ signals (Densley, 2013) were something participants in my research spoke of several times. Bona fide gang members knew some individuals would pretend to be gang-affiliated, and therefore, there were systems in place to verify new prisoners’ gang affiliations. If a new prisoner was not known to others, one of the primary questions he might be asked was, ‘who do you chill with?’ to discern with whom he associated. If an individual was known to other prisoners, such questions were not normally asked as he would immediately gravitate towards friends, associates or fellow gang members at the prison. After a prisoner was asked who he ‘chilled’ with, there were instances where individuals would falsely claim gang affiliation or to know certain powerful gang members. However, the consequences of such acts could be severe: What it is now is, because they have access to mobile phones, if I come in and I go, “Yeah, I know Joe Bloggs from such an area” because this Joe Bloggs is a big hitter, and you make out you know him to try and be one of the boys - one of the gang. But then this person really knows Joe Bloggs, and this person gets on the phone in the night and goes, “Do you know such and such?” And he says, “Never heard of him”. So, next day they go batter him, fucking giving him irons. (Prisoner 1 HMP Forest Bank) In 2002, I ended up in prison and within ten minutes, three big black and half-caste kids come to me door and said, “Right, where you from?” and I said, “[name of area]”. And they asked, “Who’d you chill with? What gang you with out there?” I said, “I don’t class myself as a gang member.” They said, “You’re from [name of area], you’re mixed race, you must be affiliated with someone”. I said, “If anyone, I lean [gang name]”. So, one of them got off, made a phone call, come back, I’d given him me name. And they were related to [gang name]: one of them was a [gang

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name] member’s cousin. He says, “Yeah, I spoke to such and such, he told me who you are. So, we’re good. If you was [rival gang name] or lying, there’d be beef.” (Prisoner 2, HMP Forest Bank)

Similar to the above two participants, many others spoke of there being an increased need to verify the status of new prisoners, mainly because of the growing numbers of individuals who would profess gang membership. Several gang members spoke of this issue, highlighting that they had encountered individuals who mimicked gang affiliation. Such issues were less pertinent in one’s local prison, where tight kinship networks meant that gang membership was far easier to discern. Indeed, in both above cases, Prisoner 1 and Prisoner 2 referred to individuals having their identities ‘checked out’ when they were imprisoned away from their local area; their descriptions of familial gang ties are reflected in the existing literature: much of this identifies gangs, as well as ‘deviant groups’ more generally, being characterised through closed, ‘tight’ networks. Gang affiliation could reliably be ‘checked out’, primarily through telephoning gang members in other prisons. Although both sample sites had formal ‘gang questionnaires’ which asked for information on prisoners’ links to gangs upon entry into the prison, many prison officers conceded that informal networks were often more reliable in establishing and verifying gang status. Accordingly, it was clear that emitting false ‘signals’, whether regarding one’s gang status or offencecommitted, was an important subject of discussion for many prisoners. However, what complicated matters was the fact that some prisoners were only loosely associated with a gang, ‘leaning’ towards a certain gang: this presented a problem as being peripherally associated with a gang made one’s status less certain and therefore made verification a more complex process. Prisoners operated their own systems to verify such information, and punished prisoners (often severely) who were discovered to have engaged in dishonest acts. Moreover, most prisoners were cognisant of the, at times elaborate, ‘performances’ which they had to undertake to bolster reputation and accrue respect. The existing literature argues that signalling practices originate on the streets, where their utility stems from the fact that those engaged in criminal activities do not have recourse to formal, government-sanctioned

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regulatory mechanisms (Jacobs, 2001; Walklate & Evans, 1999). This is especially the case for gang members, who are not only outside the ambit of these formal compliance mechanisms but must also co-operate with one another to succeed in their criminal enterprises (Contreras, 2013; Jacobs, 2001). Therefore, the signals gang members emit to one another are crucial in allowing them to determine who can be trusted. Gang members must ‘recruit’ on this basis, judging who is trustworthy based primarily on external displays combined with recommendations from third-parties and associates (Densley, 2013). On the topic of gauging trustworthiness more generally, Gambetta and Hamill (2005, p. 33) state, we look for or try to display signs of trustworthiness that are hard to fake. before we trust people, we need to trust their signs.

For gang members, it is especially crucial that new members are verified to be trustworthy: untrustworthy individuals may potentially disseminate information to hostile third-parties, either deliberately or through reckless actions. Moreover, on rarer occasions, rival gang members or law enforcement may attempt to infiltrate the gang. These are risks of which gang members are aware and, therefore, they often question unknown individuals who are seen within their ‘territory’. Once within a gang, signalling continues to be an important facet of an individual’s identity. For example, senior gang members must ensure that their ‘presentation of self ’ projects an image showing that they are able and willing to carry out acts of violence against rivals, as well as junior gang members who carry out transgressions (Venkatesh, 2008). All of this underlines the fact that gangs—at least in most developed countries—are not regulated by state actors and are ultimately viewed as illegitimate institutions by much of the population. The lack of formalised state regulation of gangs precludes their members from seeking remedies when they are adversely affected; for example, if a gang is robbed of its (illegal) drugs or (ill-gotten) money, its members cannot inform the police. This makes gang members susceptible to attack from within and without the gang (Contreras, 2013; Jacobs, 2001), and external presentations of the gang’s potential for violence are one of the

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principal ways of preventing such attacks. Street gang members, then, have the greatest need to cultivate ‘hard to fake’ signals; if they are deceived by individuals who falsely display signs of gang affiliation (such as rival gang members or the police), they have the most to lose. Many of my research participants verified the existing findings on gang members’ signalling activities. For example, junior gang members learnt signalling techniques from their older counterparts on the streets, becoming aware of times where signals had to be more discreetly displayed (such as instances where there were police crackdowns against gang members), and instances where signals had to be explicitly conveyed (such as instances where gangs were ‘proving a point’ by attacking rivals). Several gang members spoke of tattoos illustrating one’s gang affiliation and signalling to others that they were ‘down’ (affiliated) with a gang; and some specifically mentioned that committing crimes prior to gang affiliation signalled that one was serious about joining a gang. Many gang members also spoke at length about the role played by nicknames within the gang. Nicknames have also long been associated with gangs. As such names are usually only known by members of the criminal underworld, nicknames can often hamper the efforts of law enforcement; for example, referring to individuals only by their nicknames leads to lower chances of police deciphering identities when wire-tapping phones. Reflecting existing studies, many of my research participants had nicknames. Nongang members’ nicknames were usually derived from their forenames or surnames, similar to wider society. However, gang members’ nicknames were normally more ‘opaque’, referring to an individual’s physical characteristics, emotional traits or the crimes in which they specialised. The following shows one former gang member’s account of the role played by nicknames: You see, you and me are probably talking about some of the same gangsters, but as I’ve mixed in the same circles, or knew them personally, I only know their nicknames, not their real names. And can you tell me a bit more about whether nicknames are important? Well, even meself, when I started off in prison, because of the way I learnt to speak with people, learnt the patter, had a stance of not giving a fuck, they used to call me [nickname]. So, it gives an idea of how they saw me. It was all

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part of that image: I was thuggish; I’d cuss the screws. (Prisoner 3, HMP Manchester)

In the case of Prisoner 3, his nickname was one component of his wider presentation of self, and ‘part of that image’; like most nicknames, his has been conferred upon him by others, in part due to his thuggish mannerisms, actions and familiarity with the prison argot. Most crucially, being called his nickname illustrated his propensity for violence. During our interview, Prisoner 3 further stated that he went by that name during the early stages of his imprisonment. The nickname, then, signalled to others his violence potential, and his ‘stance of not giving a fuck’, something which is often seen as a key component of gang membership (see Maitra, 2013). He went onto state that his nickname helped him ‘to be on that rise, you know, rise through the ranks, be known for not giving a shit, that sort of thing. It helped embed me in the prison culture’. Nicknames, then, were of great significance for gang members: they demonstrated that an individual was known in the criminal world, familiar with its culture, and acted as another verifier for an individual’s transition from the streets to prison. Most gang members who were interviewed stated that their nicknames had been developed on the streets and were later imported into prison. In this regard, Prisoner 3’s case was unusual, as his nickname had been given in prison. However, he was far from unusual in having a nickname whilst in a gang; for example, when conducting fieldwork at HMP Manchester, approximately 21% of the prison’s gang members had nicknames according to prison intelligence records. Prison officers stated that several more gang members probably went by nicknames which the prison had yet to detect. Such names were one of the more explicit signals to illustrate one’s character. Yet, nicknames were not the only way of signalling one’s identity at the sample sites. Indeed, even acts seemingly as inconsequential as how one stood, walked and talked denoted important characteristics amongst other gang members (see also Garot, 2010), as well as in a street-context more generally (Anderson, 1999). ‘Signalling’, then, often encompassed a range of characteristics such as physical attributes but also included more subtle features, most commonly referred to as ‘putting in work’. Densley (2013) writes extensively about this notion of sacrifice for the

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gang, using the example of gang tattoos. These show a commitment to the gang’s cause, as they are something which cannot easily be removed, are usually explicitly displayed and act as a barrier preventing the individual from entering legitimate job markets. Other ‘permanent and hard to fake’ signs such as physical fractures or scars (Densley, 2013, p. 121) are also beneficial for gang members as they signal ‘violence potential’ (ibid.). To put it in economic terms, there are opportunity costs through committing to some of these external signs of gang membership, which was why some participants in my research covered up or removed their gang tattoos once they had begun the journey towards desisting from crime. However, when in the gang, such signifiers served the purpose of showing fellow gang members and gang leaders that an individual had invested into the gang, precisely because they were willing to make the sacrifices in relation to wider society and personal appearance. Due to these reasons, they were a sought-after commodity. During my research, I found gang tattoos integral to the corporeal presentations of gang members’ identities. For some, gang tattoos were solely a means of identity formation, occupying discreet parts of the body. For others, however, tattoos were deliberately placed on prominent, uncovered parts of the body, which were constantly displayed for the viewing of other prisoners and prison officers. The concept of gang tattoos as a demonstrable form of self-sacrifice was evident through the fact that prison officers could, and did, collect intelligence based on the display of such tattoos: having one’s tattoos on show could lead to detriment, either through the excessive scrutiny from prison authorities or through attacks from rival gang members. The overt displays of gang tattoos bore a risk, and those who did display showed further commitment and loyalty to the gang and its collective identity, often at the risk of personal safety.

Presentation of Self and the Perils of False Signalling Individuals who participated in my research were also acutely aware of their role and status within the wider prison, reflecting Goffman’s

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argument that ‘presentation of self ’ in daily life is a theatrical performance: image management. In The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Goffman (1956, p. 51) writes that ‘as members of an audience it is natural for us to feel that the impression the performer seeks to give may be true or false, genuine or spurious, valid or “phony”. So common is this doubt that, as suggested, we often give special attention to features of the performance that cannot be readily manipulated’. In this chapter, I have already referred to these ‘hard to fake signals’ (Densley, 2013), which were used to demonstrate that an individual was a bona fide gang member. Indeed, at their most basic level, signals could simply be an individual verbally stating his gang affiliation or the offence for which he was convicted. However, there was the continuous risk that individuals would falsely portray their identity to others. Most common were individuals who would hide their offence types or falsely claim to be gang-affiliated. Sex offenders were particularly at risk of victimisation, whether they pro-actively revealed their offence, or if they were ‘found out’ by other prisoners. Although some sex offenders took the risk of masking their crimes, other prisoners had strategies in place to verify individuals’ identities: Our gang were rioting in a prison and took over the wing, officers ran off the wing, we found a guy who we suspected of being a sex offender, read through his file and we threw him off the landing. I don’t like ’em [sex offenders] I can’t stand ’em. They have to be padded up with other sex offenders. Cos if one were padded up with me I’d kill him. I don’t care, I’d leather him. I’d punch him everywhere. And how would you find out? Like I said, you could look through their file, a screw might tell you, a screw might keep their office door open, so you can look through their file. The screws don’t like them either. (Prisoner 4, HMP Manchester)

Reading a prisoner’s files, viewing his charge sheets, or being informed of his offence by officers were all means through which one could verify whether an individual was telling the truth about the offence for which he had been convicted. Indeed, there was a presumption that sex offenders would emit false signals, attempting to deceive other prisoners as to the offence for which they had been convicted. However, Goffman’s theories around false impressions and misrepresentations were

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also present in relation to gang members. The tight, dense networks which characterise many gangs meant that there was often an established process to discern whether an individual was who he said he was: gang affiliation could easily be verified, and depending on one’s true identity, the repercussions could be severe: You get people who’re claiming and repping falsely, and I tell them that’s dumb, cos you then you go to jail and get seriously hurt. I mean, even me, I ended up in a jail years ago, in 2002. I landed there, got told, “Go in there”. I’m the only Mancunian in here. And guys immediately started making phone calls to check out that I was [gang name]. And one of them said, “You’re lucky you’re not [rival gang 1] or [rival gang 2] cos then there’d be 400 men in here wanting to kill you, simply because”. And that’s why I tell people, be very careful what you say. (Prisoner 5, HMP Forest Bank)

First, Prisoner 5’s response showed that social networks were not restricted to one region of the country. Indeed, gang rivalries and allegiances spread across England’s prisons, something which was described by several participants. Again, the high levels of gang ‘importation’ into prisons meant that gang associations which had developed on the streets would permeate prison walls. Second, Prisoner 5 alluded to the fact that gang identities were sometimes disingenuous, with prisoners falsely ‘repping’ a gang dependent upon the situation they were in. This led to his warning of advising people to ‘be very careful what you say’. Moreover, alliances and conflicts existed between gangs in various parts of England. Accordingly, his account of being in a prison outside of Greater Manchester showed that his ‘gang status’ still affected his interactions with other prisoners. Many participants highlighted the peril in pretending to be something one was not: informal systems were in place to allow individuals’ identities to be verified, and the large numbers of street gang members in prison allowed for violent retaliation to be exacted for misrepresentations. However, this statement requires substantial clarification. To present oneself as being tougher, more violent, and more resilient than in reality was not viewed unfavourably; indeed, ‘fronting’ in this manner was often to be expected. However, to lie about one’s offence, or to pretend to be affiliated to a gang were transgressions

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viewed in a wholly different light. It was accepted that ‘when an individual appears before others, he will have many motives for trying to control the impression they receive of the situation’ (Goffman, 1956, p. 13), but this performance had to be a nuanced one. Indeed, as Goffman further identifies, there is a difference between the ‘frontstage’ and ‘backstage’ identities of individuals. Central to this argument is the premise that people behave differently in their public interactions—such as at work or at school—compared to their private interactions, at home or with close members of their family. Applying Goffman’s analysis to the sample sites, ‘front stage’ could be said to involve most areas of the prison which excluded individual cells; spaces such as the exercise yard, prison gym and other public spaces. This could be contrasted to the ‘backstage’ areas of the prison, such as cells, as well as other arenas which were private spaces, most notably areas of the Chaplaincy, where private interactions occurred with the Prison Chaplain. There was an acknowledgement by several participants that interactions which occurred in these spaces allowed for prisoners to show their emotions and true characters, something that they were unable to do in the wider space of the prison: When they come to see us, they’re prepared to cry, and the armour comes off. They feel safe. With a Listener, he’d only go so far. I’ve seen a lot of prisoners cry and they say they’re ashamed. I say, “You’re not the only one”. When they come to main street – back to the prison – the armour comes back on. I have so many who say to me, “Are my eyes alright now? Do they look dry?” (Prison Chaplain 1, HMP Forest Bank)

Private interactions with prison chaplains, then, were one example of where the exterior ‘armour’ which prisoners metaphorically ‘wore’ could be taken off: under the carapace of self-confidence existed vulnerabilities, and the Chaplaincy was one forum where such emotions could be revealed. Indeed, for gang members, these external presentations of self were most apparent. Goffman (1956) describes gangs as being one group situation where individuals’ presentations of self are particularly well modulated because such group interactions place a heavy emphasis on how individuals are viewed by one another.

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In relation to this difference between ‘front’ and ‘back’ stage identities, Goffman (ibid., p. 51) goes on to argue that ‘when we think of those who present a false front…we think of a discrepancy between fostered appearances and reality. We also think of the precarious position in which these performers place themselves, for at any moment in their performance an event may occur to catch them out and badly contradict what they openly avowed’. This was as true at the sample sites, as it was when Goffman was writing over fifty years ago: And then you get the lads who stand around with the gang wanting to be in it. A lot of them aren’t even really gang members. And then they come to prison, and the only way they’ll know the dangers of falsely claiming is going onto a wing [falsely claiming] with their face mangled crying, “I wish I’d never pretended to be [a gang member] And that’s when it clicks. (Prisoner 6, HMP Manchester)

False presentations of identity—or as Goffman terms them, ‘misrepresentations’—were costly both in terms of one’s personal safety and in terms of the fall-out from being discovered to have deceived. As Goffman goes on to articulate, “when an individual appears before others, he will have many motives for trying to control the impression they receive of the situation” (ibid., p. 13). In relation to prison, it was difficult to successfully deceive other prisoners: both sample sites for my research were local prisons, with high turnovers of prisoners, and close degrees of interaction between the carceral environment and street culture. This combined with the proliferation of mobile phones in prison, as well as the cohesive social networks which characterise many gangs (see, e.g., Venkatesh, 2008; Whyte, 1943), meant that verifying an individual’s true status was usually not a difficult task. As Prisoner 6 stated, ‘falsely claiming’ gang affiliation could lead to an individual getting his ‘face mangled’. Yet there were instances where individuals genuinely believed themselves to be gang members but were seen as ‘faking it’ by other, longer-standing gang members. The proliferation of gang ‘off-shoots’, as well as the presence of more gangs generally, meant that in the search for authenticity, individuals had to be more willing to ‘prove’ themselves: a key component of this was the use of violence.

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Conclusion This chapter has sought to present how prison gangs operated at two, adult men’s prisons. As the data show, gang activities and practices did not substantially vary at the two prisons, despite the differences that existed between them in their histories. Gang members from both prisons delivered similar accounts on issues ranging from the limit points of gang loyalties to the contemporary economic dynamics of prison gangs. Through including testimonies from gang members at both HMP Manchester and HMP Forest Bank, I have sought to illustrate how the gang cultures of Greater Manchester permeated the walls of both prisons, with a high degree of gang ‘importation’ into both sample sites: gang practices, which were learnt on the streets, were further fortified and honed within custody, where numerous gang members were imprisoned. The central roles of violence in dispute resolution, the victimisation of non-gang members and former gang members and the symbolic significance of gang affiliation all loomed large in daily prison interactions. Entrenched gang practices were perpetuated in custody, activities learnt on the ‘street’ imported into prison, and these fundamentally affected the carceral experiences of both gang and non-gang members. Further, an increasing prison population has meant that gangs have been able to thrive, reforming within custody and exerting a profound influence in shaping prison life for both their members and other prisoners, as well as on the wider custodial environment.

References Anderson, E. (1999). Code of the street: Decency, violence and the moral life of the inner city. W. W. Norton. Carrabine, E. (2004). Power desistance and resistance. A genealogy of the Strangeways prison riot. Ashgate. Childs, D. (2015). Slaves of state. University of California Press. Contreras, R. (2013). The stickup kids: Race, drugs, violence, and the American dream. University of California Press.

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Densley, J. (2013). How gangs work: An ethnography of youth violence. Palgrave Macmillan. Foucault, M. (1975). Discipline and punishment: The birth of the prison. Penguin. Gambetta, D., & Hamill, H. (2005). Streetwise: How taxi drivers establish their customers’ trustworthiness. Russell Sage Foundation. Garot, R. (2010). Who you claim: Performing gang identity in school and on the streets. New York University Press. Goffman, E. (1956). Stigma: Notes on the management of spoiled identity. Prentice-Hall. Goffman, E. (1961). Asylums: Essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates. Anchor Books. Jacobs, B. A. (2001). Robbing drug dealers: Violence beyond the law. Transaction Publishers. Jacobs, J. (1974). Street gangs behind bars. Social Problems, 21(3), 395–409. Jacobs, J. (1977). Stateville: The penitentiary in mass society. University of Chicago. Levan, K. (2012). Prison violence: Causes, consequences and solutions. Routledge. Maitra, D. R. (2013). Gangs behind bars: Fact or fiction? (Unpublished MPhil thesis), University of Cambridge, Cambridge. Maitra, D. R., McLean, R., & Deuchar, R. (2017). “If you want to get paid, you’ve got to do it”: A qualitative study on the morality of crime. Deviant Behaviour, 38(10), 1–13. Sykes, G. M. (1958). The society of captives: A study of maximum security imprisonment. Princeton University Press. Venkatesh, S. (2008). Gang leader for a day. Penguin. Walklate, S., & Evans, K. (1999). Zero tolerance or community tolerance: Police and community talk about crime in high. Crime Prevention and Community Safety: An International Journal, 1, 11–24. Whyte, W. (1943). Street corner society: The social structure of an Italian slum. University of Chicago Press.

21 County Lines in Prisons Kelly Gray

Introduction The following chapter began life as a multi-agency policy briefing on behalf of the Eastern Region Serious Crime Unit (ERSOU). The role of the ERSOU is primarily to identify and disrupt organised criminals. The ERSOCU is 1 of 10 Regional Organised Crime Units (ROCUs) operating across England and Wales providing specialist capability to tackle the increasingly complex threat posed by organised crime. Officers and staff in the unit tackle a range of crime from child sexual exploitation and modern slavery to County drugs lines. Initially, interventions from ROCUs provided support to local police services addressing conflicts from neighbourhood gangs across areas often related to drug dealing, as K. Gray (B) Eastern Region Special Operations Unit, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] National County Lines Coordination Centre, London, UK

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Andell and J. Pitts (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Youth Gangs in the UK , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99658-1_21

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these networks became further developed ROCUs turned their attentions to County Lines and local organised crime networks. The chapter focuses upon case studies of exploitation arising from County Lines operating within the UK prison system and makes some suggestions for disrupting exploitative County Lines practices and safeguarding the vulnerable. According to Pitts (2021) in his academic insight report for Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons and Probation, Nikki Holland, the National Crime Agency (NCA) County Lines lead, notes that whereas in 2015 only seven of the UK’s 44 police forces were reporting County Lines activity, by 2018 all 44 forces reported their presence (Grierson, 2019). Whereas in November 2017 the NCA estimated that there were at least 720 County Lines operating in England and Wales, by 2020 this figure was revised upwards to 2,000+, with at least 283 lines originating in London (National Crime Agency, 2017). [County Lines p. 5].

The above statistical data suggests significant increases in County Lines drug dealing activity (See Harding in this volume). Moreover during the National Intensification weeks of action against County Lines (CL) drug distribution networks, the Eastern Regional Serious Organised Crime Unit (ERSOU), the Prison Intelligence Unit (PIU), the Prison Regional intelligence Unit (PRIU) and the Regional County Lines Coordinator (RCLC) also piloted collaborative interventions to prevent criminal exploitation originating from inside the secure prison estate. In this chapter, case studies from practice are presented to highlight possible best practices to inform a future national approach. The chapter offers suggestions to expand existing Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA) to ensure a balanced and more consistent multi-agency approach to oversee risk assessments regarding County Lines criminal exploitation in the secure estate and during the re-entry and resettlement periods.

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Background The dangers of criminal exploitation to vulnerable people and to the public from County Lines have been raised by academics and policy makers alike (Andell & Pitts, 2019, Andell, 2019, Black, 2020). The National County Lines Coordination Centre (NCLCC) has also increased awareness of criminal exploitation and violence linked to County Lines drug distribution which has resulted in improved identification and reporting of threats within communities. However, our understanding of the threat within the custodial setting and how this may impact upon communities both internal and external to the secure estate remains incomplete. In a recent report, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary Fire and Rescue Services (2016) reminded the police service that safeguarding is one of the most important tasks that the police should undertake. In developing multi-agency approaches to safeguarding Marion Brandon (2020) concludes, Communication is essential for collaboration but is inevitably one of the key points of breakdown. There is evidence of uncertainty amongst practitioners about how and when to share information…(Brandon et al., 2020: p. 15)

The current public health approach to address violence presents further opportunities for information sharing and collaborative work between police, prison and probation services. The Serious Violence Duty included within the Serious Violence Bill (2019), and Draft Guidance for responsible authorities (2021) places a duty on statutory partners to reduce levels of serious violence. This Bill signifies a clear focus for Government and impacts on the operational priorities for prison and probation services. There are a plethora of existing multi-agency mechanisms which could be the focus for co-operation and co-ordination to reduce violence and some of this work is likely to be embedded in community safety structures. However, to ensure adequate and systematic risk assessment and information exchanges, it is

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suggested that MAPPA is an appropriate regional mechanism for information exchange which could enable partners to fulfil community safety duties and enhance the development of further local partnership work for risks of serious violence arising in prisons. According to the County Lines Intelligence: . There are approximately 3000 known prisoners serving sentences for CL offences. . The largest County Lines footprints are in Category B and C establishments. . YOI Feltham has the highest number of gang nominals on the CLICM. . The East and North West regions have the greatest regional footprint. . HMP Parc in Wales appears to have the highest number of CL prisoners on the CLICM. . ERSOU currently have 556 people serving sentences for County Lines from the seven forces. The following case studies give examples of risk of violence and exploitation and make some suggestions to reduce these risks and to safeguard vulnerable people. Case Study 1. Exploitation in the Conveyancing of Drugs into Prisons During the first lockdown for COVID-19 in 2020, it became apparent that more risks were taken with the conveyancing of drugs into prisons. There were more frequent incidents of contraband being thrown over prison walls (“throw overs”). This conveyancing would usually otherwise have happened more discretely during prison visits. Operation Mumble was a prison-led, joint operation with HMPPS teams and partner agencies with the aim to disrupt drug conveyancing into a prison. The operation identified a number of prisoners who were organising contraband to be thrown over the prison walls via prison intelligence. Intelligence led to the interception of a “throw over”, which resulted in the arrest of 3 prisoners and 4 members of the public. However with collaborative approaches, what appeared as a simple prison “throw

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over” investigation in one location evolved into an investigation of a more sophisticated County Lines network operation which extended to other parts of England. The details of five women were found in prison cells whose names were linked to numerous County Lines prisoners in different parts of the country. Subsequent background checks conducted by the probation service and law enforcement revealed that these women had been coerced into drug supply. Measures were subsequently put in place in the community to safeguard these vulnerable women. Case Study 2. County Lines Within the Prison Estate Joint working with HMPPS identified a male prisoner running a drug line from his cell. It also became apparent that a woman from London connected to a drug line was trying to convey drugs into the prison. The intelligence also produced a significant seizure within the prison estate. The prisoner was charged, and a drug line which linked Dorset, the West Midlands and London was dismantled. Evidentially, there are gaps in existing practices to identify County Lines networks within prisons in order to protect vulnerable prisoners and members of the public. A regional multiagency working group was initiated to improve multiagency working, the common objective of protecting the public was identified as an overarching common objective. Service level agreements and information sharing protocols were agreed to enhance multi-agency approaches to disrupt County Lines exploitation and to assist with work allocation and planning. It was identified that relevant information needed to be shared as soon a prisoner is charged and a remand in custody is likely. This would ensure cell allocation and safety measures are implemented at the earliest opportunity. Learning from this process has informed best practice which can be replicated in other regions utilising formal MAPPA arrangements to encompass similar working groups. Given the definitional and taxonomic problems associated with the term gang (Andell, 2019) filtering relevant information for County Lines subjects of interest can be challenging if unfair disproportionate practices are to challenged and incorrect labelling is to be avoided. The probation voice in multi-agency work in gatekeeping and anti-discriminatory practices was viewed as particularly useful to the process to avoid possible

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stereotyping and disproportionate practices in information exchanges; however, anti-discriminatory practices remain the responsibility of all agencies involved (Thompson, 2006). At the time of writing, there is not a routine focus on County Lines nominals for risk assessment as information requests are conducted on a case by case basis rather than as routine. If nominals or networks are identified, early resources can be dedicated to target and disrupt organised criminal activity and the correct Police National Computer markers are key to help with identifying subject’s risks. Possible PNC marker solutions for more clear information sharing regarding prisoners involved in County Lines. Law enforcement can create markers for specific topics within the Police National Computer System. For example, notifications could be received when County Lines individuals change prison location. There is now a national recognised PNC marker for County Lines which covers offenders and potential victims of exploitation. This should along with other markers such as drugs, firearms and violence be utilised by all computer systems. Briefings and teaching modules for staff at the youth secure estate have been piloted to assist with a contextual understanding of the issues associated with County Lines; this should be rolled out nationally to all secure estates. Case Study 3: Illicit Finances and Following the Money An enforcement project identified a male subject linked to County Lines. He was a prominent member of the drugs line which operated the Eastern region. The subject had two sisters and information was received that one of his sisters bank details were found during a cell search and these details were identified in a further eight cells. It became apparent that the sister was redirecting payments from other prisoners to her brother’s bank account. A discussion with the financial investigator who had previously conducted an investigation against the subject established that no assets/cash had been located for him. Further financial enquiries established that the sister’s bank accounts had a balance of £3,420 in a current account and a saving account of £1,345. The subjects other sister also had several bank accounts comprising, one current account with a balance of £10 K, another current account with £32 k balance and a savings account with a balance of £11 k. HMRC indicated that one sister

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had no employment and the other was earning a modest annual income of £15 k. In all, the accounts had previously been funded by third party payments of at least up to £50,000 from prisoners following the subjects conviction. The investigation was a protracted one. One sister signed a disclaimer to the balance held in her bank accounts and the other contested accusations until the day of the court hearing. The end result was that £16,000 was recovered as it could not be shown that all the money held in the accounts were recoverable property. Perhaps if information had been shared earlier, there may have been opportunities to investigate further upstream activity further and outcomes may have been different. Case Study 4. Domestic Abuse and Financial Manipulation In December 2020, a prisoner asked for money to be paid into an account. The account holder in turn had paid 23 payments totalling £1075.00 to other prisoners during that month. The account holder presented as a vulnerable female who had been subjected to domestic abuse (DA) by another named male who was also serving prisoner. The woman had links to a live County Lines drugs business. The two males mentioned were serving sentences on the same wing so it was reasonable to assume that the payments reflected the trading of illicit items, i.e. that she could both send and receive payments in relation to drug trafficking activity. She did not seem well connected with other known offenders which also possibly demonstrated her vulnerability. She had sent money to prisoners at three other prisons and was linked to one of these prisoners on the outside. Both were connected to the same County Lines supplying drugs in Norfolk, and there were various other connections between the couple and the people receiving the transactions. The vulnerable woman appeared on one prisoner’s phone account, while on her partners account, she unusually appeared under another name stated to be his sister. This case was reviewed by the illicit finance team at the NCLCC due to numerous names that were linked to County Lines. Initial checks showed numerous payments going into her account and considerations

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were made for safeguarding. It is clear that imprisonment is not necessarily an impairment to illicit County Lines business activities and that following the money is a useful way to disrupt networks. Under the Proceeds of Crime Act (2022) if a defendant is made subject to an order with a benefit figure that has not been satisfied by the available amount at the time, if the Crown become aware in the future a defendant has acquired additional assets, they may apply to increase the order by the value of those assets. Under s22 of the Act, the Crown may seek to re-open the proceedings after a confiscation order has been made. In the Eastern Region, the Asset Confiscation Team now routinely researches all County Lines nominals for potential Sect. 22 uplifts. This best practice could be reproduced nationally with further access to shared financial information. Case Study 5. County Lines Controlled from the Prison Estate A recent investigation highlighted that a serving prisoner was using young vulnerable people to undertake work in illegal drug markets in the community. He controlled this distribution operation on behalf of another ex-prisoner. There were no apparent links between the two prisoners barring the fact they were in the same prison for a short period of time a while ago. This differential association (Sutherland, 1939) demonstrates the ease of connecting with illicit opportunities to reproduce and proliferate distribution networks. Proactive police work at a train station recently led to a vulnerable missing person being safeguarded who was linked to a County Lines exploiter. A warrant was executed in Ipswich and the London-based nominal was arrested along with a quantity of drugs and money. A burner phone was found known to be the line phone. He was arrested for being concerned in the supply of Class A drugs and modern slavery offences. He was charged and remanded to prison. Following information received a cell search was instructed two weeks after his imprisonment and a phone was recovered showing his deal line continued to be live and functional. The short period of time it takes to re-establish a deal line gives an indication of the need to change current tactics. For example, an established drugs line that was facilitating drugs distribution between London

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and Norwich was operating from at least January 2020. In May 2020, the line owner was arrested and charged by officers. In August 2020, a female was arrested and charged after taking over the line on behalf of the male in custody. Both individuals were sentenced to custodial sentences. In September 2020, the drugs line became live for a third time, the group now aware of police methods utilised the line solely used for the purpose of contacting Class A drugs users in Norwich. Following call data applications, the line holder was attributed to a cousin of the first male arrested. Further call data revealed the cousin was in possession of a mobile phone in his cell in HMP Norwich which was used to organise the supply of Class A drugs. On 11/01/2021 officers from Met Officers stopped a vehicle in Edmonton, London, containing the cousin and his family, he was arrested and conveyed to Norfolk police custody suite where he was charged with being concerned in the supply of Class A drugs. Following experience from the above case studies, it is suggested that phone data for County Lines associated prisoners should be more closely monitored. Case Study 6. Cell Sharing Two well-established County Lines managers from different distribution networks were put in the same cell; it became apparent that both lines were successfully running with joint working arrangements between each gang. There had also been an increase in the number of throw overs which were also thought to be linked to joint arrangements between gangs. Some of the contraband from throw overs was recovered, and some people were arrested.

