European Youth Gang Policy in Comparative Context

Abstract

The past decade has seen increased reports of street gangs across a range of contexts. In Europe, anxieties over street‐based youth has led to the development of gang‐specific policies across a range of jurisdictions, most notably the UK. Following a similar pattern of policy mobility in criminal justice, many of these policies have origins in the US system. In this review of international gang policy developments, we critically examine a number of these policies in a comparative context ‐ including gang policing units and intelligence databases ‐ and interrogate their efficacy. Drawing on cogent examples from the UK, we argue for caution in adopting US gang intervention tactics due to the lack of empirical evidence relating to their applicability or efficacy, and the corresponding potential for discrimination toward the most marginalised and socially excluded children and young people in society.

A ‘good job’ in difficult conditions: Detectives’ reflections, decisions and discriminations in the context of ‘joint enterprise’

“…Together, the embedded nature of ‘gang talk’ in criminal justice discourse and public policy (Fraser et al, 2018; Hallsworth and Young, 2008, 2010) and the term ‘gang’ not being race neutral facilitates storylines of collectivity that potentially criminalize all people of colour (Alexander, 2008). Thus ‘the uncritical and arbitrary employment of the gang label, particularly within a risk paradigm’ (Smithson et al, 2013: 113) pathologizes and criminalizes the urban black male in wider social culture (Stuart, 2019) leading to the incorrect assessment of black men as criminal (Gabbidon, 2010) all in an effort to ‘protect the public’ (Williams and Clarke, 2018: 1).…”

The Matrix in Context: Taking Stock of Police Gang Databases in London and Beyond

“…The London Metropolitan Police Service (hereafter, the Met) maintains a database of purported gang members, termed the ‘Gangs Matrix’ (hereafter, the Matrix). The Matrix was launched in 2012 as part of the UK Government’s ‘war on gangs’ (Densley and Mason, 2011; Fraser et al, 2018), although there is precedence for UK gang databases before that, with the National Football Intelligence Unit files on football hooligans in the 1990s (Garland and Rowe, 1999). The Matrix is a risk management tool used to respond to the problems associated with the estimated 200 gangs in London, such as the 110 gang-related homicides that occurred between 2016 and 2018 (Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC), 2018: 10).…”

From Breakers to Bikers: The Evolution of the Dutch Crips ‘Gang’

“…Notwithstanding these contributions, some European scholars take issue with a flourishing gang control industry, represented by databases that customize police action and civil gang injunctions that limit the freedoms of gang members (see Densley 2011;Fraser et al 2018), and a related "quantification of gang research" (Pyrooz and Mitchell 2015:42) exported from America to Europe. Young (2004), for example, argues that an "administrative criminology" characterized by "voodoo statistics," dehumanizes and denaturalizes the human experience, reducing gang members to "walking clusters of decontextualized variables" (Hallsworth and Young 2008:187).…”