Youth Gangs in the UK
How different are they from their American counterparts?
Judith Aldridge, Juanjo Medina, Robert Ralphs
University of Manchester, UK
Outline: comparisons to US gangs
1. Context and background
2. Prevalence
3. History & evolution
4. Structure, organisation, drug dealing
5. Culture
6. Ethnicity
7. Violence
Context
UK: objections to
gang research
 Create moral panics
 Demonise young people ‘ASBOs’ ‘Hoodies’
 Stigmatise young people, communities
 Reinforce, glorify, perpetuate, even ‘create’ gangs
 Nothing new to see here: in UK, groups are the same
as we’ve been seeing/studying for decades
Top headlines in
Guardian newspaper search
 ‘Turf war among drug gangs blamed as
youth, 17, dies after shooting’
 ‘Drug gangs rampant in top Dublin youth jail’
 ‘Youths pick chic Paris mall for gang rumble’
 ‘Gang chased youth, 16, and stabbed him to
death, court told’
References to ‘youth’ ‘gangs’
in Guardian newspaper
450
400
350
300
250
200
150
100
50
0
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
Academic papers with ‘youth/street
gangs’ and UK, Britain, England
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
UK: Why we persist
 Use of term ‘gang’ in UK not new
 Must remedy predominant focus in research, police &
journalistic accounts on ethnic minority youth
 Must balance journalistic accounts that glorify gangs
 Policy transfer from USA NOW occurring
 Demystify gangs
 Challenge overly punitive official responses: schools,
government, police
Context: conclusion
 Discussion about gangs is ‘newer’
 Different research ‘history’ (focus more on
youth subcultures, not gangs)
 More wariness/fear of the label by
academics, policy makers

But actual use of the term increasing in the
last five years particularly
Prevalence
Prevalence
 YOCJS: (10-19 year olds)

3% in street gangs, group existed 3m or more, group commits
crime together
 NEW-ADAM: (arrestees 17 and over)

4% in a gang with name and territory
 Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime (13 year olds)

3.5% of 13 year old in a gang with a name & special saying or
sign
 Communities that Care (11 – 17 year olds)

4% in London in a gang with a name and a territory
 Staying Safe Study (14 schools in south of England)

3.9% in an ‘offending gang’
Prevalence: conclusion
 Difficult to say because of variations in
measurement, samples, age groups BUT:
 Possibly broadly similar to US


Nevertheless, undoubtedly lots of very
interesting differences, but research isn’t quite
there yet to disentangle them
Some comparative research currently under
way
YOGEC: Research design and methods
 ESRC funded ethnographic study: 2 years fieldwork
 3 neighbourhoods in large English city
 Group Characteristics; Drug use and dealing;
Violence; Ethnicity; Gender; Community relations;
and Lifecourse (onset and desistance)
 100+ interviews - gang ‘members’, ‘associates’
(friends, girlfriends, relatives), key informants (e.g.
police, youth workers, local government)
 9 focus groups - non-gang involved young people,
parents, & representatives of community/statutory
agencies
History
History
 RC gangs going back 2 decades, even 100+ years
 In Inner West we documented history going back to 80s and
early 90s




Predominantly ethnic minority youth
Drawn to informal economy for standard of living above basic
survival
Specialist drugs gangs operating open drugs markets
In pyramid structures, dealing heroin & crack
 By late 90s until now:




Open to closed markets (mobile phones, police crackdowns)
Heroin and crack to cannabis
Gang coordinated to individual dealing
Greater to lesser earnings

Combined with legitimate income sources
History: conclusion
 Likely very similar history of gangs
 RC was unusual in this specialist ‘drugs gangs’ status
in the UK

Evidence anecdotal, police
 In a similar way, American has research identified
these specialist ‘drugs gangs’ in some cities (e.g.
Chicago)
 But like the UK, in the US, specialist drugs gangs are
rare even if drug dealing is common
Structure, organisation,
drug dealing
Structure, organisation, drug dealing
 Little evidence of hierarchy in these same gangs
 No evidence that X and Y were ‘leaders’ or ‘running’ this gang
 In contrast to heroin in cocaine the vast majority of the dealing we





identified was cannabis
Most dealing not gang co-ordinated – sold individually, 2/3s
Individuals kept all their own profits
No evidence of dealers being paid a wage at the lower levels
(though this did happen with ‘runners’, though nothing like at this
level)
Members do not live extravagantly, more concerned with status
No "card-carrying" members, loose affiliation

But this view amongst police ‘new’, does it arise as a
result of our report? In all our research, referred to clear
affiliations
Structure, organisation, drug dealing:
conclusion
 Probably very similar for most US youth gangs
 Specialist (e.g. drugs) youth gangs in US are the
exception rather than the rule

True of UK too
 Exception: we found one specialist girl gang – highly
organised, shared profits from illegal activities, role
differentiated - got the job done, did so without
violence or the threat of it

But! Key members of group were sisters/relatives of
highly involved male gang members, group virtually
disbanded now
Culture
Culture
 Gang ‘joining’ probably not that useful a term



No recruitment
Consistent with the formation of neighbourhood and school
friendship groups
To ‘join’ more about developing different kinds of relationships
with existing contacts

Self-protection, labelling and taking advantage of illegal
opportunities define the ‘difference’
 Cultural identifiers





No initiation rituals (though ‘proving oneself’ sometimes
discussed)
Few/no identifiers like colours, tattoos, hand signs
Few ‘codes of conduct’ (though a few are patchily referred to
and almost always betrayed)
Few/no organised meetings
Some of these things may be changing – especially through
social networking sites (e.g. MySpace)
Culture: conclusion
 The process of ‘joining’ is probably very
similar to the US

The idea of ‘joining’ in both US and UK based
on stereotyped media image
 US likely to have more rituals and cultural
signifiers

