Girls and Gangs: ‘Shemale’ Gangsters in the UK?
| Date | 01 December 2009 |
| Author | Tara Young |
| Published date | 01 December 2009 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1473225409345101 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
ARTICLE
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Published by SAGE Publications
(Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC)
www.sagepublications.com
ISSN 1473–2254, Vol 9(3): 224–238
DOI: 10.1177/1473225409345101
Girls and Gangs: ‘Shemale’ Gangsters in the UK?
Tara Young1
Correspondence: Tara Young, Centre for Social and Evaluation Research, London
Metropolitan University, Calcutta House, Old Castle Street, London, E1 7NT, UK.
Email: t.young@londonmet.ac.uk
Abstract
In recent years there have been a number of high profi le stories reporting increasing levels of
female involvement in group related crime. According to these reports teenage girls are no longer
spectators hovering on the periphery of street gangs but are hard core members actively engaging in
the kind of extreme violence that is usually the preserve of men. As girl ‘gangsters’, young women
are seen to be engaging in a wide range of crimes such as robbery, rape and murder. Using fi ndings
from an empirical study on young people’s use of weapons and involvement in street based groups,
this article examines female involvement in ‘gangs’ and their violent behaviour. It challenges the
dominant stereotype of girl ‘gangsters’ as malicious violent aggressors. The notion of the gang and
implications for policy and practice will also be considered.
Keywords: street gangs, victimization, violence, young women
Introduction
Reviews of crime statistics show that compared to male offending, female offending is low
and female violence is a relatively rare occurrence. That offending in general, and violent
offending in particular, is primarily the domain of men, and not women, has not prevented
social commentators from frequently reporting on a departure from this pattern. During these
periods the relatively non-serious nature of female offending is obfuscated by attention to a rise
in offi cially-recorded female crime and an apparent change in the type of offence committed.
Claims are made that women are becoming more violent, that the violence they engage in is
more lethal, and that they are becoming more like their male counterparts (see Burman and
Batchelor, this volume). In the hubbub about female violence, a moral panic ensues (Cohen,
1980) where young women are hailed as being ‘the feral sex’ (Bracchi, 2008).
Panic about youthful behaviour has a long history (Pearson, 1983), and this tradition
persists in contemporary concerns around the hyper-violent female, particularly in the form of
the female gangster. In the early 1980s, amongst a fl urry of interest and concern about female
offending, Anne Campbell investigated the phenomenon of violence amongst British girls
(Campbell, 1981) and subsequently amongst female gang members in the US (Campbell, 1984).
Her investigations drew the conclusions that the panic surrounding female violence was not
commensurate with the problem and the existence of a female gang ‘problem’ was, in essence,
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