Abstract
The majority of studies about gangs come from the global North meaning that we know very little about young people’s involvement in organized crime in the global South. This chapter explores the roles that Bangladeshi street children play in organized crime groups by drawing on interviews with street children, criminal justice practitioners, non-government organization workers and community members and over three years of participant observation of Bangladesh and its criminal justice system. This chapter argues that in order to understand street children’s involvement in Bangladesh’s organized crime groups—the mastaans—it is necessary to expand the boundaries of criminology to include development studies’ concepts of social protection, patron-clientism and child labor. The chapter highlights the need to build a more cohesive collaboration between criminology and development studies.
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Notes
- 1.
This chapter defined social protection, patronage and child labor as concepts derived from development studies. This is done to ensure clarity for the reader; however, I acknowledge that all three concepts are also relevant to other fields such as childhood studies and ethnography.
- 2.
The term ‘street child’ is a contentious for many reasons. Scholars note the diverse backgrounds of these children and the different ways they engage with the streets (Thomas de Benitez 2011). In addition, the lives of street children are far from static, their relationships with the streets evolve as they grow up (Ennew and Swart-Kruger 2003). Thus, these children must be viewed as individuals rather than as a homogeneous group (Ennew and Swart-Kruger 2003). It is preferable to consider the range of ‘street connections’ that young people have (Thomas de Benitez 2011) and, in this study, it is important to note the ways in which the children were ‘street connected’; some lived ‘off’ of the streets at an organization and rarely returned home, others still played ‘on’ the streets while still engaging with the organization, in addition, several of the children still worked ‘on’ the streets during the time of this study (for a more in-depth discussion of children ‘of’, ‘on’ and ‘off’ the streets, see Aptekar and Heinonen 2003). For the purpose of clarity, the term ‘street child’ is used within these discussions; however, it must be read with caution and considered in light of the variety of connections that children have while being ‘street involved’ (Aptekar and Heinonen 2003).
- 3.
The name of the organization is intentionally excluded from this paper to protect the anonymity of the participants in this study and the organization itself.
- 4.
All phases of this study adhere to the British Society of Criminology’s Ethical Code and were submitted to the King’s College London Ethical Committee where it gained ethical approval.
- 5.
The names of the participants are excluded from this paper to uphold confidentiality and protect the anonymity of all who participated in this study.
- 6.
For more details about the research with the children including engagement techniques, confidentiality and ethics, please see Atkinson-Sheppard S (2017b) Street children and Dhaka’s gangs: Using a case study to explore Bangladeshi organised crime. SAGE Research Methods Cases.
- 7.
Group interview 3 with the children.
- 8.
Group interview 1 with the children.
- 9.
Group interview 2 with the children.
- 10.
Group interview 5.
- 11.
Group interview 5 with the children.
- 12.
Group interview 6 with the children.
- 13.
Group interview 6 with the children.
- 14.
Group interview 4 with the children.
- 15.
Group interview 4 with the children.
- 16.
Semi-structured interview 10.
- 17.
For a more detailed discussion please see: Atkinson-Sheppard S (2016) The gangs of Bangladesh: Exploring organised crime, street gangs and ‘illicit child labourers’ in Dhaka. Criminology and Criminal Justice, 16(2), 233–249. https://doi.org/10.1177/1748895815616445.
- 18.
Not his real name.
- 19.
Semi-structured interview 11.
- 20.
Semi-structured interview 11.
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Atkinson-Sheppard, S. (2018). Developing a Global South Perspective of Street Children’s Involvement in Organized Crime. In: Carrington, K., Hogg, R., Scott, J., Sozzo, M. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Criminology and the Global South. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65021-0_24
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