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Prison data bases such as NOMIS can identify which prisoners are sharing cells and could potentially create alerts for County Lines offenders. There are considerable numbers of these types of offenders that are sharing cells which could potentially increase risks from new or more developed networks. Moreover, some prisoners could pose further risks for vulnerable others if cells are shared. Case Study 7. Cell Searches A male charged and remanded for County Lines activity and exploitation had his cell searched after information was received from investigating officers that a deal line was being run from the prison. The phone data was downloaded and showed links to a prison officer. The officer was arrested and his phone showed links to County Lines activity in the Eastern region. Cell searches have produced significant information from phones being seized regarding bank accounts. Due to the high number of phones seized, many are destroyed due to lack of written processes and staff resources. These phones contain a wealth of information regarding County Lines activity and phone data should be routinely collected by local police. It is suggested that phone data should be routinely downloaded and analysed to help identify any possible criminality in accordance with relevant legal protections. Case Study 8. Safeguarding of Children A welfare concern was raised regarding a 15-year-old female who was a looked after child residing in Norfolk. It was believed that she was a young person being exploited. There were 31 intelligence reports concerning this child which charts her progression into exploitation. Intelligence showed that the young woman was making regular trips to London to collect drugs for a County Lines network during which time she acquired a boyfriend serving in HMP Aylesbury. She was stopped in a vehicle in Cambridge and the males with her were known County Lines offenders. The young female was in a vehicle with cash and mobile phones but unfortunately no interventions or safeguarding procedures were implemented to protect her. No one in the car was charged with any offences and she was returned

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to Norfolk. The males in the vehicle were 30 years older than her and no obvious association with the child. In 2019, she visited a prisoner in Nottingham who is a known OCG gang nominal. She was found to be in possession of illicit items, drugs and tobacco. She was at the time keeping company with a male from Leicester who had gang affiliation markers. She was arrested and charged and checks showed the prisoner was receiving visits from numerous young people from different areas. These visits were blocked as all of the visitors were not listed as family contacts. Checks showed the child had also visited a known prisoner in the Isle of Sheppey. This lead to further submissions around this young female stating there were concerns regarding two other vulnerable children in Norfolk who may be being exploited by County Lines drug dealers. The children may have been asked to bring in drugs to unknown prisoners wrapped or swallowed or plugged. She was arrested again and sadly is now a currently serving prisoner. Early intervention and collaborative working could have safeguarded this child back in 2018 instead of her being exploited for two years. HMPPS stated they were aware of the visits but did not raise the matter as a safeguarding concern. Anderson notes (2021) there has been a 807% increase of children referred to support councils in connection to modern slavery. Most prisons have inmates who are linked to trafficking, exploitation of vulnerable individuals and County Lines. There is therefore a safeguarding imperative which is multi-agency in nature. It is estimated by the Children’s Society that 27,000 children in England are in gangs. Nationally, only 401 submissions linked to County Lines were made to the national referral mechanism in quarter 3 of 2020 accounting for just 16% of all referrals. The first independent national safeguarding practice review undertaken for Government suggests that the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) is both poorly understood and under-utilised. HMPPS have recognised the need to improve awareness to protect vulnerable children. The probation service, youth offending teams and other statutory partners have a vital role in safeguarding and protecting the public. This role could include further home visits and pre-release checks to identify suitable accommodation on release from the secure estate. There

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are currently five youth secure estates with few County Lines debriefing processes in place for those working with young offenders. Relevant partners in different areas rely on a plethora of partnership arrangements to safeguard vulnerable children involved in County Lines. When referrals are made to Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hubs the threshold for older children are often set too high for interventions as inter-familial abuse of younger children is often prioritised (Firmin, 2011). A more standardised process for risk assessment is needed when dealing with the safeguarding issues of young people involved with County Lines suspects or offenders. Mechanisms such as the MAPPA could be utilised as an additional effective and credible signposting conduit into safeguarding interventions for older children. This could include the use of the Vulnerability Assessment Tracker used by some local police services which is currently being trialled within HMPPS. Case Study 9. Visits Information was received to indicate that a prisoner intended to set up a deal line when he was released. The female visitor was the subject of recent intelligence reports which described her as dealing drugs on Canvey Island. During visits, the prisoner received “a pass” from his visitor. She took a parcel out of her trousers and placed it in the rolled-up table number from the visits table. This was observed and challenged by attending prison officers. During the challenge, the prisoner grabbed the parcel and attempted to secrete it within his person. This led to him being restrained by prison staff. The visitor became aggressive when detained by staff, and assistance from other members of staff was necessary. The female visitor then began to throw a chair and tried to up turn the table, then subsequently attempted to break windows in the visiting area. She later explained that she had mental health problems and would struggle if not released. It was explained to her that due to her behaviour, she would be barred from entering the prison in the future and was the subject of safeguarding checks and interventions.

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An initial assessment by staff concluded that a package had been passed to the prisoner who had concealed the package in his body. Despite visible evidence of lubrication, the prisoner refused to be subjected to a body scan. He was then placed on report and sent to the segregation unit. Better information exchanges around visitors is clearly important for safeguarding. If there are concerns for the safety for persons visiting, HMPPS should intervene to ensure the person is not being exploited. Checks should also be undertaken to investigate possible links to other prisons. Case Study 10. Probation Partnerships In the Eastern region, probation has undertaken checks on their intelligence systems regarding County Lines offenders due for release from prison. These checks give more accurate detail of release addresses than prisons are sometimes aware of. ERSOU has shared prison release data with local police services in the areas of re-entry to enable proportionate suitable disruptions to criminal activity where appropriate. For example, this has led to disruption notices being served and recommendations that the addresses are not suitable for prisoners on release. One such release address had links to cuckooing which was subsequently deemed unsuitable. Information was recently received on a prisoner who had a Criminal Behaviour Order who was contacting a young vulnerable female. Partnership work enabled a report to be produced which was circulated to statutory partners detailing past sexual exploitation of both male and female children and ongoing contact with a child from the custodial setting. The release address given was of a vulnerable female who was previously subjected to domestic violence. Through partnership work with the probation service, the case was referred to MAPPA and the prisoners status was increased from medium to high ensuring additional monitoring can be undertaken and further licence conditions can be explored in line with best practice models (Tapley & Jackson, 2019).

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Conclusion This chapter has highlighted best practice models in addressing County Lines arising from collaborative working in the eastern region with regard to information sharing between enforcement, prison and probation services. To ensure the sustainability of this work and to replicate best practices in other regions, further policy development work is required. Both prison and probation practitioners have identified growing concerns regarding violence, vulnerability and exploitation linked to gangs and County Lines in the secure estate. Frontline practitioners report significant debts are created within prisons which is used as a means of control in modern slavery (Home Office, 2017). Cell Debt extortion scams are sometimes used to control more vulnerable prisoners. Therefore, information regarding perpetrators and victims needs to be retained and shared in a more systematic way. National Offender Management Information System (NOMIS) reports verify practitioner anecdotal evidence regarding recruitment and exploitation but information sharing can be sparodic. Further information sharing and case conferencing across systems via MAPPA arrangements could identify risks and safeguarding issues for those being released into the community and additional interventions could support re-entry and resettlement plans.

References Andell, P. (2019). Thinking seriously about gangs: Towards a critical realist approach. Springer International Publishing AG. Andell, P., & Pitts, J. (2019). Preventing the violent and sexual victimisation of vulnerable gang-involved and gang-affected children and young people in Ipswich (1913160033). Sutherland, Edwin H. The theory of differential association. Readings in criminology and penology, edited by David Dressler, New York Chichester, West Sussex: Columbia University Press, 1972, pp. 365–371. https://doi.org/10.7312/dres92534-039

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Anderson L. (2021) Modern Slavery—NRM evidence in drug trafficking cases. Crucible Chambers Insights. https://crucible.law/insights/modern-sla very-nrm-evidence-in-drug-trafficking-cases#:~:text=The%20Children’s% 20Society%20noted%20in,referrals%20being%20for%20male%20chil dren. Black C. (2020) Independent report. Review of drugs: Phase one report. Home Office. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/reviewof-drugs-phase-one-report Brandon, M. et al., (2020). Complexity and challenge: A triennial analysis of SCRs 2014–2017: Final Report, London: DfE. Farrow, K., Kelly, G., & Wilkinson, B. (2007). Offenders in Focus Risk. The Policy Press, Bristol. Firmin, C. (2011). Female voice in violence: Final report on the impact of serious youth violence and criminal gangs on women and girls across the country. London: Race on the Agenda. Grierson, J. (2019, January 29). County Lines: Huge scale of £500m drug industry revealed, The Guardian. Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary fire and rescue services (2016) Time to listen—a joined up response to child sexual exploitation and missing children; Ofsted. www.gov.uk/government/publications/joint-inspec tions-of-child-sexual-exploitation-andmissing-children. NCA. (2016). County Lines gang violence, exploitation & drug supply 2016 . N. C. Agency. https://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/who-we-are/public ations/15-county-lines-gang-violence-exploitation-and-drug-supply-2016 NCA. (2017). County Lines gang violence, exploitation & drug supply 2017 . N. C. Agency. https://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/who-we-are/public ations/234-county-lines-violen-ce-exploitation-drug-supply-2017 NCA. (2018). County Lines gang violence, exploitation & drug supply 2018. N. C. Agency. https://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/who-we-are/public ations/257-county-lines-drug-supply-vulnerability-and-harm-2018 Pitts, J. (2021). County Lines. HM Inspectorate of Probation Academic Insights 2021/01. HM Inspectorate of Probation.https://www.justicein spectorates.gov.uk/hmiprobation/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2021/01/Aca demic-Insights-county-lines-.pdf Serious Violence Bill (2019). Research briefing. House of Commons Library. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8685/

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Tapley, J. and Jackson, Z. (2019). Protection and prevention: Identifying, managing and monitoring priority perpetrators of domestic abuse in D. Gough and A. Pycroft (Eds.), (2nd Ed) Multi-Agency working in criminal justice: Theory, policy and practice. Bristol: Policy Press. Thompson, N. (2006). Anti-Discriminatory Practice (4th ed.). Palgrave.

Part VI Policy & Practice

22 The English Street Gang and Government Policy John Pitts

As is always the case in accelerated social transformations, crises get shifted onto the life histories of individuals. (Jurgen Habermas, 1994)

In England, gang policy is an invention of the twenty-first century. Before, policy makers, academics and the public were seemingly unaware that England had a ‘gang problem’ about which the government was supposed to do something. In 1966, the eminent criminologist David Downes (1966), having visited the USA, went in search of Americanstyle street gangs in East London, but in vain. Later, in the mid-1990s, Peter Stelfox (1998), a superintendent in the Lancashire constabulary, having visited the USA and Canada, undertook a national survey of J. Pitts (B) University of Bedfordshire, Luton, UK e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Andell and J. Pitts (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Youth Gangs in the UK , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99658-1_22

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English police forces to see if they had found any. Unable to arrive at a generally agreed definition of a gang which was applicable to the UK situation’ he devised the following: Any group which uses violence or the threat or fear of violence to further a criminal purpose, but excluding football hooligans and terrorists.

Although he elicited a remarkable 91.45% response rate from the police forces, only sixteen of them identified gangs in their area, and this yielded a national total of just 72. By contrast, research by US criminologists David Curry and Irving Spergel (1992), using a similar methodology, but a far tighter definition, found an estimated 4,881 youth gangs in the USA. The majority of the UK gangs identified by Stelfox comprised adult males aged 25 to 29. Some gangs spanned a broader age range with a handful of gang members below the age of 16. These gangs were predominantly white, only 25.4% had members described as ‘Black Caribbean’, and only 7% had members who were predominantly from ethnic minority groups. This led Stelfox to conclude that: These figures challenge the perception that violent gangs are primarily either a youth problem or one which occurs mainly within ethnic communities. Organisationally the majority of gangs tended towards a loose structure. (Stelfox, 1998)

Later, in 2004, Home Office research into group offending by young people, (Sharp et al., 2004), made no mention of ‘gangs’, referring only to entities it described as ‘Delinquent Youth Groups’. But within two years, the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS, 2006), using a gang definition devised by Simon Hallsworth and Tara Young (2004), was claiming to have identified 171 youth gangs in London alone, many using firearms in furtherance of their crimes and estimated to have been responsible for around 40 murders and 20% of the youth crime in the capital. If the MPS data was even half right, something had changed. The figures also showed that around 70% of ‘gang members’ were of African-Caribbean origin or of ‘Mixed Heritage’.

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In 2007, ‘gang-related’ knife and gun crime peaked. In South London in the first half of 2007, there were six murders in Lambeth, four involving a firearm and two involving knives. By the December of that year, however this number had risen to 25. Between 2004 and 2006 the borough had the second highest rate of fatal and non-fatal shootings of all thirty-two London boroughs, with 22% of gang-related gun crime attributable to children and young people aged below 18. While in 2003, under-20 s formed only 16% of all Trident-related (intra-racial firearms homicides and shootings in the African-Caribbean community) by 2006, this had risen to 31% (Pitts, 2008).

The Government Acts However, the event that galvanised the government was the murder of Rhys Jones, an 11-year-old White boy, in Liverpool, in August 2007. Rhys was caught in the crossfire between two White teenage gang members. The murder of Rhys Jones became front page news and Prime Minister Gordon Brown convened a gang summit where he launched the Tackling Gangs Action Programme (TGAP). The programme aimed to reduce youth violence, focusing on gang-related firearms offences in London, Merseyside, the West Midlands and Greater Manchester. However, there seemed to be only a limited understanding of the scale of the problem. As Charlotte Pickles observed in Dying to Belong (2009): Although a number of localised studies have been conducted by police forces and academics, in addition to the Home Office’s analysis of four British cities in their Tackling Gangs Action Programme (TGAP), the prevalence of gangs, their membership and the extent of their criminal activity—including violence—is largely unknown ... The Home Office’s TGAP appears, however, to have identified fewer gangs than the MPS. The MPS found 171 gangs operating in London and the Home Office estimate that there are 356 gang members in the Capital. This would mean around two people per gang, which would not, by the Home Office’s own definition, constitute a gang. This situation is unacceptable. (p. 20)

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Leaving to one side, the government’s understanding of the magnitude of gang crime, commentators in the Black community ruefully observed that, despite the many gang-related murders of Black young people in preceding years, it took the publicity surrounding the gang-related death of a White child to galvanise the government. (The Rhys Jones murder was turned into the TV ‘docudrama’ Little Boy Blue in 2017). The TGAP programme drew heavily upon the experience of Operation Trident the unit set up in 1998 by the Metropolitan Police, to tackle gun crime and gun-related homicide in London’s African-Caribbean community, and 13 similar units in other English towns and cities. Hot on the heels of TGAP, in June 2008, the government introduced TKAP (the Tackling Knives Action Programme). But TKAP was poorly focussed, conflating knife crime with knife carrying and gang-related violence. This, despite the fact that contemporaneous research suggested that 85% of young people who were known to carry knives claimed to have done so for protection, while just 4% had used them to threaten someone and only 1% had injured anyone with a knife (Sharp et al., 2004). However, TGAP and TKAP notwithstanding, there was still strong resistance to the use of the term ‘gang’ within government, academia and some criminal justice agencies. In the preparation of its 2007 report for the Youth Justice Board of England and Wales, Groups, Gangs and Weapons (Young et al., 2007), there was strong disagreement in the research team about terminology. When the report finally emerged, it appeared to be saying that the use of the word ‘gang’ was a misnomer in terms of group offending in the UK but that there were some young people, armed with guns, sometimes describing themselves as gang members who, together, posed a serious threat. Resistance to the term amongst some academics appeared to centre on concerns about the potential stigmatisation of the young people involved in ‘group offending’, not least because of mounting evidence that, in London, Manchester and Birmingham, many of them were drawn from Black and Minority Ethnic communities. This was also a concern amongst professionals in Youth Offending Teams. The clumsy resolution of the contradictions within the report were a result of sudden changes of academic representation, with some members leaving, allegedly in a

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‘huff ’, to be replaced by others who were more concerned to depict the phenomenon accurately, irrespective of the report’s potentially negative impact. As to the policy makers, whereas the Blair administration had boosted fear of crime as an electoral gambit, the watchword of the subsequent Brown administration was ‘public reassurance’, and the idea that American-style violent street gangs were now roaming the city streets was inimical to this goal.

Dying to Belong It was the publication in 2009 of Dying to Belong by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), the think tank founded by Conservative M.P. Iain Duncan-Smith, that eventually established ‘gangs’ as a politically acceptable description. Dying to Belong was, and arguably remains, the most comprehensive analysis of violent street gangs in Britain in the twentyfirst century. Its meticulous interrogation of the ‘gang’ and the ideas and theories about the gang notwithstanding, its incongruous punch line appears to have been decided several years previously by Iain DuncanSmith. In the CSJs Breakdown Britain report (2006), Duncan Smith had written: Most significantly however, a catalyst and consequence of these pathways to poverty, is the breakdown of the family. Marriage, far more stable than cohabitation, has rapidly declined in recent decades; 15% of babies in Britain are now born without a resident biological father; and we have the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in Europe. Without strong families violent and lawless street gangs, whose leaders are often school age, offer a deadly alternative.

Both Duncan-Smith and, soon to be, Prime Minister David Cameron subscribed to a similar view of the origins of lower class crime, which Cameron characterised as a culture of entitlement. The culture of entitlement canard had previously been levelled at David Cameron, a descendant of King William IV and fifth cousin once

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removed of Her Majesty the Queen and his immediate circle, which included Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, a direct, albeit illegitimate, descendent of George II, and George (nee Gideon) Osborne, heir to the Osborne Baronetcy in Ireland. In the 1980s, de Pfeffel Johnson, Osborne and Cameron had been prominent members of the notorious Oxford University Bullingdon Club, memorably lampooned by Evelyn Waugh in Brideshead Revisited (1945), as the Bollinger Club (Angel, 2012). In the hands of Cameron, the idea of a culture of entitlement was transmogrified into what was, in effect, a simplified version of Charles Murray’s ‘underclass thesis’ (1984), which was, in turn, a vulgarised version of the Oscar Lewis’ culture of poverty thesis (1959). DuncanSmith and Cameron saw lower class criminality as the product of an overweening welfare state that rewarded fecklessness and undermined individual responsibility, thereby discouraging parental propriety and producing a culture of dependency and entitlement wherein sexual profligacy and criminality become the norm. In this version of events, the ‘broken family’ was the progenitor of the ‘broken society’ with the added twist that now, ‘human rights’ and ‘health and safety’ legislation protected the culprits from the consequences of their actions. This led Cameron to conclude, in a speech in August, 2011, at the height of the rioting taking place in English cities, that the nation was in the grip of a moral crisis: Irresponsibility. Selfishness. Behaving as if your choices have no consequences. Children without fathers. Schools without discipline. Reward without effort. Crime without punishment. Rights without responsibilities. Communities without control. Some of the worst aspects of human nature tolerated, indulged—sometimes even incentivised—by a state and its agencies that in parts have become literally de-moralised … It is essential for those in power in Britain that the riots now sweeping the country can have no cause beyond feral wickedness. This is nothing but criminality, pure and simple. (Stratton, 2011)

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Riotous Assemblies On 4th August 2011, a police officer shot 29-year-old Mark Duggan dead while attempting to arrest him. The officers involved were from Operation Trident. Although it was initially reported that a bullet was found embedded in a police radio, suggesting that Duggan had fired at the police, The Guardian later reported that this was a police issue bullet fired from a police issue weapon. On August 13th, the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) confirmed that this was the bullet that had passed though Duggan’s body. On 6th August, a protest march, beginning at the Broadwater Farm estate in Tottenham and finishing at Tottenham police station, was held. It was organised by Duggan’s friends and relatives who were demanding ‘justice’ for the family. Once at the police station, they asked for a senior police officer to come out to speak to them. However, no senior officer appeared but police with riot shields were deployed. Then, after a confrontation with a police officer in which a young woman was thrown to the ground, violence broke out. This is generally accepted as the moment when the 2011 riots began. Often referred to as the ‘London Riots’, the ensuing disturbances lasted for six days and involved thousands of people in cities and towns across England. The rioters engaged in looting, arson and attacks upon the police and by the end, five people were dead.

Ending Gang & Youth Violence In October 2011, David Cameron, by now Prime Minister, convened an International Forum on Gangs chaired by Theresa May and Iain Duncan Smith. In his summing up, Iain Duncan Smith maintained that although many factors led to rioting, gang involvement and gang crime, caused by family failure, was at the root of the problem. At this point the government’s position appeared to be that the riots were orchestrated by violent youth gangs whose members were drawn from the progeny of fatherless families or unmarried parents. However, CCTV footage, Court records and subsequent research undertaken by

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The Guardian/ LSE (2012) found that only around 8% of the rioters were known to be gang involved. Nonetheless, the intervention programme that emerged from the government’s post-riot deliberations located the aberrant family as the source of Britain’s gang problem. November 2011 saw the publication of Ending Gang and Youth Violence: A Cross-Government Report (Home Office, 2011). The document indicated that the development of local gang and youth violence strategies would require: … a systematic review, re-prioritisation and restructuring of public services at the local level—based on early intervention as well as enforcement. That means changing the way mainstream public services like schools, hospitals and health visitors operate to identify children at risk. It means local areas agreeing coordinated, sustainable interventions tailored to an individual and/or their family.

It commended a concerted, long-term effort, to be achieved by statutory and voluntary sector agencies in the fields of policing, youth justice, probation, youth work, safeguarding, health, employment and training, which would share information, resources and accountability. This process was to be facilitated by the new Localism Bill which will give local areas the power to take action and pool their resources through Community Budgets. The three-year Ending Gang and Youth Violence (EGYV) programme was launched in January 2012. The EGYV team, located in the Home Office, assembled what it described as a virtual network of over 100 expert advisers to provide practical advice and support to local areas with a gang or serious youth violence problem. At the outset, the 100 experts offered advice to 30 gang-affected ‘local areas’, 19 of which were in London. Ten million pounds-worth of ‘early intervention’ monies, were re-designated to improve the way mainstream services identify, assess and work with the young people most at risk of serious violence, with at least half of this funding going to the non-statutory sector. There was in addition, £1.2 million to be spent between 2012 and 2015 to improve

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services for young people under 18 suffering sexual violence and exploitation in gangs, focusing particularly, although not exclusively, upon gang-involved girls and young women. However, the EGYV programme was launched at a time of severe cuts to youth services and its resources were distributed largely on the basis of the recipients’ own estimations of whether or not their interventions did or could ‘work’ with gang-involved young people. As a result, many existing programmes were simply re-badged as gang desistance projects and so EGYV-funded provision was determined as much by shortfalls in the funding of existing youth programmes as objective assessments of the nature and dimensions of the local gang problem. An evaluation of the first two years of the programme (Disley & Liddle, 2015) found that the local partnerships involved were seldom working to an agreed definition of the ‘gang’ or an identifiable ‘evidencebased strategy’ for gang intervention. Nor had they established any baseline measures of gang involvement and gang activity. As a result, two years into the programme, it remained unclear whether more young people were becoming involved in gangs, whether gangs were becoming more or less numerous or whether gang crime was becoming more or less serious.

Troubled Families EYGV was designed to run in parallel with, and be complemented by, the work of a new Troubled Families Team (TFT) in the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG). The Team was headed-up by erstwhile Anti-Social Behaviour Tsar, Dame Louise Casey, and charged with ‘turning around’ 120,000 troubled families over a three-year period. In fact, the TFT was, to all intents and purposes, a re-packaged version of New Labour’s Family Intervention Projects (FIPs), also headed by Louise Casey, which aimed to eliminate anti-social behaviour. Despite government claiming a 90% success rate for the FIPs, the evaluators could not agree. (see for example Gregg, 2010). The TFT had a budget of £400,000,000, a figure that dwarfed that of the EYGV and underscored the government’s belief that the

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malfunctioning family was at the root of riots and gang crime, as well as anti-social behaviour, truancy and idleness. Identifying the families that would be targeted, the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) report noted that: These families are characterised by there being no adult in the family working, children not being in school and family members being involved in crime and anti-social behaviour. These families almost always have other, often long-standing, problems which can lead to their children repeating the cycle of disadvantage. One estimate shows that in over a third of troubled families, there are child protection problems. Another estimate suggests that over half of all children who are permanently excluded from school in England come from these families, as do onein-five young offenders. Other problems such as domestic violence, relationship breakdown, mental and physical health problems and isolation make it incredibly hard for families to start unravelling their problems. The cost of these families to the public purse is very significant—approximately £9 billion a year, the vast majority spent on reacting to their problems. And most importantly, most of the money being spent is not providing lasting results and changing lives.

Thus, the criteria for selection for the scheme were that households were: . . . .

Involved in crime and anti-social behaviour Had children not in school Had an adult on out of work benefits Caused high costs to the public purse

A second wave of Troubled Families programmes was launched in 2014, this time targeting a further 400,000 families at an additional cost of £900 m. In 2015, in a tone redolent of Gordon Brown’s endorsement of the FIPs, David Cameron described the scheme as a runaway success, claiming that 98.9% of the 118,000 families worked with so far in the scheme had been ‘turned around’. However, it transpired that this 98.9% figure was the proportion of families that met the criteria for inclusion who had been engaged by the programme rather than the proportion ‘turned around’.

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An evaluation of the programme by the National Institute for Economic and Social Research (NIESR) commissioned by the DCLG from a consortium led by Ecorys (NIESR, 2016) found that: ... across a wide range of outcomes, covering the key objectives of the Troubled Families Programme—employment, benefit receipt, school attendance, safeguarding and child welfare—we were unable to find consistent evidence that the programme had any significant or systematic impact. The vast majority of impact estimates were statistically insignificant, with a very small number of positive or negative results. These results are consistent with those found by the separate and independent impact analysis using survey data, also published today, which also found no significant or systemic impact on outcomes related to employment, job seeking, school attendance, or anti-social behaviour.

‘Refreshing’ the EGYV By 2016, the EGYV had expanded to 52 areas but, in January, in a leaked letter from the Home Office to local authority staff involved in the scheme warned that: Frontline team support and associated funding will be ending at the end of March 2016 (and that it would) not be offering any further centrally funded peer reviews or local assessment processes in the next financial year.

The letter went on: ... great progress has been made over the past four years in tackling gang and youth violence issues

and it indicated that the department would be setting up a new forum to; harness the expertise of as many of you as possible to tackle the issue.

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Chuka Umunna, Labour MP for Streatham, claimed that the Home Office decision would seriously compromise efforts to reduce gang and serious youth violence: If it is being done to cost-cut, I say you cannot put a price on the lives of our young people, (and he noted that the virtual network of over 100 expert advisers was not being replaced with) anything meaningful, just a couple of civil servants with no expert knowledge (who) would have responsibility for the issue added to their existing work. (The Guardian online, 2016).

Chuka Umunna also observed that asking local authorities, whose budgets have been severely depleted, to take on this work was simply unrealistic. The government’s claim that ‘great progress has been made over the past four years’ could not be established empirically however because, as noted above, no gang definition or baseline measures had been put in place at the inception of the EGYV initiative. Disley & Liddle’s evaluation based on the perceptions of EGYV professionals (2016) was more equivocal regarding the programme’s impact. It concluded that gangs were probably less visible than two years previously, possibly to avoid the police, which could be an effect of the targeted policing of gangs of the type developed by the Trident Gang Crime Command in London. Most respondents agreed that gangs were involved in drug markets, violence and territoriality and that some were drawn from a single ethnic group. They also thought that gang-involved girls sometimes stored drugs and firearms, or set up attacks on rival gang members, but that they were also subject to violence and sexual exploitation. Some respondents believed that the ages of gang members had risen over the period but that the numbers of gangs had decreased, suggesting perhaps that, outside London at least, the EGYV intervention may have been having an impact. On the other hand, most London respondents believed that the number of gangs had increased; that they had more affiliates and that a larger number were ‘older’. (24 of the 52 EGYV areas were in London). Whereas the use of firearms appeared to have decreased outside the

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capital, most thought that this was not the case in London. London respondents thought that gangs were becoming better organised and that some had become de facto criminal business organisations, dealing drugs into markets throughout the country. This meant that previously antagonistic gangs were more likely to be cooperating than was the case two years earlier. Particular concern was expressed about school-age children being used as ‘mules’ to carry drugs to points of sale on the coast and in provincial towns and cities. However, as the authors noted, the study was the first to collect nation-wide information about gangs and while they expected that perceptions would vary from area to area they did not expect such variations within areas. But this was what they found. They suggest that this may have been because practitioners were thinking about different gangs; because their different work roles led to differences in how much they knew about gangs, as well as differences of opinion about whether individuals were gang members. Moreover, the views of respondents sometimes appeared to be influenced as much by widely reported gang research (cf Pitts, 2008, Firmin, 2011, Beckett et al., 2013, Densley, 2013, Harding, 2014) as by their own experiences. In January, 2016 H. M. Government published Ending Gang Violence and Exploitation, a Refreshed Approach (Home Office, 2016). Ironically, this coincided with the aforementioned leaked Home Office letter announcing the scaling-back of the EGYV programme. Ending Gang Violence and Exploitation indicates that the EGYV programme would continue the work of reducing violence by supporting a change in the way that public services respond to gang and youth violence but that now, gang related exploitation of the vulnerable must be a priority and that work in the 52 EGYV areas must reflect this. It notes that: The Ending Gangs and Youth Violence programme has meant we have a much better understanding of the issues in relation to gang and youth violence, and how to tackle them. ... That is why we have refreshed our approach, and why we are concerned with both reducing gang related violence and preventing the exploitation of vulnerable people by gangs.

