Making Up Gangs: Looping, Labelling and the New Politics of Intelligence-led Policing
| Author | Colin Atkinson,Alistair Fraser |
| DOI | 10.1177/1473225414529047 |
| Published date | 01 August 2014 |
| Date | 01 August 2014 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Youth Justice
2014, Vol. 14(2) 154 –170
© The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/1473225414529047
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Making Up Gangs: Looping,
Labelling and the New Politics
of Intelligence-led Policing
Alistair Fraser and Colin Atkinson
Abstract
The 2011 ‘summer of violent disorder’ in England cast a spotlight on the often arbitrary and uneven
process through which individuals become labelled as ‘gang-members’. Based on data from two separate
but concurrently conducted qualitative studies in Glasgow, Scotland, this article draws on the critical
vocabularies of Bourdieu and Hacking to conceptualize this new frontier in the politics of gang policing:
analysing the distinctive ‘fields’ that street-based young people and police actors inhabit; uncovering the
complex chain of interactions through which individuals become labelled as ‘gang-members’; and exploring
the consequences of such labelling processes.
Keywords
ethnography, gangs, intelligence, policing, sociology of knowledge
Introduction
In the aftermath of England’s ‘summer of violent disorder’ in 2011 – a series of events that
also impacted upon young people north of the border in Scotland (BBC News, 2011a,
2011b) – Prime Minister David Cameron was unequivocal in apportioning blame.
Informed by briefings from senior police officers, Cameron postulated that street gangs
were ‘at the heart’ of the violence. However, as the dust settled, uncertainty about the
nature and extent of gang involvement in the riots began to emerge. After initially claim-
ing that as many as 28 per cent of those arrested in London were gang members, the
Metropolitan Police revised this figure downwards to 19 per cent, a figure that dropped to
13 per cent countrywide (The Guardian and LSE, 2012: 21). By the time the United
Kingdom (UK) Government’s policy document was published in response, the role of
gangs in the riots was considerably downplayed.1 This process of equivocation, revision
and uncertainty casts a new spotlight on the policing and political response to the ‘gang
Corresponding author:
Alistair Fraser, University of Hong Kong, 923 Jockey Club Tower, Hong Kong.
Email: afraser@hku.hk
529047YJJ0010.1177/1473225414529047Youth JusticeFraser and Atkinson
research-article2014
Article
Fraser and Atkinson 155
fever’ (Hallsworth and Young, 2008) that has recently gripped the UK, in particular the
role of police intelligence in attributing gang membership and estimating the extent of the
‘problem’.2 Given the potentially corrosive effects of labelling (McAra and McVie, 2012;
Ralphs et al., 2009), there is a need for critical scrutiny of the processes through which
individuals become labelled as gang members, and the consequences of such labelling.
Based on original research undertaken in Glasgow, Scotland, this article aims to explore
the complex chain of interactions through which individuals become labelled as gang
members, and the consequences of these often uncertain and unpredictable processes.
Specifically, the article illuminates the increasingly active role of civilian intelligence
workers – who are employed in the police service but are not sworn police officers – in
the new politics of gang policing. Civilian intelligence workers play a pivotal role in the
identification of gang members and the construction of gangs ‘in the system’, exercising
a level of power and discretion previously only attributed to police officers. The role of
civilian policing staff, however, remains relatively unexplored in the academic literature,
and little is known of their subcultural role within the broader field of policing, which is
still dominated by a persistent and hegemonic ‘cop culture’. Drawing on first-hand
accounts of police actors3 – both civilian intelligence workers and police officers in a
range of roles – and young people themselves, we analyse the contingent meanings of
gangs in the varying contexts of ‘policing’ and ‘street’. In both fields, there is a struggle
for recognition, status and distinction – and for young people, a great deal of posturing,
experimentation and fluidity – making the attribution of gang membership a highly fraught
and contingent process, with clear potential for error and ‘misrecognition’.
The article is divided into three parts. In the first, we give an overview of the rapid
expansion of the policing of gangs in the UK, highlighting the increasingly critical role of
civilian intelligence workers in these processes. Drawing on the vocabularies of the
French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, we argue for the need to appreciate the divergent
understandings of gangs between the fields of policing and the street, as well as the poten-
tial pitfalls involved in ‘making up people’ (Hacking, 2004) – particularly when carried
out by police actors obscured from public debate and academic scrutiny. In the second, we
introduce the field site and methods of the research, framing the argument as a dialogue
between researchers embedded in distinct but related fields. In the third, we explore the
separate but overlapping nature of gang meanings and definitions between these fields,
demonstrating the role of subjectivity and contingency in labelling processes, and the
impact of these at-times arbitrary processes on the lives of children and young people.
Policing Gangs in the UK: Power, Politics and Policy Transfer
Prime Minister Cameron’s declaration of a ‘concerted, all-out war on gangs and gang
culture’ (HM Government, 2011a) marked a significant amplification of government rhet-
oric toward gangs in the UK, and was followed by a corresponding acceleration of gang-
specific policy responses (HM Government, 2011b); many of which have a distinctly
American flavour.4 Summarizing the impact of such developments in England, Smithson
et al. (2013: 114) recognize the importance of policy transfer from the United States (US),
noting that many English cities have developed dedicated police gang/firearm units, such
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