Reluctant Gangsters: The Changing Face of Youth Crime

by Pitts; John

• ISBN13: 9781843923657
• ISBN10: 1843923653
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2008-09-19
• Publisher: Willan

Summary

During the time it took to write this book 39 young people were either shot or stabbed to death on the streets of London in gang-related murders. Other major cities in the UK have also experienced an increase in such killings. In certain parts of our towns and cities, and among certain social groups, life has become far more dangerous for children and young people. At the heart of this problem is the proliferation of violent youth gangs and the culture they ferment.This book provides an account of the emergence, nature and impact of armed youth gangs in three London boroughs over the last decade. It describes the challenges these armed young men and women pose to their communities, those charged with preventing crime and those struggling to vouchsafe 'community safety'. While the focus of the book is 'local', the processes it outlines and the effects it chronicles have both a national and international relevance.It argues that the main reason behind the emergence of the armed youth gang has been the coalescence of two previously discrete socially deviant groups; the rowdy, episodically criminal, adolescent peer group on the one hand and the locally-based organised criminal network on the other.The book analyses the impact of the globalisation of the drugs trade and the consequent shift in the focus of local organised crime from the 'blag' to the 'business'. It also discusses how socio-economic and cultural factors, as well as family and neighbourhood histories and loyalties and localised racial antagonisms all play their part in the emergemce of the armed youth gang.

Author Biography

John Pitts is Vauxhall Professor of Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Bedfordshire

Table of Contents

Figures and tables	p. vii
About the author	p. ix
Acknowledgements	p. xv
Things have changed	p. 1
The obscure object of investigation	p. 9
Thinking about gangs	p. 29
Why here? Why now?	p. 54
From a blag to a business	p. 66
We are family: gang cultures	p. 84
Reluctant gangsters	p. 97
Living in neo-liberal gangland	p. 110
If every child mattered	p. 126
References	p. 163
Index	p. 173
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