It also notes that the Home Office EGYV will:

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... continue to support local areas this year and encourage them to adopt the refreshed approach and priorities, as set out in this document, which address both reducing gang violence and tackling gang related exploitation of vulnerable people. 52 local areas are now being assisted through the Ending Gang and Youth Violence programme, and have been reviewed and provided with recommendations by the Home Office sponsored peer network (now nearly 100 strong) and the Ending Gang and Youth Violence frontline team.

Ending Gang Violence & Exploitation sets out the six priorities for future interventions: . ‘County (drug) lines’ and the exploitation of vulnerable children and young people used as couriers and ‘runners’. . Protecting locations where vulnerable young people are targeted, including residential children’s care homes and Pupil Referral Units . Safeguarding gang-associated women and girls . Reducing violence and knife crime . Early Intervention . Developing alternatives to gangs via education, training and employment One notable omission from this list is the family. Initially, the bedrock of the EGYV/Troubled Families strategy, the family has disappeared from this ‘refreshed’ approach. There is also no mention of the withdrawal of EGYV funding and the government’s intention to pass this work over to cash-strapped local authorities and/or the voluntary sector, if it could, and if they could, which was at best uncertain.

Enter the FEDS In 2016, with the EGYV ‘running on empty’ and Troubled Families more or less abandoned, a new organisation, the National Crime Agency (NCA), stepped into the frame. In its County Lines, Gang Violence, Exploitation and Drug Supply report (2015), the NCA maintained that:

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its pursuit of county lines will support the aims of Ending Gang Violence and Exploitation in the transition from EGYV. From around 2010, the police had presided over the exponential growth of County Lines drug dealing involving the exploitation of some of Britain’s most vulnerable children and young people (NCA, 2015, Andell & Pitts, 2018, Harding, 2020). The policing of County Lines obviously required rapid information sharing and coordinated action across a plurality of police jurisdictions but this had proved extremely difficult. It was therefore decided that the NCA, with its national remit, in collaboration with local police forces, would assume responsibility for the policing of County Lines. The other pressing policing issue at this time was the sexual exploitation of girls and young women in towns in the North West of England. The Jay Inquiry (2014) concluded that an estimated 1,400 children, most of them white British girls, had been sexually abused in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013, mainly by British-Pakistani men. The abuse included gang rape, forcing children to watch rape, dousing them with petrol and threatening to set them on fire, threatening to rape their mothers and younger sisters, and trafficking them to other towns. The police were criticised for their contemptuous and sexist attitudes towards the mostly vulnerable working-class victims as well as their fear that highlighting the perpetrators’ ethnicity would trigger allegations of racism and damage ‘community relations’. The Inquiry also criticised the police for their complacency in relying on communication with, and information from, sometimes self-appointed, male, ‘community leaders’, elected councillors and Imams, because these communications tended to downplay the extent and seriousness of the abuse. The case for rethinking police priorities was clear. And so it was that the exploitation of children and young people, particularly if they were involved in County Lines drug distribution, became a key target for police intervention.

Cutting the Cops But this was a period of austerity. In 2010, in the wake of the ‘Credit Crunch’, the government cut £2 billion from the £9 billion Ministry of

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Justice annual budget with an estimated loss of 15,000 of the department’s 80,000 staff. On 10th September 2010 the Police Federation observed that the government’s projected 25% cuts in UK policing budgets could lead to the loss of 14,000 officers; and this turned out to be an underestimate. In April 2010, the Metropolitan Police announced that they would have to ‘lose’ 4,000 officers. The Greater Manchester Police (GMP) calculated that between 2011 and 2015, they would have to find savings of £135,000,000 which would result in the loss of 2,700 jobs. In an interview with the Manchester Evening News in October 2015, departing Chief Constable Sir Peter Fahey said that the police were now only be able to actively pursue 40% of the crime reported to them, partly because of lack of evidence but also because, in the light of the cuts, the police had to prioritise. The consequences of the cuts in the justice system were also keenly felt in the prisons and Young Offender Institutions, which lost 7000 officers. As a result, the ‘gang problem’ had at times overwhelmed staff, causing them to seek back-up from the police. Gangs in prisons remain a source of concern. In 2013/14, 16% of boys in young offender institutions (YOIs) reported having experienced ‘gang problems’ when they first arrived at the establishment (rising to 21% for black and minority ethnic (BME) young people). An inspection of Feltham ‘A’ YOI (which holds boys aged under 18) noted that 48 gangs were represented in the establishment and the gang problem in the secure estate as a whole was described as ‘seemingly intractable’ by the Chief Inspector of Prisons (HMIP, 2015). Nonetheless, though acute, the problem of life-threatening gang violence in prisons and YOIs was not amongst the priorities established by the refreshed EGYV. But something had to give. While England’s refreshed gang strategy was based on better research, better evidence and had a clearer focus, it was also a seriously scaleddown project compared with the broad but unfocussed ambitions of the original EGYV.

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Losing Ground County Lines In 2019 Nikki Holland, the National Crime Agency (NCA) County Lines lead noted that whereas in 2015, only seven of the UKs 44 police forces were reporting County Lines activity, by 2018 all 44 forces reported their presence (Grierson, 2019). Whereas in November 2017, the NCA estimated that there were at least 720 County Lines operating in England and Wales, by 2020 this figure was revised upwards to 2,000 + , with at least 283 lines originating in London (National Crime Agency, 2017; 2017b; 2019). Between 2012 and 2016, convictions of children aged 10 to 17 for ‘possession of Class A drugs with intent to supply’ increased by 77% (Ministry of Justice, 2017). This was three times the increase amongst adult offenders. As Robinson et al. (2018, p. 14) observe: While some of these young people are “user dealers”, or individual entrepreneurs working “solo”, many others are embedded within gangs and organized criminal networks.

Knife Crime Related to the growth of County Lines, knife crime, having fallen between 2010/11 and 2013/14, rose over the next six years. In 2019, there were 45,627 offences involving knives or sharp instruments recorded by police a 7% rise year on year, and 49% higher than in 2011 when comparable records began. In the year ending March 2021, there were around 41,300 offences involving a sharp instrument. This was 15.3% lower than in 2019/20. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on patterns of crime and there was a large decrease in the number of offences involving knives or sharp instruments during periods when national lockdowns and other restrictions were im[posed].

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Back to the Future Sensing that youth crime, violence and drug dealing were getting out of control, in April 2018 the Home Office announced its Serious Violence Strategy, setting out what it described as an ambitious programme of work to respond to increases in knife crime, gun crime and homicide. The government pledged £22 million over 2 years for a new Early Intervention Youth Fund and £200 million over 10 years for a Youth Endowment Fund. Its publicity material observed that: The Youth Endowment Fund is dedicated to building the evidence base to determine what works and supporting improved outcomes for children and young people. Each project will be evaluated to build and share knowledge of the types of interventions which are most effective at preventing young people from being drawn into crime and violence. From intensive family therapy to street-based and school mentoring programmes, 30,000 young people between the ages of 10-14 will directly benefit from ground-breaking interventions that the Youth Endowment Fund will support, evaluate and where they are shown to have impact, grow

The government ceded the implementation of the YEF to the private sector; two companies; Impetus and The Private Equity Foundation (PEF). In their publicity material, Impetus and PEF claimed to have been set up: ... by a group of leaders from the private equity industry (and was) the first organisation in the UK to apply a venture philanthropy approach harnessing its private equity and investment expertise to help great charities become even better.

Private equity firms, sometimes unkindly referred to as ‘asset strippers’, do not usually ‘moonlight’ as criminologist and so, presumably, Impetus and PEF had to garner their advice and expertise on intervention strategies from elsewhere. Wherever this was, they appear to have been shortchanged because the ‘evidence-based interventions’ commended by the Fund, family counselling, cognitive behavioural treatment, mentoring,

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multi-systemic therapy etc., developed, in the USA in the 1980s and 1990s, all focus upon the individual and the family and were designed to reduce youth crime in general rather than the knife crime, gun crime and homicide the Serious Youth Violence Strategy aims to eradicate. And, as O’Connor and Woodell (Home Office, 2015) observe in their Rapid Review of Interventions Delivered in the UK, for the Early Intervention Foundation: Our review failed to identify any gang-specific programmes with a robust evidence base implemented in the UK. (p. 49)

Most of the interventions recommended by the EIF and the YEF were originally imported into the UK as the core elements in the government’s largely unsuccessful What Works programmes for youth and adult offenders in the 1990s, where it soon became clear that serious problems arose when attempts were made to ‘upscale’ interventions that had apparently worked in a Canadian ‘laboratory’ into a national programme.

The 2019 Serious Youth Violence Summit In February 2019, the real world crashed in upon these convoluted arrangements when 14 young people were stabbed in just five days, triggering a rapidly convened Serious Youth Violence Summit. The summit involved 140 attendees; police leaders, youth workers, academics and victims’ representatives. Prime Minister Theresa May opened the Summit claiming that knife crime was a top priority for government. And, in what the Daily Mail described as a ‘radical shift in policy’, she said that we cannot simply arrest our way out of this problem. This was unintentionally ironic since, as Home Secretary, Theresa May had approved a cut of £2 billion from the £9 billion Ministry of Justice annual budget, leading to the loss of 20,600 police officers (Full Fact, 2019). Instead, she said, the government would adopt a ‘Public Health’, ‘Whole-System Multi-Agency Approach’ to youth violence and impose a legal duty on hospitals, schools and social services, all of which had

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experienced similar cuts, to protect young people. Describing the new approach the Prime Minister explained that: Casualty staff and GPs will be obliged to flag up knife wounds or other suspicious injuries so children can be referred to ‘violence reduction units’. Mentoring and education will be used to stop them being dragged into crime and the gang culture. Teachers and social workers will also be obliged to report danger signs such as truancy and serious misbehaviour. The aim is to intervene ‘long before’ young people ever pick up a weapon. (Her Majesty’s Government, 2019)

Violence Reduction Units In August 2019, Theresa May awarded eighteen Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) £35 million to establish Violence Reduction Units (VRUs) which would utilise a ‘Public Health’ model of violence reduction. The Violence Reduction Units are specialist teams which bring together the police, local government, health, community leaders and other key partners to tackle violent crime by understanding its root causes. The new units will be responsible for identifying what is driving violent crime in the area and coming up with a co-ordinated response. (Gov.UK, 2019)

This sounded remarkably like the prospectus set out by the Ending Gang & Youth Violence programme in 2012. However, while there appeared to be widespread agreement in government and the relevant services that the ‘Public Health Model’ of violence reduction was the way to go, what the model actually was remained unclear. Was it just a metaphor, or did its proponents really believe that violence was a communicable ‘disease’, or was it, in fact, a melange of hastily assembled, albeit underfunded and unrelated, elements masquerading as a strategy. It was in 1996 that the World Health Organisation (WHO) designated violence a ‘worldwide public health problem’ afflicting ‘whole

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populations’ and commended a ‘science-based approach to understanding and preventing violence’. This approach consisted of ‘observation, problem identification, the specification of risk and protective factors, the development of interventions, and the evaluation of their effectiveness’ because this was how other types of medical research proceeded (World Health Organisation, 1992). However the fundamental differences between the emergence and spread of disease and the choices made by human beings were largely ignored. At present, surveying the plethora of different initiatives re-badged as a Public Health model, it is difficult to identify the differences between them and that other contemporary shibboleth, ‘Multi-Agency’ working.

How Serious Is the Government’s Serious Youth Violence Strategy? In July 2019, the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee Report on Serious Youth Violence produced a scathing response to the government’s Serious Youth Violence Strategy, pointing to a serious mismatch between the Government’s diagnosis of the problem and its proposed solutions. In his evidence to the committee Sir Denis O’Connor, the former Chief Inspector of Constabulary, maintained that the Strategy was much more concerned with its narrative and less [with] action, adding that the analysis was inadequate and that the aim appears simply to ‘make things better’. O’Connor was just one of the many witnesses who criticised the incoherence and lack of ambition of the strategy. When questioned by the committee, the government’s Minister for Vulnerability, Safeguarding and Countering Extremism, Sarah Newton, was unable to name a single measure or target by which the government could determine the success of its strategy. Neither could she produce estimates of the numbers of young people at risk of becoming victims or perpetrators of serious youth violence, nor those currently in contact with youth services. Asked how many young people the government planned to reach via projects like the Youth Endowment Fund, the Early Intervention Fund and the National Citizen Service, the minister claimed that there was no data available. The committee concluded that:

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As the Government’s primary response to the wave of violence blighting our communities, however, it is completely inadequate. It contains no targets or milestones, few new actions, and no clear mechanisms for driving forward activity at a national and regional level. Nor does it suggest a clear Government focus on keeping young people safe from rising levels of violence. Although the strategy refers to risk factors for involvement in violence, its analysis is based largely on readily-available evidence. It is not underpinned by any attempt to collect data or gain a clear understanding of the number of people-particularly young peopleat risk of serious violence. We fail to see how the Government can get a grip on this problem or pursue a public health approach without a clear understanding of the size and location of the populations most at risk, so that it can target resources effectively. (p. 42)

From Public Health to Penal Populism and a ‘Dead Cat’ The government’s Serious Youth Violence Strategy may have been a ‘top priority’ but it was one of the many top priorities that were eclipsed by the Brexit debacle in parliament, and the selection, and then election, of Prime Minister Boris Johnson in July 2019. Within a month of his election Johnson announced a raft of new criminal justice policies. He promised to recruit an extra 20,000 police officers by 2022, at a cost of £1.1bn, thereby bringing police numbers in England and Wales back to their 2010 level. The Home Secretary Priti Patel observed that the additional officers would enable the police to carry out more stops-and-searches in designated areas, and that henceforth they could do so without authorisation from a senior officer. Interviewed by the Daily Mail Ms. Patel said: I’ve always felt the Conservative Party is the party of the police and police officers. Quite frankly, with more police officers out there and greater police presence, I want [criminals] to literally feel terror at the thought of committing offences. (Doyle, 2019)

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Johnson promised to give additional resources to the Crown Prosecution Service and spend £2.5bn. to create 10,000 additional prison places and £100m to recruit additional prison officers to make good the 25% decrease since 2010. In December 2021, by now politically beleaguered P.M., Boris Johnson announced that he intended to dismantle 2,000 county lines gangs by the next election, introduce drug testing on arrest for all crimes and increase funding for drug treatment in his new ‘10-year Drugs Strategy’. Governments tend to focus on ‘law and order’ in times of political difficulty and the media was quick to denounce Johnson’s pledge as just another ‘dead cat’; i.e. a sensational new policy designed to divert attention from the accusations of sleaze and duplicity dogging the government. But Johnson’s Drugs Strategy was not really new. Project Adder, ‘Addiction, Diversion, Disruption, Enforcement and Recovery which offered treatment and recovery services to addicts at the same time as cracking down on drug-related crime was piloted by the Northumbria Police in 2019 and extended to ten areas with the highest rates of drug misuse, including Blackpool, Hastings, Middlesbrough, Norwich and Swansea in July 2021, having proved successful in diverting persistent offenders to treatment services. The announcement did not dwell on the fact that the many millions of pounds announced to support the strategy would not be enough to restore the cuts to drug rehabilitation services by the Cameron government in which Johnson was a minister.

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Angel, H. (2012, January 13). Were the Riots Political? Safer Communities, 11(1), 24–32. Beckett, H. Brodie, I. Factor, F. Melrose, M. Pearce, J. Pitts, J. Shuker, L. & Warrington, C. (2013). It’s Wrong ... But you get used to it, a qualitative study of gang-associated sexual violence towards, and exploitation of young people in England London: The Children’s Commissioner for England Centre for Social Justice. (2009a). Broken Britain. Centre for Social Justice. Centre for Social Justice. (2009b). Dying to Belong. Centre for Social Justice. Crown Prosecution Service. (2018). Defences—Duress and necessity, CPS Published 19/10/2018|Legal Guidance Curry, G. David, & Irving A. Spergel. (1992). Gang involvement and delinquency among Hispanic and African-American adolescent males. Journal of Research on Crime and Delinquency, 29 (3), 273–291. Densley, J. (2013). How gangs work: An ethnography of youth violence London: Palgrave Macmillan. Disley, E., & Liddle, M. (2015). Urban street gangs in ending gang and youth violence areas: Local perceptions of the nature of gangs and whether they have changed in the last two years. London: Ministry of Justice. Disley, E., & Liddle, E. (2016). Local perspectives in Ending Gang and Youth Violence Areas: Perceptions of the nature of urban street gangs, Research Report 88. Home Office, January. Downes, D. (1966). The Delinquent Solution,. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul. Doyle J. (2019, August 2). I want criminals to be terrified, says Priti Patel: New home secretary vows to return to zero-tolerance policing as she demands full explanation over bungled ‘Nick’ sex abuse inquiry, Daily Mail , https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7316055/I-want-criminalsterrified-says-Priti-Patel-Home-Secretary-restore-confidence-Britain.html Duncan-Smith I. (2006). Foreword to Breakdown Britain, London, Centre for Social Justice Factor & Pitts (2016) Gang-involved Young People: Custody and Beyond , Nacro/Beyond Youth Custody Firmin, C. (2011). This is it, this is my life. Female voice in violence final report London: ROTA Fitzgibbon W, Silverstone, D. & Young, T. (2013). The role of the family in facilitating gang membership, criminality and exit London: The Dawes Unit, Catch 22 Full Fact. (2019, November 8). Police officer numbers in England and Wales, London, Full Fact. https://fullfact.org/crime/police-numbers/

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Gingerbread. (2013). http://www.gingerbread.org.uk/content.aspx?CategoryI D=365 Gov.UK (2011). https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pms-speech-onthe-fightback-after-the-riots Gov.UK (2019). Funding for Violence Reduction Units announced. https://www. gov.uk/government/news/funding-for-violence-reduction-units-announced Gregg, D. (2010). Family intervention projects: A classic case of policy-based evidence, London, Centre for Crime & Justice Studies Grierson, J. (2019, January 29). ‘County lines’: huge scale of £500m drug industry revealed’, The Guardian. Guardian/LSE. (2012). Reading the Riots: Investigating England’s summer of disorder, London. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jan/29/gov ernment-stop-funding-tackle-gang-violence-chuka-umunna Habermas, J. (1994). The Past as Future: Jürgen Habermas: Interviewed by Michael Haller, translated from Vergangenheit als Zukunft by Max Pensky. University of Nebraska Press. Hallsworth, S. and Young, T. (2004). ‘Getting Real about Gangs’, Criminal Justice Matters. 55, 12–13 Harding, S. (2014). The Street Casino: Survival in Violent Street Gangs Bristol: Policy Press Harding, S. (2020). County lines. Bristol University Press. Her Majesty’s Government. (2011). Ending gang and youth violence: A CrossHer Majesty’s Government. (2016). Ending gang violence and exploitation, London, Her Majesty’ Government Her Majesty’ Government. (2019, April 10). The Prime Minister’s Summit on Serious Youth Violence, 1–4. Downing Street, Her Majesty’ Government Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services. (2020, January). Both sides of the coin: An inspection of how the police and National Crime Agency consider vulnerable people who are both victims and offenders in ‘county lines’ drug offending, London, HMICF&RS. HMIP. (2015). Report on an announced inspection of HMYOI Feltham (children and young people) London: HMIP Home Office. (2011). Ending gang and youth violence: A Cross-Government report. Home Office. Home Office. (2016). Ending gang & youth violence: A refreshed approach. London: Home Office. House of Commons Home Affairs Committee. (2019, July). Report on serious youth violence, London, House of Commons Home Affairs Committee.

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Jacobson J. Kirby A. & Hunter G. Joint Enterprise: Righting a wrong turn: Report of an exploratory study, Institute for criminal policy research, Birkbeck, University of London. http://www.prisonreformtrust.org.uk © 2016 the authors and Prison Reform Trust Jay, A. (2014). Independent inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Rotherham 1997–2013 Lewis, O. (1959). Five Families: Mexican case studies in the culture of poverty, New York, Basic Books. Manchester Evening News. (2015, October 12). Departing chief constable Sir Peter Fahy talks about pressure of role and how he needed counselling to cope, Manchester. Police, M. (2006). The Pan-London gang survey. Metropolitan Police. Murray C. (1984). Losing ground: American social policy, 1950–1980, New York, Basic Books. National Crime Agency. (2015). Intelligence assessment, county lines, gangs, and safeguarding. National Crime Agency. National Crime Agency. (2017). Drug trafficking. National Crime Agency. National Crime Agency (2017b). County lines violence, exploitation & harm. London: National Crime Agency. National Crime Agency (2019). Intelligence Assessment—County lines drug supply vulnerability and harm . London: National Crime Agency. National Institute for Economic & Social Research (2016, October). No evidence Troubled families programme had any significant impact on key objectives, NIESR evaluation finds, London, NIESR Press Release. O’Connor, R., & Woodell, S. (2015). What works to prevent gang involvement, youth violence and crime: A rapid review of interventions delivered in the UK & Abroad . Home Office. Perraudin, F., & Elgot, J. (2016). Government to Stop Funding Scheme to Tackle Gang Violence. Chuka Umunna leads criticism of Home Office decision, calling for increased focus on hard-to-reach unemployed youngsters. Pitts, J. (2008). Reluctant gangsters: The changing face of youth crime. Routledge. Pitts J. (2014). Who Dunnit? Gangs, joint enterprise, bad character & duress, Youth & Policy, 113, 48–59 Robinson, G., McLean R. and Densley, J. (2018). Working county lines: Child criminal exploitation and illicit drug dealing in glasgow and merseyside, International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 63(5), 694–711. Saggers T. (2019, March). Drawing the County Lines, Chartered Institute of Public Health.

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Sharp C. Aldridge J. & Medina J. (2004). Delinquent youth groups and offending behaviour: Findings from the 2004 offending, crime and justice survey, Home Office Online Report 14/06 Cl 6, London, Home Office, https://dera.ioe. ac.uk/8472/1/rdsolr1406.pdf Stelfox, P. (1998). Policing lower levels of organised crime in England and Wales. The Howard Journal, 37 (4) Stratton A. (2011, August 15). David Cameron on riots: Broken society is top of my political agenda, The Guardian. Sturrock R. & Holmes L. (2015). Running the Risks: The links between gang involvement and young people going missing, London, Catch 22 and Missing People The Guardian/LSE (2012). Reading the Riots: England’s Summer of Disorder. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/46297/1/Reading%20the%20riots(published).pdf Townsend M. (2019, March 9). County lines gangs: How drug-running is fuelling knife crime, The Observer. World Health Organisation (2002). World report on violence and health: Summary World Health Organization, Geneva Young J. (1999). The Exclusive Society, Sage Publications Young T. Fitzgerald M. Hallsworth S. & Joseph I. (2007). Groups, gangs and weapons: A report for the youth justice board of England and Wales. London: Youth Justice Board.

23 Youth Work and Gang Violence Reduction Pete Harris and Mike Seal

Introduction The ‘problem’ of ‘gangs’ and what could be effective responses to them continues to occupy the minds of policymakers and other stakeholders, both in the UK, Europe and across the globe. This chapter examines ways in which the profession of youth work might respond to this troubling and contested aspect of some young people’s lives. We first present a brief overview of youth work for those unfamiliar with the field, including

P. Harris Faculty of Arts, Society and Professional Studies, Newman University, Birmingham, UK e-mail: [email protected] M. Seal (B) Education and Social Mobility Lead, University of Suffolk, Ipswich, UK e-mail: [email protected]

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an outline of orthodox and more contemporary, specialised conceptualisations of youth work such as street-based, ‘on-road’ and psychosocial youth work. We suggest a number of ways in which we think youth workers working through these modalities can engage meaningfully with young people involved in, and/or at risk of, involvement in gangs. We do not intend here to enter the debate about the nature and delineation of gangs per se as this has been extensively covered elsewhere, including in this volume. We do however want to present an architecture of a practical youth work response to the gang phenomenon. We borrow the umbrella term ethnoconflictology to characterise youth workers developing a historical and cultural understanding of a community’s construction of violence as a first step to them involving young people and the community in tackling it. For our evidence base, we draw in large part on our own large study of youth work responses to the broader social issue of youth violence (The Touch Project) which was co-produced with young people and youth workers in 3 European countries and is fully documented elsewhere (Harris & Seal, 2016).

Conceptualisations of Youth Work in the UK A well-established body of literature has attempted to identify what is distinct about UK youth work as compared to other professions that seek to educate and engage with young people, such as social work, youth justice and teaching in schools (e.g. Jeffs & Smith, 1988). Arguably, the hallmark of youth work that is foregrounded as distinctive in that literature is the voluntary participation of young people in a relationship with the youth worker (Huskins, 1996; Merton et al., 2004); that is, the young person’s engagement with the worker is not imposed, but freely chosen and negotiated. Youth workers maintain that this element of choice creates a distinctive mediation of authority within the relationship, opening up the possibility of a relationship between worker and young person in which the young person is more psychologically invested as an active agent. Traditionally, youth workers use a range of themed, recreational activities (such as art, music, sport, or outdoor pursuits) either in youth

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club-type premises or other locations (the street, or other public and digital spaces) to strengthen these relationships and create space for critical reflection and experiential learning to occur. Crucially, these activities are not viewed as simply diversionary or as an end-product, but as the means by which workers hope to engage young people in a process of informal education (Batsleer & Davis, 2010; Jeffs & Smith, 2008). This education often takes the form of spontaneous conversations rather than being curriculum-based and can occur in both one-to-one relationships and groups. In theory at least, the relationship between worker and young person, along with these activities and free association, acts as vehicles to raise young people’s awareness of alternative options in terms of their values, behaviour and identity construction. The physical, social and temporal contexts in which youth work practice occurs mean that opportunities for learning are necessarily negotiated, often occur during real time, and need to be drawn from the immediate environment, in the moment. This improvised form of engagement (Harris, 2014) has its foundations in the ideas of Paulo Freire (1972) who believed that dialogue was key to working with oppressed and disenfranchised groups. Dialogue, he insisted, is a process of two-way encounter and influence, a co-operative activity involving mutual respect where people work with each other on themes generated together. The aim of this dialogical practice in youth work is conscientisation, whereby young people develop a critical, in-depth understanding of the social and political contradictions in their world. Through this raised awareness, it is hoped they are then moved to take action against the oppressive elements in their lives, such as poverty, sexism, racism and class disadvantage. Alongside this critical theoretical base, youth work training programmes, in common with many of the helping professions such as social work, often have as their starting point a basic introduction to humanistic psychology. Thus, models of youth work practice still draw heavily on the work of Abraham Maslow (1962) and Carl Rogers (1961) which emphasises how human needs motivate behaviour and the importance of worker empathy. This emphasis means that youth workers seek

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to fully enter the young person’s subjective ‘life-world’ and may decide to concede space for self-expression; a difficult balance to strike where some forms of self-expression (e.g. crime and violence) may risk harm to young people themselves and others.

Street-Based and ‘on Road’ Youth Work There is a long tradition of youth workers seeking to engage young people who may not be accessing traditional youth work provision such as youth clubs and projects. ‘Detached’ youth work or street-based youth work (Goetschuis & Tash, 1967) seeks to engage young people in their geograhical territory (e.g. public spaces, parks, shopping centres). Pinkney et al. (2018) draw on this tradition and Glynn’s notion of ‘OnRoad’ criminology (2014) to conceptualise ‘on road’ youth work. In this reading, the youth worker operating with reserves of ‘street social capital’ (Sandberg, 2014) is more willing and able to inhabit the spaces occupied by gang involved or affiliated young people, physically and psychologically, working in ways and at times and in places that other workers may not feel able to. Irwin-Rogers et al. (2018) argue that this notion of engagement with young people where they choose to meet is changing in the light of social changes linked to the advent of online communication. The blurring of boundaries between the virtual and online world raises questions about how youth workers might respond meaningfully to youth violence in this new digital context. Harris (2018) argues that youth workers now need to develop new skills of digital youth work if they are to respond to issues such as gangs and youth violence within this new social reality. In order to claim a strong foothold on the policy and professional terrain of gangs and youth violence as it is currently constituted, we believe the field may also need a theoretical framework that can more fully encompass both the psychic and social dimensions of young people’s subjectivities, gangs and youth violence. Psychosocial youth work (Harris, 2019) makes use of insights from psychodynamic psychology that suggest the underlying causes of hostility and aggression are not always accessible to the conscious mind, thereby allowing

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the consideration of psychodynamic processes such as defence and identification at play in aggression, violence and identity construction. At the same time, the psychosocial framework does not deny the impact of social environment; rather it suggests that structural forces such as poverty and racism and social discourses, such as dominant and subcultural discourses (Foucault, 1975) of masculinity, can severely constrain some young people’s identity constructions and life-chances. Taking all these modalities as possible types and sites of practice, we now turn to outline how youth workers might engage meaningfully with the ‘gang’ issue. We suggest that the violence perpetrated by young people involved in gangs can take physical, psychological and material forms, but importantly for us, also have its roots in a structural form of violence directed at young people and perpetrated by the state. We believe youth workers need to think about all these aspects of violence when working with young people involved or affected by in gangs, as perpetrators and victims. Our practice framework is taken from our previous work (Harris & Seal, 2016) and is organised into four inter-related levels of worker response: the personal, community, structural and existential. We also briefly highlight the importance of youth workers being able to work with an awareness of how indices of social identity, especially gender, are implicated within, and affect the dynamics of, their interventions.

