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How Gangs Work
An Ethnography of Youth Violence
J. Densley
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eBook - ePub
How Gangs Work
An Ethnography of Youth Violence
J. Densley
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Drawing on extensive interviews with gang members, this book provides a vivid portrayal of gang life. Topics include the profiles and motivations of gang members; the processes of gang evolution, organization, and recruitment; gang members' uses of violence, media, and technology and the role of gangs in the drugs trade and organized crime
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Estudios infantiles en sociologĂa1
Gangs and Society
Not long after the 2011 UK riots, I co-wrote a paper for Policing Today questioning the role of gangs in urban disorder (Densley and Mason, 2011). I argued that by attributing the riots to gangs, the government had conflated the actions of gang members as individuals (âgang memberâ activity) with the actions of gangs as organizations (âgang-relatedâ activity); a subject to which I shall return in Chapter 3. Gangs were present at the riots but not controlling them, I said, in part because gang identities ceased to be relevant in such a context. If anything, the riots actually disrupted conventional gang activity because gangs lost control of their markets. The perceived suspension of normal rules instead presented gang members with an unprecedented opportunity to acquire consumer products for âfreeâ. In the words of Philip Zimbardo (2008, p. 8), author of the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment, âYou are not the same person working alone as you are in a group.â
My thinking about the riots was informed not only by my training as a sociologist, but also via an experience I had as a secondary school student when I was a face in a crowd out to avenge one Year 11 classmate who had been assaulted by a group of boys from a rival school because he was judged to be wearing the wrong colors on a bus that crossed catchment areas. Dressed in school uniform and apoplectic with rage, we descended upon the bus stop brandishing skipping ropes, field hockey sticks, rounders bats, Bunsen burners, utility clamps, workplace utility knives, and whatever else we could salvage as weapons from school classrooms. Thankfully this never amounted to anythingâthe boys got wind of us lying in wait and stayed home. But I was clearly not myself. The group context diluted responsibility and created anonymity. I followed the crowd and let other people do the hard work of making decisions for me. Like the middle-aged and middle-class women who went âshoppingâ off-the-rack at abandoned department stores during the 2011 riots, I got carried away with the moment and with my peers. I had no real grievance. I was only partially committed to countercultural norms. As David Matza (1964) said, I was able to âdriftâ into delinquency and drift back out again.
Admittedly, my assessment of the riots was largely speculative because at the time there was very little substantive evidence available. But a comprehensive âreadingâ of the riots, which encompassed interviews with 270 rioters and was published some months later by the Guardian and London School of Economics, agreed that the government had mistaken the role of gangs in the summer disturbances (Lewis et al., 2011). The riots were instead precipitated by hostility toward police, particularly over the use of stop and search, and a deep sense of injustice. A âcitizensâ inquiryâ into the riots likewise concluded they were caused by a combination of high youth unemployment and basic police incivility (Citizenâs UK, 2012). Other studies cited as contributing factors the growing divide between rich and poor and concern over a lack of decent affordable housing.1
The riots began when a protest about the police shooting of Tottenham resident Mark Duggan turned violent. After initially claiming that approximately 30 percent of those arrested in London were gang members, the Home Office (2011) revised the figure to 19 percent, a figure that dropped to 13 percent countrywide. But rioters and gang members do share similar profiles. Like gang members, many of the rioters were existing criminals. The Ministry of Justice (2012) reported that 76 percent had a previous caution or conviction, 26 percent had more than ten previous offences, and 26 percent had been in prison before. Like gang members, the rioters were also predominantly young and male. Just under half were aged 18 to 24, with 26 percent aged between 10 and 17 years oldâchildren, in the eyes of the law (Home Office, 2011). A third of them had been excluded from school and the majority had educational difficulties. The racial profile of the rioters also closely resembled the ethnic make-up of the local population. The majority of rioters in London were black or of mixed race, for example, while in Manchester or Liverpool, they were overwhelmingly white; ditto gang members (Metropolitan Police Service, 2007).
