This article raises many interesting issues and is of particular importance to students taking the ‘Crime and deviance’ option but also to students studying the ‘Mass media’ option. Claire Alexander first shows us how little we actually know about British ‘gangs’, despite the prevalence of the word in the media. She then offers a useful synopsis of ‘gang’ research, showing how the definition of ‘gang’ has changed since the first studies. Finally, and importantly, she gives us three reasons why, as sociologists, we should be particularly careful when using the word ‘gang’: first, there are significant problems with how ‘gangs’ are defined; second, what is seen as the ‘gang problem’ is inextricably entwined with ideas about ‘race’, ethnicity and what has been called ‘the myth of black criminality’; and third, what are often offered as the underlying causes of ‘gangs’, especially with regard to criminality and deviance, are the same things suggested for earlier moral panics, such as those concerned with muggers, rioters and Yardies.
Are the streets of every British city really filled with hooded young men with knives and guns intent on murder and mayhem? Politicians have taken up the call, blaming the rise of street gangs on everything from broken homes and absent fathers to hip hop culture and YouTube.
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