Reluctant Gangsters Revisited: The Evolution of Gangs from Postcodes to Profits

Amid rising public concern of knife-enabled crime, this article seeks to review and reframe the contemporary debates on knife crime which remain tied to concepts of fear, protection and fashion. Concepts of social field theory and street capital theory have much to offer in reframing a more contemporary narrative. Through such analysis, knife crime can be redefined as a logical response to the unpredictable asymmetrics of the social field, offering mechanisms for agency and control while providing both a pressure release and opportunity to demonstrate authenticity in ‘The Game’.

Section: Discussion: a Social Field In Fluxmentioning

confidence: 99%

Getting to the Point? Reframing Narratives on Knife Crime

Harding¹

2020

“…Even if no gangs existed in Britain’s past (and some contest this too; see Davies, 2013), gangs can still exist Britain’s present. The subculture-gang division separated ‘them’ (America) from ‘us’ (Britain) (Campbell and Muncer, 1989), and for decades this became an idée fixé – a calcifying adjudication which tied the hands of UK scholars seeking to adapt to the ‘evolving’ presentation of UK gangs (Densley, 2014; McLean, 2018; Whittaker et al, 2019).…”

Section: Shift Happens: Towards a New Uk Gang Research Agendamentioning

confidence: 99%

An Introduction to Gangs and Serious Youth Violence in the United Kingdom

Densley¹,

Deuchar²,

Harding³

2020

Self Cite

This article introduces the special issue on UK gangs and youth violence. Written to coincide with the launch of the National Centre for Gang Research at the University of West London, this collection adds the voices of academics who have spent years researching serious violence to a conversation dominated by policymakers and media commentators. The authors examine trends in youth violence and offer a brief history of UK gang research before previewing the contribution of the seven empirical articles dealing with police gang databases, knife crime, county lines drug dealing, contextual safeguarding, offender mental health, gang disengagement and criminal desistance.

“…In From Postcodes to Profits (Whittaker et al, 2017) writes about the Mali Boys in Waltham Forest who epitomise this shift. They are, they say,.…”

Section: The Drugs Tradementioning

confidence: 99%

Black Young People and Gang Involvement in London

Pitts¹

2020

Drawing upon research undertaken by the present author in East, North West and South London and the work of other UK social scientists, this article considers the evidence concerning the involvement of young people of African-Caribbean origin and Mixed Heritage in street gangs and gang crime in London (For the sake of brevity, I will simply refer to these young people as Black, not least because this is how they usually define themselves). It outlines the sometimes acrimonious debate about the relationship between race, crime and street gangs in the United Kingdom in the past three decades, concluding that while many of the claims made about this relationship may be exaggerated or simply untrue, the evidence for the over-representation of Black young people in street gangs in London is compelling. The article then turns to the changing social and economic predicament of some Black young people in the capital since the 1980s and its relationship with their involvement in gang crime. Finally, it considers the role of drugs business in the proliferation of the gang form and ‘gangsta’ culture and the involvement of growing numbers of younger Black people in County Lines drug dealing.