Many of themes associated with the riots also overlap with the themes that came out of my research with gangs. This is perhaps to be expected given that the London boroughs most affected by the riots (Croydon, Hackney, Haringey, Lambeth, Lewisham, and Southwark) are the same boroughs in which my fieldwork took place. Rioters identified the same economic (that is, the absence of money, jobs, opportunity) and social (that is, disproportionate treatment, the search for respect and so on) motivations for joining the riots as my interviewees did for joining gangs. Rioters, like my interviewees, described being repeatedly stopped and searched by police. Some rioters, like my interviewees, came from âtroubled familiesâ and âdysfunctional homesâ (Cameron, 2011). But where the rioters and my interviewees differed is that despite what the government first claimed, the rioters on the whole were not as committed to âcriminalityâ as my interviewees were. My interviewees did not âdriftâ between conventional and criminal behavior as I once did (Matza, 1964). The question is, why not?
This chapter explores some of the aforementioned themes in detail, with the aim of better understanding the purpose of gangs and the motivations of gang members. I begin by exploring intervieweesâ lived experiences of violence within the fieldwork sites.
Welcome to the neighborhood
Compared to most large American cities, London is relatively safe. Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling famously made the mistake of implying otherwise, conflating the estates of London with the street corners of Baltimore, the city portrayed in gritty US television drama The Wireâa curious analogy given that the annual murder rate in London is two deaths per 100,000, compared with a staggering 35 per 100,000 in Baltimore (Watt and Oliver, 2009). One criminological axiom, however, is that crime is local and crime rates vary dramatically among neighborhoods in close geographical proximity (Sampson, 2006). Crime continues to trend downward nationallyâhomicide in particular is at a 30-year lowâbut for interviewees living in areas with no infrastructure and lots of gang activity, it felt like crime was going up. Approximately 40 percent of the 145 teenage homicides in London occurring between January 2005 and December 2012 were perpetrated within the six fieldwork boroughs (Citizenâs Report, 2012). For total homicides overall, Lambeth ranks first, Southwark ranks third, Hackney ranks fourth, Haringey ranks sixth, Croydon ranks eighth, and Croydon ranks tenth out of Londonâs 32 boroughs (Wikipedia, 2012a).
Under-protected
When I first proposed this study in 2007, the teenage homicide rate in London increased nearly 70 percent from a steady decade average of 16 to 27. When Billy Cox, 15, was gunned down in his bedroom on Valentineâs Day that year, he became the third teenage boy shot dead in south London in just 11 days. He followed James Smartt-Ford, 16, killed in front of hundreds of people attending a disco at Streatham ice arena on February 3, and Michael Dosunmu, 15, shot in the early hours of February 6, as he lay in bed at home in Peckham. Such murders had a significant impact upon the community. Said one key informant:
The game has changed. Gangs will now kill you in public with your family and friends watching. They will run up in a manâs house and assassinate him while heâs asleep. The home used to be a sanctuary but now nothing is off limits. Kids are sleeping in body armor for fear of being shot in their beds. They feel like they can never be alone. They must always watch their back because someoneâs out there waiting for them to slip.
The proximate presence of these threats, both real and perceived, increased support for gangs and enabled them to successfully persuade others that they belonged to and protected the community. Protection was indeed one of the primary reasons why interviewees joined gangsâgang membership was described as rational adaptation to the perennial threat of violence that was present in the neighborhood.
Many interviewees expected to die not from old age and natural causes but from interpersonal violence. Every day they were forced to negotiate environments in which the young were viewed as prey by various predators. Member 42 said, âI live in a certain area where gangs are having fights on that main road. Daily. I live off that main road. Iâm caught up in it.â Member 26 elaborated:
Drug-dealers trying to sell, crack fiends looking to steal or score, and gang members out to make a name for themselves. Fuck Afghanistan, we need troops out here. Every time man be leaving his yard he walks into the Gladiatorsâ arena. Sometimes itâs kill or be killed.
Interviewees regularly made lifestyle changes to manage everyday threats associated with perceived risk of violent victimization, including, in some cases, making alternative travel plans because of safety concerns on their way to and from school. They were almost preoccupied with studying the environment for possible threats and often so attuned to the harassment they faced on the streetsâthe threats, groping, suggestive gestures, and lewd commentsâthey had developed a repertoire of physical and verbal gymnastics to help defuse it. To project an image that they are ânot to be fucked withâ and best âleft the fuck aloneâ, said Member 11, youths walked with a âkind of bopââ that is, a confident and typically arrogant or aggressive gaitâand practiced their âscrew faceâ, which can only be âdescribed at best as a blank expressionâ and at worst as âhostileâ scowl or look of distaste (Gunter, 2008, p. 353). As Member 22 said, â[y]ouâve gotta look tough, scary, not like one of them Chris Brown niggers, all sweet and shitâ.2
For some interviewees, violence had become a part of everyday life. They viewed fighting as the best or only way to resolve conflicts and gain respect. When Member 31 was in Year 7 at school, for instance, he got into a fight with a boy who âwanted to be the badder man [with] more respectâ. Member 31 recalled:
He pulled out a knife. He was brandishing it. I didnât think heâd do it but he actually stabbed me. ⊠He went for my chest, my neck, but I moved my hand to block it and it hit my wrist. He ran off. I was wearing a black tracksuit ⊠I lifted up my hand, I saw blood pouring out of my sleeve. ⊠Heâd cut completely through the artery and the tendon in my wrist.