Even though there are signs this is changing
Ethnicity
Media & political discourse around
gangs and race
 Strong media & political tendency to present
black community as responsible for gang
problems:
Tony Blair, April 2007:
“The black community – the vast majority of
whom in these communities are decent, lawabiding people horrified at what is happening
– need to be mobilised in denunciation of this
gang culture that is killing innocent young
black kids.”
Ethnicity
 NEW-ADAM: Majority of gang members are white
 Edinburgh Study on Youth Transitions and Crime:
94.3% of the sample were white and so were the
overwhelming majority of gang members
 Offending Crime and Justice Survey (2004): there
is little to suggest ethnic differences or a particular
over-representation of young black males in gangs
 YOGEC: in predominantly white areas, we found
gangs were mostly white; in areas with the highest
concentration of black ethnic minorities, we found
gangs that were mostly black
Ethnicity: surprise!
 Areas with higher ethnic (black) population received media and
policy attention


Police claimed not to use race as defining criteria, but do!
Whilst: much more gun violence there (reflects police priorities)



But white gangs also used guns!
Thus greater vulnerability of black youth to discriminatory,
aggressive, intrusive policing
White areas complained of ‘discriminatory neglect’!
 Black community leaders: stuck


Recognised gun/gang violence in their communities
(empowering?)
But drawbacks to ‘racialising’ the gang problem

negative stereotypes about black people, ‘suspect’ community,
allows for simplistic explanations, legitimisation of inadequate
interventions, police harassment
Ethnicity: conclusion
 Immigration history, ethnic make-up very different

UK: shorter, less (8%), different groups


Indian sub-continent, Caribbean and Africa
US: longer, more (~ 30+%)

Hispanic/Latino & Black American
 UK less geographically segregated


Highest ethnic minority areas in RC still mostly white
We do not have racial ghettos (by definition)
 Gangs arise in areas of deprivation, and their ethnic
composition reflects the composition of the neighbourhoods that
spawn them
Violence
How different is context
of violence in the US and UK?
 In relation to gun crime & homicide:

US > UK
St Louis > Research City

BUT!

Research City ~ St Louis

Firearm violence in Research City
 Firearm violence for last 20 years relatively
high in RC for the British context
 Disproportionately concentrated in Inner West
 Victims and perpetrators often/mostly gang
affiliated
Violence in RC gangs
 Gangs did not ‘specialise’ in violence, generally tried to avoid it
 But! Violence symbolically and rhetorically important

Potential often present; references to, memories of, violence
 Idea of ‘trigger happy’ gangster motivated to protect reputation

Alternate conflict resolution strategies employed
 Conflict within gangs as important as conflict between gangs



More ‘important’ day-to-day
About: business, friendships, romantic relationships,
family – same for most of us
Jealousy and debt recovery were key – came up over and
over – generally, these are likely within not between gangs
Violence and drugs markets
 Violence was linked to drug sales, but not
disputes over markets/customers

Instead, ‘taxing’ other dealers (same &
different gangs)
 Played role in gang members arming
themselves
 Even in the hey-day of Inner West specialist
drugs gangs, conflict only rarely about drugs
markets
Unacknowledged trauma
 References to violence, and exposure to violence as
victims, perpetrators and witnesses was part of
everyday conversation and growing up
 Ex-girlfriend of key gang member explains:
 ‘There was that many shootings at the time that it was
just normal, it was sad and everything, but then a
couple of days later you would have forgotten about it
and somebody else would have been shot’ (30 year old
woman)
Interview with female gang member,
sister of male gang member
 I lost the plot when I seen that poor – when I seen
that poor boy got shot dead, and in front of me. I
could have took that bullet, it could have been me
dead. I had the Regional Crime Squad, I had the
Murder Squad at me door. Do you know what I
mean? I was getting phone calls – shit myself. I
thought, “I’ve gotta get the fuck out of the city. I’ve
gotta get away.” And I couldn’t cope with what I’d
seen, and I cracked up and went to me doctor’s. The
police weren’t interested, they just wanted to get me
statement, I told them to sling it. Do you know what I
mean? Went to me doctor’s, told him, you know um,
“I’ve seen someone shot.” And he said, “Well you
shouldn’t put yourself in them situations, should
you?”
Violence
 Different gangs, different violence


Inner West: having, holding, accessing, using
guns all important re: gang status
Far West: valued the masculinity of physical
fights (being ‘handy’) as opposed to
‘cowardly’ resort to guns
 But access to guns (‘real’ and ‘replica’)
common across all gangs/research sites
Sources of violence
 Most violence emanated from interpersonal disputes



often about friends, family and romantic
relationships
Not linked to disputes about drug markets
Jealousy and debt motivated a considerable degree
of within-gang conflict
 Association (by blood or company) to other gang members
was a ‘risk factor’ for bullying and victimisation

By other gangs, by police
 ‘Unsolved’ violence (esp. murders) by police resulted in violent
‘vendettas’ among these gangs (‘crime as social control’)
 Glorified in plethora of recent journalistic books
Violence: conclusion
 Suspect many similarities
 Research in UK early days
 But lack of connection between violence and
drugs markets consistent
 Our focus on ‘within gang’ conflict not
discussed widely in the US


Does not necessarily point to cross-national
differences
Could be our research focus.
Conclusions
Gangs in Research City
 Not well-organised profit making hierarchical criminal
enterprises with an interest on franchising
themselves and active recruitment
 But “bunch of kids with guns”, small minority older
members involved in more serious money-making
criminal activities
 Cultural identity as ‘gang’ not as institutionalised as
in the US
 Drug sales now mostly individual activity, not
controlled by the gang, although sometimes involving
some cooperation and division of labour
Any questions?