Working at the Personal Level Individual young people’s involvement in gangs often changes over time and is not all at the same level or degree. To be meaningful, youth work responses have to recognise the different individual motivations that lie behind violent behaviour. Sometimes violence is driven by a desire to meet pressing physical or material needs (Maslow, 1962) such as for money, power, or safety (Pitts, 2008) but also for more psychological, internal needs such as belonging (Centre for Social Justice, 2009), identity or to show and be shown loyalty. For some young people, even incarceration in prison as result of involvement in violence meets a need, in this case for some safety and structure in their chaotic lives. In areas

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where gangs are active, not to become part of a gang is to put yourself at the risk of becoming a target, and weapon carrying provides both an exit strategy should trouble present itself, and greater security when moving from place to place. Youth workers need therefore to focus on building relationships with young people in which young people can begin to understand what needs they are meeting through criminal and violent behaviour and begin to find attractive alternative, ways to meet those needs. A psychosocial perspective on youth violence would suggest that young people engaged in gangs will present as ‘defended subjects’ (Gadd & Jefferson, 2007) and consequently seek to locate the reason for their behaviour outside, or away from, their own agency. We have outlined a style of intervention—constructive confrontation—that seeks to directly challenge young people’s existing world-views and increase their sensitivity to others (Harris & Seal, 2016). Strong, voluntary (Jeffs & Smith, 2008) and dialogical (Freire, 1972) relationships with young people can create the opportunity to challenge them about defensive, maladaptive behaviour that can prevent them from getting the help they need. This challenge needs to be strongly and honestly articulated and made on the basis of mutual respect and trust, rather than formal status or position. To achieve this, youth workers need to help young people distinguish between respect that is earned, intrinsic respect due to all, and respect that is based around fear. Workers should work with young people on how respect and status is constructed in their community and culture, working on alternative attainable and sustainable ways to develop that status. When engaging with young people whose trust in others has been shattered, effective workers may also need to allow themselves to be vulnerable too; to trust young people knowing that they may well betray that trust and in the belief that giving such trust will eventually elicit more trustworthy behaviour. This is what we call therapeutic trust (Horsburgh, 1960; Pettit, 1995). Youth workers proximity to young people such as in street-based youth work, can also facilitate highly authentic, visceral engagements. In the context of an ongoing relationship, informal encounters can generate improvised (Harris, 2014) teachable moments in which the consequences of violence for the victim and the perpetrator can really

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‘hit home’. When the worker has their own experiences of violence to draw on, young people can often recognise themselves in the worker, and the worker can recognise him/herself in the young person—a process we call reciprocal identification (Harris & Seal, 2016). Some workers feel strongly that experience of gang affiliation or involvement can give them some influence and authority with young people when seeking to steer them away from the dangers involved and enables them to remain confident in what might be unpredictable, threatening contexts. Bringing about behavioural change may include an ability to deal with criminal behaviours without becoming anxious or responding in a knee-jerk fashion. This higher threshold is often borne out of a knowing familiarity with the behaviour and circumstances encountered on the street, a notable feature of Pinkney et al’s (2018) notion of ‘on road’ youth work. If youth workers have lived and grown up in the communities in which they work and have perhaps even been involved in crime and violence as teenagers, this street social capital (Sandberg, 2014) can be a valuable asset as they are able to ‘cash in’ this capital to move alongside young people who might otherwise be mistrustful of professional adults. That said, reciprocal identification might become more of a shortcoming than an asset within professional youth work relationships (Harris, 2018). Some workers, by virtue of the charisma their biographies generate, can become somewhat romanticised in both their own and young people’s eyes. Without supervision that encourages reflexivity, underlying issues that may have been related to their own violent behaviour could seep out in their practice. Without an ability to reflexively recognise how their own self affects others, there is a danger that the worker will act perversely to reinforce the view of self and the world that lies behind the violent and gang-related behaviour.

Working at the ‘C’ Level Promoting young people’s desistance (cessation from) gang involvement, crime and violence requires youth workers to also think beyond this inter-personal level and engage with the wider circles of influence in the young person’s ecology (Bronfenbrenner, 1977), i.e. the young people’s

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peer groups, families and the wider community. For some young people deeply entrenched in gang activity, a kind of ‘street divorce’ (Maruna & Roy, 2007) may need to occur, which involves young people distancing themselves from those elements in their environment that exert pressure to remain engaged in violent and gang-related behaviour. However, the removal of the young person from that criminogenic social milieu still leaves the underlying issues of identity construction unresolved. Workers need to find a way to help those young people involved in gangs to create a refashioned identity within their communities. Crucially, they need to acknowledge how attractive young people’s current gang identity is to them and the psychic purpose it serves in their local context. Young people have made a huge psychic investment in such social identities and will naturally defend this identity against what they may well see as an attack, hence the need for workers to be fully sensitive to these psychosocial dynamics. Some communities have a reputation for violence and gang activity. While some members of the community may not want to be associated with it, they are often not in an economic position to leave, do not know how to create change or do not want to leave. This can lead to a sense of helplessness within the community that builds up for generations. Seligman’s (1974) psychological concept of learned helplessness explains how individuals react to continuous exposure to adverse events. Whole neighbourhoods can come to feel similarly helpless in the face of gang-related violence and some members of the community may become cynical about the value of going to community-based services. Youth workers need to see themselves as community workers too, skilled in community development and action that promotes collective organisation to challenge existing socio-political and economic structures and promotes self-belief. Communities may have capacities that may not be obvious to outsiders and it may take time to discover them. This means that youth workers need to be embedded and visible in the community for a number of years before they become truly effective. We see durability in funding as crucial if youth work is to bear fruit and produce this collective efficacy in communities (Sampson et al., 1997). This goes against the direction of the funding and evaluation strategies of the past 20 years, certainly in the UK. Short-term targeting forces

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youth workers to ‘speed up’ their work. This can erode the trust that is essential to working in areas with gang-related issues. Fire-fighting and simply moving young people off the streets does not allow youth workers to engage meaningfully with the context surrounding their violent behaviour. An embedded approach avoids this tendency for youth workers to chase violence (Harris & Seal, 2016). Chasing violence in this way also means that certain other communities, where violence is less visible but bubbling under the surface, are denied resources. Only longterm embedded youth and community work can enable these issues and other voices to emerge, for instance, those of the victims as well as the perpetrators of violence.

Working at the S Level Violence can be defined more widely than direct forms of inter-personal violence and can take non-physical forms (that is, not just on the body). The state can be a visible and invisible violent actor in the lives of young people, acting in its own interests or in the interests of powerful groups in society. In our own research (Harris & Seal, 2016), young people told us about physical abuse and brutality, or discriminatory use of powers like stop and search by state representatives such as the police. We also suggested that welfare and education policies, the operation of the justice system, state-drawn boundaries around national identity, and discourses generated within the media, can all be interpreted as acts of violence too, and their impact can cause physical, psychological and material harm. For example, young people’s freedom to meet and socialise in public space (a facet of social life that we see as key to their healthy development), if restricted by legal decrees or poor town planning, can result in the creation of tensions and frustrations that are then turned in on others in their community, often violently. Perhaps most imperceptibly, culture (the discursive framework passed down from generation to generation through which people make sense of their lives) can come to be dominated by one group in society that then has a stranglehold on meaning. How society thinks about young people, and what behaviour is legitimate and what is not (which is in fact highly contestable)

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becomes naturalised. Put simply, one way of seeing the world (from the perspective of an adult) becomes the way of seeing the world. While the occurrence of gang-related violence between young people is perhaps more overt and rightly attracts social disapproval and concern, state abuses of power are often masked and not recognised, even when young people eventually revolt against it. Young people can come to feel constantly under the ‘gaze’ of the police. Archetypal activities that young people enjoy, such as skateboarding, ball games or simple association for the purpose of drinking, smoking and ‘courtship’, can, in some areas, become non-negotiable. Such moves are often driven by concerns expressed by others in the community about the gang issue, who argue that young people’s presence within the space represents a threat to their safety. But this can have the perverse effect of heightening young peoples need to mark and defend where they live. When large financial investments are made in city-centre regeneration projects, young people, can come to be seen as an unwelcome threat in these newly developed spaces, which are often patrolled by private wardens who use their power, seemingly without any public accountability, to remove young people from what were previously public spaces. This state-sanctioned control does little to ameliorate the territorial attitude many young people adopt and then exhibit in the public display of loyalty to postcodes. These become a potent a symbol of their identity as well as a means of retrieving some sense of control and belonging. This complex picture of structural disadvantage, occasional police brutality and denial of freedoms, as well as young people’s sometimes criminal and violent behaviour, demands a thoughtful, politically literate response on the part of youth workers. It is increasingly hard to identify instances where youth workers are engaging in direct action to both prevent and challenge the violence young people are often experiencing at this structural level. It is essential that youth workers understand how their own professional actions could act to collude unintentionally with this structural violence and then have the confidence to confront it. We suggest therefore that youth workers need to introduce political and prosocial responses that encourage young people to consider the political nature of the issues affecting them and break out of their territorial mindsets. If workers do not consider political education and social action

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to be part of their role, it may be because they feel their employers would not support them. Policymakers and managers need to support youth workers who seek to challenge young people’s behaviour and the behaviour of the police or the state where it is leading to more tension in communities. Engagement in the process of political and social change is a means by which young people can begin to feel some sense of control in their lives. The desire to resist ‘control’ lies beneath some young people’s desire to retaliate against those that they meet on the streets (e.g. the police). Education as to their civil rights, such as their rights on arrest, as well as more general political education, delivered through informal conversations and dialogue, could help to mitigate the risk that resentments might erupt into large-scale disorder. This requires managers and policymakers to recognise the value of this work, even when it means they themselves may be targeted for criticism.

Working at the E Level Finally, talking to young people involved in gangs often reveals a picture of young people’s lives in which existential human needs (such as for hope, meaning and purpose) are either in deficit or entirely absent. Young people involved in gangs and criminality may have no sense of control over their future, or of the meaning of their personal reality (Harris & Seal, 2016). The subordinated nature of some young people’s lives means that they may feel invisible within a societal system that they feel refuses to recognise their subjective reality. This can lead to them developing a nihilistic world-view, which entails a disregard, even denial of the humanity, rights and dignity of other young people. Breaking through these intransigent and nihilistic attitudes can present a seemingly insurmountable challenge for the workers involved. Some young people, including those involved in gangs, can become prone to turn this existential hopelessness on themselves or their communities, become depressed, or lapse into elaborate conspiracy theories. Quite how to work with people at this existential level will always be highly contextual and nuanced. We again emphasise the importance of taking an approach that seeks to understand a community from within.

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For some, appeals to see the other as a unique individual (a person) might have leverage, and this might be meaningfully approached in some communities from either a faith-based or more humanistic perspective. What is important is that youth workers understand and work within the value base of the community and can mediate potential contradictions between these values and people’s behaviour. The youth workers job will be to help young people find and attach, or re-attach, to a value base that makes sense for them, or even work with them to articulate a new value system of their own.

Working with Social Identity The relationship between gangs and categories such as gender, race and class is far from simple or mono-causal. Youth workers need to develop a sophisticated analysis of how these factors are at play within the lives of the young people with whom they seek to engage. These categories and other axes of identity interact on multiple and often simultaneous levels, contributing to systematic social inequality and ultimately different experiences of, and explanations for, gang involvement. One-dimensional models of power and oppression risk failing to capture the reality of contemporary life for young people. Youth workers seeking to respond meaningfully to young people in gangs and youth violence need to consider the hierarchical relationships and conflicts within social categories such as gender, race and ethnicity as well as that between them. Limited space here prevents consideration of theoretical frameworks for social identity such as intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1991) except to say that people can be subject to multiple oppressions that compound one another. We also recognise that these processes are fluid, contested and dependant on context. That said, we want to briefly highlight here how social constructions of gender can affect the dynamics of worker interventions with young people involved in gangs. Young men in gangs could be seen as psychically investing in a social discourse of masculinity that emphasises respect and reputation and valorises physical signifiers of strength and power. The key question which youth workers need to engage with is why some young

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men are so drawn to these signifiers. One hypothesis (suggested by our psychosocial theoretical frame) would be that this psychic ‘investment’, although felt as empowering consciously, could be a result of an unconscious need to defend against feelings of failure and vulnerability. Thus, while deconstructing these discourses that serve to authorise the persistence of aggression and violence, workers also need to pave the way for the construction of alternative self–representations that meet the same underlying needs but are not violently enacted. These needs may be for differentiation from forms of masculinity perceived as subordinate or weak (Connell, 1995). Dismantling these fictions is a precarious business as they form the mainframe of the young men’s identity construction. Reworking them is more feasible, and building new relationships with alternative figures of identification might be one way to do so. There is growing evidence that young women’s involvement in gangs is changing, with isolated incidents of girl-on-girl violence (Firmin, 2010). Young women in our study (2016) appeared to be at the whim of young men whose casual approach to monogamy in relationships left them vulnerable to exploitation at the hands of other young men. Some young women had experienced sexual and psychological abuse, assault, exploitation or partner violence, even rape, but did not perceive it as abusive. Some even acted in ways that further glamorised the violence they were subjected to. Some studies suggest that this may be partly out of an unconscious desire for love, protection and respect (Dorais & Corriveau, 2009) and as result of internalising the oppression they experience within their relationships with young men. Young women may buy into young men’s notions of masculinity despite often suffering from the violent consequences of this in the form of male anger and violence. Their sense of self becomes so enmeshed with internalised gender constructs that their relationships with their partners and female friends become impoverished at best, and destructive at worst. This often leads to them experiencing psychological and physical violence in domestic situations that then often spill out into public and digitalised social media spaces too. Male and female youth workers often struggle with how to respond to this form of violence, both in terms of how to support the young women but also how to challenge the young men in

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the young women’s peer group with whom they have close, but often damaging, relationships. It is important to remember that youth workers will also bring a wide range of experiences coloured by all these factors. Male workers may, consciously or unconsciously, adopt personas that unwittingly support rather than subvert these constructions of gender. This points to the need to recognise the investments made in masculine identities by workers too. Solutions that appear effective could be relying on collusion, or be complicit (Connell, 1995) with patriarchal discourses that workers should instead be challenging. Workers need to work with young men to construct alternative identities where support for women, restraint and delayed gratification also form part of a confident masculine identity. Often, male workers who are seen as most stereotypically ‘straight’ and ‘hard’ are those who garner the most respect and by default gain the most leverage with young men for whom such qualities are central to their own values. Such masculine worker personas may contain elements of hegemonic or dominant masculinity (sportiness, muscularity and physicality) but do not necessarily need to incorporate any wish to dominate other subordinate masculine subjectivities. Given the locally specific negotiation of multiple identities, and the unpredictable nature of work with people, workers need ultimately to make a judgement as to when to inhabit with or shake up the subjective life worlds of the young people they are seeking to work with. Female or male workers who do not fit this hegemonic, hetero-centric mould, face additional challenges in overcoming prejudice, before being in a position to exert influence. Conforming to hetero-centric and masculine pedagogic styles provides little room for any contestation to emerge as to how young men can construct their masculinity. Other young men who do not fit into such locally hegemonic constructions of masculinity can then be marginalised by such emphasis on the acquisition of masculine capital or ‘man-points’ (Harris, 2019). This has implications for the debate as to how to structure training regimes for youth workers. Time and space for the development of such reflexivity and critical thinking, especially around gendered identities, is essential. The proximity of the worker’s journey to that which the young person is embarking on can, if managed both internally and externally

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in this way, add authenticity to that process, and potentially be transformative in its effect; if not reflexively acknowledged within routinised supervision, however, it can exacerbate the very problem the worker is trying to address.

Conclusion So, in sum, we believe that a youth work response to young people who are involved in, or affected by, gangs and violence needs to be multidimensional and locally sensitive. For youth work interventions to have effect they need to be operationalised at personal, community, structural and existential levels. One way to capture this approach would be to conceptualise youth workers working with gangs as needing to be ethno-conflictologists: professionals who can fully understand the function of violence in young peoples’ lives and in their communities. Workers need to be able to see the links between the circumstances of an individual young person’s life and peer pressure, community influences, wider societal and institutional structures, and even broader questions of meaning, purpose and personhood. Keeping an eye out for the varying dimensions of violence (physical, psychological, material and structural) is important, not least because it prevents a narrow focus on the individual and the physical manifestations of violence. Without the multi-dimensionality we have described here, the effectiveness of youth work intervention strategies will always be reduced. Youth workers have traditionally valorised person centred, improvised, democratic, and experimental practice. There is now a need now for greater attention to how orthodox youth work methodologies can translate into innovative practice in street-based, ‘on road’ and digital modalities. The boundaries of youth work have to malleable, creating room for the deployment of new theoretical frameworks such as psychosocial youth and community work and new approaches to practice that acknowledge young peoples’ presence in digital spaces. Project-oriented funding regimes and the relative scarcity of mainstream, funded, permanent youth and community work services mean that, until this is addressed, youth workers will be unable to offer the

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support to young people that their experience tells them is needed. We might say that funders are failing to optimise returns on their investment—returns made possible when work that seeks to respond meaningfully to the issue of gangs and youth violence is supported in the long term.

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Harris, P. (2019, April). Down with the kids? Examining the male youth worker as role model and mentor to young men involved in violence. Youth and Policy, Available at: https://www.youthandpolicy.org. Harris, P. (2020). Just give up the ball’: In search of a third space in relationships between male youth workers and young men involved in violence. Criminology and Criminal Justice. 1–16 Horsburgh, H. (1960). The ethics of trust. Philosophical Quarterly, 10, 343– 354. Huskins, J. (1996). Quality work with young people: Developing social skills and diversion from risk. Youth Clubs UK. Irwin-Rogers, K., Densley, J. and Pinkney, C. (2018). Gang violence and social media. In: Ireland, J.; Ireland, C. and Birch, P. (Eds.), The Routledge International Handbook of Human Aggression. Routledge. Jeffs, T., & Smith, M. (1988). Youth work. Macmillan Press. Jeffs, T., & Smith, M. (2008). Informal education—conversation, democracy and learning. Educational Heretics Press. Maruna, S., & Roy, K. (2007). Amputation or reconstruction: Notes on the concept of “knifing off ” and desistance from crime. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 23(1), 104–124. Maslow, A. (1962). Toward a psychology of being. John Wiley and Sons. Merton, B., et al. (2004). An evaluation of the impact of youth work in England . DfES. Pinkney, C., Robinson-Edwards, S., Glynn, M. (2018) On road youth work: Inside England’s gun crime capital. Youth and Policy Available at: http://www.youthandpolicy.org/articles/on-road-youth-work/ Accessed 1st July, 2021 Pettit, P. (1995). The cunning of trust. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 24, 202– 225. Pitts, J. (2008). Reluctant gangsters: The changing shape of youth crime. Willan Publishing. Rogers, C. (1961). On becoming a person. A therapist’s view of psychotherapy. Houghton Mifflin. Sampson, R., Raudenbush, S., & Earls, F. (1997). Neighborhoods and violent crime: A multilevel study of collective efficacy. Science, 277 (5328), 918– 924. Sandberg, S. (2014). Street capital: Ethnicity and violence on the streets of oslo. Theoretical Criminology, 12(2), 153–171.

24 Safeguarding, Young People and Gangs Isabelle Brodie

Introduction This chapter will explore how safeguarding policy and practice have been applied—and not applied—to the issue of youth violence in gangs and drug trafficking via county lines, and the significance of this for the experience of young people, their families and the professionals who work with them. The chapter places the issue of gangs and county lines within the policy discourse of ‘child exploitation’ which has gradually emerged over the past 20 years. The chapter will consider the extent to which this discourse serves to promote a safeguarding approach to the children and young people concerned, or whether it has generated a new set of difficulties. It will argue that understanding of this issue in the contexts of the lives of children, young people and their families has been constrained I. Brodie (B) Safer Young Lives Research Centre, University of Bedfordshire, Luton, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Andell and J. Pitts (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Youth Gangs in the UK , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99658-1_24

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by the nature of the discourses surrounding young people in trouble of various kinds. These include assumptions relating to age, gender, race and ethnicity as well as the ‘blind spots’ that exist within the worlds of policy, practice and research conversations. These fissures are deeply rooted and have historically been little recognised, far less overcome. It is suggested that current discussions in research and practice relating to the safeguarding of ‘exploited’ young people have the potential to address some of these issues and attempt to move away from more restricted models of harm. Models such as contextual safeguarding (Firmin, 2015, 2020), the ‘social’ model (Featherstone et al., 2014), ‘transitional’ safeguarding (Cocker, 2020) and ‘complex’ safeguarding (Tregidga & Lovett, 2020; Firmin et al, 2020) draw attention to different aspects of the lives of young people, online and offline. These approaches recognise the need to prioritise listening to, respecting and acting upon young people’s accounts of their lives and experience, and assessing the needs of the individual. However, all agree that intervention needs to move beyond young people to families, communities and the online spaces that children and young people occupy. Without attention to the social, economic and structural conditions in which young people live, the success of new safeguarding approaches and models is likely to be, at best, limited. This chapter draws on research and evidence from a range of sources. The nature of the issue concerned, which is difficult to research and for many reasons sensitive, means that empirical research represents a narrow lens through which to view the issue. Evidence from professionals, and from non-governmental organisations working with children, young people and their families, is especially important in this context.

Framing the Discourse Young people, safeguarding and gangs each constitute emotive issues which are subject to a range of social and political rhetoric. Taken together, they are politically potent. For some members of the public, they will be of immediate anxiety and concern; for others, remote and barely comprehensible.

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For the purposes of this chapter, ‘young people, safeguarding and gangs’ will be taken as a singular policy discourse in which ‘interest groups, social movements and institutions through which problematic situations are converted to policy problems, agendas are set, decisions are made and actions are taken’ (Rein & Schon, 1993). It is suggested that the singularity of this discourse can be traced through a series of [re]definitional ‘moments’ which have pulled together issues which were or are thought to be related, but have often been treated separately and via different legislative and policy frameworks, institutions and approaches to practice. The discourse is also located within wider historical, cultural and social definitions of individual and group identity, race and ethnicity, gender and social class. Previous chapters in this book (and see also Gordon, 2000; Harding, 2014; Hallsworth & Young, 2004; Pitts, 2008) have discussed in detail debates over the definition of the ‘gang’ and whether existing definitions have militated against effective policy and practice. In respect to safeguarding, evidence suggests that the street gang is frequently, though not always, a recognisable phenomenon to young people (Beckett et al., 2013; Harding, 2020; Young, 2008). At the same time, the uncritical application of popular definitions of the gang can be problematic; Amnesty International’s (2018) investigation of the MPS Gangs Matrix found a lack of robust procedural practices for classifying individuals as ‘gang affiliated’, and that ‘indicators used…to identify ‘gang members’ simply reflect elements of urban youth culture and identity that have nothing to do with serious crime’ (p. 43) and that the definition of gangs itself was vague and racialised. The framing of the discourse is strongly related to questions of definition, and the changing contours of language and conceptualisation relating to the ‘social problems’ of young people, safeguarding and gangs. Gang association, youth violence and exploitation represent contested spaces within the discourse of childhood, and specifically adolescence. As historical analysis has demonstrated convincingly (Carlen, 1993; Pearson, 1983), violence and abuse are constant features in the lives of many young people, but have been labelled in different ways, with consequences for the nature of response from criminal justice and welfare agencies.

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At the present time, gang involvement, knife crime, school exclusion, child criminal and sexual exploitation, county lines, trauma relating to other forms of abuse and violence, and peer-to-peer violence are frequently grouped together in policy discussion (see, e.g. NCA, 2018, 2019, 2020; Office of the Children’s Commissioner, 2019). This may be understandable and indeed helpful in asserting the connections between different issues within children’s lives and the associated need for safeguarding. At the same time policy discussion often neglects the multi-layered complexity and differing causal relationships between these issues (Wroe, 2021).

Historical Legacies in the Safeguarding Response to Young People Involved in Gangs To understand safeguarding responses to young people in gangs, it is necessary to unpick the way in which the treatment of children has become separated from the treatment of adults. This is linked to the wider history of safeguarding, in which different forms of abuse and harm have received higher levels of policy attention at different times, even while the type of abuse is not, in itself, ‘new’ (Parton, 2011). The primary legislative reference point for the welfare and protection of children is the Children Act 1989. This clarified that all those under the age of 18 are ‘children’ in the eyes of the law, that the child’s welfare should be prioritised in decision-making, and that relevant services should work in partnership to protect and promote children’s welfare. While young people who had offended were part of the Act, arguably there was an uneasy compromise between criminalisation and welfare responses (Arthur, 2006; Packman & Jordan, 1991). The legislation has since been updated, extending the types of harm that need to be considered under the safeguarding umbrella, and emphasising the need for effective multi-agency partnership (Department for Education, 2020). The Children and Social Work Act 2017 also reformed the framework supporting the delivery of multi-agency services to protect and safeguard children, abolishing local safeguarding children boards (LSCBs) and introducing the concept of three statutory safeguarding

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partners—local government, the police and health services who hold statutory responsibility and must also make arrangements to identify serious child safeguarding cases and commission and oversee local child safeguarding practice reviews where they consider it appropriate to do so. The past 20 years have seen significant changes in the conceptualisation of safeguarding, specifically those who are considered to be in need of safeguarding, the barriers to safeguarding, and what constitutes an effective response, including the safeguarding challenges associated with serious youth violence and different forms of child exploitation. At the same time, key principles of the 1989 Act—including the centrality of the child’s welfare, the idea of ‘partnership’ with parents and carers, and the need to consult with children to ascertain their wishes, remain extremely important in assessing the current safeguarding landscape and how these principles are applied to young people who are involved with gangs.

Definitional Moments in the Emergence of ‘Child Exploitation’ The concept of ‘child exploitation’ has become an umbrella term for many of these issues. Youth violence in the context of gangs and county lines intersects with different forms of exploitation—and the associated safeguarding responses—in a range of ways. The patterns of violence and abuse associated with exploitation are not new and can be understood within the wider history of safeguarding through which different forms of abuse become prominent at different times (Parton, 2011). The ‘discovery’ of abuse of adolescents can be traced to the early years of the twenty-first century. Researchers argued that the safeguarding system had traditionally focused on the abuse of younger children within families, at the expense of recognising the distinct needs of adolescents as they exercised greater independence and spent more time outside the family home with peer groups (Melrose & Pearce, 2013; Pearce, 2009). This inequality had been reflected in the balance of empirical research into child abuse, but during the 2000s growing research attention pointed to the overall underestimation of the harm suffered by

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adolescents, but also the range of ways in which this could occur (see, e.g. Barter et al, 2009; Stein et al, 2009). The emergence of the label of ‘exploitation’ and its place in safeguarding policy and practice was linked to concerns emerged regarding what was then routinely described as ‘child prostitution’ (Melrose et al., 1999; Melrose & Barrett, 2004). New guidance was issued by the Department of Health in 2000, stating that victims of ‘child prostitution’ should be viewed as children in need of protection, as opposed to individuals who had committed a crime (Department of Health, 2000). This represented a significant ‘paradigm shift’ in understanding of the issue, differentiating between the sexual exploitation of children from the commercial sexual exploitation of adult women (Melrose, 2004, 2013). At the same time a tension remained between the aspiration towards a safeguarding response and the impetus to criminalise, manifest in the statement that: ‘the Government recognises there may be occasions, after all attempts at diversion out of prostitution have failed, when it may be appropriate for those who voluntarily continue in prostitution to enter the criminal justice system in the way that other young offenders do’ (Department of Health, 2000, p. 10). Further guidance was issued in 2009 which introduced the term ‘child sexual exploitation’ (CSE) and recommended a series of ways in which Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCBs) should be working at local level to prevent, identify and respond to child sexual exploitation, including the disruption and prosecution of crimes associated with CSE (Department for Education and Employment, 2009). This guidance generated considerable activity at an operational level, but as the profile of CSE increased, it became clear that this category also carried conceptual and definitional problems. Conceptually, Melrose (op cit; see also Coy, 2016) argued that the shift to CSE, while drawing attention to the experience of adolescents, also masked the gendered nature of exploitation, which she traced to masculine hegemony. It is important to recognise that gender continues to exercise a powerful role within discussion of exploitation and the lived experience of young people. The sexual double standard, whereby girls and young women are viewed as morally corrupt on account of their sexual behaviour (consensual and non-consensual) remains visible.

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Serious case reviews and official enquiries continue to highlight the ways in which young women are blamed for their abuse and exploitation, and this is also reflected in some of the everyday language used to describe young people (Nywarko, 2018). At the same time, gendered perceptions of ‘who is vulnerable’ have also made it less likely that boys and young men are viewed as possible victims of sexual exploitation, despite a growing body of evidence of the organised sexual abuse of boys. Girls and young women have similarly been absent from discussion of criminal exploitation and county lines. On the ground, the policy emphasis given to a pimping/grooming model meant that other forms of sexual exploitation—including that found in gangs, but also group based exploitation and exploitation between peers (Firmin, 2015), were not recognised or felt to be too difficult to categorise. Professionals charged with identifying CSE found the new definition confusing and could be inclined to attach the label of CSE to any sexual relationship between young people. In 2017, and in an attempt to address some of these concerns, further guidance was issued which clarified child sexual exploitation as a form of child sexual abuse. While this was broadly welcomed, it has also become contested, with a strong argument that the language of child sexual exploitation is now so elastic that it is difficult to sustain the view that it represents a distinct category of sexual abuse (Beckett & Walker, 2017). At the same time, the idea of ‘exploitation’ was increasingly linked to youth violence, including gang association and membership. The level of sexual violence and exploitation taking place within and around gangs was also increasingly recognised (Beckett et al., 2013; see also Harding, 2020), and that certain features of this violence that were specific to, or exacerbated by, the gang environment. Patterns of criminal exploitation in drug markets were also changing (Andell & Pitts, 2018; Harding, 2020) and there was ‘a step-change’ from ‘sporadic exploitation, likely from within family and friendship networks, to more widespread and systematic exploitation employing techniques of coercive control’ (Windle et al., 2020, p. 3). The language of exploitation was, therefore, extended. The Government definition (HM Government, 2018) of child criminal exploitation, by way of organised crime and county lines, almost precisely replicates

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the definition of child sexual exploitation. What is clear is that within political and policy discourse, academic discussion, and the response of local areas to the issue of exploitation, the overlaps between different forms of exploitation have been increasingly assumed. Greer et al. (2019) note the significance of wider safeguarding guidance, specifically Working Together to Safeguard Children (2010), published in the wake of the 2011 riots, in locating different forms of child exploitation within a common framework, that ‘the response to gang crime and the emergent phenomenon of county lines should focus on support around vulnerability and exploitation, rather than drug arrests, was a further driver of multi-agency work and information sharing’ (p. 11). They suggest that this approach was subsequently endorsed by the Modern Slavery Act of 2015, with its focus on forced labour, child exploitation and debt bondage. This has had important implications for the way in which services are organised and the nature of the response, included the development of integrated, specialised ‘exploitation’ services and associated professionals, often within the voluntary sector (Harris et al, 2017). There are clearly advantages to a recognition of the ways in which young people’s individual experience can involve different forms of exploitation and the overlapping nature of risk and vulnerability within adolescence. New language has gained currency, including the idea of ‘extra-familial harm’ as a more encompassing term that permitted recognition of the different ways in which adolescents in particular could be harmed outside the home. The higher profile of the issue is reflected in growing attention to data collection: Dacey (2021) points to the fact that ‘gangs’ were identified as an issue of concern in 14,200 Children in Need cases in 2020, a rise from 10,960 in 2019 (Department for Education, 2021). There has also been an increase in referrals to the National Referral Mechanism citing child criminal exploitation—2,500 cases out of 5,100 children referred (Home Office, 2021). This has the potential to strengthen safeguarding responses. However, there is also a danger that lessons have not been learned, and that there has been a lack of attention to the differences, as well as the similarities, between different forms of exploitation and extra-familial harm. Legislation has not always kept pace with shifts in research and practice

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thinking: Wroe (2020) notes that there is still an absence of a legislative and policy framework that acknowledges extra-familial harm. The government has been challenged on the extent to which criminal justice legislation gives priority to children and young people’s safety and welfare (see, for e.g. James, 2021). The Children’s Society (2020) report noted that ‘even when exploitation is evident, there is still an attitude that these children are complicit in their own criminal exploitation’ (p. 29). Dacey (2021 op cit) emphasises that the extent and degree of challenge in addressing these issues have not been fully recognised. These include systemic conditions in which the number of adolescents entering the care system is increasing, while those entering the youth justice system contracts. Entry into care is not, however, necessarily protective or a guarantee of safeguarding: Day et al. (2020) found that being in care was associated with being propelled into the criminal justice system, rather than receiving an enhanced response that promotes their safety. There are, therefore, many contradictions within policy and practice that are not necessarily in the best interests of children or young people, or helpful in promoting partnership approaches between different professional agencies and individuals. Additionally, the contradictions have not always been recognised or critically interrogated. At an operational level, procedures and paperwork such as risk assessments relating to child sexual exploitation has increasingly been relabelled for child criminal exploitation, often without consideration of their fitness for purpose. Questions also exist as to how far the evidence that exists about what constitutes effective responses for young people has been translated in ‘real’, and resourced, practice at local level. There is a danger that the focus on exploitation services has been accompanied by a concomitant reduction in attention to other forms of abuse and harm.

