Gang-related organised crime in the United Kingdom is concentrated around the cities of London, Manchester and Liverpool and regionally across the West Midlands region, south coast and northern England, according to the Serious Organised Crime Agency.[1] With regard to street gangs the cities identified as having the most serious gang problems, which also accounted for 65% of firearm homicides in England and Wales, were London, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool.[2] Glasgow in Scotland also has a historical gang culture with the city having as many teenage gangs as London, which had six times the population, in 2008.[3]
On 28 November 2007, a major offensive against gun crime by gangs in Birmingham, Liverpool, London and Manchester led to 118 arrests. More than 1,000 police officers were involved in the raids. Not all of the 118 arrests were gun related; others were linked to drugs, prostitution and other crimes. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said it showed the police could "fight back against gangs".[6]
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Debate persists over the extent and nature of gang activity in the UK,[12][13] with some academics and policy-makers arguing that the current focus of enforcement efforts on gang membership is inadvisable, given a lack of consensus over the relationship between gangs and crime.[13]
Gangs in Belfast have been involved in people smuggling and human trafficking. Although the vice industry was previously mostly on the street, in recent years it has moved indoors to residential homes and hotels and formed closer links to organised crime networks. Trafficking gangs in Belfast, as in the rest of Northern Ireland, tend to be of Chinese or Eastern European origin, utilising local people as facilitators in their network.[27]
The increasingly collaborative relationship between the two gangs has led to some in the media describing them as more akin to a "super gang", seeking to establish a greater national network of organised crime rather than controlling their post-code areas.[33] Other reports suggest both gangs are effectively inactive, and there is no "super gang".[34]
However, it was recognised by the VRU that only around half of all violent incidents which occurred were reported to the police (as compared with figures from hospital admissions and other research),[97] while violence related to organised crime in parts of the city (many of those involved having "graduated" from the local street gangs) remained a significant issue.[98][99][100][101] A 2020 Graeme Armstrong novel, The Young Team, narrated by a gang member in the local dialect, focuses on the "ned culture" of the region in the early 21st century (albeit set in Airdrie, North Lanarkshire a few miles east of Glasgow rather than the in the city itself).[102][103]
Street gangs in Liverpool have been in existence since the mid-19th century. There were also various sectarian "political" gangs based in and around Liverpool during this period.[104] Dr Michael Macilwee of Liverpool John Moores University and author of The Gangs of Liverpool states, "You can learn lessons from the past and it's fascinating to compare the newspaper headlines of today with those from the late 1800s. The issues are exactly the same. People were worried about rising youth crime and the influence of 'penny dreadfuls' on people's behaviour. Like today, some commentators demanded longer prison sentences and even flogging while others called for better education and more youth clubs."
In the early 1980s Liverpool was tagged by the media as "Smack City" or "Skag City" after it experienced an explosion in organised gang crime and heroin abuse, especially within the city's more deprived areas.[105][106] At the same time several criminal gangs began developing into drug dealing cartels in the city, including the Liverpool Mafia, which was the first such cartel to develop in the UK. As drugs became increasingly valuable, large distribution networks were developed with cocaine producers in South America, including the Cali cartel.[107] Over time, several Liverpool gangsters became increasingly wealthy, including Colin 'Smigger' Smith, who had an estimated fortune of 200m[108] and Curtis 'Cocky' Warren, whose estimated wealth once saw him listed on the Sunday Times Rich List.[109]
A report in the Observer newspaper written by journalist Peter Beaumont entitled Gangsters put Liverpool top of gun league (28 May 1995), observed that turf wars had erupted within Liverpool. The high levels of violence in the city came to a head in 1996 when, following the shooting of gangster David Ungi, six shootings occurred in seven days, prompting Merseyside Police to become one of the first police forces in the country to openly carry weapons in the fight against gun crime.[112] Official Home Office statistics revealed a total of 3,387 offences involving firearms had occurred in the Merseyside region during a four-year period between 1997 and 2001.[113] It was revealed that Liverpool was the main centre for organised crime in the North of England.[114]
