For months now there has been wide coverage of the number of murders of and knife attacks on young people in London. Only last weekend there was another murder in Hackney bringing the total for London to twenty-four during 2008. I learnt on the news last night that individual gangs control three areas of Hackney, and that one of these gangs has started encroaching on the others’ territory. This leads to a general sense of unease, an anxiety for young people in the area and a sense of helplessness about what to do about gang culture.
I thought I’d explore on IBSS to look at some of the issues related to gangs. I started by looking at the IBSS online thesaurus and using the keywords ‘gangs’ and ‘violence’ to do a search. I limited this to material produced between1995 to 2008 and this gave 102 results. What the results reveal is that there are of course numerous issues relating to the formation and role of gangs and the use of violence.
An article which caught my eye was ‘Gang-related gun violence: socialization, identity, and self.’ Paul Stretesky and Mark Pogrebin (2007). The article describes a study using interviews with twenty-two inmates convicted of gang-related gun violence. The findings show that gangs are ”important agents of socialization that help shape a gang member’s sense of self and identity.” In addition, those interviewed said that guns offered them protection, and also helped them “to project and protect a tough reputation”. The study goes on to look at “the way gang socialization leads to gun-related violence and has implications for policies aimed at reducing that violence.” The article emphasizes the role of the gang in giving young people a sense of belonging and status amongst their peers.
Another article, ‘Gang membership as a risk factor for adolescent violent victimization’ by Terrance Taylor, Dana Peterson, Finn-Aage Esbensen and Adrienne Freng (2007) looks not at gangs’ violent behaviour but at “the link between gang membership and violent victimization”. The findings “suggest that gang members are more likely to experience violent victimization, as well as greater frequency of victimization, than do non-gang members”. It is ironic that young people feel safe in a gang, in terms of status and belonging, but that in fact membership of the gang threatens their safety.
Another interesting angle is raised in a review of the book ‘Gangs in the global city: alternatives to traditional criminology’ edited by J Hagedorn and reviewed by Irving Spergel (2007). The book mentions the factors usually considered important for high gang crime rates, such as drugs, and for the lowering of crime rates, such as zero-tolerance policing. However the book puts forward and examines a different issue – the role of housing in gang formation. The review mentions the 2005 riots in Paris and that “the concentration of economically disadvantaged ethnic minorities in high-rise housing projects has created conditions for violence even in Europe, where violence is historically very low” and goes on to say that “within cities and regions, certain factors such as slum clearance, gentrification, or other aspects of a city’s housing policy may have an effect on social behaviors, including violence.” This would certainly be an area I’d like to investigate further with regard to our Hackney example. Over the past five years there has been a lot of re-development of notoriously bad areas of high rise housing into new mixed low-rise housing. On the surface this appears to be a vast improvement with a nice square at the centre of the development meant to give a community feel. But rumour has it – and a large police presence in the area seems to back this up – that drug pushers and gangs are still prevalent and that gentrification of the area has not solved the problems but pushed them into smaller areas.
I found it interesting to dip into IBSS and explore a couple of different aspects of this vast topic: the impact of issues like housing, the role of gangs in giving young people a sense of identity, and the irony that although being in a gang makes young people feel safer it actually makes them more prone to attack.
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