‘If You’re Down With a Gang Inside, You Can Lead a Nice Life’: Prison Gangs in the Age of Austerity
| Published date | 01 April 2020 |
| Date | 01 April 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1473225420907974 |
| Author | Dev Rup Maitra |
| Subject Matter | Bonus Content |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1473225420907974
Youth Justice
2020, Vol. 20(1-2) 128 –145
© The Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1473225420907974
journals.sagepub.com/home/yjj
‘If You’re Down With a Gang
Inside, You Can Lead a Nice
Life’: Prison Gangs in the
Age of Austerity
Dev Rup Maitra
Abstract
In many countries, there has been growing academic attention towards the activities of street and prison
gang members. However, while much of the American literature explores the experiences of prison gang
members, such investigation has been notably absent in the English context. This article seeks to address this
deficit in the literature. Through gathering data from interviews with active prison gang members, it shows
how reduced staffing levels in English prisons has led to an increasingly ‘ungovernable’ prison space. This, in
turn, has led to an increase in levels of gang membership. Most notably, the high numbers of street gangs
‘imported’ into prisons has had the unintended effect of creating several ‘in prison’ gangs, which form for the
first time in prison, with their members seeking protecting from more established gangs. This proliferation
of gangs has had a significant impact on rates of in-prison violence, and how prisons are managed.
Keywords
far-right, gangs, organized crime, penology, political economy, prison gangs, race relations, radicalization,
street gangs, youth violence
Introduction
Despite the documented historical presence of youth street gangs within England, for
much of the 20th-century academic attention focused more on investigating the activities
and practices of older organized crime figures (see, for example, Hobbs, 1995). Variously
termed ‘gangsters’ and ‘the faces’, there was scant attention paid to investigating what
role, if any, younger gang members played within their operations. This lacuna of aca-
demic study on youth gangs in the 21st century was something that was replicated regard-
ing the study of gangs in prison. Indeed, prior to Wood’s (2006) study on English prison
gangs, there appears to be no mention of prison gangs within England’s academic litera-
ture. Although more recently, there has been increased academic focus towards prison
Corresponding author:
Dev Rup Maitra, University of Suffolk, Long St, Ipswich IP4 1QJ, UK.
Email: d.maitra@uos.ac.uk
907974YJJ0010.1177/1473225420907974Youth JusticeMaitra
research-article2020
Bonus Content
Maitra 129
gangs in England (see, for example, Maitra, 2015), developments in this field are fast
paced: on a street-level, there has been the emergence of new iterations of gang structures,
such as the ‘enterprise gang’ (Densley, 2013) which sees a greater focus on accumulating
pecuniary benefits through gang activities.
However, it is difficult to gauge the relationships and linkages between gangs in prison
and gangs on ‘the street’. The limited research that has been conducted within English
prisons on the subject of gangs has been confined to the adult prison system (see, for exam-
ple, Wood, 2006; Wood and Adler, 2001). The omission of researching youth detention
facilities becomes even more apparent when one considers the disproportionate representa-
tion of young people in England’s gangs (Maitra, 2018), something that is reflective of the
disproportionate presence of young people in crime more generally (Farrington, 1986).
This article primarily presents data gathered from youth gang members (aged 18–24)
imprisoned within two English prisons. Through outlining their experiences, as well as
their conceptualizations around gang membership, this article seeks to illuminate the
characteristics, activities and practices of contemporary youth prison gang members. This
is a relevant and timely area of study when one considers the rising rates of gang-related
violence on the streets of England (Maitra, 2018), as well as a corresponding increase in
academic scrutiny towards street gang activity from scholars in England (see, for exam-
ple, Densley, 2013; Harding, 2014). A lacuna exists, however, in analysing whether, and
to what extent, street gang formations and practices are imported into the country’s prison
system. It is this existing gap which this article seeks to fill. Beginning with a background
on the topic of prison gangs, this article goes on to outline the methodology through which
the presented data were gathered. This article then goes on to analyse data in three princi-
pal sections: first, a discussion on the prison gang in the 21st century, situating the find-
ings and gang members’ perspectives within the extant literature. The data show how
prison gangs are now a reality within the English prison system, with members operating
within loosely structured, yet informally delineated gangs. I then go onto to the contested
area of ‘politicized’ gangs and the interactions between race, faith and prison gang mem-
bership. While these are polarizing areas of discussions, the interactions between religion,
race and gang-based conflicts were mentioned by many prisoners, and this is, therefore,
an area that requires discussion. Thereafter, I look at the prison gang as a ‘drugs gang’,
outlining how continued membership to one’s ‘drugs gang’ in prison confers practical
benefits both regarding security and ossification of the gang identity. This article ends
with a discussion around some policy implications arising from the research, and finally
with a conclusion of this article’s findings.
Prison Gangs – A Background
American criminologists have conducted extensive research into the aetiology of prison
gangs, focusing, among other things, on the linkages that exist between gangs on ‘the
street’ and in prison. Recent research by Decker and Pyrooz (2018) shows there to have
been an expansion of US prison gang membership, and that gang members vitiate prison-
based treatment programmes, and cause harm to prisoners and prison safety. Earlier
research by Spergel (1995) also found that ‘incarceration . . . has led to increased gang
To continue reading
Request your trial