Research provides valuable insight into Glasgow gang culture

Children in Glasgow can become socialised into the city’s gang culture from as young as 12 years old, according to new research by University of the West of Scotland (UWS).

UWS PhD student, Johanne Miller told the British Sociological Association’s annual conference in Glasgow on 15 April 2015 about the lifecourse of gang members in the city and the violence they take part in.

Miller researched 60 members of 21 of the 170 gangs in Glasgow as part of her PhD, spending weeks working with them. The research saw 36 of the gang members taking part in focus groups, and 20 in interviews.

She told the conference: “The process that emerged from participants was that young people aged between four and 12 began playing in the few streets that made up their scheme – a council-built estate – and began from a young age to be socialised into street culture.”

She found that the gangs were not hierarchical, organised criminal groups but friends that had grown up in the same area that became socialised into a street and gang culture that was territorial.

She added: “These children have grown up hearing stories of territorial rivals and the crimes they enact. So within the child’s conscious there is a known enemy, an ‘other’ out there who is already a threat in their minds. There is a tradition of associating your ‘scheme’ as something that needs to be protected.”

After the age of 12 they could be part of the gang and become drawn into violence against rivals when protecting their territory.

Miller said: “They would begin absorbing street culture transmitted through story-telling and observations of older children in the area and family members, adopt the gang name, start using it and decide whether they wanted to fight or not. This is how they grew into the gang. This violence then becomes more serious for core members, and conflict becomes a central binding agent of the gang.

“To start a fight one only needs to enter another gang’s territory and shout one’s scheme name – this is seen as an indicator of a fight. Territorialism is the conflict that creates tensions between other groups, and it separates and divides them from other young people and eventually traps them into their scheme through fear of reprisal.

“Between the ages of 14 and 18 gang members spent four to six hours each day on the street, more at weekends.”

Miller found that their time in a gang was usually quite limited, and after three years or so they began drifting away, usually in their late teens.

Professor Ross Deuchar, Assistant Dean (Research, Enterprise and International) of the School of Education, has a wealth of criminology and criminal justice research expertise and oversaw this PhD research study along with Professor Chris Holligan of the Institute for Youth & Community Research.

Professor Deuchar said: “Johanne’s research adds to the growing portfolio of scholarly and critical research within our research group on ‘Youth Justice and Crime Prevention’ and brings the issues surrounding youth gang culture and territoriality very much to the foreground of the general public’s attention.”