Not Something I Recognise? Young People’s Views and Experiences There has been a growing body of research examining children and young people’s experiences of professional, responses to their exploitation and extra-familial harm, including the realm of gang involvement

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and association. The evidence that exists has limitations: research samples are small and tend to represent young people who have the confidence to speak out, participate in projects, or have better experiences of services. Young people from some social groups and communities have often been absent from the debate, including disabled children and young people (Franklin et al., 2017) and those from black and minority ethnic communities (Ali et al., 2020). However, this does not diminish the importance of this evidence, not least because it does not always align with policy and practice priorities. It is also remarkably consistent (see, e.g. Brodie, 2016; Warrington, 2013; Warrington & Brodie, 2017). Discussing different forms of exploitation, young people have argued that the language is unhelpful in describing their lives and the nature of the problems they face. In a recent consultation for the Tackling Child Exploitation Programme (Fairgrieve & Brodie, 2021) young people said that young people’s voices had been ‘quietened’, that ‘exploitation’ was a term favoured by professionals, not chosen by young people, and that ‘exploitation’ became such an overriding concern for professionals that too often the wider circumstances of their lives were ignored or misunderstood. One young person who took part in the TCE consultation commented: ‘We wouldn’t call it exploitation… professional make these terms, we don’t, maybe they should ask us to’. Another said: ‘Children don’t necessarily have the vocabulary to explain [what is happening to them]’. Other research has highlighted the tension between the choices children and young people make, and adult responses that operate along a spectrum from blame and judgement to an insistence on their victimhood (Beckett et al., 2013). These positions do not correspond with the complexity of young people’s experiences, in which violence may be highly normalised. In Hallett’s (2017) research young people talked about the ways in which their exploitation, however harmful, also made them feel ‘visible’, noticed and given attention in ways that were not true in other aspects of their lives. Robinson, McLean and Densley (2019) relate this to masculinity, that the young male victims of criminal exploitation interviewed in their research ‘in an attempt to uphold their perceived masculine status…[young people] routinely rejected the victim label to profess that drug dealing was their own rational choice’

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(p. 18). Anecdotal evidence from professionals working in the field also emphasise the ways in which the money that can be earned through the drug dealing associated with county lines can be viewed as a very real benefit. Young people who are identified as exploited or as being at heightened risk of exploitation are not, therefore, necessarily inclined to trust professionals or to be open to professional intervention. This is often grounded in past experiences of services, or deeply embedded distrust of social care or criminal justice agencies (Beckett et al., 2013). Exploratory research with children and young people in England or Wales who had come into contact with the police because of concerns about their safety or well-being (Beckett et al, 2015) found that young people were often frightened of the police, and/or did not feel that the police would respond in a way that was fair. Perceptions of injustice were linked to the view that the police would not take young people seriously or believe them, or understand issues about the young person’s background or identity. While some research has highlighted the empathy of individual police officers and other professionals (see, e.g. Windle et al., 2020; Factor and Ackerley, 2019), other studies and official enquiries have borne out young people’s concerns (Beckett et al., 2015). Young people give high priority to professional responses that are friendly and caring, non-judgemental and interested in the young person as an individual. Professionals are valued when they are prepared to ‘go the extra mile’. Parents and carers, who have often been excluded from the conversation and report feeling blamed and judged (Pike et al., 2019) value information and understanding of the very difficult circumstances and impact of exploitation. The effects of exploitation are long-lasting, and it is also important that support continues over the longer term. These points seem modest as a standard of service delivery, but require a renewed confidence in the individual capacities of professionals to work according to their judgement and discretion, with the time and space to support the young person in accordance with their needs.

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Responding to Risk, Vulnerability and Violence Young people’s wish for attention to the wider context of their lives corresponds to a powerful—and longstanding—body of evidence indicating the many other forms of harm and disadvantage which young people face. These include other forms of sexual, emotional and physical abuse and harm, often normalised to the extent that it is hardly recognised (Beckett et al., 2013). This may be associated with serious family difficulties, problems at school—sometimes manifest in absence or formal exclusion from school—and mental health problems (Hallett, 2017; Harris et al, 2017; Warrington, 2013). These issues may have resulted in young people entering the care system (Coy, 2008; Day et al., 2019), which may in turn compound the risk of exploitation (see, e.g. Harding, 2020; Pearce, 2009; Pearce & Pitts, 2011; Rawden, 2019). Similarly, responses to challenging behaviour, including school exclusion, may reduce adult oversight in children’s lives and mean that they lack daily supervision and occupation (Graham, 2021). In this context, gang involvement and the tangible or intangible benefits of exploitation may be very appealing. However, it is important to recognise that these other forms of harm and disadvantage may be of many years standing and interact with exploitation in many different ways. An exclusive focus on exploitation can mean that, in line with the young people’s comments above, the issues that generated exploitation in the first instance are not adequately addressed. Attention to these issues has tended to take place through the lens of individual risk. These are listed in numerous policy and research reports, and often seem interchangeable. Indeed, any social problem afflicting young people almost invariably is taken as a risk factor for any other—so, for example, school exclusion, mental health problems, family relationship difficulties are each interchangeable as a ‘risk factor’ for the other. Current risk assessment processes often involve checklists that focus on whether these factors are present in young people’s lives, rather than where they sit in young people’s priorities and concerns, and how they are related (Brown et al., 2017). In contrast, much less attention has been given to the role of adult perpetrators.

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Discussion of ‘risk’ has also been detached from the social and economic structures in which young people live (Featherstone et al., 2018). Even when risk is more widely contextualised, it is very clear that the level of social and economic risk is mirrored by inequalities in the allocation of services and the support available to young people living in troubled communities. Poverty is ‘neither a necessary nor sufficient factor’ in explaining child abuse and neglect, but economic analyses have demonstrated that the distribution of social care and other services is weighted against areas where the levels of need are greatest (Bywaters et al, 2016; Bywaters et al., 2018). Again, belonging to some ethnic groups further limits access to services and economic opportunities (Webb et al., 2020). These communities are also likely to be affected disproportionately by changes to drug markets and the evolution of county lines networks, which also exploit vulnerable adults and neighbourhoods (Jaensch & South, 2018; O’Hagan & Long, 2019). These issues have become especially acute after a decade of austerity in which the services available to respond to children and young people who are associated with gangs and in need of protection. Despite numerous reports demonstrating the necessity of a youth work response, involving detached outreach, relationship based practice and opportunities to engage in different activities, there have been major cuts in such services since 2010. The Wood Review of statutory changes to safeguarding arrangements estimates that there is a current shortfall in children’s social care of £824 million (Wood, 2021). An interim report from the Children’s Social Care Independent Review highlights the increase in young people aged 16+ entering the care system (an increase of more than one third since 2009–2010) and comments: The system particularly fails teenagers who face harm outside of the home. Teenagers are the fastest growing group in both child protection and care (Department for Education, 2021d), and many experience serious harm or die … Accountability for keeping these teenagers safe is lacking.

For young people, therefore, choices about different courses of action, including their involvement with criminal enterprises, takes place within highly constrained circumstances (Beckett et al., 2013; Coy, 2008;

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Hallett, 2017; Young, 2009;). At the same time, young people say that concern about exploitation and their protection does not translate into an understanding of the complexities of their lives, that frequently the picture is one where individuals have been ‘habitually let down by those who are charged with their care and well-being and are coping, as best they can, with what life has dealt them’ (Young, 2009, p. 235).

Alternative Ways of Seeing and Doing New approaches to safeguarding adolescents attempt to capture ways in which their needs and their risks of exploitation, interact. Contextual and complex safeguarding approaches highlight the way in which the risks encountered by adolescents are present in different spaces—such as schools, parks, shopping centres and other public spaces, as well as online platforms—and in relation to different groups—peers, partners and adults who are unconnected to families. These models have also emphasised the need to recognise that the evidence does not support a separation of the status of victim from that of offender or perpetrator. Rather, young people may be both victims and perpetrators of exploitation, or may be associated with exploitation as observers or bystanders. Similarly, factors which may be assumed to represent risk—for example, peer groups—can also be protective (Brodie et al., 2020). A shared element across new approaches to safeguarding children and young people is a recognition that practice needs to fit with children and young people’s developmental pathways, and the everyday lives they live. Approaches also emphasise the need to design services in a way that reflects young people’s lives, rather than fitting their lives to existing services. Transitional safeguarding therefore emphasises the necessity of ending the current gulf between children’s and adult services, and ensuring that young people continue to receive support in line with their needs (Cocker, 2020). Within a Contextual Safeguarding approach, this means extending definitions of abuse to include forms of child sexual exploitation, child criminal exploitation, teenage relationship abuse, gang-affiliation, peeron-peer sexual and serious youth violence. It will also include addressing

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the social conditions, and contexts, in which abuse occurs rather than just the individual and family—and in turn, this requires attention to the social and community contexts in which individuals live their lives. This will include peer groups, schools, community spaces such as parks, shopping centres and the street. Experience of these contexts will vary, and broader inequalities will influence the extent to which any context is felt to be ‘safe’ by a young person or group of young people. Young people themselves interact and affect the context as well. This has important implications for the nature of intervention, requiring information gathering that extends beyond the young person and engages with a much wider range of partners who are engaged with these settings, including local businesses, transport providers, those engaged in leisure industries as well as traditional safeguarding services. Improved safety will mean not only the safety of the young person, but also the safety of the context or setting—and therefore, in turn, increased safety for a much wider group of young people who may not have come to the attention of any agency. Contextual Safeguarding has been welcomed in many areas as a new way of thinking about safeguarding, as well as a new way of working. There are multiple examples of the way in which the approach can be applied within local contexts and in response to specific issues and events see, for example, Firmin & Abbott, (2018); see also the Contextual Safeguarding Network at (https://www.csnetwork.org.uk/en/resour ces/practice-guides-and-resources/intervention-catalogue). Ensuring that individuals are kept safe takes place alongside a broader, community based way of working. Identification of related cases of abuse and exploitation in a local school, for example, can prompt mapping exercises, consultation with children and young people, and the bringing together of new partnership networks to consider ways in which the environment can be made safer—for example, developing a youth outreach initiative, awareness raising with families and communities, or greater surveillance of a physical space. Contextual Safeguarding is, therefore, a creative approach which can, and should, be flexibly applied (Firmin & Lloyd, 2020).

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Conclusion Children and young people tell adults that they want to ‘matter’ (Billingham & Irwin-Rogers, 2019) and to be recognised as important individuals in their own right, who become involved with gangs and exploited in different ways for many and complex reasons. The evidence is clear that their exploitation is not clear cut, that those who are exploited may also abuse others and that exploitation usually overlaps with multiple problems and needs. The landscape of safeguarding has changed and is changing rapidly, though responses to young people involved in gangs and serious youth violence continue to wrestle with a very significant historical legacy. There continues to be ambivalence on the part of politicians, experts and professionals on the extent to which children and young people should be held culpable for behaviour associated with gang association, county lines and other forms of exploitation and abuse. Individual case descriptions highlight the very real complexities in protecting young people while holding them to account for violent crimes. New approaches to safeguarding emphasise they are not offering blueprints, practice models or manualised programmes (Firmin et al, 2020). However, they offer the potential for active engagement with local histories and current patterns of need, while re-asserting the importance of thoughtful, individual work with children and young people, families and professionals. This requires work by professionals who are given autonomy and respect for their individual judgement and expertise, and the time and support to use this.

References Andell, P., & Pitts, J. (2018).The end of the line? The impact of county lines drug distribution on youth crime in a target destination, Youth & Policy. Ali, N., Butt, J., & Phillips, M. (2021). Improving responses to the sexual abuse of Black, Asian and minority ethnic children. Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse.

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25 The Premier League: Breaking the Cycle of Gang Violence Christine Barter, Paul Hargreaves, Kelly Bracewell, and John Pitts

Introduction In 2016, BBC Children in Need (BBC CIN) and the Premier League Charitable Fund (PLCF) came together to establish a joint programme, Breaking the Cycle of Youth Violence (BCYV), which aimed to reduce youth violence in the communities in which Premier League football clubs operated. Each of the eight participating clubs had Club Community Organisations (CCOs) funded through the BCYV programme that C. Barter · P. Hargreaves University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK K. Bracewell University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK J. Pitts (B) Vauxhall Centre for the Study of Crime, University of Bedfordshire, LUTON, UK e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Andell and J. Pitts (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Youth Gangs in the UK , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99658-1_25

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undertook work with young people in their catchment area. This chapter is based on the independent evaluation of the interventions funded through the BCYV programme (Barter et al., 2020).

Methodology Two members of staff from each of the eight CCOs were interviewed about their experiences, insights and the challenges of delivering the programmes, including those involved in direct work, managers and a small number of colleagues from other Premier League programmes. In total 32 young people from five of the CCO projects participated in the evaluation, eight in individual interviews and 24 in six focus groups. Ten of the participants were young women and 22 were young men. The ages of participants ranged from nine to 18 years. The quotations used in this chapter are derived from these interviews and focus groups. In addition, seven professionals from youth offending, education and safeguarding services with extensive experience of four of the CCOs were interviewed. The chapter describes the responses of the CCO staff and young people attached to Arsenal; Burnley; Chelsea; Crystal Palace; Everton; Newcastle United; Southampton; Stoke City and Tottenham Hotspur to the ‘gang problem’ in their catchment areas.

Arsenal The Problem Staff identified six gangs they were working with in the Islington area. These gangs are named after the housing estates where they are located. In addition, there are other gangs of ‘Youngers’ (aged between 12 and 16) who have some association with the larger gangs, but the situation is fluid. So, for example, [A estate] and [B estate] are very close to each other but they’ve had, very, very significant incidents; they’ve had murders and all sorts

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going between the estates. But at the moment they have some sort of truce and we’ve got participants that go between them. We work with both groups... But, you know, the big problem in Islington (at the moment) is there’s sort of two rivals, on [estate] and [road], that’s the sort of priority at the moment.

At the time of the interview, the workers felt the situation was ‘stable’: There’s not Been a Murder for a Few months Now. So that’s Good, it’s not as Bad as It Has Been.

However, they were aware that this was a volatile situation and that things could change very quickly: You know, one thing happens, and it increases tensions, then it leads to a chain of events and everything sort of spirals … Yes, I mean, you know, there’s always tensions because all it takes is for one person, or one incident to happen, like there’s someone that they know gets stabbed or whatever, and the fallout is significant, like it can all of a sudden affect a lot of people in one way or another. So, you know, you never know what’s around the corner.

In these conflicts, the protagonists use knives but also guns: Guns Are Becoming Easier to Get but there’s Still, They’re Still not as Easy as Going into the Kitchen and, You Know, Picking a Knife Out of a Drawer.

Several of the young people involved in gangs are also active in the transportation and marketing of illicit drugs (County Lines). One local authority, Islington, has undertaken a survey of the places young people from the borough who were involved in County Lines were apprehended. At a recent meeting, Probation Officers in Islington observed that in some families, three generations are involved in gang conflict and drug dealing.

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The Response Arsenal staff are members of a strategic group in Islington that endeavours to map, monitor and plan interventions with gangs. This gives them information about where, when and how to target their work. The club runs PL Kicks footballing sessions on all but one of the six gang-affected estates in the area and they have been doing so for several years. The same staff members run all these sessions, which means that they know the young people from each of the estates and have built positive relationships with them. They have pursued a strategy of creating ‘safe spaces’ where young people from the different estates are encouraged to attend sessions in each other’s areas with the same staff. What happened over time was, whereas in the past, if there was someone maybe from one area that came up to another, it would be, well you’re from there, so it’s a problem, whether you’re involved or not. But all of a sudden that wasn’t so much of a problem and it was OK. And what then happened over a period of time was that more people were sort of positioned between the two groups, where it was mutual friends.

The staff believe that their involvement may serve as a catalyst for this process and that this was a product of a consistent presence over time which served to build trust, created safe spaces and allowed young people to move between the gang-affected areas. This was promoted by the introduction of tournaments and other joint events to the point where this transitioning became ‘normal’. So, I’m not saying that it’s all fixed and it’s all rosy, but compared to where it was, you know, a while ago, you know, that the picture between certain groups is a lot healthier. Football is the hook, football is the activity and football pitches are where we do our work, but yes, I sort of see it more (that) the environment that we’re trying to create is a youth club, it’s a youth club on a football pitch. So, it’s, you know, it’s a safe place, it’s an enjoyable place, it’s where people can socialise, have fun, play football. Football is a key part of it, of course it is, and we’re a football club. But football is the activity but it’s certainly not the objective or the aim. We have young people that don’t play football and they just come along, and they enjoy being around the

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environment that’s been created or enjoy speaking to the staff. So, they just enjoy being around it.

The young people have recently produced a film about their involvement with Arsenal: So, one of the things that came through in the film that we produced was how people can find themselves in difficult situations that can be hard to get out of and situations that they didn’t want to be in, just through one mistake, or by affiliation or just being part of where they live.

One of the participants in a young people’s focus group said of the film: … our whole film was based around not getting dragged into things that don’t involve you. And showing how something crazy can escalate in the hood without you even actively doing anything. You can just get caught up in stuff and not everyone from round here is a bad person. Sometimes you just get caught up in things. And we made it a positive film, we made sure that we didn’t have anyone get stabbed or shot.

Another said: Understanding why people do it. What, you think we wake up one morning and want to kill someone? You wake up with your mum getting shot by one of your fucking enemies. Well now you’re waking up, you want to kill everyone, don’t you? Do you know what I mean? So, it’s like you have to show people the reason why. ‘That’s what went on because he’s a gangster, that’s what he wants to do’, you know what I’m trying to say? But why is he that person? What happened, what changed him? Because I’m sure he wasn’t like that when he was seven years old.

The workers feel that many young people become involved with gangs to achieve a sense of belonging; a need to connect with something. They believe that involvement in the Arsenal PL Kicks programme offers an alternative sense of belonging but one without the risks inherent in gang involvement. They also recognise that some young people are attracted to

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gang involvement because of the money generated by the drugs business. They, therefore, see programmes that lead to employment as a key part of their intervention. If you’re saying to someone you shouldn’t really be selling drugs and they say, ‘Well how am I going to get money?’ And you say, ‘Well, I don’t know, just have a look’, that’s not really going to help. But if you can say ‘Have you thought about trying to get a job’ and that ‘We can maybe work on this together’, and try and support them, that’s going to help. And, equally, with education, we can look at educational programmes. So, I think supporting people to take opportunities is important. We have to almost bridge them into it.

It was clear from the responses of the focus group participants that the football club was an important factor in attracting young people, particularly gang-involved young people, into the programmes: I’ve always been aware that they’ve had such a presence in the community, in Islington in general, but not just round here. Like we’ve got the Cruyff in Eltham Park that was opened by Denis Bergkamp. We regularly have players come to Eltham Park to meet people and stuff. They even gave us the hall in the Emirates to premier our film.

Burnley The Problem The police reportedly believe that there are up to forty organised crime groups/gangs in the Burnley and Pendle area, some of which are family based. The staff in Burnley report that around 25% of their caseload comprises young people involved in serious group offending, with links to gangs across East Lancashire. They note that there are several gangs in Burnley itself and that some have links into organised crime in the form of ‘high level drug dealing’. These young people are drawn largely from the South Asian community in Burnley, and they are mainly involved in dealing cannabis and cocaine. The gangs have links with Manchester

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and the larger Northern cities. There are also territorial gangs whose ‘turf ’ may be a postcode or a school. Some gang-involved young people are as young as nine and are used as ‘runners’ who deliver drugs and messages to end users. The 14–16-year-olds tend to be involved in violent territorial battles. Some girls and young women are involved on the fringes of the gangs and they are vulnerable to sexual exploitation by gang members as well as older men associated with the gangs. The staff believe that while it is less apparent than in other areas, there is a serious gang problem in Burnley, not least because of the links between the street gangs and the higher level, familial, organised crime groups in the community: And certainly, in the South Asian heritage community in Burnley and Pendle, that’s where the gang influence will probably be strongest. So, it’s sort of family links, I can’t remember the numbers off the top of my head, but I’m sure it was something like, around forty recognised organised crime groups, so that’s gangs operating across Burnley and Pendle within that community.

The Response Staff believe that the football club is ‘a major factor in the local area’, a theme that emerged strongly from the interviews with other clubs, and this encourages young people and other agencies to engage with them. The football club branding is our main engagement tool. The CCO receives referrals from Lancashire Social Care, the local Youth Offending Teams, the Police, the Lancashire Early Action scheme and the Pupil Referral Unit. Staff also meet gang-involved young people via the PL Kicks programme which targets young people involved in antisocial behaviour. The programme also keeps close links with local mosques, that make some referrals and helps to monitor the gang problem, and several multi-agency groups concerned with young people crime and violence. In thinking about the nature of their work, a senior member of staff at the club observed that: I think that clubs, historically, have fallen into the trap of thinking that a football coach can just be picked up and plonked into this sort of programme. I think they need additional training … a passion for football and sport but,

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ultimately, they need to bring experience of working with young people in the criminal justice system. The work with gang-involved young people revolves around one to one mentoring. This involves discussion of the risks of ganginvolvement, both the risk to themselves as well as the risks to other people. They also consider the consequences in terms of the kind of sentences gang behaviour is likely to attract in Court. The workers endeavour to raise their aspirations by helping them to look more critically at the ‘gangster’ lifestyle and think about alternative lifestyles and opportunities. They tend to look to sort of the big people in the communities, sort of the people with the fancy cars and the kind of lifestyle they have, but they don’t see the other side, which is they might be at risk of getting into custody or prison for several years. So, it’s trying to raise aspirations really, there’s a lot of work around that, and trying to get them into positive pathways.

Each of the young people Burnley CCO works with has an individual intervention plan which is worked out with the young person. Workers also involve an ex-gang member from Manchester. He talks to the young people about his experiences, disclosing that his brother was killed in a gang-related incident and that he had been sent to prison. However, having decided to exit the gang lifestyle he struggled to extricate himself although he eventually did, and he is now running his own company and mentoring young people. At the time of the interview, staff were working with several young people who were unwilling to leave the gang, but they were persisting. They also work with young people who are susceptible to gang involvement: I could probably name about four or five more who, because of their lifestyle and the way their families operate or because they are in the care system, are at high risk. I guess it’s just a lack of protective factors for some young people

Crystal Palace The Problem The project head at Crystal Palace sits on the Croydon Serious Youth Violence Board, a multi-agency group including the police, relevant

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statutory agencies and some voluntary sector organisations. The Board monitors gang activity in the borough and the links between Croydon street gangs, gangs from other areas and organised crime groups. It also identifies current ‘hotspots’ where violent conflict is concentrated. At the time of the interview, the Board had identified 12 major gangs in Croydon. However, gangs in South London are emerging, merging and disappearing all the time: Obviously, Croydon, you’ve got like Norbury, you’ve got Thornton Heath, you’ve got South Croydon, you’ve got West Croydon, you’ve got Sutton. There could be five or six different gangs in those areas alone. And, like I said, gangs could be three people who say to themselves, look we’re together now, so they start doing negative things and they’re a gang. However, having done so they can become a target for other, older, gangs: … the smaller ones could just be riding their bikes. But because they’re in a group, the more violent gangs start to cause an altercation, which is the problem really because it’s those ones that get caught up in situations and then, if the older group were to try 159 and take their phone, because they’re not used to being in those situations, they can end up losing their life. Before it could be, maybe just getting your item taken, maybe getting hit, now people are using knives or other weapons and causing a lot more harm.

Some of the many stabbings recorded by Croydon police are related to ‘postcode’ conflict, a fact that was highlighted in 2018 by a murder a few hundred yards from Crystal Palace’s Selhurst Park Stadium: It was the prosecution’s case that the defendants were part of a gang called CRO – the postcode which covers Croydon town centre and New Addington and that Jermaine’s death came after a series of music videos were uploaded online by CRO and rival gang CR7, which is the Thornton Heath postcode ‘… they were there to hunt down anyone they thought was from the CR7 gang and who was unfortunate enough to get in their way. (Croydon Advertiser, Friday February 16th, 2018, page 1)

Other Croydon gangs are involved in County Lines drug dealing, using children and younger adolescents to transport drugs to out-of-town locations. Most County lines emanating from Croydon are currently

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targeting Portsmouth. A major concern is the recruitment of younger children: We’ve had schools come to us saying they think someone as young as ten is being recruited to be in a gang. So, I’d say, (the age range) stretches from ten to probably twenty-three/twenty-four. This child was being recruited by his brother. And that’s the bit that gets neglected a lot, isn’t it, when we’re talking about gangs. It’s that some of it is familial, it might be dad as well, sort of dad, older brother, younger kids.

However, CCO staff were critical of the portrayal of gang-involved young people in the press as either forced to undertake tasks for the gang or just naïve, ‘wide eyed’, children who are offered a pair of trainers or twenty pounds to ferry drugs to an out-of-town location. They are eleven/twelve years old and thinking ‘This guy’s like an icon, a hero to me, I want to be like him’. And then when the boy agrees to do something for him, he’s ‘looked after’, like he’s almost untouchable because now he’s one of their boys. And you can see it when they come to group sessions. You can see who commands respect because of their affiliation to someone, whether it be brother or a cousin or whoever. You see how they’re maybe getting dropped at sessions in a certain car, like a Range Rover. So, for some, gang affiliation is also a protective factor, rather than a risk factor. It’s about status. Status is everything for them, to be able to say, I am this person or I’m that that person on their Instagram or their social media.

The Response Based on information from the multi-agency gang monitoring group CCO staff can intervene in gang ‘hotspots’ as and when they emerge in order to create safe spaces. At the time of the interview, the area around the IKEA store and the Multiplex Cinema in Purley was regarded as an ‘emerging gang area’/ ‘hotspot’ because a lot of young people on the periphery of gangs, some of whose older siblings were in prison, were congregating there, and there was a concern that they were being recruited into gangs by older adolescents. This enabled the CCO to target these young people and involve them in a 12-week life skills

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programme in a local youth club while also providing a safe space for them to congregate. Here they work with both boys and girls in gangs or on the edge of gang involvement. Like other clubs Crystal Palace offers individual and group mentoring programmes. Participants are referred by social welfare and criminal justice agencies, but participation is voluntary. We now have programmes which meet young people who are just on the edge of getting (gang) involved; maybe they’ve been arrested for gang related activities and we’re meeting others who are involved and would like a way to get out but can’t really see it. These programmes are putting us right in the heart of the gang problem … Without being disrespectful, they don’t know anything else. So again, they think that it’s the be all and end all. They don’t know there’s actually choices for them. Sometimes them wanting to get out could just be as simple as putting them on some sort of course with a qualification.

From interviews it seems that the young people value the sessions and retention is high. I think like it’s a good programme because I didn’t think anyone would be able to like talk me off getting off the roads or anything like that. But when I met E and then started talking, it was just like, when you’ve got someone to support you and influence you, it’s different to trying to do it by yourself and being on the road. When I first met E I was feeling so shit about myself. I reckon if I didn’t meet E I’d probably be in prison or like in a gang or killed or stabbed up or something.

In the past year, the CCO developed an intervention with schools where there was a gang problem. It focuses upon the year seven transition from primary school at 11 years old. Children in year seven are allocated mentors aged 14 to 16 who are in years ten and eleven. Many of the mentors are girls and young women who mentor both younger boys and girls. The mentors are trained over several days at the stadium and receive regular clinical supervision from CCO staff involved in the intervention: People are likely to settle down if they have someone who can show them the ropes. So, year tens seemed to be the best people to show them the ropes. Things

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like, you know, locker systems and how to sort of organise their diary, lunches, things like that, that we might take for granted, are the things that actually mean quite a lot to a year seven, it’s quite daunting. The mentors also focus on relationships in general rather than just gangs and violence but given the environment from which the students are drawn it aims to counteract the negative influences both in school and on the street where fighting, anti-social behaviour and mugging are a problem. At present the scheme has around 40 mentors and 60 mentees.

Everton The Problem The CCO staff at Everton believe that the city’s gang problem is chronic and getting worse. At the time of interview, there did not appear to be any gang-specific programming although gang-involved young people participated in Everton’s programmes: Yes, it’s not just one big gang in Liverpool, its different areas. Like there might be a couple of gangs in that area, do you know what I mean? Like even on the same road. Like in some areas … if they go over that road, they’re in a world of trouble, just because they’re from that side of the road, it’s mad, and that’s all-around Liverpool. Like in the area, there’s a couple of gangs in this area, where one sees the other, it’s automatically, and they’re going to fight. So, we’ll organise a fixture in a certain area. And a kid who’s mad into football and then, when you say this area, they’re like, I can’t come. And they don’t give you a valid reason why they can’t come, it’s because that area, they don’t want to go into that area. So that’s gang related behaviour, do you know what I mean?

Staff also noted that the age of gang-involved young people was falling and that these children are used/ ‘groomed’ by older gang members. Their observations have been corroborated by staff from other agencies and projects whom they meet as part of their work, or at multi-agency training sessions. They suggest that there are often links between street

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gangs composed of children and younger adolescents and adults involved in organised crime. So, say there’s ten or more kids hanging around this area … maybe committing antisocial behaviour, being really disruptive and quite intimidating (they are) potentially linked to knife crime, gun crime, drugs, trafficking, all that kind of stuff. And in terms of age, anything, like any age really. We’ve got kids as young as twelve … who are affiliated with men, who are a lot older. They believe that the girls and young women who are gang-involved are ‘groomed’ into the gang but are also motivated by a need for protection from other gangs.

As is the case at Tottenham Hotspur the staff at Everton are concerned that violence and crime are becoming normalised: I think some cases. I’ve sat there, and I’ve had a kid say to me, I am going to be the next big thing, I’m going to be the next big gangster that hits Liverpool. And you think, my god, that’s your aspiration, yes, like wow. Like why? Like that’s crazy. And you just, sometimes you just can’t unpick it, you can’t even think, where has that come from? Because this child just aspires to be that way and wants to be the next big thing and wants to be feared and wants to be, I don’t know.

The Response Much of the work of the Everton CCO is concerned with preventing or reducing youth crime and violence and many of the young people on the club’s programmes are either beginning to get involved in offending or vulnerable to victimisation and exploitation. This latter group is referred by schools with which the club has links. The teachers and the Everton staff describe them as the ‘nurture group’ because of their immaturity and vulnerability. They’re really quite low level, quite young for their age, and really, really vulnerable. They hit every single one of our risk criteria, and they’re going to be more vulnerable to victimisation and being targeted by older kids who will exploit them.

