Thread by @docrussjackson

THREAD

Debate around 'grooming gangs' reminds me of the poor quality of debate about UK 'gang violence'.

Now I'm NOT saying 'gangs' or 'grooming gangs' don't exist, or that there isn't any crime associated with gangs - gangs are undeniably a real & serious problem.

However...

There are some searching questions about what we might mean by the term 'gangs', which raise issues around the consequences of suggesting they are a serious threat to society.

Simon Hallsworth & Tara Young have undertaken extensive research, & I want to outline some of that.

If we study the thesis that Britain saw a tremendous upsurge in gang activity throughout the noughties - an idea of 'gangland Britain' - it appears to be based on a series of opinions & conjectures, which taken together attempt to define & explain the problem of 'urban violence'.

At the core of this thesis is the claim that a great threat facing the UK is the growth of what is historically thought of as an American problem: the urban street-based gang.

These groups, it is argued, are armed, dangerous & prepared to kill.

Gangs are believed to control territories, (in particular urban social housing estates & surrounding areas, as evidenced in the so-called 'postcode gangs') & exercise control of, or are heavily involved in, the illegal drug trade.

No-one disputes that gangs are part of the problem of violence in cities like London, Manchester & Birmingham, but constructing the problem of street violence as essentially, or mainly a problem of 'gangs' is flawed - wrong - on empirical, theoretical & methodological grounds.

The problem of urban violence in multiply deprived areas is not, essentially, a problem of 'gangs' & it should not be constructed as if it is.

I'll briefly summarize Hallsworth & Young's five objections to talking up the issue of urban violence as a 'gang' problem:

Objection 1: The empirical case is not proven.

There is no empirical evidence of the existence of gangs. Why? Because there is no established gang research tradition in the UK.

Defining what constitutes a gang, as opposed to just a group, is a consistent & unresolved problem.

It's also notoriously difficult to attribute criminal activity to a 'gang'. Part of the difficultly lies in separating those acts carried out by the individual member from those carried out collectively; not all violence committed by so-called gang members is gang related.

Broadly speaking, despite fearmongering from politicians who shamelessly & opportunistically use 'law & order' rhetoric, the rate of violent crime in the UK has been falling since 1995.

This is interesting because public anxiety about 'gangs' has grown during the same period.🤔

Objection 2: The attention 'gangs' receive may reflect more the sensational & (often) inaccurate coverage produced by the divisive & predominantly right-wing mass news media than it does the objective reality of the street.

Despite the lack of empirical evidence, urban violence is often framed in terms of gangs. The Sunday Times Magazine claimed the UK’s inner cities are ‘Sin Cities’ awash with warring gang members; a thesis accepted by the mass news media more generally.

As gang explanations become increasingly hegemonic - as it used more and more widely to explain urban violence - so other, more plausible narratives that might help challenge this interpretation (eg performing masculinity within volatile peer groups) get filtered out & silenced.

Objection 3: The term ‘gang’ is not a neutral descriptive of the street world out there.

Its use comes with a dangerous ideological baggage from which it cannot be disarticulated.

The term ‘gang’ seems like an innocent description, but this is certainly not the case.

It is rather a: "transcendental signifier saturated with meanings that are immediately bought into play when it is mobilized. The term 'gang' does not designate a social problem in any neutral sense; it denotes and, in a tautological way, explains this problem simultaneously."

"The term gang signifies not this or that group out there, but a Monstrous Other, an organized counter force confronting the good society; the gang provides a ready made ‘suitable enemy’, suitable precisely because no one can disagree with its classification as such".

Fear of gangs is bound up with the fears the adult world has with its young, but there is an ethnic dimension to this fear in so far as the gang is nearly always seen to have a black or brown face. These are outsiders who threaten the good society; outsiders who are unlike 'us'.

Objection 4: Far from confronting the mystifying gaze of the mass media, academics (& increasingly non-academics) who relentlessly discuss the social issue of 'gangs' & 'gang culture' all too easily confirm it in their fixation & their elected method of research.

Gang research developed in the USA from the 70s, & grew from two convictions:

1 the defining feature of the gang was the group’s integral relation to crime & violence.

2 the gang was a major driver of urban violence &, as such, needed to be understood in order to be suppressed.

Hallsworth & Young don't deny the existence of criminal gangs in the UK, but they say the problem of violent urban crime cannot & shuold not be reduced to the gang: applying American gang definitions in the UK fails to account for the very different UK context (eg few guns).

Such research starts from the position that the problem of inner city urban violence is a problem of gangs, & thus the solution to urban violence is inevitably to be found through more gang research & more gang intervention initiatives!

Objection 5: Far from helping practitioners, authorities & communities to derive good & sensible policies that may help ameliorate urban street violence, those who begin with the gang *invariably* come to assert the need for yet more gang suppression!

If you begin with the assumption that the gang is at the heart of the violence you want to explain, then invariably you will find that gang suppression is the solution to the problem; even if there is a huge excess to the violence which is not gang related.

The problem of 'gang talk' is that it goes beyond simply adopting inappropriate policies: it INCREASES the likelihood that young people will seek out gang membership, & identify as gang members, while the state & police put increasing resource into tackling the problem of gangs!

This THREAD is based on Hallsworth & Young's 2008 article: 'Gang talk and gang talkers: A critique', in which they suggest "the solution to preventing urban violence will not be found by sanctioning crackdowns or gang suppression programmes".

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/17…

To reiterate, there is an acceptance that street gangs exist, & more recently there have been changes in the way illicit drugs are distributed in the UK, & there are concerns about the criminal exploitation of vulnerable gang-involved children & young people.

You wouldn't know from most British journalism, broadcast news or politics shows, but as ever, academics have been undertaking informed, careful & nuanced research & analysis, & asking interesting questions about 'gangs', which go largely unreported.

emerald.com/insight/conten…

Andell considers recent Govt gang policy against the backdrop of the worsening social & economic circumstances of the young people most likely to be drawn into the illicit drugs trade: economic intervention in impoverished neighbourhoods may be key to more effective intervention.

Hesketh & Robinson describe a 'business model' of illicit drug distribution dominated by organised crime groups that, effectively, employ young people to do the leg-work for them - not a 'gang' but rather an entrenched illicit business.

Pitts addresses the question of how gangs evolve, finding that existing models of gang evolution fail to reflect the diversity of gang forms, noting that while some gangs have morphed into what are, in effect, criminal business organisations, most are temporary & disorganised.