I pick up the relationship between violence and respect in Chapter 3, suffice it to say here that fighting was almost a daily occurrence for intervieweesâin some cases they fought so often that it was impossible for them to even quantify. Member 17âs best estimate:
I felt like it was every day. I just wanted to be with my friends but I couldnât because I would see a girl on the bus and sheâll come up behind us, she might have a bat in her hand, metal baseball bat, and I mean I have to fight her.
Riding to his friendâs house one afternoon, for instance, Member 32 was âstabbed twice in [the] legâ for refusing to submit his mobile phone and bicycle to âthe group of boys [who] came around to rob anyone in that areaâ. He explained,
Someone ran from behind me and pulled my hood over my face ⊠we was just fighting and I remember, like, someone going for me with a knife. ⊠Iâd been stabbed in the leg. But, [because of] the adrenaline, I didnât realize [until later].
Member 7, a female, recalled an equally gruesome experience:
I was beaten up ⊠with a bottle nine times in the back of my head. ⊠Bottled nine times before it bust on my head, there was a great crack on my head. Nine times ⊠because it wasnât cracking on my head thatâs the only reason why she carried on, do you see what Iâm trying to say? She bottled me nine times and I actually felt it nine times. I will never forget it.
Incidents such as these often occurred before interviewees ever associated with gangs. Interviews with young people not affiliated with gangs but living in the same areas, moreover, confirmed that they too grappled with similar issues and shared similar experiences, regardless of membership status. A consistent theme in the gang literature, however, is that youths involved in gangs are disproportionately victimized compared to youths who are not (Peterson, Taylor, and Esbensen, 2004; Taylor et al., 2007). The data do not allow me to make general comparisons, but I can report that 19 of the 69 gang member and associate interviewees had previously been threatened with guns, nine had been shot at and three actually had been shot; 55 had previously been threatened with knives and other weapons, 28 had been stabbed, and nine had been injured with other weapons; 41 had been robbed; and one had been kidnapped. All 69 interviewees also reported that they had family or friends who had been shot, stabbed, or beaten by gangs, and at least seven reported that they had family or friends who had died as a result of gang violence. Member 3 told me, âIâve had one proper deep, like friend killed and two school friends that I used to go school with killed. So altogether three school friends dead.â
Only a relatively small number of people are actually involved in the most serious violence. Trevor Bennett and Katy Holloway (2004, p. 313) extrapolate, for instance, there are approximately 20,000 active gang members in Britain, with a confidence level of plus or minus 5000. This is likely an underestimate given the data is based only on those gang members aged 17 and above in the arrestee population from 1999 to 2002, but even 50,000 is a drop in the ocean of 62 million people. A neighborhood can feel very violent even when the actual perpetrators are comparatively few in number, however, not least because the community often knows the fantastically active offenders by name. The police also often know them by name, my fieldwork suggests, but in communities historically âover-policed and to a large extent under-protectedâ (Macpherson, 1999, p. 312), confidence of residents in police to properly intervene is low:
Police is all about numbers. Theyâre not about anything else. If thereâs like a 10 percent decrease in crime on the streets, then theyâre all right with that regardless of whether things are actually any safer or not. Out here youâre not living under police protection. No matter how many times the police said theyâll protect you, theyâre not going to protect you. So we find our own protection. We protect our own ⊠âcus the police ainât doing shit for us, we police ourselves. We equip ourselves with tools to protect ourselves, you understand? Weâre a phone call away. Where the police? Police just tell you to go file a report.Member 25
As gatekeepers into the criminal justice system, police provoked the ire of interviewees most, but their frustration certainly extended to the system at large. Member 37 observed:
Thatâs t...