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Another programme recruits from an all-boys Academy and the young people are referred because of their problematic behaviour in school. And those young people were identified as almost like the trouble makers and ones that have got really low numeracy, low literacy. Half of the group are from single parent families, low socioeconomic status and fitted the bill, potentially, and it’s awful, for those who are likely to commit an offence and are already engaged in social, antisocial behaviour and are getting into trouble in school, in terms of being aggressive and violence and things like that and having outbursts. So, the one group were quite challenging, in the sense they might be the ones who are the perpetrators, and then the other group were really vulnerable and could, potentially, be vulnerable to crime against them or being targeted by someone and exploited in that way.

A central aim of this work, which focuses on life skills and behaviour, is to keep the young people in school and this is born of a recognition that truancy and exclusion render them vulnerable to involvement in and exploitation by gangs. Reflecting on his own experience of growing up in the area, one of the workers said, ruefully: A pathway, a solid pathway for a young person to go down. Like my mates. Growing up, my mates had a clear pathway what they wanted to do. School, six form, college, a trade. They’ve got that trade for the rest of their life and that will provide money and work for them. So that’s one pathway. Pathway is a massive factor, if you want to turn all this around. A clear pathway for these young people to take, to give them that sense that there’s a light at the end of that tunnel. ‘If I do all this, I will become this’. That’s the biggest thing, I think. What we are lacking for young people, where we’re failing young people, is the pathways to do stuff, what they want to do in life.

Newcastle United The Problem The CCO staff in Newcastle believe that the ‘gang problem’ is relatively small compared with other UK cities. They have identified groups of

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adolescents involved in anti-social behaviour and inter-group violence, but these groups do not appear to be involved in drug trafficking or have links into organised crime groups. For many years, the drugs trade in the North East has been dominated by a small group of White organised crime groups. However, the staff feel it is difficult to estimate the scale of the gang problem because the city, the local authority and the police are reluctant to identify any of the offending that occurs in Newcastle as gang crime. This is because they want to maintain the reputation of Newcastle as a safe, low-crime and city. The club works closely with the local Youth Offending Team in which the police have a stake, and this may militate against identifying young people as ‘gang-involved’. There are groups in certain parts of the city, which would probably meet the gang criteria and there are a lot of young people that might think that they’re part of a gang. For example, I’m working with a young person at the moment who tells me he is in a gang, but a lot of it is sort of low-level disruption and they just like the thrill of getting chased off by the police and things like that, rather than the territorial type things, that’s not really something that we’ve come across yet.

Nonetheless, the staff are aware that Northumbria police are working on certain strategies to combat gang violence and serious organised crime and this suggests that this has been an emerging problem over the past few years which the police are trying to ‘nip in the bud’. However, to date, the CCO has not seen the need to develop any interventions targeted specifically at gangs and gang crime.

Southampton The Problem CCO staff in the Southampton programme say that the ‘gang problem’ is concentrated in central Southampton, where many of the children come from deprived families several of whose older children are gang-involved. They note that in Southampton there is little acknowledgement of a gang

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problem although the workers regard the problem as serious. They are particularly concerned about the ways children and younger adolescents are recruited into gangs. In the areas that we work, where one gang in particular operates, we have, what’s called, Primary Kicks, which is your primary school age group. And it’s quite scary to talk to these kids … about that problem, and how much information they know. And I’d say, the most serious aspect of it is having siblings, older participants or older role models in their lives, recruiting the most vulnerable kids in Southampton.

The Response The club targets the gang-affected neighbourhoods via the PL Kicks programme using their football coaches to offer advice to young people vulnerable to gang involvement. Although not necessarily trained in work with young people involved in crime, the coaches draw upon their, sometimes extensive, experience of working with young people. However, the CCO also runs a structured youth violence programme in schools: That’s where it becomes a little bit difficult, we’ve got two core strands. We’ve got a school-based strand and a community-based strand. Through the schools we have what’s called a community champion, which, effectively, is a fulltime member of Saints staff that works in that school, who oversees all Saints provision. They will know all the students very well because they see them on a daily basis. They’re sort of mentors and youth workers, who are based within a school. So, a lot of the school-based sessions are easier to identify backgrounds and sort of past experiences of participants and young people. However, when we go out into the community, that’s where it’s difficult because where we don’t know the kids that well or we may not know someone’s background as soon as they attend Kicks, that becomes a little bit difficult. And that’s where we sort of use our staff to almost be youth workers and sort of delve into sort of communication with them around sort of their background, what they’ve been up to, and those sort of things. And that’s when the answers and the story sort of come out.

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Staff are concerned about the conflict between groups and the need to work with them separately: Mixing of kids is a big one for us. Being aware of areas in Southampton and mixing them, in terms of bringing cohorts together, is a massive ‘no, no’, or if you do it, you need to make sure that those don’t know each other or there’s no negative feelings beforehand, otherwise, it can kick off, which we’ve seen in the past.

They are also concerned about the safety of the football coaches who do the face-to-face work with gang-involved young people. We work in some of the hardest to reach areas, and some of the people that we deal with are tough. And, for me, the biggest barrier is feeling confident in our coaches to actually deal with the situation if it kicks off. Obviously, we’ve got some staff who I do feel comfortable with and others that I’m not so comfortable with in that setting. So, I’d say, my biggest concern is staff safety in particular areas.

Stoke City The Problem Based on information from the police and the young people they work with, the staff at Stoke have identified more than 25 street gangs in the city. The membership of gangs is based on territory, mainly housing estates, or ethnicity. The gangs are largely made up of young people aged between 12 and 18 but older people are involved too: You’ve got, the dilemma; you’ve got young people that think they’re in a gang. So, you’ve got the ‘Older’ organising all the drug dealing and stuff, so they, obviously, prey on the vulnerable young people who aspire to be like them. So, although they’re targeted, they’ll automatically call themselves a gang member, which they are to some degree, but really, some of them are just causing antisocial behaviour. The younger people are used as ‘runners’, carrying drugs to end users for the ‘Olders’. Many of the boys and young men, particularly the

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older ones carry weapons and are involved in fights with gangs from different areas, organised through social media. The gangs are made up of both boys and young men and girls and young women. Some are the girlfriends of the boys and some are just friends, but they appear proud of their gang affiliation. When we first started with this group they were, literally, ‘I’d ride or die for my area’, and now it’s completely different. Like that’s what they were like. Walked in, dead enthusiastic about it, ‘yes, I’m part of this’. When we did that session around, ‘What is a gang’ and what the Home Office states is a gang, they would clearly say, ‘yes, yes, yes’.

The staff felt that gang-involved girls were more volatile than the boys and while they too were involved in violence, this tended to take place in the schools, but like the boys, the fights are organised via social media. Violence appears to be a core activity of the Stoke gangs: Here? I’d say, just pure violence … like they’re not scared to have the fights. Weapons, obviously, there’s been an increase in knife crime in the last couple of years. But also, drugs, its parties, a lot of parties. There’s also CSE, even in those [focus] groups you’ve spoken to today, any of them could have involvement in CSE, violence, do you know what I mean? The gang problem is getting worse … and they think, easy, fast, money is the way, whether its drug dealing here or through county lines.

The Response The CCOs gang programmes were developed in liaison with the police: We started (3 years before) by identifying all the local gangs in Stoke. So, we sat with the police, we said, right, OK, we will work with x, y and z from different gangs. And what we did, was we brought them together. It was a risk initially because it was almost like, the police were worried we were going to create like a super gang, but actually, it worked really well. So, we had two or three young people, who were quite heavily embedded, were really, basically, the police were on crack down, so, basically, they were targeting them really to just get them charged and sent down, type of thing. But then we came in as an intervention, right, OK, let’s work with them first, type of thing.

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Originally, the CCO worked with 12 young people drawn from four different gangs. The group participated in an intensive programme over the summer focussing on questions of inter-group relations, problem solving and life skills. This work was particularly challenging for the staff involved: And I just think you have to be so aware of stuff that goes on with the young people, like I said, you have to have that regular contact with the schools or even with the young people, what’s going on, so that, you know. One to ones are key as part of this programme. I think you’ve got to have a broader knowledge about safeguarding, what goes on in the community, to be part of this type of work. The work in schools consists of a ten-week programme with additional one to one support. The aim of the group is to enable participants to identify short-term and long-term goals that they want to work towards and to identify the people who can help them realise their goals.

One participant in a focus group said: We’ve been going on about joint enterprise, knife crime, gangs; we’ve been doing like case studies as well like on some guy that got stabbed when he was in a gang … Because outside of school a lot of us like associate with like a group that can be considered a gang. Like in our little group here there’s like, I’d say two separate groups and one of them hangs around here and one of them hangs around somewhere else but they both like get in a little bit of trouble. It’s like antisocial behaviour and stuff and people have been hurt and had weapons and stuff, they (the staff ) think it’s good to help us to know in the future that if ever that comes up, that’s how we can get away from it.

The young people know that the CCO is working with the police and the school and that their joint aim is to effect behavioural and attitudinal change. They know really. They know what they’re doing and what they’re in the group for. We try and avoid the word, gang. We don’t always say, oh you’re in a gang, because some of them want to be in a gang or they’re taking part in criminal or antisocial behaviour … or they’re hanging around with people that are. So, we just say, it’s about looking at attitudes and behaviours and what’s going on in the community to make you aware, so you can make your

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own decisions. Some know that they’re on there for the gang issue but we, when we’re addressing things, we never say, oh you are in a gang, unless it’s disclosed on a one to one, then we work with them.

Asked how they might address the question of gang involvement a member of the CCO staff said: If it comes up in a group, we’ll discuss it there and then. There’s one session about what a gang is and why people join them. We show real life videos of people that have been involved in gangs and then left them. But then some of them will say, ‘oh but it’s not that easy, is it?’ And then we will discuss it. But if it’s, we feel that someone’s trying to say they’ve been in that scenario and they haven’t been able to come out, then during a subsequent one to one, we’d speak to them about being scared to come out. We can also bring the police in, a YOT police officer, who also does the Prevent programme. And what we’ve found, they do stuff around Prevent, where they do activities which raise awareness and also try to help them to come away from the gang with the support of the police.

Tottenham Hotspur The Problem The Tottenham Hotspur CCO operates mainly in Haringey and the adjacent borough of Enfield. It works mainly with young people from Wood Green, Tottenham, Enfield and Edmonton each of which has a significant gang problem. Staff are concerned about the way that ‘gang culture’ is transmitted to younger children: There are kids from primary school already looking and their brothers, cousins, older, who are twelve/thirteen/fourteen/fifteen/sixteen/ seventeen/eighteen that are on the streets doing things. And then the young primary school kid is seeing that and thinking, oh right, that’s what I’m going to do next … Kids are seeing other kids rolling up in the nice stuff, fancy stuff, cars, drugs, money, and that’s what they’re seeing. Staff are concerned that young people aspire to this lifestyle and that working with them on the issue is difficult. So that is

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a really hard thing to battle with, when someone is believing that they have to defend their ends, they have to, you know, their block is their block. They don’t work for the council, they don’t put a cent, or a penny into that block or what not, but it’s their street, it’s their block, it’s their belief.

Staff are particularly concerned that this is a lifestyle which has perpetuated the cycle of violence and that this has an effect in terms of the young people’s attitudes towards life and death: Killings, death, the value for life is the worrying thing. Kids are growing up with no value for life, you know. To understand that, if you actually really sit there and you really like understand that, it is a scary prospect. Because if, we’re talking about teenagers of fifteen to eighteen that have no value for life, find it easy to take life, what about the ones that are coming under them? You know, if an eighteen-year-old is already telling like a thirteen-year-old, like go and do this, and they’re doing it, then all the other thirteen year olds are thinking that this is just how to deal with conflict.

Staff fear that potentially lethal violence is becoming not just a gangrelated activity but an acceptable mode of conflict resolution amongst local young people more generally. The situation is worsened by the technology which means that information about, and images of, violent events are circulated very quickly. However, the workers feel that the main driver of the violence is the fact that at the same time there’s kids that are living the real life and seeing this in real life

The Response The Tottenham area is notorious for gang violence and organised crime which can involve several generations of the same family. Staff at Tottenham Hotspur CCO are concerned about the plethora of negative role models available to impressionable children and younger adolescents. The mentors, coaches and teachers that work for the CCO attempt to redirect these young people but regard it as an ongoing battle to ‘change their mind-set’:

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The work of the CCO is in a ‘hub’ which presents young, gang-involved, people with alternative, positive, lifestyles. It offers a safe environment to play football, reconnect with education, pursue training courses and gain qualifications. The hub offers courses in key life skills as well as apprenticeships, traineeships and voluntary work. The hub attempts to spread awareness of the services it offers amongst young people and their parents who may not know what opportunities are available in their locality.

The CCO also has a regular presence in the A&E departments of the North Middlesex and Whittington Hospitals. Here staff endeavour to contact young people aged from 12 upwards admitted because of injuries sustained as a result of an assault or involvement in violent conflict. The theory underlying hospital-based violence interventions is that this crisis will make the victim more likely to reflect upon the lifestyle that brought them to this situation. This is sometimes termed a ‘teachable moment’ and the role of the foundation staff is to allow the victim to reflect on this and to outline available choices, including the possibility of involvement in programmes offered by the foundation at its base in White Hart Lane. The other purpose of the intervention is to prevent the violence escalating as a result of inter-gang ‘tit-for-tat’ reprisal attacks.

The Premier League CCOs: Prevention and Gang Desistance Each of the Premier League CCOs was, in their different ways, concerned with the prevention of gang violence and for some clubs this was a major part of their work. Criminologists distinguish between three types of preventive intervention, Primary, Secondary and Tertiary. Primary Prevention involves universal strategies that address the social, economic and familial factors that research suggests are associated with gang involvement. These kinds of intervention are usually undertaken, or funded by, public authorities and are beyond the scope of the clubs. Secondary Prevention targets young people who appear to be at risk of becoming gang-involved. At this level, programmes characteristically target individuals who have family and friends in gangs as well as those

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who have difficult home lives and live in gang-affected neighbourhoods. Interventions may involve street-based outreach programmes, schoolbased ‘gang resistance education’, life skills work, and contact with police officers and/or peer mentors who explain the negative consequences of gang membership. All the clubs were involved in this level of gang prevention. Tertiary Prevention targets gang members who are seriously involved in gang violence and County Lines drug dealing. Some clubs worked with this group.

CCO Involvement at a Strategic Level Most CCOs were represented on multi-agency strategic groups, characteristically convened by the police. These groups monitored gangs and gang crime in their borough/s and held information about and maintained contact with the agencies and organisations involved in ‘gang work’. This appeared to have several advantages for the clubs. It enabled them to identify gaps in provision and to thereby focus their gang work in areas, and with groups, where they had the capacity and expertise to make a positive impact. It also enabled CCOs to avoid the duplication of work already being undertaken by other agencies and organisations. By virtue of their, sometimes extensive, local knowledge and local connections, it enabled CCOs to provide local intelligence which could sometimes forestall violent conflict between rival gangs.

Reward and Recognition Most gang-involved young people come from poor families in socially disadvantaged neighbourhoods (Pitts, 2008; Densley, 2014; Harding, 2014, Andell, 2020). And many are destined to be denied both reward and recognition in the conventional world. (Young, 1999). While, to the outside observer, the gang appears to offer most of them very modest rewards it offers a great deal of recognition, an elevated status in their locality as well as protection from their adversaries. What the interviews show, however, is that involvement with a football club, which has no obvious ties with the criminal justice or child protection services, and a

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prestigious ‘brand’ can offer a significant level of recognition and status without the risks involved in gang membership and County Lines drug dealing. As such, the CCO would appear to be an ideal vehicle for a gang prevention, diversion and desistance interventions. But such an intervention would need to be significant, in terms of its targeting, the time and attention it devotes to the young people targeted and its duration. Much of the research on gang desistance programmes suggests that they are successful while the young person in involved but that their impact tails off when the programme ends. Some of these young people will come from families in which their siblings, parents and possibly grandparents are involved in gang-related activity so the role of the club as a countervailing, pro-social force will be crucial. The main difference with a programme offered by a Premier League CCO is that it can offer sustained involvement, initially by an intensive, tailored, programme and latterly via the universal preventative offer of PL Kicks. Moreover, the CCOs do not carry the stigma of the welfare and criminal justice agencies with which many gang-involved young people are all too familiar. And in some cases, the clubs have also been able to provide young people with paid jobs as uniformed stewards on match days and serving in the club shop.

Staffing Strategies Several of the Premier League CCOs involved in gang work had recruited staff from their catchment area, some of whom had grown up in gangaffected neighbourhoods. This strategy had several advantages. Staff retained contact with friends and family in the neighbourhood and were aware of local gang activity. This enabled them to use this knowledge to target interventions and meant that they were ‘street wise’. This gave them insight into the lives of some of the young people with whom they worked and helped establish their credibility in the eyes of the young people. Harris & Seal call this Reciprocal Identification, exemplified in the quotation from the young person interviewed at Crystal Palace. These staff members were receiving in-service training, and some had progressed to part-time university level education. This was an important

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element in the strategy because it tended to insulate these workers from the well-documented pressures upon previously gang-involved youth workers and peer mentors from gang-involved peers, who may be friends with whom they grew up or, indeed, their brothers or cousins. However, as the CCO staff at Southampton observed, this can be high-risk work and so an accurate assessment of the potential dangers faced by workers is essential.

Community Involvement As Carlene Firmin (2020) notes, if we are to safeguard young people in gang-affected neighbourhoods, we must recognize that for them the risks are out there in the neighbourhood, where the experts seldom venture. The perpetrators are their peers and the problems lie, first and foremost in the dynamics of the neighbourhood rather than simply the behaviours, attitudes and beliefs of the young people. Traditional office-based, responses to the gang problem may improve the lot of some gang-involved individuals. However, they cannot anticipate gang violence and victimisation in order to make pre-emptive interventions. Nor can they respond to the, almost invariably unreported, victimisation of gang-involved and gang-affected girls and young women and their parents (Beckett et al., 2013). And they cannot mediate between potential adversaries in inter-gang violence which is the forum where most gang fatalities occur. In short, many safeguarding and criminal justice agencies are destined to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. In endeavouring to reduce the territorial animosities between different gangs, Arsenal is working in and between gang-affected estates. Crystal Palace is taking its services to gang hotspots in the community. Burnley by keeping contact with local mosques and schools, monitors the local gang problem. Southampton takes the PL Kicks programme to gangaffected neighbourhoods, Crystal Palace, Everton and Stoke work in gang-affected schools and Tottenham Hotspur works with the victims of violence who come into local hospital A&E departments. This is something which statutory agencies are seldom able to do. In many ways, their goals are akin to those of the highly successful Cure Violence programme

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developed by epidemiologist Gary Slutkin (et al., 2018) in Chicago. Slutkin argued that if violence is to be countered and contained interventionists must interrupt transmission, prevent future spread and change group norms.

References Andell, P. (2019). Thinking seriously about gangs: Towards a critical realist approach. Palgrave Macmillan. Barter C. Hargreaves P. Bracewell K. (with Professor John Pitts) (2020). BBC children in need and premier league charitable fund joint programme: Breaking the Cycle of Youth Violence (BCYV) Independent Evaluation Report, University of Central Lancashire. Beckett, H., Brodie, I., Factor, F., Melrose, M., Pearce, J. J., Pitts, J., ... & Warrington, C. (2013). It’s wrong—but you get used to it: A qualitative study of gang-associated sexual violence towards, and exploitation of, young people in England . London: The Children’s Commissioner for England. Densley J. (2014) How gangs work: An ethnography of violence, Palgrave/Macmillan. Firmin C. (2020) Contextual safeguarding, HM Inspectorate of Probation Academic Insights Harding, S. (2014). The street casino. Policy Press. Harding, S. (2020). County Lines. Bristol University Press. Harris, P., & Seal, M. (2016). Responding to Youth Violence Through Youth Work. Policy Press. Pitts, J. (2008). Reluctant gangsters: The changing face of youth crime. Routledge. Slutkin G. Ransford C. & Zvetina D. (2018). How the health sectorCan reduce violence by treating it as a contagion, AMA J Ethics. 20 20(1), 47–55. https://doi.org/10.1001/journalofethics.2018.20.1.nlit1-1801 Young J. (1999). The exclusive society, Sage Publications.

26 Using Ex-Gang Members as Peer Youth Workers Junior Smart

Introduction The different facets of peer mentoring particularly in relation to criminal justice continue to be examined within academia by, amongst others, Buck (2020), Creaney (2020), Nixon, (2020), McNeill and et al., (2012) and Maruna, (2010); each presenting a case that is both rational and compelling, whilst at the same time seeing peer mentoring largely through the lens of the peer mentor or those being mentored. In reviewing relevant literature, one set of voices that are missing are those from the other side of the table; those involved in the commissioning process or those who are required to make decisions based on the quality or legitimacy of such approaches. In order to fill this gap, my research was based not only on interviews with ex-gang members working as peer J. Smart (B) St. Giles Trust, London, England e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Andell and J. Pitts (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Youth Gangs in the UK , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99658-1_26

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mentors but also with individuals considered experts in their field but, by virtue of their roles, approach peer mentoring as users of their services. This chapter is based on a qualitative study, (c.f. Bachman et al., 2015), which explored the experiences of those involved, practically, in peer and relational support in cases of gang involvement and child criminal exploitation (CCE) and actual and potential commissioners of such services. The study aimed to establish the benefits of using this approach; whether it was more likely to effect change when those with lived experience of the issues being dealt with undertook the mentoring, the challenges their involvement presents and the gaps between the mentors’ objectives and the real life outcomes? In the case of those commissioning peer and relational support services, the methodology took the form of interviews with four anonymized respondents, senior figures in the charity sector, homelessness, drug abuse, serious group violence and serious case reviews in the UK and the US. Their combined experience in these fields totalled over 85 years.

Gangs and Gang Nominals Setting the stage for meaningful discussions rightfully requires clarification of definitions and terms of reference that will be discussed. Arguably, this is especially true when considering highly contentious and divisive labels such as ‘Gang’, and its associated terms ‘Gangs’ ‘Gang Member” and ‘Gang Nominal’. There are debates around the consistency, suitability and intent of its use within academia and social policy (Hallsworth, 2013). Scholars have not only pointed out how subjective the term is and that it represents different things to different people, but also how, owing to storytelling, sensationalism in the press and social media, the lines between fact and fiction are frequently blurred (Hallsworth, 2013). Others have called attention to the negative intent with which the label has been utilised and have demonstrated in some sectors how it has been used to racially profile and stigmatise individuals. This research adopted the definition of a gang adopted in the Centre for Social Justice, 2009 Report, Dying to Belong:

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A relatively durable, predominantly street-based group of young people who:- 1 see themselves (and are seen by others) as a discernible group; 2 engage in criminal activity and violence; 3 lay claim over territory (this is not necessary geographical territory but can include an illegal economy territory); 4 have some form of identifying structural feature; and 5 are in conflict with other, similar gangs. (Centre for Social Justice, 2009)

This definition provides us with a fairly solid foundation for considering gangs or, my preferred term, the ‘co-offending groups’ we are considering. Academics such as Harding (2014) and Densely (2013) continue to demonstrate that gang members are largely rational agents who act with autonomy, within their own spheres of a predefined but rarely documented set of rules. In the gang world, there are consequences and repercussions for those who don’t take notice of the rules or who break them and there are rivalries and conflicts between and within groups which frequently result in physical harm and even death as individuals compete for, as Harding (2014) describes it, social capital. None of this happens within a vacuum. For example, sociological studies identify a relationship between poverty, crime and social disorder. Similarly, psychological studies highlight the relationship between crime, deprivation, poor social mobility and marginalisation. Significant research in this area includes Thrasher (1927), Cohen (1955) Durkheim, (2013) Jankowski (1991) and Cloward and Ohlin (2013), whilst research such as that by Decker et al. (2009) explores how migration and ethnicity also has a bearing on gangs and their formation.

County Lines and Child Criminal Exploitation Academics and practitioners have long argued that neither are new concepts and that the only thing that has changed is how these people and networks have evolved and grown (Caluori et al., 2020). The Home Office (2018) in its report, which sets out the government’s strategy to tackle County Lines define them as:

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…a term used to describe gangs and organised criminal networks involved in exporting illegal drugs into one or more importing areas [within the UK], using dedicated mobile phone lines or other form of “deal line”. They are likely to exploit children and vulnerable adults to move [and store] the drugs and money and they will often use coercion, intimidation, violence (including sexual violence) and weapons.

Whilst the Home Office definition on County Lines is useful, it is incomplete. Research by McLean et al. (2019) show that criminal networks don’t just limit their activity to illegal drugs but also legal ‘highs’ which practitioners working in the field of drug treatment suggest can be equally harmful (Masters, 2020). County Lines are exploitative by design and are frequently linked to human and sex-trafficking activities which go largely unreported (D˛ebowska, 2007). In the same report, The Home Office (2017) define Child Criminal Exploitation (CCE) as: Child Criminal Exploitation occurs where an individual or group takes advantage of an imbalance of power to coerce, control, manipulate or deceive a child or young person under the age of 18 into any criminal activity (a) in exchange for something the victim needs or wants, and/or (b) for the financial or other advantage of the perpetrator or facilitator and/or (c) through violence or the threat of violence. The victim may have been criminally exploited even if the activity appears consensual. Child Criminal Exploitation does not always involve physical contact; it can also occur through the use of technology. (Home Office, 2017)

The NHS definition of Modern-Day Slavery arguably carries significance because although it fails to acknowledge the role of technology and social media it does focus on the vulnerabilities and the methods used by these co-offending groups and criminal networks in day-to-day County Lines activity: the recruitment, movement, harbouring or receiving of children, women or men through the use of force, coercion, abuse of vulnerability, deception or other means for the purpose of exploitation. (Such et al., 2020)

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Defining the Intervention Model Spectrum When we talk about intervention, we mean ‘to get involved in order to stop, change or supress’ (Densley, 2013). In the world of County Lines, intervention frequently means more than to promote desistance. In fact, these interventions attempt to break down negative association with criminal groups, disrupt violent situations and promote gang exit through support and the provision of legitimate opportunities for those ready to exit. A valuable way to examine gang intervention is to consider it in a non-linear fashion and ask who would be implementing an intervention and why? Observed in this way, an intervention continuum becomes apparent. One with enforcement agencies at one end and supportive organisations at the other. Enforcement agencies include the police, and other criminal justice agencies. They have a range of strategies at their disposal to counter crime, violence and criminal activity. Some of these place police at the core with focussed objectives; to remove and incarcerate those breaking laws, creating victims and causing harm (for example, stop and search and County Lines intensity weeks where they take a focussed approach within a specific area in order to deliver a ‘crackdown’) (Coomber et al., 2019). At other times (such as with the public health approach), the police are part of a larger partnership alongside voluntary sector organisations and health departments (Shrotri et al., 2019). At the opposite end to law enforcement sit the voluntary and charity sectors which, whilst they may have similar goals (to reduce crime and victims) have distinctively different ideologies and approaches. For them, intervention frequently means empathetic support and guidance, access to additional services, the building of relationships and the coming together of networks. They argue that individuals caught up in such activity come from marginalised sections of our society and face multiple and complex disadvantages. They argue that their approach works to address the social imbalances and deficits thereby promoting desistance. (Seal & Harris, 2016). Both approaches have merits and shortfalls. Stop and search is one such example. It remains a controversial tool that many argue damages

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police-community relations, yet its approach is lauded by public opinion as a ‘deterrent’. If we speak to families that have lost their children to knife crime, many will argue that more stop and search is needed not less (Densley, 2013). Pitts (2016) argues that for these reasons amongst others, punitive measures have persisted in the face of alternatives, and despite law enforcement agencies repeatedly stating that they cannot arrest their way out of complex problems such as gang crime and county lines. Arrest and incarceration present a seemingly quick win for the public whereas the third sector counter that such approaches are unethical, expensive and fail to achieve long-term results. They argue that in the long run their methods, which are human-centred, holistic and supportive, are cheaper, more sustainable and addresses the underlying causes of unwanted behaviour (Boyce et al., 2009).

The Positive Role of Peer Mentoring and Peer Support Peer mentoring is an approach which utilises individuals, often those with ‘Lived Experience’ (LE), to provide guidance and support. Peer mentors can be employed or they can be volunteers who work with individuals and groups. Their work can be built into the work of an agency or organization (see, for example, the St Giles Trust and Prisoners’ Education Trust). Their work is ‘holistic’ endeavouring to deal with the underlying issues and building and sustaining educative and supportive relationships (Buck, 2016). The value of peer mentoring and support has been recognised within academia and its practice has been adopted in the UK, particularly in the criminal justice system where peer mentors are estimated to make up as much as 92% of criminal justice mentors in parts of the UK (Willoughby et al., 2013). In carrying out an empirical review of the current evidence relating to peer mentoring within the Criminal Justice System, Buck (2020) drew attention to the various positive effects that peer mentoring can create, for example it can have a valid role in desistance by helping people leave

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criminal pasts behind, it can connect them with services and employment that individuals would not typically access and therefore provide opportunities and it can even play a part in system reform by using the ‘LE voice’ and showing how and where change needs to occur.

Peer Mentoring and Its Role in Desistance The case for reducing offending and re-offending endures both within academia and social policy for many different reasons; the impact on victims and communities often carries with it appeals for harsher sentencing to ‘deter’ people from offending, whilst for calls for penal reform, alternatives to prison demands a stronger focus on treatment and reintegration (Jennings and et al., 2017; Newburn, 2007). One aspect of the punitive approach which cannot be easily ignored is the cost. According to a recent Annual Report by the Ministry of Justice (MOJ, 2020), each prison place was costed at £44,640; a sum comparable to the yearly fees at prestigious private school Eton (Eton, 2020) except this fee is paid by the taxpayer. Given that forty-eight per cent of those who spend time in one of Her Majesty’s prisons will go on to re-offend within a year, the ‘churn’; the cycle of offending, arrest and incarceration is very costly. A recent piece of research by Newton and et al. (2019) followed a cohort of offenders from 2016 over the course of a year. They estimated the economic and social cost of reoffending to be £18.1 billion. Arguably, this is a substantial cost and one can only imagine the benefits to society if even half that money could be saved. LE is a term which has become a way to refer to mentors with criminal convictions. It is widely acknowledged both in data and in research that those with convictions face numerous obstacles in terms of their rehabilitation and desistence including, amongst other things, inequality in terms of gaining employment, stigma around disclosure, having an income and dissolving any existing debts, access to housing and benefits and the knock on effect that all of these have on their health and emotional well-being (Bushway et al., 2012; Hunter et al., 2018; Nixon, 2020).

