Youth in the UK: 99 problems but the gang ain ' t one?

Abstract

Youth in the UK: 99 problems but the gang ain ' t one?Hannah Smithson Rob Ralphs Article information:To cite this document: Hannah Smithson Rob Ralphs , (2016),"Youth in the UK: 99 problems but the gang ain ' t one?", Safer Communities, Vol. 15 Iss 1 pp. 11 -23 Permanent link to this document: http://dx.(2016),"Towards an intersectional model of desistance for black offenders", Safer Communities, Vol. 15 Iss 1 pp. 24-32 http:// dx.(2016),"Managing offenders: establishing the impact of incarceration and what works in Singapore", Safer Communities, Vol. 15 Iss 1 pp. 33-48 http://dx.Access to this document was granted through an Emerald subscription provided by emerald-srm:368933 [] For AuthorsIf you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -At a time when youth gangs and gang policy feature significantly in the discourse on UK youth, it is judicious to critique the framework and evidence upon which these policy developments have originated. The political focus on gangs was heightened, in part, by the English riots in 2011. The reaction to the riots was a "concerted all-out war on gangs" and led to the development of the national Ending Gangs and Youth Violence (EGYV) strategy. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach -The authors use Manchester as a case study to illustrate what the they argue to be the misplaced focus of the current EGYV strategy and provide a detailed critique of the strategy to date. Findings -The paper suggests that government funded gang interventions are currently bereft of a "what works" approach and should only be implemented when the authors have significantly developed the knowledge and understanding of gangs in a local context. Originality/value -The paper calls for a stronger evidence based policy approach to tackling gangs.

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

“…Pitts, he concluded, had succumbed to unguarded 'gang talk' (Hallsworth and Young 2008) and was reminded that loose lips sink ships. Hallsworth foreshadowed heavy criticism of subsequent government policy on gangs (see Shute and Medina 2014;Smithson and Ralphs 2016), with some commentators arguing the 'G-word' helped politicians justify the scapegoating and criminalization of black and minority ethnic youth (Alexander 2008;Gunter 2017;Smithson et al 2012;Williams 2015). Pitts (2012Pitts ( , 2016 responded in kind to these criticisms, describing the academics underplaying victim impact or neutralizing harm caused by gangs as 'reluctant criminologists' blinded by cognitive dissonance and in dereliction of their professional duty to transform private troubles into public issues.…”

European Youth Gang Policy in Comparative Context

“…As research has demonstrated, moreover, there are wide variations in the meaning and application of the term ‘gang’ both within jurisdictions such as the UK (Fraser, ), between the USA and UK (Fraser and Hagedorn, ; Hallsworth and Brotherton, ), and among criminal justice practitioners across these differing jurisdictions. The picture is still emerging and clearly lacking several pieces of the jigsaw (Ralphs and Smithson, ; Smithson and Ralphs, ).…”

Challenging the orthodoxy on pupil gang involvement: When two social fields collide

“…This is a thorny subject, particularly in the UK. Some researchers have argued that youth gang ‘problems’ are hyped up by professionals and ‘gang talkers’ with vested interests in exaggerating the nature and scale of youth gangs (Hallsworth & Young, ; Smithson & Ralphs, ). Others, however, have highlighted the serious levels of violence committed by people involved in street gangs and the negative effects that gang involvement has on outcomes for young people (Pitts, ; Densley, ; Harding, ).…”

“…An established body of research indicates that gang‐involved young people have an increased propensity to become both offenders and victims of crime, experience breakdowns in their familial and personal relationships, and engage in illicit substance use (Thornberry et al ., ; Krohn et al ., ; Melde & Esbensen, ; Ozer & Engel, ; Weerman et al ., ). The issue of youth gangs was pushed up the UK political agenda by the 2011 riots and the contentious debates that followed regarding the role played by school‐aged young people involved in gangs (Ministry of Justice, ; Home Office, ; Smithson & Ralphs, ). Recent police data indicate that the problems associated with youth gangs have been growing since the riots, with the number of gang‐related violent offences increasing by 55% between 2013 and 2015, and over one in five knife crimes with serious injury in 2015 being gang‐related (MOPAC, ).…”