Criminalising the other: challenging the race–gang nexus

Abstract

Whilst criminologists, sociologists and policy-makers fuel a perennial debate over the existential value of the ‘gang’, 1 the Criminal Justice System (CJS) in England and Wales creeps further into the lives of marginalised and excluded young Black men who have been identified as ‘gang-involved’, a ‘gang-concern’ or ‘associated’ with a gang. Drawing on research commissioned by two North West (English) Local Authority Crime Reduction Partnerships, this article offers a unique insight into the problematic way that the term ‘gang’ is being appropriated and used by criminal justice agencies. The findings suggest that the ‘gang’ label legitimises the over-policing of Black people and communities and acts as an inhibitor to the reconciliation of other, more acute, socio-economic problems endured within Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities. Inspired by the paper ‘White sociology, black struggle’, 2 this article is concerned with the problematising effects and the enduring features of the gang construct as a ‘signifier’ for Black men. More contentiously, it highlights the contribution of criminology to the Othering of young Black men, to show that the contemporary position of young Black men as significantly overrepresented and differentially treated within the CJS reflects a continuity with the idea of the ‘Black folk devil’ inherent within a burgeoning body of ‘uncritical’ criminology.