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Part of effective rehabilitation is enabling people to move forward with their lives; that is part of their narrative of change and this narrative becomes even more compelling when people can ‘see themselves’ within new roles and living out positive, meaningful lives and identities (Giordano et al., 2002; Marsh, 2011). When people cannot move forward, even once they have completed all that is expected of them through their sentence, we have what is known as frustrated desistence (Wright, 2017). This can be one of the contributing factors to the well-documented ‘revolving door’, the circuit of prison and recidivism (Freeman, 2003). Taking this into consideration the relationship between peer mentoring and desistence is both purposeful and valid. On a personal level, mentors can act as role models who offer their lived experiences as inspiration for individuals to change (Buck, 2020), because of their degrees of empathy they can encourage self-confidence and hope for the future (Lopez-Humphreys & Teater, 2020), they can reduce feelings of isolation and increase feelings of self-worth and self-sufficiency and they can reduce and remove voids between the mentee and services they would not normally find accessible (Buck, 2020). On a practical level, a peer mentoring post may offer an individual with a criminal record employment and an income where they would otherwise struggle and in doing so provides a way where they can contribute something to society (Nixon, 2020).

Recognising the Significance of Peer Networks and Peer Influence The academic literature has consistently demonstrated the link between criminal behaviour and exposure to negative, criminal or antisocial peer networks. The data shows that friends become the most important role models in the adolescent years, which is a period of heightened vulnerability. Consequently, those role models may have a profound influence (Agnew, 1991; Weerman, 2011). One of the most consistent findings dating back to the 1930s with Shaw and McKay’s research (1942) was the discovery that more than 80% of teenagers appearing before the court had peer accomplices. These groups are often referred to as a ‘peer

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network,’ or ‘peer influence,’ ‘peer effects’ (Haynie, & Kreager, 2013). Studies have shown that not only is there a correlation between committing crime and length of time spent with negative personal networks but also the strength of the individual’s attachment to them and levels of selfcontrol (Wright et al., 2001). In addition, scholars such as Rokven et al. (2017) have shown that levels of victimisation are lower for those who were able to stay apart from their negative peer groups. Taking this into account, peer groups are important when we consider interventions because if negative outcomes are a manifestation of negative associations then it follows that positive outcomes may be achieved through the same channels. The value of peer relationships was articulated in a very personal way by one of my respondents: I’ve just finished interviewing about 40, young people and nearly every one of them spoke about the importance of peer networks, friendships and influence… in adolescence they’re not particularly interested in the adult view of the world…so it’s unsurprising young people said that it would help them to have peer support, to be talking to somebody who’s gone through what they’ve been through, and to help them kind of navigate their journey and to think about how they respond and how they grow, and how they can make better choices. But talk to professionals and they say, well, that’s a bit risky. Actually…well that’s kind of what happens every day of the week for young people. They either do that through a kind of informal situation which is risky because they seek that out themselves or we establish and support services that already do so and do so successfully… (S1)

Understanding the Unique Needs of the Client Group Within the field of support work, frequently the client demographic is drawn from marginalised and vulnerable sectors of the society, these are individuals, families and communities where there are frequently multiple complex needs and these coexist with a lack of trust towards agencies and services (Case, 2006). There might be issues of crime,

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victimisation, poverty, violence, low social mobility, low income, exploitation and a range of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE’s) and any number of these might be coupled with additional barriers such as language, negative experiences with services, authority or education, possible existing criminal history and the possible culminative impact these have on their mental health. Peer mentoring or relational support by itself isn’t going to sort a housing situation for example or an issue with a client’s benefits, but it might be the conduit, the starting point to the much needed connection with a network of other services. Addressing any number of these issues, there is a recognition of the resources and time required which, frequently is a scarce commodity amongst services and their frameworks (Andersson, 2013; Pitts, Pugh, & Turner, 2002), yet for the clients or service users it may be the first time they actually open up and trust somebody to be their advocate or their assistant. It is here that peer mentoring, particularly that which harnesses LE, appears to have an advantage (Parkes et al., 2019). They have the time to build relationships and this is bolstered by greater degrees of empathy from the workers involved, furthermore, when they are well placed; as part of another existing service for example, they benefit from the expanded networks which can assist in meeting an individual’s needs (McNeill et al., 2012). its all about having those types of relationships, those types of networks where if you need to, you can provide options, options that the young people don’t necessarily have direct access to. So a conversation will happen. Someone will say right. They want to get into Finance and as a team we scan our networks and we make it happen and just like that a person’s trajectory is potentially changed by the options they now have…. (S1)

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The Benefits Peer Mentoring Affords as a Localised Response Because peer mentoring settings include community and outreach settings (Buck, 2020). It has a level of localisation and can be more responsive to the client and community needs as opposed to large systemdriven agencies which operate at a distance and require multiple levels of sign off to effect action (Davies, & Merton, 2009). In the arena of co-offending groups, exploitation and violence often this advantage can play a crucial role in diffusing situations and topping them from erupting or intensifying. As the workers are in situ and because they have built relationships on the ground and are deemed to be ‘trusted’ individuals, often by people and communities which may have withdrawn from or be distrusting of services, they are more likely to achieve positive outcomes (Andersson, 2013). Three of my respondents chose to use their personal experiences as a way of illustrating the advantages of being able to engage with families and communities on the ground: When you live and breathe this work you have to go to where the people are because you know that they actually receive very little support. I have been to community meetings where someone has been stabbed to death and not seen anyone else, not police, not any of the support agencies, yet go to the partnership meetings or watch TV coverage and there will be like ten of them all with an opinion…you end up thinking no wonder there is mistrust… (S1) The only way you can be effective at supressing violence is if you target everyone at risk and that means families, children, the whole community…. when those people trust you, you get told things that ‘agencies’ don’t, you get to hear when trouble is brewing and it is because you are armed with that knowledge and trust that you can step in and hopefully avert the worst… (S3) We would be out there and you know something is about to kick off because of what the young people have told you that they have seen on

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social media… then as a team it will be like who’s reaching out, who’s going to do this? Then I will always be on call to debrief, the amount of debriefs I’ve done with other young professionals on a bench at 10 o’clock at night after they’ve just had to go and intervene because they know something’s going to go horrifically wrong. (S2)

One of my respondents talked about how, because of the level of trust his team had established they were able to mobilise the community to act in a powerful ways which mitigated the need for police presence: Every time there was an incident, there was a lot of saturation from police. We made a stand and said we didn’t want heavy law enforcement because we knew the community tensions were high and didn’t want just more presence from police which at that time would just alienate people even more. So, we started doing these Community responses where it wasn’t the police, it was a community. We would have a protest, we’d have signs that said stop killing people, we would have a bullhorn, we would go to the scene of the crime. All within 48 hours of the incident, we wanted people to come out and voice their disapproval. We had a lot of community groups that were part of it. We supported them to lead it. But we ensured that every incident was responded to whether it was a three year old girl that got shot, which hundreds of people would come up or if it was like a 21 year old guy who’s dealt drugs in the past where 20 people would show. But, we wanted to respond to all of it…for us that was really important. (S4)

The Value of Lived Experience Within Peer Mentoring Until relatively recently the value of LE remained largely unexplored academically (Sandhu, 2017). It’s role in supporting those at risk of violence in gangs and organised criminal networks is perhaps more practised than academically explored or examined. However, this doesn’t reduce its relevance. In that sphere, where engagement with services (no

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matter how reluctantly) can literally mean the difference between life and death who that person chooses to disclose to and why is of major importance. A 40 year old guy who’s main issue is that he’s homeless is not going to be too fussed about who he divulges information to … You know he might prefer it if a person working with him came from a similar, cultural background to him. Maybe had lived experience of homelessness or maybe was from the same ethnic group, same town, supported the same football club but, it’s not critical, because to admit to being homeless is not illegal for starters and there’s nobody who’s going to threaten you or do you harm because you’ve told a homelessness worker your homeless. It might be embarrassing but that’s where it stops. It’s not something that’s going to put you at risk. If you take a 14 year old boy who owes 700 pounds to a drug gang because he’s just been arrested and lost a lot of drugs, the information he carries and divulges is potentially a risk, a risk of arrest, a risk to his family or worse of death, so he’s not going to open up to a first person who says, just tell us your story, if he’s going to open up at all, he’s going to require a lot more in the way of reassurance and the credibility of a worker is a large part of that. It’s not the only thing, of course you can get credible workers who may not have lived experience, some people are better at winning trust than others. But what we’ve seen again and again is that these disclosures of really, serious high risk stuff are more likely to come to the worker who’s got the lived experience…The credibility. (S2)

St Giles Trust is an award-winning charity with over twenty years of experience in developing and delivering peer-led services. Their first peer-led project began in Wandsworth Prison through training and then deploying serving prisoners to offer resettlement support to fellow inmates. At that time, peer-led approaches were new and justifiably met with scepticism and resistance as agencies neither ‘trusted’ serving inmates nor saw the value in the service. However, the results of this approach were evidently positive and so St Giles were able to extend their programmes further across the prison estate and deploy it in the community (Gough, 2017).

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In 2010, Frontier Economics provided an independent evaluation into St Giles’ peer advisor model. They determined that for every £1 invested there was £8.54 saving to the taxpayer (PBE, 2010). In the following years, St Giles Trust became one of the first recipients of a Social Impact Bond (SIB), a form of payment by results. This is where private, nongovernment investors pay for an intervention, and if certain results are achieved, are paid back their initial investment plus an additional return on that investment. The results for the SIB were again positive the service achieving a 9.74% reduction in re-offending and resulting in a payout for all invested parties (Disley et al., 2019). There are a few unique characteristics noted by evaluations of the Trust’s work. Firstly, their peer advisor programme professionally trains and develops people; they work towards an accredited Level 3 Advice and Guidance qualification whilst undertaking supported work placements either with St Giles or partner organisations (Boyce et al., 2009). Secondly, they employ people with lived experience; over 40% of their paid staff have had experience of the criminal justice system, homelessness, substance misuse, mental health challenges and other issues. Within their gangs and CCE service SOS that figure is over 90%. (Hunter & Boyce, 2009). Peer mentors are deployed in many different arenas, ranging from alcohol recovery to rehabilitation in probation settings and from education to mental health within the voluntary sector (Tewksbury et al., 2004). However, the emphasis on training and employment (especially for those with convictions) is an important differentiating factors between St Giles and other agencies. And this is especially important given the correlation between unemployment, offending and reoffending (T2A, 2021). By employing those with convictions, St Giles demonstrates through action that they both recognise the inherent needs of that group (to earn a proper salary and to move past their offending) and place a value on Lived Experience (Brunton-Smith & Hopkins, 2013). The values that those with lived experience offer within the peer support role was recognised by my respondents. Firstly, their apparent increased level of empathy:

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You don’t need to have lived experience but believe me it helps in terms of empathy. The likelihood of any intervention being successful is going to be really low if you don’t have empathy and I mean really have it. Of course there’s problems but problems can be solved even the ones you don’t have language for. But if you are not very good at putting and seeing yourself from the clients perspective you will only ever be working at a really superficial level with tokenistic levels of success… (S4)

Secondly, their heightened dedication to the task because of what the job and its responsibilities mean: It is just my opinion but in terms of a workforce those that have Lived Experience tend to give you more because to them a job and an income can mean everything. They tend to give the clients more because they understand the consequences and repercussions if they take their eyes off the ball, for example if they miss a call or fail to show up. Finally, they have a relateability and authenticity that other staff just don’t have, and that is something that can’t be faked… (S1)

Its comments such as these which are consistent with the findings of Buck (2018), Kavanagh and Borrill (2013) in that peer mentors are motivated by more than a salary or achieving a target but by an emotional awareness of what their mentees are going through. In carrying out their roles, they are authentic, credible and relatable. These are common factors cited by Harding (2020), Densley (2013) and Pitts (2008) within existing research around gangs and CCE, having positive role models, being protected from victimisation and being amongst those who they can relate to are commonly quoted reasons for involvement (Lenzi et al., 2015). Similarly, it was this awareness and relatability that two of my respondents who in talking about the commissioning process reflected upon: I think commissioners have come to know and value of Lived Experience because they know the groups and individuals they want to engage with

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wont just work with ‘anyone’ they need that extra relateability … Hard to Reach, the clue is in the name… (S2) …in the past we have been commissioned to recruit someone to provide gangs work and then they ask to see the DBS and if it is clear they say ‘that’s not what we wanted. We wanted someone that person could really relate to’… (S3)

One of my peer respondents remarked how they felt that despite the numerous obvious benefits peer work remained an under-utilised opportunity at the commissioning level owing to perceptions of risk. …there’s a really valid place for peer work…however I think that commissioners and policymakers remain very nervous about it and about the risks involved… (S1)

Lived Experience and the Perceptions of Risk The negative perceptions of risk is arguably one of the key reasons that peer mentoring, particularly that which utilises individuals with LE, remained until relatively recently largely within voluntary, unpaid capacities (Creaney, 2020). Attitudes towards individuals with criminal records continue to be a barrier to their employment, carrying with it inherent stigma, thoughts and feelings about what risks previous offending may pose to staff, to reputation or to the vulnerable people that organisation is supporting (Fahey et al., 2006; Uggen, et al., 2014). My respondents, who all work at senior commissioning and delivery levels, are largely supportive of LE as a model talked about the issues they faced in using those with convictions. Firstly, the perception of risk that these individuals pose within a safeguarding context. I think within a safeguarding context, it needs to be much better explored with safeguarding professionals as to why they feel there is such a challenge around safety and decision making? Because on a very practical

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level, if the young person is already being referred to services they’re already in a space where they’re not making the best decisions…otherwise that referral would never happen, that service offer would never have happened. Safeguarding professionals are very powerful, safeguarding is probably the most important space around young people in terms of support services. So I think the risk then is that these professionals deem that the young person’s choices are going to be further badly influenced by a bad influence. And when that happens they’re not seeing the world through the eyes of that young person. He’s already got bad connections, bad influences and actually, there’s a balance. Reputable services and that type of peer support, utilises the lived experience to enable them to make better choices. (S1) When we first entered this space, the notion of using offenders and even worse employing them carried a lot of stigma, there was a lack of trust amongst our partners and underneath it all…fear. The DBS highlighted their convictions but they were often so determined to put their past behind them that they would give us the most in terms of dedication to the task…of course, risk and how we assess it is always an issue…but it was never as bad as others may think. (S3) When I started doing this work it wasn’t in a good place when we’re talking about using those with lived experience…there was a program in Chicago previously, that didn’t go so well and left a bad taste in people’s mouths because they had guys who used to be in the streets and ended up using, misusing, their positions to give information to wrong people. I don’t think the intentions were anywhere near as bad as people thought, but the damage was done. Nobody wanted to see guys with lived experience in these roles again… (S4)

One of my respondents voiced their frustration and drew comparisons with other institutions as a way of illustrating how much more readily those with LE and convictions are condemned for their mistakes: How many times have people failed? How many times have people for example in the police messed up? How many operations have Doctors made mistakes or Judges sent innocent people down? Do we say get rid

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of those institutions? No, we say they are ‘bad apples’ lets learn from that mistake…how come we never afford a second chance to those who have broken the law but are trying to do better. (S4)

The narrative, language and attitude of hope for those with convictions rather than the discourse of offenders as hopeless, risky or dangerous, are key to successful journeys of desistance (McNeill, et al., 2012). Sensitivities around risk have been touched upon by other academics (for example Kavanagh & Borrill, 2013) although arguably it is worthy of more exploration in terms of empirical data. In investigating the paradox of mentoring adults in the criminal justice system, Hucklesby and Wincup (2014) propose that part of the solution lies in being realistic about risk and balancing this with effective support structures. This is congruent with one of the observations made by my respondent: Criminal records are a lot more common than people realise, speaking as an employer, if someone has or discloses their criminal history you know what you are dealing with, you can make informed decisions and have the right layers of support in place…in our experience we tend to have more problems with people who don’t have criminal convictions because these are the ones who are unknown and often where there is deviancy it has gone under the radar… (S1)

Issues Within the Commissioning Process Two of my respondents cited the commissioning process as one of the core reasons for things going wrong in relation to risk. They argue the process itself fosters a culture which favours minimal rather than realistic costings for services and it is the manifestation of those insufficiencies (the lack of adequate managerial support and / or clinical supervision for example) which ultimately produce mistakes. Accordingly, they argue the need for properly funded services: From the very top, from the point at which money is released through funders requires a change in focus… they should only be interested in

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the quality of relationships and the outcomes for young people and not interested in how many bums on seats and how many assessments have been done because that is just a factory and it’s a factory that quite frankly anybody can do…but if the turning point is established relationship and trust, and that it’s the acknowledgement that that takes time. (S1) The real risks come into play where it’s poorly funded and it’s poorly run. The training is poor and people that are commissioning the service are looking for huge outcomes very quickly for little investment. It wasn’t too long ago people were trying to buy support interventions in boroughs in London for as little as £15,000. What quality are you expecting to get for £15,000? How many excluded, difficult young people can you make a significant difference to? Where is the supervision or clinical support? Don’t tell me you are buying a proper service…. (S2)

These are valid points highlighted by academics such as Pitts (2016) and Turgoose (2016), who both draw correlations between levels of funding and the efficacy of an intervention? How much does it cost for a life? These questions are basically being asked and answered during each commissioning process where the difference between a good and a bad service can mean the difference between lives saved and lives put at risk. The consequences of a cost-saving culture can be witnessed at every stage within serious case reviews (Mason, 2019); cutbacks to the workforce leads to frontline workers with the best will, striving for the best outcomes but working within arguably obstructive frameworks, as a result they don’t have the time to build effective working partnerships with either other organisations or their clients. They also lack buyin from their management because they too are also working within reduced unsupportive frameworks. All of this culminates in instances where information and opportunities are missed, families are bounced around services, often they are moved because it is a ‘quick fix’ and sometimes this happens because services feel like they are out of options. All of this means increased risks are taken and that services struggle to keep up against their organised criminal counterparts who are quicker to evolve, adapt and communicate (Harding, 2014).

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In this landscape particularly of austerity and cost savings, there have been ongoing concerns that peer mentoring will be seen as a source of free labour, which for those with LE and/or convictions (and consequently may have limited employment options) has the potential to be exploitive (Nixon, 2020). This concern was raised by two of my respondents who approach the topic from their different perspectives, firstly the deployment of peer mentoring in a voluntary capacity without qualifications: People may like the principle of mentoring but that doesn’t mean they understand the practice…there is still this idea that it is some kind of bolt on that can be delivered by ‘anybody’ and can be delivered by volunteers and without any form of qualification…it’s a recipe for disaster. (S1)

Buck (2021) warns against the use of volunteer peer mentors within the criminal justice system, highlighting the high personal toll it can take on individuals including burnout and secondary trauma especially for those who are frequently drawing on their own personal experiences. Instead, she advocates the implementation of good-quality training, support and supervision as vital aspects to promote the welfare of both mentors and mentees. Another account from a different respondent highlights issues concerned with possible imbalances of power and their observations of those with convictions potentially being exploited by agencies, observations noted by academics such as Buck (2018); Brown and Ross, (2010). The treatment you see of people with convictions is terrible to see, often they are just wheeled out under the guise of giving something back by different organisations but when you speak to them they are frequently unpaid and even on the rare occasion when they are, it is minimum wage…that’s not going to help them in the long term move on…that’s why I am proud of the way we try and invest and develop people… (S3)

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Labelling, Liminality and the Lived Experience Transition Working with the issues of CCE, County Lines and violence requires a joined up approach, as such peer mentors with LE will frequently be working alongside those with non-offending backgrounds within probation / criminal justice settings. How they are seen, their experience of how they are treated and whether they are seen as professionals with a level of expertise or whether the label of the past is carried with them become crucial factors for those trying to desist or develop new identities (Buck, 2014; Giordano et al., 2002). Turner (1967) defined liminality as the transition between identity states. In terms of desistence, the end goal should be to receive a new status and role within society. The community setting for peer work yields some tough emotional spaces for those with convictions and LE to work within. These are individuals that by virtue have histories have experienced disadvantage, marginalisation or trauma. If these individuals are then in environments where they are not validated by others, defined negatively or unduly critically, if they end up in roles where there are detrimental power imbalances, Turner (1967) argues not only is this ethically wrong but it presents additional obstacles to their desistence. This was touched upon by one of my respondents: For the first number of years we were looked at through the risk averse lens, invited to meetings only to speak about the client and then told to leave…then they realised we were able to do things they weren’t and now we are asked to advise on many of their toughest cases… (S1)

Thankfully, it seems that negative perceptions of those with LE has gradually changed over time. Much of this appears to stem from positive outcomes at a practice level (such as those seen St Giles and other charity organisations) where it is recognised that they bring additional value to a range of services but also from qualitative examples such as those cited by Buck (2018) or Nixon (2020). Two of my respondents talked about

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the pleasing shift from enforcement to relational practice and trust in organisations doing work on the ground. I think we are seeing the shift away from enforcement and towards much more relational practice. I think moving towards more trauma informed systems of care. I think are really significant advancements… we now talk relational practice, systemic practice, trauma informed systems of care…I’m really excited to see the willingness to bring people with experience into decision making. (S2) They wanted this type of approach to be more law enforcement driven…But if law enforcement is driving this you won’t have those relationships in communities...Not that they can’t work with police, but because their motivation is to ultimately lock them up and that’s not the best outcome…My job is to get them to see. To look at this differently. Everybody is going to win if there’s less people committing crimes and violence and shooting. Peer mentoring is just one way of helping people change their trajectory…one way which results in a win win … (S4)

Conclusion It is arguably very fortunate to capture the view of respondents that operate at a senior level in relation to peer mentoring. Although their views cannot be generalised to the rest of the population nor be representative of organisations or bodies concerned at the commissioning level, their perspectives offer unique insights. They confirm that peer support within criminal justice continues to be utilised and developed and that its implementation as a tool of desistence is valued. Some of the strengths identified or confirmed include the greater degrees of empathy which LE provides, being small and localised enough to be responsive to the changing needs of the client group and its ability to build relationships within otherwise time-restricted frameworks. Peer mentoring has been shown to not only support the efforts of desistence of the mentee but also the ongoing journey of desistence of the mentor. In contrast, the fact that the respondents highlighted negative attitudes associated with using

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those with LE particularly for vulnerable marginalised groups shows that there is still some way to go to overcome the negative stigmas associated for those with criminal records. This continues the ongoing discourses around desistence and the value those with convictions can bring to society. However, St Giles Trust is one agency which has shown that with the right support people with convictions can make a real difference. One of the last issues raised was regarding the commissioning process and how the culture needs to be changed in order to overcome the race to the bottom in terms of costs against possible benefits. One such point that the insights have raised is that cheaper rarely equates to better and in fact can increase levels of risk particularly in high risk areas such as cooffending groups and criminal networks. Therefore, there is an argument for sustainable funding and quality assurance in order to deliver services that are effective, suitable and most importantly safe.

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27 Criminal and Sexual Exploitation in County Lines: Voices from Affected Communities Paul Andell

Introduction The National Crime Agency in their 2017 National Threats Assessment inform us that, The concept of county lines is the supply of drugs from urban hubs to county towns - usually associated with urban street gangs and is a key driver for other criminality. (NCA National Threats Assessment, 2017)

They go on to add that a key feature of County lines is the persistent and systematic exploitation of young and vulnerable persons and that young girls are vulnerable to sexual exploitation. Practitioners, the public and the press are beginning to note the impact of these new drug distribution networks (Andell & Pitts, 2018). P. Andell (B) University of Suffolk, Suffolk, England e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Andell and J. Pitts (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Youth Gangs in the UK , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99658-1_27

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In their Look Closer campaign, the Children’s Society (2021) argues that everyone has a role to play in protecting children and vulnerable young people from abuse and exploitation. Their campaign with National County Lines Co-ordination Centre and British Transport Police is focused towards public spaces where exploitation may be most visible but also includes online environments like gaming platforms and social media. Despite these efforts, statutory partnerships such as Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hubs and Crime and Disorder Partnerships have been slow to implement appropriate interventions, often being hampered by competing priorities and diminishing resources. Moreover, efforts are sometimes not helped by the growing ranks of gang experts and gang talkers (Hallsworth & Young, 2008) who frame interventions in narrow retrospective understandings of experience rather than relying on current evidence. This can sometimes lead to unhelpful multi-agency power dynamics (Crawford, 1999) resulting in ineffective strategies and the targeting of inappropriate interventions towards the wrong people at the wrong place and time (Andell & Pitts, 2018). In order to sharpen multi-agency processes, real-time information loops should be key to strategic approaches in order to ground community safety practices in the realities of those who live and work in affected neighbourhoods through two-way information flows. By reflecting on some of the lived experiences of participants whose lives have been affected by County lines, it is hoped the importance of listening to those affected can be foregrounded and new inclusive partnership arrangements forged with communities.

Praxis and Practice In safeguarding practices and interventions aimed towards young people involved in County lines, increasing attention is given to integrated community-based teams. In these teams, professionals are charged with the responsibility to both empower and protect vulnerable young people in complex social environments. This role can be arguably described as a hybrid model of youth leadership, community development and

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child protection work. Interventions are likely to involve professional assessments, referrals and pedagogic interventions needed to address the complexities of both care and control to equip young people to make informed choices in difficult circumstances. The Child Safeguarding Review Panel (2020) suggests that many professionals are involved with children of concern but often professionals have little understanding of the complexity or context in which child criminal exploitation takes place. Integrated diverse skill sets are required of professionals in multiagency teams who work in gang-affected neighbourhoods. The literature regarding youth leadership from the US informs us that workers involved in youth programme leadership may perform several distinct functions from offering emotional support to acting as an advocate. This involves adopting the role of friend (Young, 1999), parent (Hirsch, 2005), mentor (Rhodes, 2004) or teacher (Halpern, 2005). In order to stimulate practice discussions and service planning, it is important to hear the voices of the actors involved in the social milieu of County Lines. Below the chapter sets out some of the experiences encountered in a recent action research project designed to assess and address harms arising from violence and sexual exploitation associated with transitioning criminal economies in a County town in South East England. As part of the study interviews were conducted with more than 60 respondents who self-identified as having knowledge of gangs and gang life (Andell & Pitts, 2017), Case studies have been extracted from field work interviews to illustrate the complexity and context in which services and practices need to adapt to if they are to effectively enhance the life chances of gang-involved participants. A useful way to illustrate the constructions and reconfigurations of those experiencing gang life is through case studies (Crotty, 1998). The case studies below have been purposively selected to provide in-depth explanations of social behaviours which calls into question the often assumed wisdom of established professional services deployed to reduce the harms of those affected by County lines. The chapter relies on the diverse experiences, within a common framework of exploitation, recorded through in-depth interviews. The causal mechanisms of these experiences are detailed elsewhere (Andell, 2019).

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Extracted interviews were utilised from the experiences of a 17-yearold gang involved young woman, an older former user dealer of class A drugs, a parent of a 17-year-old gang involved young man and a focus group conducted with young women aged 12–21. Respondents identified themselves as being from a range of ethnic backgrounds including White British, White Eastern European, Black African Caribbean and Black African, the largest group were of mixed heritage. Although the interviews constituted personal experiences of gang culture, the presenting actualities of participants helped construct a knowable world of gangs by contextualising accounts in a broader world independent of the perceptions of it (Andell, 2019; Matthews, 2014; Pitts, 2016). Common discourses from the interviews were of violence (Short, 1997) grooming (London CEOP, 2011; LCJB, 2010) and sexual exploitation (Firmin, 2015, Jago & Pearce, 2008, Melrose, 2012). Some of the respondents appeared to have an awareness of the dynamics involved and were beginning to reflexively challenge perceived social realities. These insights were useful in order to make specific recommendations for strategies and practices to address the harms arising from gang culture in specific places. The following case study is a brief overview of Z a young woman who became involved with gangs in London and who at the time of writing was accommodated in a County Town.

A Case Study of Z Z moved to the County town from London for a residential care placement following a court case where the judge decided to give Z ‘one last chance’. It was assumed that Z’s offending was at a serious level due to the implied threat of a custodial sentence. Z had been accommodated at a residential children’s home for 10 months and according to her own assessment Z had shown improvement by ‘getting back on track’ and keeping her ‘head down’. Prior to life at the residential unit, it is fair to say that, like many other looked after children, Z’s lifestyle and social circumstances could be described as chaotic. Z is of mixed heritage and spoke briefly about a troubled

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home life with her mother (who had alcohol issues) and step father. She described school life as being disruptive, Z said she was bullied at school for being Muslim and wearing a head scarf. Z reports that as a younger child she had personal items taken from her by other children at school. Z subsequently developed anger issues and at around age 11 began to act out at school by slamming doors, throwing furniture and was subsequently placed on report. Z then began to truant, smoke cannabis and drink alcohol. Around this time, Z began to steal from high-street shops (mainly i phones to sell on for cash). Z became known to the police who advised her to ‘fix up’. However, the constraining social realities for Z and others like her are such, that over simplified advice based on individual choice is often not enough to change behaviour or circumstance. Cuevas et al. (2013) argue that being victimised at any point in time is associated with higher odds of delinquency, substance abuse, arrests and convictions in late adolescence and adulthood. However, rather than individualising young people as receptacles of risk, Pitts (2016) argues that human behaviours should be understood in the contexts in which they arise. He utilises Bordieu (1990) to provide a more relevant framework of analysis. These differing approaches have implications for a range of possible interventions for work with young people from gang-affected neighbourhoods. For many criminally exploited young people, the risks are in the gang-affected neighbourhoods where many of the young people live and where the experts rarely venture; the perpetrators are their peers and the problem lies, first and foremost in the dynamics of the neighbourhood rather than the behaviours, attitudes and beliefs of individual young people trapped in the social field of the gang. Young people tend to know more than they are given credit for and most are generally aware of the kinds of support and interventions, in the neighbourhood, in the school and in their peer group, which could ameliorate the harms arising their situation. Firmin (2017) makes progress towards including a community-based responses to address some safeguarding deficits with a ‘contextual safeguarding’ approach. This approach considers neighbourhood and other spaces frequented by vulnerable young people at risk of extra-familiar abuse. Firmin suggests that a range of stakeholders have responsibility to protect and safeguard children in these spaces. However,

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while situationally the activation of these networks may go some way to reduce harms to children, the underlying structural causal tendencies which underpin both the power dynamics of abuse and failures of disproportionate support are left undisturbed and therefore a culture of abuse may reproduce itself as agents often reproduce the norms and resources of a specific social field (Moghadam-Saman, 2019). Recent research suggests benefits of working with families in neighbourhoods utilising trained peer workers (Devine, 2015). However, much depends on the neighbourhood resources available and how this type of support is animated. In the shorter term, for example, when threats are potentially lethal and imminent, it may be appropriate to remove the individual from a dangerous environment or neighbourhood, but unfortunately this sometimes results in placements which are equally damaging or interventions which are overly individualised. Specialist fostering placements are a possibility which may be considered in such situations (Staines et al., 2015). At age 15, Z was removed from her neighbourhood by her mother and sent to Kenya for 9 months with the hope that she would learn better behaviour. On her return, Z said she wanted to be more grown up to frighten those who were bullying her and she subsequently started to hang out with much older people who were aged 21. Z reports that these older people influenced her in a negative way and she began to drive for a local gang who were ‘bagging up’ and delivering class A drugs. It is important to understand the cultural dynamics that underpin gang involvement in relatively deprived neighbourhoods which are often disproportionately populated by minoritised communities. The underlying tendencies which are often ignored in assessments of individual risk are said to include the push factors of social exclusion, racism and economic exploitation and the pull factors which relate to a cultural over inclusion of consumerism. Both groups of factors subject young people to what Ken Pryce (1979) calls an ‘Endless Pressure’. However Archer (1995) warns against an over reliance on social mechanics models and encourages an approach which examines individual mediations of these external pressures. Local black parents groups who are supported through third sector organisations have the potential to assist in community safety neighbourhood interventions but are rarely

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utilised in partnership work. However, it should be noted that important differences exist between first- and second-generation BAME (Black Asian Minority Ethnic) groups (Lea & Young, 1984) and these differences are important to acknowledge in the design and implementation of interventions. Differences may include the knowledge and utilisation of social media. Z reports that she met lots of different gang members through social media and said she was bombarded with calls from male gang members who promised to look after her and give her gifts and money in exchange for working for them. In their rapid assessment of sexual exploitation and grooming CEOP (2011) mention that: When an offender had obtained a victim’s phone number, it appears to have been shared with their peers. Victims reported receiving texts and phone calls, often from unknown or concealed phone numbers.

