Ending Gang and Youth Violence: A Critique
| Author | Joe Cottrell-Boyce |
| Published date | 01 December 2013 |
| Date | 01 December 2013 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1473225413505382 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Youth Justice
13(3) 193 –206
© The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/1473225413505382
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Ending Gang and Youth Violence: A
Critique
Joe Cottrell-Boyce
Abstract
This article assesses the appropriateness of the strategies laid out in the 2011 Ending Gang and Youth
Violence report (HM Government, 2011), for achieving the goal of reducing youth violence in England and
Wales. Gangs, it is argued, have been constructed as a ‘suitable enemy’ in the report, obscuring the wider,
structural roots of youth violence. At the level of enforcement, a focus on gang membership may also be
counterproductive; creating confusion and resulting in a drag-net approach which can criminalize innocent
young people rather than focusing resources on serious violent crime.
Keywords
gangs, policy, poverty, violence, youth
Introduction
In the wake of the August 2011 riots in England, UK Prime Minister David Cameron
called for ‘concerted, all out war on gangs’, which constituted a ‘criminal disease that has
infected streets and estates across our country’ (Cameron 2011). In late 2011 the govern-
ment published the Ending Gang and Youth Violence report (HM Government, 2011),
which set out a cross-departmental strategy for addressing gang membership and youth
violence.
Placing gang membership centre stage in policies to reduce violence is problematic,
given the fact that ‘the gang’ is a contested concept, which, ‘has developed a public life
independent of any empirical foundation or conceptual exploration – full of its own sound
and fury, but signifying very little’ (Alexander, 2008: 3). Focusing violence reduction
strategies on gangs runs the risk of missing the broader social context within which vio-
lence occurs and consequently arriving at the wrong solutions. At the operational level,
the focus on gang membership may also be counterproductive; creating confusion and
resulting in a drag-net approach which criminalizes innocent young people rather than
focusing resources on serious violent crime.
Corresponding author:
Joe Cottrell-Boyce, Traveller Equality Project, London Irish Centre, London, NW1 9XB, UK.
Email: jcboyce@live.co.uk
505382YJJ13310.1177/1473225413505382Youth JusticeCottrell-Boyce
2013
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