‘It ain’t nothing like America with the Bloods and the Crips’: Gang narratives inside two English prisons
| Author | Coretta Phillips |
| Published date | 01 January 2012 |
| Date | 01 January 2012 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1462474511424683 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Punishment & Society
14(1) 51–68
!The Author(s) 2012
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DOI: 10.1177/1462474511424683
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Article
‘It ain’t nothing like
America with the Bloods
and the Crips’:
Gang narratives inside
two English prisons
Coretta Phillips
London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
Abstract
This article explores recent concerns about the emergence of gangs in prisons in England
and Wales. Using narrative interviews with male prisoners as part of an ethnographic
study of ethnicity and social relations, the social meaning of ‘the gang’ inside prison is
interrogated. A formally organized gang presence was categorically denied by prisoners.
However, the term ‘gang’ was sometimes elided with loose collectives of prisoners who
find mutual support in prison based on a neighbourhood territorial identification. Gangs
were also discussed as racialized groups, most often symbolized in the motif of the
‘Muslim gang’. This racializing discourse hinted at an envy of prisoner solidarity and
cohesion which upsets the idea of a universal prisoner identity. The broader conceptual,
empirical and political implications of these findings are considered.
Keywords
gang, Muslim prisoners, prison violence, race, territoriality
Introduction
Hobbs’ (1997: 813) assertion that there is no straightforward British equivalent of
the underclass gang member ‘emerging from the swamp of late twentieth century
capitalism wearing a baseball cap, intent on apparently ignoring the Mertonian
Corresponding author:
Coretta Phillips, London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Social Policy OLDM2.27,
Houghton Street, London, WC2A 2AE, UK.
Email: coretta.phillips@lse.ac.uk
concept of upward mobility upon which American society is grounded’ is now being
challenged in both street and prison settings.
Newspaper headlines such as ‘Gangland violence is linked to drug turf wars’
control’ (The Times, 26 May 2008), ‘Prison officers fear that Muslim inmates are
taking over control’ (The Times, 26 May 2008), and ‘Gang in jail reign of terror’
(Mirror, 18 January 2005) suggest a move in the US direction. The latter two head-
lines discuss Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons’ inspections of Whitemoor high
security prison (HMIP, 2008) and Liverpool prison (HMIP, 2004), both of which
contemplate ‘gangland culture’ being imported into prison. More broadly, these
headlines and inspections raise perennial concerns about social order in prisons,
but now added to the mix are new questions of racialized, religious identification,
symbolized in the spectre of ‘the gang’.
This specific referent is, of course, not new to the wider criminological scene. In
the USA, since the pioneering work of Riis (1902) and Thrasher (1927), the street
gang has been a constant source of fascination and consternation. Conceptualized
by Thrasher within a Chicago School tradition, the gang was a product of socially
disorganized areas experiencing problems of immigrant adjustment and lacking
informal social control. Their racialized composition was downplayed because
this was seen as incidental to the ecological processes of invasion, assimilation
and succession through the concentric zones of the city by new waves of migrants.
The gang was constituted by its essential youthfulness, spontaneity and oppositional
outlook, but also its protean and ephemeral nature, involving members in defensive
territorial fighting and predatory behaviour such as stealing.
Prison gangs: Theoretical, conceptual and empirical
understandings
Hagedorn’s (2007a, 2007b) contemporary account places the socially excluded
1
urban poor at the gang’s core in countries across the globe. Disadvantaged by
economic restructuring and the neoliberal retrenchment of welfare, organized
gang members assert their oppositional religious, ethnic or cultural identities in
the spaces of both prison and urban ghetto (but see Katz and Jackson-Jacobs,
2004). There is both the migration of some prison gangs into neighbourhoods
and of street gangs into prison as leaders are incarcerated (see also Moore, 1978).
The penetration of street gangs into the prison was a theme in Jacobs’ (1974,
1977) classic study of Stateville penitentiary where three black and one Latino gang
established a strong physical presence symbolized through their gang colours dis-
played on clothes and tattoos. Outside prison, each was located in deprived areas,
engaging in territorial violence, drug trafficking and legitimate businesses. Prison
gang members retained strong links to their street-based organizations, to the degree
that street conflicts, communicated via family members, were felt and responded to
inside prison.
The ‘supergangs’ in Stateville variously provided physical protection, material
advantages, often gained through bullying and extortion, and information about
52 Punishment & Society 14(1)
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