Z mentioned that, Its different for girls they are more vulnerable, and all the boys want is pleasure.

Jago and Pearce (2008) argue that the definitions of child sexual exploitation is important as it affects the ways in which local partnerships address the sexual exploitation of children and young people. Definition of the issues, such as gang involvement, connected with child sexual exploitation determine thresholds for intervention. Therefore, it is important that agencies have a shared understanding of terminology for gangs and sexual exploitation and recognise a common threshold for intervention in exploitation. ‘Child sexual exploitation’ as a form of child sexual abuse, clearly defined in statutory guidance (DSCF, 2009) and all agencies and practitioners should be trained to recognise behaviours as such: Sexual exploitation of children and young people under 18 involves exploitative situations, contexts and relationships where young people (or a third person or persons) receive ‘something’ (e.g. food, accommodation, drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, affection, gifts, money) as a result of them

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performing, and/or another or others performing on them, sexual activities. Child sexual exploitation can occur through the use of technology without the child’s immediate recognition; for example being persuaded to post sexual images on the Internet/mobile phones without immediate payment or gain. In all cases, those exploiting the child/young person have power over them by virtue of their age, gender, intellect, physical strength and/or economic or other resources. Violence, coercion and intimidation are common, involvement in exploitative relationships being characterised in the main by the child or young person’s limited availability of choice resulting from their social/economic and/or emotional vulnerability. (CEOP, 2011)

Schools are key to early intervention by recognising when young people go missing or are becoming involved with gangs. The training of all school staff to recognise the early signs of gang involvement and exploitation should be mandatory. Also school Governors are often key to decisions regarding school exclusions and should also be trained to attain a full awareness of the possible dangers to excluded young people from grooming by gangs into criminal exploitation. Schools should also be the site of youth outreach and detached work to provide less formal and trusted support for pupils regarding healthy relationships and informed consent, peer pressure, etc. This may counter and provide alternatives to the advice and acceptance found by some young people in gangs, Z mentioned that she was offered help by gang members, who said ‘yes come I will look after you’ but concluded that ‘all they wanted was one thing’ . In search of friendship, Z met S a young women aged 21 who was addicted to crack and heroin. Under her influence, Z was taking cocaine and frequenting nightclubs despite being only 16. Z mentioned that these times were ‘not safe’ and at one point she said she had her hair cut off while she slept. Z described this as ‘an act of jealousy’. Despite the humiliation, Z continued her friendship with S. This may indicate the levels of loneliness and exclusion that some young people experience, whereby despite acts of abuse or humiliation they return to detrimental friendships found in gangs because they believe there are few alternatives for them. This kind of toxic relationship is complex for the participants

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and can lead to abusive interactions known as ‘mate hate’ (Spicer et al., 2020). Z rationalised her friends’ behaviour by saying, ‘You can’t blame young people, S’s mum was a drug addict and mine was addicted to alcohol’. It appears the lifestyle Z was involved in provided a sense of belonging. Z said she was selling drugs on the street in central London at this time but began to receive messages on Instagram which were flattering but also contained offers of more work. This work comprised of selling drugs from flats or ‘trap houses’. Z spent up to a month at a time working from ‘trap houses’ occupied by young male gang members and drug users. She also mentioned that most of the time she did not get paid for this work. Z mentioned she met lots of other young people who were also working in these flats who she did not know but formed friendships with some of them. She mentioned that she and others were ferried from place to place by older gang members to sell drugs and that sometimes some of the girls were expected to provide sex. Z became increasingly involved selling drugs from flats in various towns and cities for a variety of gangs who she met over social media. Locations Z ‘worked’ in included Medway, Walthamstow, Wood Green, Hertfordshire, Camden, Southampton and Reading. For most of this ‘work’, she received very little in terms of financial reward but was given food, some clothing, drugs and alcohol and a sense of belonging. Z describes being taken to Walthamstow with 2 other girls in a car one aged 13 and the other 16 who she described as ‘pick up girls’. Firmin (2015) describes a typology and hierarchy of gang-involved girls. Some girls gaining status and cultural capital by virtue of a boy friend’s position in the gang. Z mentioned that in the car the older girl was instructing the younger girl to snort cocaine which the younger girl did not want. There were disagreements about this and the driver, an Albanian man, ordered Z to get out and take another car after she objected to the way the young girl was being treated. Z mentioned she did not know what happened to the other girls. She added, I think the albanian guy had sex with them he was in his 30’s.

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The fact that the young girls were using drugs and Z was able to voice concerns with little admonishment due to her value for drug sales illustrates the importance of the social capital of some young women in drug markets (Anderson, 2005). Z went on to mention a younger friend of hers K who called her to accompany her for work in Southampton. Z said she was picked up ‘by a random Somali guy and offered weed food and alcohol’. She mentioned that during the journey to Southampton the drivers were taking drugs (cocaine and cannabis) and she did not feel safe. When she arrived at Southampton, she said the flat was full of boys and drug addicts and she had her phone taken from her and told to bag up drugs and keep them in her bra. She mentioned that anytime drugs were needed to sell the boys would just grab the drugs from her bra. The next day she was taken shopping for new clothes as she did not bring any with her, meanwhile the numbers of boys at the flat increased and the arrangement became more chaotic with drug addicts shouting and fighting. Z slept on the sofa waiting to serve drugs to who ever knocked at the flat. From her phone, the gang elders found out Z was wanted by the police and she was kicked out of the flat in case she brought additional attention into a city she did not know. Z mentioned she had to beg for money on the street to get the train back to London. In another “trap house” in Wood Green, Z was separated from her friend who was taken to work from a different flat. Z was given a small pair of football shorts and a “crop top” to wear but managed to call her YOT worker who made arrangements for her to get home. According to Z, being moved around to different trap houses happened many times to her and she claims this is also happening to many other young women. Z went on to explain that she managed to escape from a flat in Reading where she and her friend were taken but separated. Once back in London she met up with her friend who had been stabbed in the leg for refusing to have sex with an older gang member. The wounding was never reported and older gang members threatened to come to London to exact revenge on Z and her friend for leaving the trap houses in Reading. Z mentioned that her cousins managed to protect her from the elders who threatened them but ominously said that

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...all gangs treat girls like shit.

CEOP (2011) in their thematic assessment of grooming and exploitation explain, that often girls are expected to comply with sexual demands: Offenders would often ask victims to engage in oral sex. Victims would frequently refuse. When the refusal was made, offenders would either continue to harass the victim until they were coerced into performing oral sex, or alternatively, provide the victim with a choice: engage in oral sex, or submit to full sex. Victims felt compelled to choose one of the options. In these cases, the grooming period appears to have been very short, lasting perhaps only a few hours. These appear to be commonplace grooming tactics – offenders were aware that victims would eventually submit to sexual activity if they harassed them sufficiently. Should they refuse, offenders were aware that presenting a choice between oral sex and full sex would compel victims to submit to some form of sexual activity.

Z appears to have developed significant resilience and risk-avoidant strategies which have enhanced her ability to remain in the community and has reduced her victimisation in volatile situations (Jacobs & Miller, 1998). When asked what is important to help young people exit gang life, Z identified ‘working alongside people who help and do not give up’ According to Z, the care unit where she currently resides ‘is strict’ but the intensive work offered appears to be working for Z as she has recently taken her GCSEs and is waiting to attend college. However, Z is also anxious about where she will live at age 18 as she viewed many of the available placements as unsafe. CEOP (2011) suggests: Where the child sexual offences involved a breach of trust, a child is also defined as being under 18. Exploitation may not end at 18, but continue into adulthood. Research has suggested that 70 % of adult prostitutes were sexually exploited as a teenager (Paying the Price, 2004), and a Home Office study of Crime Reduction Programme projects concerning adults involved in prostitution found that out of 122 participants, 25 were abused through commercial sexual exploitation whilst under 16 and 39 were abused through commercial sexual exploitation aged 16-18.

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The continuation of sexual exploitation of children into adulthood suggests that once entered into exploitation, there are considerable barriers to exit which are not easily overcome. (Pearce, 2009)

Space Safety and Sex Other young women living in the County Town participated in a focus group for our research project. The discourses outlined give a gendered context of space, safety and sex as viewed by young women occupying gang-affected spaces. Gender is often seen as the most important factor relating to different levels of fear of crime, and women consistently report higher levels of fear than men. Several explanations have been suggested, which focus either on the high levels of irrationally of female fear or on the impact of differential socialisation processes, with women being socialised from a young age as fearful subjects as compared to men (Cops & Pleysier, 2011). However, these explanations of the gender and fear debate imply static interpretations of gender with little exploration of the impact of the neighbourhood or gangs in gender power dynamics. In our focus group, many of the young women expressed their fears regarding gangs and said that they did not feel safe in particular locations which included parts of the town centre and various parks and other public spaces. The back of McDonalds in the High Street was mentioned several times by some of the younger girls as a fearful place where allegedly gang members hung out to smoke cannabis. However, it should be noted that their fears were not limited to gang-involved boys but also included older men hanging outside of pubs and clubs in the town centre. RGFG1: I don’t like it… I mean I don’t know, I mean I hate walking past a group of boys like in gangs. It makes me feel like really kind of small. RGFG2: Yeah RGFG3: like there’s always a gang that like hangs out round the back of McDonalds and you walk past there and it just makes you feel really nervous to think that there are people there that could start a fight at any point.

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Other older girls in the group did not display the same fears and expressed a view that they may feel safer with gang members: RGFG5: I don’t like people who are like quiet boys… I like hard boys. The bad boys like they’re the hardest to like get with to get to like you. So I’m like,(postures) so some are like…(postures again) so if I went out with someone in a gang yeah which I am yeah. And if he like cheated or did something that hurt me then I couldn’t leave cos like you know I’m part of that gang now cos like I’m with him, so even if he hurt me or something then I’d still have to be in the gang and like hope that one of the other boys, yeah I’d have to try n get with one of the other boys… I know I’m attracted to them kind of boys I can’t help it I like the danger RGFG 6: I think that’s what most girls like, most girls are into the bad boys and that’s why most boys are in gangs… RGFG 2: yeah RGFG 6: to try and attract the girls because they’ll know, erm girls like bad boys. RGFG 7: I think most girls join gangs because they’re scared of what will happen if they don’t join the gang, RGFG 6: yeah like they think erm if they didn’t join that gang then that gang would be after them. But if they join the gang then they can go after people with the gang so. And have back up if erm other people do want to fight them.

Traditional models of fear and gender are challenged in the above account where notions of victimisation and empowerment can be interrelated (Anderson, 2005). Accounts feelings of safety also extended to virtual spaces with most of the young women being aware of You Tube virtual spats that had amplified and looped into real-life serious violent attacks. RGFG 7: I told you about the two young lads in town and they were getting slapped about being told to say that xxx is crap. Because that video got put onto social media and then so many people saw it. Then groups of people went out to get the guy that posted this video and to get the guy that done it. But because it was talking about different generations of families it ended up being the fathers and uncles of these young boys who

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were only 13 and 14 who went after the guy who was, I think he was in his early twenties and I think potentially that was involved with the shooting that happened in town, you know where the front doors were shot up? And I think that was all part of that you know older family members were then going round and then following it up. Because the young gangs members had made the trouble.

Some of the young women expressed an awareness about the roles of young women in gangs, and they expressed discourses of power and sex relating to gangs (Firmin, 2015): RGFG 7: I always think the girls are just in gangs just for the boys to have a quick fuck. That’s what I think like… [Giggling] RGFG 6: that’s what the boys think like. That why I say like the girls are always there so like the boys can always have a quick fuck whenever they want. You know what I mean?

The group process continued with the topic of sex and this prompted one young women to ask: RGFG 5: so say you agree to do something with a boy yeah and during that time you ask them to stop and they don’t…is that rape? R: Yes RGFG 5: that is nothing to do with this topic. R: I think it is, I think it’s very important, it’s about feeling safe and as […]mentioned before - that is if girls with gangs are sometimes just there so boys can have sex, then it’s important that you understand that if you agree to go to a certain degree beforehand and then change your mind that that’s ok. You can change your mind and that should be respected.

Participant RGFG5 may have been exploring her own experiences in the focus group and was given further opportunities to explore the topic with a worker in a one-to-one session privately as safeguarding concerns were raised in line with informed consent information and agreement. The numbers and extent of young people’s involvement in gang culture

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is difficult to estimate; therefore, it may be helpful for agencies to map the gang associations of the young people they work with as a part of their safeguarding practices. Some of the girls in our focus group were also aware of the coercive or intimidating roles that girls involved with gangs can play (Firmin, 2015). This challenges the notions of traditional passive roles of young women in gangs: RGFG 2:

I think like sometimes the girls are like the worst… when you think sometime the boys are like ‘oh I’ll hurt you even if you’re female’. That’s just to scare you. But you know like if a girl was there and was like ‘oh I’m gonna slap you’ because they’re a female, well not because they’re a female, but because you’re female and they’re female then there’s like a lot more chance that they will actually hurt you.… I think girls are more intimidating because they, well we, normally we hold a grudge.

The accounts and explanations above challenge traditional models of exploitation which are associated with models of ‘power over’ (Connell, 1987). The dynamics expressed relate more closely to newer models which are more complex and can be more closely associated with ‘power to’ models (Allen, 1999). In these newer models, dominated subjects can find new spaces to exert power (however limited this may be). In the power to model, learning processes take place which can equip those who are situationally dominated for future re-positioning (Allen, 1999). This analysis could also be applied to the dynamics apparent in the establishment of county lines whereby longer established dealing networks run by crime families learn newer business models imported from bigger cities. Initially the establishment of county lines challenged the established order of older dealing networks. Established crime families become subject to changing circumstances with status and cultural capital threatened. This facilitates new alliances and promotes new conflicts which are apparent in the increases in drug-related violent crime (Dame carol Black, 2020). The personal impacts of these changing dynamics is explained in the accounts below.

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Changes in the Market A former user dealer explained some of the changes from older market models to new networks of distributing class A drugs, he said: The main changes I saw was you had small cottage industries and dealers work was product specific. With the advent of rave culture and the arrival of the poly user we saw more more people using a number of different drugs so it made common sense for dealers to change from an old product marketed to you know a multi-product marketed together. So you didn’t need to know half a dozen different contacts… it was quite difficult to get to know a dealer as a dealer. I don’t want all you as customers. That’s too much activity on my doorstep here. So I don’t mind if you pop up and pick up for your mates but you’ve got two things there one, I’m going to be really angry with you if you tell anybody where I live. But the other one is if you’re ripping a bit off of every deal, where’s the financial incentive for you not to tell anybody else where I live.

The relatively ‘innocuous community’ distribution models offered by May et al (2005) appear to concur with the older model of distribution described above. More recent distribution networks have forced older distribution models to modernise and new models of distribution are described as more of a hard sell or supply led either in open or closed markets. What I see now is much more commercial. People coming out constantly you want this do you want that. Yeah and that’s again about that pyramid selling technique you know but the family allegiance is still there. They (city dealers) steal those gains and still those family allegiances are clinging onto it. The fact that you’ve changed from a kingpin as such, the main dealer with a couple of people and then changed to these void of unknown faces that’s a telephone number that you contact so you don’t get that rapport with the dealer… It’s much more dangerous I mean the new round is about the open market drug delivery…the phone comes out… mountain bike delivery or a closed market working from a house which with the old school dealer that would be his home. The family restaurant… by getting access to that and actually being the one that comes to that door…that report requires a level of trust. The dealer is

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trusting you not to give his name out and not to tell anybody where he lives. You trust him. A decent product a decent wage a decent price. When you’ve got man seeing an open market of 10 hoodies on the corner in a park which would be replaced by 10 the next day. What is your quality control or your customer service should it go tits up. So the big risk of going to somewhere like that is going to get robbed… And going to be ripped off…Some people have phone numbers that are their quality mark.

It is argued that the mixing of buyers and sellers from various distances (where distance is a proxy for social ties) has implications for the amount of violence expected to occur (Johnson, 2015). It is further argued that markets vary on violence levels depending whether distribution is controlled by a gang organisation (Andell, 2020; Taniguchi et al., 2011; Venkatesh, 2008); the type of business structure (Murji, 2007); levels of community organisation (Berg & Rengifo, 2009); and the extent to which peaceful solutions to conflict are used (Jaques, 2010). Our respondent said, To be involved in this it’s not only for financial gain we’re still saying it’s about you know the kudos, the respect, everything else but it’s in the way that. They change into a character that they’re perceived or expected to be. Yeah. If you’re working for a county line you must act like this you must think another way and most certainly look like this.(pulls a hard face). There’s almost an occupational culture here. Definitely definitely. And with that comes as well you know there’s threats of violence.

This new model of distribution has a very different feel to the rural heroin markets reported by Few et al. in 2004 in which they assert: Generally drug buying and selling had a marginal effect on the community. Where users were funding their drug use through crime, the offences tended to be committed in another town. Alcohol was considered in all sites to cause more problems. Unintended consequences of enforcement (op cit) may have contributed to the establishment of County Lines and for the dispersal of markets to more rural Counties. The impact of some of these changes are explained below.

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A Fathers Tale X is a single parent who looks after his 17-year-old son who was in danger of returning to custody for non-compliance of court order having been convicted for selling drugs in a ‘trap house’. X has believes that recent changes in the drug distribution network has led to the manipulation of vulnerable young men by older gang members. He suggests that recent drug market transformations are catastrophic and will result in serious violence. In my eyes there’s only a few things that can happen, either you end up in prison, you end up seriously hurt or you end up dead. Right and you end up, doing something that is not in your nature. You, can become a killer when you aren’t a killer. When to me none of these boys, the boys that I’ve met, I know through my son trust me, they’re not killers they’re not even bad. In the truth of it, they’re not even bad lads, they’re just lads who have had no-one, no family. Where the difference with my boy is he has a family and I feel he was drawn into it more because of…how to describe it, he shut me down.

He described a transition of some of those involved in to a normlessness which has an impact on younger people. I think with them, it starts off a bit like you’re told, yeah a pair of trainers or something, you’re told it’s all cool. But you don’t get that some of the lads who are older are genuinely, they’ve lost all their feelings. Do you know what I mean, they’ve lost, and they’ve become so cold. They don’t care what they’re getting their youngsters into.

When asked how old the elders are who are involving youngers, he cautiously replied, Erm, I’m not saying as I know them I’m just saying what I would call older as in, I would say between twenty-five and thirty something…I’m not talking about my age. I think by the time, if you get to my age and you’re still in it then you’re either fucked as in you’re out on the road and you’re doing the crack and doing that shit and your still selling it to

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make a bit of money or, you’re in at the top, no one knows you’re in it , you’re very high at a level that the police can’t really, aren’t able to get anymore and you’ve got the thirty year olds who are still…like my boy was the lowest. You know you’re handling it on the street, the easiest for the police to nick and if I’m totally honest that’s what pissed me off a little bit. That’s all the police are interested in they’re not actually solving the problem. Cos you’re just, a kid like my boy you can find them ten a penny.

Similar to other respondents, questions were asked about the targeting of valuable police resources on low-level participants in the dealing network. There appears to be a need for either the police to target a higher level of the network or explain to community groups and workers the reasons for a focus on low level runners and street dealers or risk the loss of community confidence and information (Lea & Young, 1984). However, it should also be noted that there is a significant turnover of drugs and money that takes place and some young people (depending on their position in the distribution network) can make substantial amounts of money. When asked how much his son earned X replied; A week? I would say, roughly depending on how much they’re grinding out, they’re probably what five hundred quid a week, something like that (R: that’s a lot of money) might be a bit more sometimes. Yeah course it’s a hell of a lot of money for not actually physically…again but you get a twist because they feel like…in that world you’ll feel like ‘oh I’m not actually getting up, I’m not actually going to work. But you’re still being told what to do. You know they don’t see it.

X went on to comment on the exploitative nature of the work of a street dealer and the wider cultural values that are absorbed: My boy would never see it, but you’re still being told what to do, when you have to be out on the street, and also you’re obviously in serious danger, you know. But that’s part of it a bit of an adrenaline rush, you know … I’m gonna be totally honest, I think, to me, were saying to a young generation that we’ve totally forgotten about, ‘right we expect you to have these standards and these morals’ but the actual morals and

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the standards that we’re, as society are showing is basically saying ‘fuck everybody do what you want and get greedy as fuck’.

Archer (1995) suggests that we need to understand not only how structural and cultural properties are transmitted to agents but also how these are responded to. She suggests that two sets of causal powers influence how structure conditions agency. Structural and cultural properties enhance or constrain different courses of action but it is the reflexive power of the agent (or individual) which allows them to deliberate on which project would realise their personal concerns within society and to act strategically in order to promote their concerns. The mediation of structural conditions by agency is what happens at the nexus of where these two sets of causal powers meet. X has been left with many questions as to the social and personal motivations that propelled his son into dealing drugs in a trap house. He mused; You don’t see it coming and of course you don’t want em to do it. But you just, I aint got a clue why it happened but something fucking got him, something, just yeah something like grabbed hold of him and made him think ‘yeah this is it’…If someone had of said to me, erm four years ago, five years ago, ‘you’re son will be out on the road, in trouble with the police, selling drugs, getting into, getting himself in trouble’ I would have said ‘not a chance, I take him to football, he’s playing football, Saturday Sundays, he’s doing alright at school, I used to do the parents evenings, I’ve been strict, I’m trying, as a parent.

However. despite the doubts expressed, X’s analysis of the influence of structure and agency was not too distant from that explained above. X argues that, Ok I’m not rich, and I’m not middle, I’m working class, I live in a council flat, it’s just me and my boy…So I certainly aint saying I’m rich but at the same time, it weren’t like we were sitting with no carpet or me just giving him some bread for food, do you know what I mean? We got sky TV if he wanna watch football, any premiership game he can watch, any. Do you know what I mean? Whereas some of these boys I’ve met through them

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meeting my son I can’t judge em, once I actually got to know them and I knew their whole story. It us who are letting them down, it’s not them. Yeah if they keep doing it don’t get me wrong they do let themselves down. But at the very beginning, that’s us who are letting them down. We’re letting them down by just saying ‘fuck off, we don’t care’ ‘you’re just trouble’. I’ll give you another example right of what I read in the news. You got that young girl who stabbed her boyfriend, she’s a doctor, she’s training to be a doctor yeah so the judge turns round and says ‘aahh that’s not fair on her, she’s got a bright future ahead of her, and she can be a doctor’ but they already know she’s got a problem if she’s done this one, this weren’t the first time she’d gone Gary (bitter) and tried to stab someone. OK but why are we doing it for someone who actually don’t actually need it, can we start being real and just start saying it’s a class thing? Cos I’ve said, like I’ve said to the copper now. It’s not even a black and white thing, it’s a class thing. Where all we’re doing now is saying to a certain class of people ‘fuck you we don’t care’ and to another class ‘its fine what you wanna do, you make mistakes and were gonna keep on bailing you out’

The causal power of social form mediated through social agency according to Archer (1995) needs further explanation to rid us of over simplistic explanations. However, the frustrations experienced by X at the perceived lack of opportunity for development for his son returning to the community from being in prison on remand was heart felt and he was able to pin point areas for improvement when trying to assist young people to exit gang culture. X mentioned his son had said I know I fucked up. I just want to do my education. I know I’ve really messed up, I just wanna get back in education’.So then in the courts wisdom they turned around and said ‘no, no school will take him for a start’ and then the courts said ‘no, you’ve got to go and live xxx (outside of his home town), you’re not coming back to xxx, you’re not going back with your dad because’ and this is what really fucked me off, it still annoys me now. Because when I went to Social Services and said, I was like worried about how to discipline him because I didn’t want to hurt him and he was aggressive, they turned round to me and said I couldn’t control him so he’s not coming back in xxx he had to go to his Grandparents and trust me his Grandparents struggled even more than I did.

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It is clear from the last account that re-entry or resettlement packages should include relevant opportunities for education or employment which are an important feature of gang exit work. As some of the largest employers the county and borough, it may be useful if councils revise their procurement processes so that contractors are encouraged to give opportunities to local young people and in particular young people involved in the criminal justice system. It is recognised that some young people may need further training and education to be job ready and therefore consideration should be given to commissioning a specialist education and training agencies who can work with hard to reach young people as part of a safeguarding care plan.

Conclusions As the above chapter is read the case studies will already be dated, there will be shifts in the practices of the participants of County lines exploitation and those responding to it. However, lessons for policy and practice can be gleaned from the above case studies. Z demonstrated significant resilience and was ready to move on with her life if accommodation and support opportunities allowed her to do so. Models of Housing First (Homeless Link, 2020) could assist in such cases to provide individual support interventions which address issues of multiple disadvantage, however, this would require the collective efforts of a more socially inclusive housing policy. Different responses were apparent in the case of X’s son, who from X’s viewpoint did not receive adequate support to protect him from further involvement in County line drug dealing. Unfortunately, X’s son was subsequently convicted of a grave crime for which he received a substantial sentence. This case highlights the need for the availability of individualised through and after-care programmes from YOI’s, Prisons, YOT’s and Probation. Such interventions should to meet the continuity of support required for people leaving secure estates and have been outlined in innovative partnerships between delivery agents and academia (Beyond Youth Custody, 2015). Such programmes should include elements of appropriate education and employment to assist

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with gang exit which may involve social enterprises designed specifically for those who are attempting to gang exit (Pitney, 2015). X’s father continues to campaign and educate on the needs of gang-affected young people and such skills and experience from affected community members or peer workers could be further utilised to provide additional support as workers in local projects or to give assistance to local YOT teams. The group of young women from the case study above demonstrated relational agency by working in a group which provided situational opportunities for exertion of power and learning opportunities. Further informal learning opportunities in groups should be facilitated by the expansion of current youth work provision to enable young people to explore issues of gender and power in relation to gangs. The same learning processes could apply to those entangled in drug distribution networks to enable peer learning and harm reduction practices relating to drugs. Broader harm reduction strategies for communities could aim to distinguish and separate those who groom and exploit vulnerable young people from those who are exploited, although it is acknowledged that such dyads are never clean cut. However, more radical community harm reduction strategies in local drug markets are also showing early promise, interventions such as heroin-assisted treatments are said to assist to reshape dangerous and unstable markets through demand reduction (Hallam, 2021). A mix of interventions, including those mentioned above, will need to be carefully considered to achieve a specific required balance of interventions to match particular geographies, histories and markets to reduce harms to affected communities. We are perhaps better now equipped to take on this challenge as greater insights develop through UK gang studies.

References Andell, P. (2019). Thinking seriously about gangs. Palgrave.

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Index

B

Black criminology 10, 327 Black Lives Matter (BLM) 10, 95, 328, 347, 348 Bradford 11, 12, 351, 363, 367, 373, 379, 380, 382, 389–395, 399, 404, 405

C

children rights 205 comparative gang studies 95, 101 County Lines (CLs) 4, 6, 9, 13–15, 48, 57–67, 69–73, 76, 77, 80, 81, 93, 94, 102, 145, 177, 185, 186, 203, 215, 229, 246–254, 262, 265, 275, 276, 284, 286, 424, 438, 442, 474–486, 505, 507, 513, 537, 540, 541, 543, 544, 547, 549,

552, 563, 569, 583, 584, 589–592, 607, 615–617, 629, 631 County Lines and prisons 477 CPS and gangs 449 criminal business 2, 6, 249, 503 criminal exploitation 4, 14, 34, 58, 64–66, 68–74, 76, 78–81, 93, 102, 196, 215, 229, 249, 254, 265, 290, 474, 475, 543–546, 550, 588, 617, 622 criminal exploitation and safeguarding 58, 68, 69, 73, 541, 585 critical realism 22, 29, 35

D

drugs business 22, 162, 198, 202, 479, 566

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Andell and J. Pitts (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Youth Gangs in the UK , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99658-1

643

644

Index

E

evidence and gang dimensions 438

gang violence 8, 24, 95, 96, 98, 150, 173, 175, 176, 248, 263, 393, 439, 440, 449, 504, 506, 575, 581–583, 585 Glasgow gangs 119, 126, 219

G

gang definition 3, 25, 101, 142, 250, 492, 502 gang evolution 4, 26, 49, 50, 54, 185 gang exit 591, 637 gang exit work 636 gangs 1–9, 13, 15, 16, 22–35, 41–45, 47–54, 58, 62, 63, 91–103, 112, 113, 115, 116, 118–121, 123–130, 132–134, 141–146, 150, 154, 157, 160–162, 164, 174–176, 178, 180, 185, 192–195, 210, 211, 214, 215, 217–219, 222–225, 228–230, 237–241, 243–251, 253, 254, 262, 263, 270, 276, 284, 286, 303, 324–326, 340, 354–357, 391, 402, 411, 413–415, 417–422, 424–427, 438, 439, 441, 442, 444–446, 449, 451, 457, 458, 460, 462–464, 468–471, 473, 481, 483, 486, 491, 492, 495, 499, 502–504, 506, 513, 519, 520, 522–524, 526, 529–531, 533, 534, 537–541, 543, 544, 549, 552, 562–567, 569–580, 582, 583, 585, 588–590, 598, 600–602, 615, 617, 618, 621–623, 626–629, 637 gangs and surveillance 301, 310, 350, 353 Gangs Matrix 30, 539

H

Heroin trade 389

L

Liverpool street gangs 240, 247

M

modern slavery 13, 58, 68–70, 75, 79, 424, 473, 480, 483, 486 moral state and gangs 29

P

Pakistani youth gangs 379, 391, 395, 403 Paramilitary gangs 193, 195, 197, 198, 202–204 peer work 602, 607 political economy and gangs 143 post-colonial studies 146 post-industrialisation 210

R

race and gangs 10, 94 racism 10, 30, 35, 94, 95, 148, 150, 152, 163, 164, 298, 303, 324, 326, 328–331, 333, 334, 337, 348, 356, 381, 399, 505, 521, 523, 620

Index

S

Scottish drug supply 423 social exclusion 198, 212, 213, 216, 227, 238, 244, 620 sports interventions 210, 401, 520, 567

UK UK UK UK

645

gang policy 102, 302 gang scholars 92, 94, 95, 100 gang studies 1, 6, 41, 92 prison gangs 13, 474

W T

trauma and legacy of slavery 70, 102, 200, 203, 204, 272, 273, 280, 283, 285, 298, 330, 331, 333, 337, 340, 540, 606–608

Welsh gangs 228 women and gangs 9, 250, 251, 254, 262–265, 289, 567, 585, 626, 628, 629

U

Y

UK and US 94, 95, 101

youth work and gangs 519, 520, 585