Gangs, music and the mediatisation of crime: expressions, violations and validations

Abstract

Purpose The way in which criminologists understand, contextualise and theorise around the mediatised world has raised some critical new questions. The purpose of this paper is to report on qualitative research which looks at the ways in which some forms of social media are utilised by gang members. Gang research in the main is predicated on the notion that gangs are deviant products of social disorganisation; however, there is little written on the “specific” forms of expression used by those associated with gangs. Design/methodology/approach The lyrical content of three music videos has been analysed using narrative analysis. Findings Music videos have been used as a form of expression for decades. More recently in some cases they have been used as a tool to send threats, promote gang culture and flaunt illegal substances, which is fairly a new concept, in the UK at least. Social media and music videos are not the sole reason why there has been a rise in violence amongst young people; however, this paper aims to further explore some of these notions. Originality/value The authors suggest that this form of expression presents challenges in the understanding of gang activity in a mediatised world. The intention is not to further criminalise young people, but to seek understanding and explore the phenomenon of music videos and its position their gang research.

Policing the beats: The criminalisation of UK drill and grime music by the London Metropolitan Police

“…In the aftermath of a series of stabbings and shootings that were linked to drill music (Pinkney & Robinson-Edwards, 2018, p. 109), a number of criminal justice responses have been launched. These include the continuation of Operation Domain launched by the Met with the aim of taking action against gang-related videos, the consolidation of a Serious Violence Strategy (HM Government, 2018), and the intention to pursue ‘drillers’ as ‘terror suspects’ echoing the Terrorism Act 2000 (Morrison, 2018; Thapar, 2018b; The Telegraph , 2018).…”

“…This being the theoretical prism through which the policing of drill is seen, this article addresses a topical issue within a slim but emerging body of literature (Irwin-Rogers & Pinkney, 2017; Pinkney & Robinson-Edwards, 2018), while also paving the way for hitherto neglected discussions on the criminalisation of Black music genres in the UK. While some illuminating academic research on drill’s stylistic predecessor, grime, has been undertaken within sociology and criminology, the criminalisation of both genres by the Metropolitan Police remains largely under-researched.…”

“…While some illuminating academic research on drill’s stylistic predecessor, grime, has been undertaken within sociology and criminology, the criminalisation of both genres by the Metropolitan Police remains largely under-researched. Notable exceptions include two journal articles and a book which explore the ‘mediatisation’ and ‘commodification’ of crime and street culture through new media (respectively, Ilan, 2012; Pinkney & Robinson-Edwards, 2018; Irwin-Rogers & Pinkney, 2017), and another two articles that discuss the ‘juridification’ of nightlife and alternative culture (Talbot, 2011), and reintroduce grime as a ‘public counterculture’ rather than a ‘criminal subculture’ (Fatsis, 2018). All other relevant research on the topic fails to address the criminalisation of Black ‘urban’ music in the UK, specifically or at any adequate length, focusing instead on other aspects of grime, rap and hip-hop.…”

If crime is not the problem, crime fighting is no solution: policing gang violence in the age of abolition

“…In so doing, they confirm existing stereotypes about Black and minority ethnic youth (Trujillo and Vitale, 2019) and criminalise the complex symbolism and performances of gangs and gang members as elaborately detailed in ethnographic research (Garot, 2010). Lest we forget that gangs are multi-faceted, socially constructed, hybrids of fiction and fact (Van Hellemont and Densley, 2019), and gang symbolism has been strongly commodified (Hayward and Yar, 2006;Ilan, 2015) to market clothing and music (Ilan, 2020;Pinkney and Robinson-Edwards, 2018) and sell sensational tales of Black and minority ethnic criminality to a mostly White, affluent, suburban youth market (McCann, 2017). Scott (2020) found huge variations in methods of gang member identification as reported by law enforcement across regions in the USA.…”

THUG LIFE: Drill music as a periscope into urban violence in the consumer age

“…Following the death of rapper Lil Jojo in a drive-by shooting in 2012, linked to a dispute with the man widely believed to be the creator of drill, Chief Keef (Harkness, 2013), drill began to be regularly connected to the perennial problem of inner-city violence. Chicago was and is a city with very high levels of urban violence (Irwin-Rogers and Pinkney;Pinkney and Robinson-Edwards 2018), but in the last ten years or so there has been a tendency to connect Chicago's longstanding violence problem with what is a relatively new form of music. Harkness (2013), claims that the sheer number of gangs and gang members in the city are a key part of the problem, and he also notes that many of these gangs contain active or peripheral members who make drill music.…”