Offender Management Community Scoping of London Gang ...

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(Sunderland) of the six areas studied by Bannister (2008) were females thought to have a significant role in forming territorial groups. ‣ The dynamic factors that affect the formation and shifting rivalries of serious offending groups. ‣ The link between gang membership, imprisonment and violent radicalisation. ‣ Effective interventions with young people and adults who are engaged in serious group offending. What evidence there is tends to originate in the USA (which has a dramatically different context and pattern of group offending), and focuses on people under 18. 12
3. Dynamics and Drivers of Serious Group Offending in London 3.1 Methodology The information in this section has been drawn from structured ethnographic research. This has involved speaking with predominantly older gang members from a dozen locations across London. Furthermore, the use of an open source chat forum created specifically for gang discussion in England 3 , especially London, has been useful in providing a written source of opinions and comments from people of all ages, including gang members and social workers and like-minded people with an interest in gangs. Finally, in more recent years e-mail communication with gang members, affiliates and associates as identified through “gang” websites on Myspace has helped to acquire a number of written descriptions on issues of gang names, territories and reasoning behind rivalries and alliances. The report therefore relies on multiple formal and informal interviews with 66 key informants who are current and former gang members predominantly aged over 20 from 21 London Boroughs. Further information has been drawn from 55 regular contributors to the England Gangs discussion forum and also from a further 40 less frequent contributors. There have been e-mail exchanges with 32 individuals from some of the more established and older gangs as identified by their MySpace accounts. Finally, 200 individual submissions made via the London gangs website have been made by people wishing to discuss gangs in their local areas – these submissions cover details of gang names and locations on almost every postal district within Greater London. This is only what is quantifiable, there have also been many conversations with professionals, youth workers, youth offending service workers, crime analysts, local residents and young people who live and work in the affected areas. Triangulation has been attempted by linking up intelligence on serious incidents and crimes as told by informants through media sources such as MySpace, YouTube, NexisUK newspaper archive, local London newspapers (London24 and Thisislocallondon websites), listening to lyrics in gang music, visiting estates to observe graffiti and speaking with other crime analysts. The internet is used by groups to advertise their reputation and seriousness. Through the internet the gangs can exaggerate their fierceness as well as their numbers to intimidate other gangs. This is what Alexander (2008, 8) refers to as „mythmaking‟ something, which has become an integral part of youth gangs in London over the past couple of years. Howell (2007, 39) notes that „gangs themselves create myths‟ around what has been known to become the „Big Gang Theory‟ in which “gang members exaggerate their strength, numbers and cohesion either for self defence or to enhance their reputation” (Alexander, 3 England Gangs discussion forum, created in January 2006 http://www.setbb.com/englandgangforu 13
Page 1 and 2: Offender Management Community Scopi
Page 3 and 4: Authors Dr Alex Stevens Dr Polly Ra
Page 5 and 6: 4.2.4 Practice issues .............
Page 7 and 8: 2. Literature review on gangs in Br
Page 9 and 10: the term „gang‟ by police or th
Page 11: that they will mature out of, does
Page 15 and 16: anymore. We are prepared to defend
Page 17 and 18: The scores used to calculate depriv
Page 19 and 20: ecome involved with those who have
Page 21 and 22: Aside from intra-gang conflict the
Page 23 and 24: 3.3.6. Conflict amongst the age ran
Page 25 and 26: Figure 3.2: Typical age structure o
Page 27 and 28: murders in the future. There is no
Page 29 and 30: When a gang or a number of gang you
Page 31 and 32: ‣ Inter-gang violence. Conflict i
Page 33 and 34: Organised K-Town Black Lambeth Crim
Page 35 and 36: The most significant differences in
Page 37 and 38: The exception was HMP Belmarsh whic
Page 39 and 40: associated with certain Further Edu
Page 41 and 42: of placing rival group members toge
Page 43 and 44: 5. Offender Management Models 5.1 H
Page 45 and 46: Figure 5.2: The multi-agency model
Page 47 and 48: The potential disadvantages are:
Page 49 and 50: 7. References Aldridge, J., & Medin

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