The Gang in Criminological Literature

Abstract

Of all the topics that contemporary Criminology deals with, arguably, the gang is the most researched. Moreover, gangs are considered in a variety of places, such as policing studies, youth work and migration: they are inescapable, being blamed, at various times, for all manner of things from murder and rape to drug dealing and people trafficking. Others still see gangs as a form of resistance, a social movement and helpful ad hoc socialiser of young people (Brotherton 2007). The extent of gangs is perennially disputed in the literature. There are those who see gangs everywhere and others who see the phenomenon as far more restricted. It both rests on whether scholars use a fat or a thin version of the gang in their work (Hallsworth and Young 2008). The phenomenon of gangs itself is hardly helped by there being no agreed working typology. Moreover, as I noted previously “… the polluting influence of funding from the police and a range of government agencies has meant that criminologists have had little incentive to be unduly critical of the basic ontological settlement around gangs” (Amatrudo 2015a, b, 105). There is also the phenomenon of the fetishisation and sexualisation of young, virile male bodies, often black, by, usually, white, middle-class observers, inside and outside of the academy. Many academics and policy makers are all too willing to sensationalise the lives of young people and fit them neatly into a category; the gang as an object to stare at, to study and assess (Panfil 2014; Mayeda et al. 2001). Many scholars are all too willing to go along with the script. This issue of seeing gangs everywhere is a huge concern. At a time of falling crime rates the gang seems to be given greater and greater attention. The issue of joint criminal enterprise is intertwined with the issue of gangs, leading Squires to write of “voodoo criminal liability” concerning the over-criminalisation of young black men in our urban centres with their accompanying over-prosecution and over-incarceration rates (Squires 2016). We must never forget that Stan Cohen’s Folk Devils and Moral Panics was about gangs, mods and rockers. Cohen’s view was that the media’s focus upon mods and rockers made them seem a far bigger problem than they were. So, it has been with a succession of groups over the years since Cohen’s book appeared. It is worth citing, in full, Cohen’s analysis in a passage from the start of the book, which is seminal:

“Societies appear to be subject, every now and then, to periods of moral panic. A condition episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests; its nature is presented in a stylized and stereotypical fashion by the mass media; the moral barricades are manned by editors, bishops, politicians and other right-thinking people; socially accredited experts pronounce their diagnoses and solutions; ways of coping are evolved or (more often) resorted to; the condition then disappears, submerges or deteriorates and becomes more visible. Sometimes the object of the panic is quite novel and at other times it is something which has been in existence long enough, but suddenly appears in the limelight. Sometimes the panic passes over and is forgotten except in folklore and collective memory; at other times, it has more serious and long-lasting repercussions and might produce such changes as those in legal and social policy or even in the way the society conceives itself. One of the most recurrent types of moral panic in Britain since the war has been associated with the emergence of various forms of youth culture (originally almost exclusively working class, but often recently middle class or student based) whose behaviour is deviant or delinquent” (Cohen 1973, 9).