The gangs of Bangladesh: Exploring organized crime, street gangs and ‘illicit child labourers’ in Dhaka
| Author | Sally Atkinson-Sheppard |
| Published date | 01 April 2016 |
| Date | 01 April 2016 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1748895815616445 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Criminology & Criminal Justice
2016, Vol. 16(2) 233 –249
© The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/1748895815616445
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The gangs of Bangladesh:
Exploring organized crime,
street gangs and ‘illicit child
labourers’ in Dhaka
Sally Atkinson-Sheppard
The Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London, UK
Abstract
This article presents a study of street children’s involvement in organized crime in Bangladesh. It
is based on an empirical case study conducted in Dhaka and draws on interviews with 22 street
children, 80 interviews with criminal justice practitioners, NGO workers and community members
and over three years of participant observation of the Bangladeshi criminal justice system and
wider society. The article explains how street children work for ‘mastaans’, Bangladeshi organized
crime bosses. These children are hired to carry weapons, sell drugs, collect extortion money,
commit political violence and conduct contract killings. This article argues that these children are
neither victims nor offenders; they are instead ‘illicit labourers’, doing what they can to survive
on the streets.
Keywords
Bangladesh, child labour, gangs, organized crime, street children
Introduction
Criminologists argue that there are certain conditions that predispose a locality, whether
it be a neighbourhood, city or country, to organized crime and gangs (Hagedorn, 2008).
Bangladesh suffers from many of these conditions, notably a fragile state (Riaz, 2005),
endemic poverty and pervasive slums (Lewis, 2012). The stability of the country is
precarious; it is vulnerable to climate change and disasters, both natural and man-made
(Van Schendel, 2009). So what does this mean for the involvement of street children in
organized crime?
Corresponding author:
Sally Atkinson-Sheppard, The Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London, Somerset House East Wing,
London, WC2R 2LS, UK.
Email: sallyatkinsonsheppard@yahoo.co.uk
616445CRJ0010.1177/1748895815616445Criminology & Criminal JusticeAtkinson-Sheppard
research-article2015
Article
234 Criminology & Criminal Justice 16(2)
There have been hardly any studies conducted in Bangladesh which explore gangs or
organized crime. The reasons for this are unclear but the fact remains that while scholars
have long debated gangs in the USA, and increasingly in other countries, this research
offers the first robust empirical study of the gangs of Bangladesh. Because so little is
known about organized crime in Bangladesh, there is no way to assess how these groups
operate, the hierarchies that exist among them or the role children play in these criminal
businesses. This article fills these lacunae.
During an extensive review of the literature, I discovered that children who become
involved in armed conflict or criminal activity are commonly described as gang mem-
bers, child soldiers or victims of exploitation. However, none of these terms sufficiently
explain what happens to children in Dhaka. This article proposes an alternative view:
street children, who operate at the bottom echelon of Bangladesh’s organized crime
groups, are ‘illicit labourers’; that is, unskilled or semi-skilled workers in criminal
enterprises. This article will consider why this proposition better explains the work
children do and why they do it.
The first section of this article considers the relevant literature to this discussion of
children’s involvement in organized crime. The second section deliberates the methods
used in this study. The third section discusses the research findings, including the types
of crimes that street children are hired to commit and the backgrounds of these children’s
lives. The conclusion draws together the main arguments within this article and considers
the implications of this research for policy, practice and future research.
Organized crime and gangs
Scholars have long debated the organization of crime. Mary McIntosh (1975: 7) was
one of the first to do so in 1975 when she argued that ‘crime is a collective activity’ and
that it is important to consider how criminals organize themselves and the crimes that
they commit. But what makes the organization of crime so significant for this article?
First, understanding criminal organizations in Bangladesh helps us to recognize how
criminal groups operate. Second, it enables an understanding of the division of labour
within these groups (McIntosh, 1975: 7). Lastly, it allows the development of a framework
through which to understand how crime groups are managed, how gang members are
ordered and how children are exploited.
The question of what constitutes organized crime has been highly contested over the
years, and the violence these groups commit has dominated political and social rhetoric
in many countries (Levi, 2012). Many academics argue that street-based gangs operate
as the lower echelons of organized crime groups (Levitt and Venkatesh, 2000). In 2006,
Hallsworth and Young proposed that group offending occurs in three distinctive clusters:
peer groups; gangs; and organized crime. They argued that gangs often begin as peer
groups but that some gangs become organized crime groups. This view is supported
empirically in several studies in the United Kingdom (Densley, 2012; Harris et al., 2012),
in Indonesia (Alcano, 2014) and South America (Rodgers and Baird, 2015).
While there is a general consensus that many gangs begin as peer groups involved
in recreation few studies explore the specific involvement of street children in gangs
or organized crime. However, some studies do reference ‘gang-like’ behaviour of street
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