London was the first city noted to have a major problem with criminal gangs, followed thereafter by American cities such as New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles.[117] A number of street gangs were present in London during the 20th century, many in the East End, often referred to as Mobs, including The Yiddishers, Hoxton Mob, Watney Streeters, Aldgate Mob, Whitechapel Mob, Bethnal Green Mob and the organised Italian Mob headed by Charles Sabini. The history of these gangs is well documented in "London's Underworld: Three centuries of vice and crime".[118]
The Pall Mall Gazette released a research report on gangs and crime in England in 1888, they discuss the downfall and dissolution of a gang called the Skeleton Army a few years before hand, and include a collection of 9 gangs and their respective territories, gathered from contemporary police reports, which are as follows:
In 2018, researchers from London South Bank University found that gangs in the London borough of Waltham Forest that used to be organised around post code rivalries had moved beyond territorial disputes to focus on profit-making activities like drug dealing.[133] They cite James Densley's gang evolution model, which details how gangs progress from recreational goals and activities like defending post codes to financial goals and activities like drug dealing.[134] Densley concludes that fully evolved gangs "resemble not just crime that is organized, but organized crime".[135] Densley also found that gangs in London also used handsigns and gang tattoos to denote gang membership.[131][citation needed] Some gangs in London are motivated by religion, as is the case with Muslim Patrol. However, profits arising from drugs and other criminal activity is a significant motivator for many gangs.
The gang culture spread into many deprived areas in South Manchester.[139] A gang-related crime occurred on 9 September 2006, in Moss Side, where Jessie James, a 15-year-old schoolboy was shot dead in the early hours of the morning. His shooting is said to have been the result of a mistaken identity for a rival gang member. To this day his murderer(s) have not been found.[139]
In April 2009, eleven members of the Gooch Gang were found guilty of a number of charges ranging from murder to drugs offences. The Gooch Gang had a long-standing rivalry with the equally well known Doddington gang. The Gooch gang operated with a tiered structure. On the top were the gang's leaders, Colin Joyce and Lee Amos, and below them were members controlling the supply and distribution of drugs to the street dealers at the bottom. The gang was earning an estimated 2,000 a day, with street dealers allowed to keep 100 a day for themselves. After 2001 when Joyce and Amos were sent to prison on firearms charges, there followed a 92% drop in gun crime in central Manchester.[140] Official gun enabled crime figures show a 17% reduction in Manchester when comparing 2005/06 (1,200 offences) and 2006/07 (993 offences). However, this was followed by an increase of 17% in 2007/08 (1,160 offences) compared to 2006/07.[141] In 2009 shootings were reported as falling by 82% compared with the previous year.[142]
In addition to this, many ethnic gangs can be found within Manchester as well, Black and Pakistani gangs being the most prominent, founded in areas such as Rochdale and Oldham where criminal charges range from carrying firearms to murder. Manchester is also home to the Inter City Jibbers, an element within the city's main hooligan gang that uses football hooliganism as a cover for acquisitive forms of crime. According to former Manchester United hooligan Colin Blaney in his autobiography Undesirables, members of the gang have been involved in serious forms of crime, such as drug smuggling from Latin America and the Caribbean, carrying out armed robberies and committing robberies on drug dealers.[143] In an interview with Vice, members of the gang spoke of connections with Liberian drug smuggling cartels and convictions for offences including armed robbery, credit card fraud and sale of class A drugs.[144]
There were raids across the city which was the latest phase of Operation Atrium, launched in 2001 to clamp down on drug-related crime in Bristol by disrupting organised gangs. More than 960 people have been arrested in the past 18 months.[148] In 2009 Olympian and judo expert James Waithe was convicted of drugs offences, having been an enforcer for drug ring that made 50 million annually.
When it came to court, magistrates treated women's involvement in gangs differently to that of men. The concern over female crime related to the deviation from typical notions of femininity and morality, thus women typically received lesser sentences than men.[159] Due to the conventional idea of femininity that saw women as weaker than men, many courts would have believed it impossible to view women as orchestrators of such crime. Most women were assumed to have played a supporting role.[159] 2ff7e9595c
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