Gang injunctions just criminalise poor communities

By introducing gang injunctions, the British government is adopting a policy that has failed to reduce violence in the US

“Gang injunctions are not solutions to social ills, nor do they make our streets safer” says Jerry Elster, a former gang member from South Central Los Angeles and an organiser with All of Us or None. “What they are successful at is criminalising impoverished communities”.

This week, gang injunction powers similar to those in the US came into force in England and Wales. Introduced by the last Labour government, gang orders are civil orders that will be used by local authorities and police to restrict the freedoms of people they identify as members of “gangs”. A lower standard of evidence for a civil order will make it easier to issue gang injunctions since identification of gang members can be based on no more than informal hearsay evidence from police officers.

Gang injunctions were first used in Los Angeles in the 1980s. Thirty years later, those original injunctions are still in force. They have become increasingly popular among local government and police, mainly in California but increasingly nationally as a way to get federal funding for extra policing and to push forward gentrification, under the guise of tackling street crime.

By introducing gang injunctions, the British government is adopting a failed policy. Community organisations in California say that injunctions are an ineffective and inappropriate response to social problems, because they fail to address the fundamental causes of violence such as poverty and unemployment. Instead, they criminalise people and their communities. “These injunctions label our young people as criminals, and condemn them to a lifetime of discrimination and an end to hope” says Linda Evans, part of a diverse group of concerned members fighting the gang injunctions in Oakland. Indeed, a gang order will make otherwise legal everyday activities, such as wearing certain colours or meeting a friend in town, illegal for people they target. Breaching any of the conditions imposed upon an individual will be a criminal offence, which could result in a prison sentence of up to two years or a fine.

By criminalising people, injunctions not only fail to reduce violence, they exacerbate the conditions which create it – just consider how criminal records have an impact on unemployment. Meanwhile, Los Angeles continues to have an increasing number of recorded “gang related” crime and residents of Oakland say that gang injunctions have created further tension between communities. But in New York, where more funding was invested in social services to reduce violence, numbers have declined.

Gang injunctions have also been used to justify increased police surveillance and harassment of communities of colour. All those named on the injunctions in Oakland have been black or Latino, and has lead critics of gang injunctions to describe them as “legalised racial profiling”. People of colour are already disproportionately targeted by the police in Britain. A 2010 report showed that black people were at least six times more likely and Asian people around twice as likely to be stopped and searched as white people.

Injunctions will be socially and economically costly. The coalition government continues to cut funding for education, housing, welfare and jobs but is prepared to use our resources to increase surveillance and harassment of our communities. They will require more public funds for the police and divert resources from projects which have been proven to reduce violence.

In Oakland, local people have come together to resist the gang injunctions and develop their own plan for a safer city. “Our communities will only become safer places when we have secure incomes, when our basic needs for housing, nutrition and health care are met, and when we believe our lives matter”, says Manuel Fontaine of Plan for a Safer Oakland. These are the things that will make safe and sustainable communities here too. We need real community solutions.