Gang Crime in the United Kingdom as Sole Responsibility of the Police

Whether or not tackling gang crime in England and Wales is the sole responsibility of the police service is a matter of contentious debate. On one hand, gangs are typically associated with criminal activity, they are groups of people with distinctive attitudes, behaviours and a recognised territory. This leads to a central belief that gang crime is a major factor for the police service in England and Wales and has been for many years. For example, in a report by Manchester City Council, they projected that over 1000 young people in Greater Manchester were involved in gangs. Although this information was gathered in 2002, it is still relevant today, the Crime Survey of England and Wales (2019) suggests there has been a significant increase in gang crime and details such as how many members there are and the age range. Between March 2016 and March 2018, there has been a substantial growth of the distribution of children aged 10 to 15 years old who are associated with gangs in England and Wales. There has been an estimation of around 28,000 youths alone involved in criminal activity. Stelfox (1998) identified the majority of UK gangs, the members of these gangs ranged from ages 25 to 29 and were predominantly male. There were a few gangs which the members were aged 16 and below. In this paper, there will be a number of topics that are discussed relating to the responsibility of the police service, and whether or not tackling gang crime is the sole responsibility.

Williams and Finlay (2018) argue how gang crime is affecting our young people in the UK. They mostly focus on the ‘County Lines’ issue where this term is used for the increasing mobile phone lines used by gangs to permeate counties where a lucrative drug market is known. The National Crime Agency interprets that 88% of police areas in England and Wales have either a well-known or a developing County Lines problem in their area. The Suffolk police service are aware of over 30 County Lines trafficking drugs into Suffolk from many different urban centres. As this is affecting young people aged 10-18 years in England and Wales, it is essential that organisations such as charity organisations or healthcare workers are fully equipped to deal with this, instead of the police service. This is to ensure no harm is exploited to the youths and general public.

An approach to prevent violent crime, especially gang crime, has been trialled in Scotland with some success; this is called the Public Health Approach. In 2002, this was informed by a report by the World Health Organisation started a study of taking this approach to the criminal justice system. The Scottish public health approach has mainly made an impact on knife crime; this is a huge factor for gang crime; where this approach was introduced by police-led operative rather than legislative changes. They treat violence as an ‘infection which can be cured’. During this approach, Scotland’s homicide rate has decreased by 50% between 2008 and 2018. However, there have been organisations and the general public who have been sceptical about the decrease in crime in Scotland. For England and Wales, the public health approach was announced by the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan in September 2018. He announced the launch of a Violence Reduction Unit in London to implement the approach. There was support for the approach by many politicians from different parties. In a 2009 report on knife crime, the Home Affairs Committee stated that this sort of approach had “convincing evidence of the long-term cost benefits of applying a public health approach to violence reduction, as well as benefits to individuals and communities”. Although the public health approach has been successful in some areas and that it doesn’t necessarily need the police service involved, there have been some criticisms of this approach. For example, The Centre of Social Justice have argued that the law enforcement still have a role to play. The police are aware that responding to gang crime aftermath efforts are not always sufficient. This is relevant in the event that if someone was stabbed in a gang, then they would have to contact the family of the victim, etc. 

The police service have many responsibilities, this could range from burglaries to homicides and even just patrolling the streets to ensure maximum safety for the public. Within these responsibilities, safeguarding is an essential role within the service to protect children, teenagers and even adults’ welfare. Section 11 of the Children Act 2004 states that the authorities and the organisations which are taking on their roles and the chief officer of each service in England must promote the welfare of others, especially children. In particular gangs, they often allow children or young adults to join in with the criminal proceedings, most likely give them the easier jobs or just simply offer them protection. This is not a new occurrence to happen in the United Kingdom, there have been youth gangs in Britain for at least 50 years. Even though this has been challenged by many social scientists such as David and Downes (1966) where they explored youth crime and gangs in East London but found no evidence to support this. With regards to the police’s partial responsibility in safeguarding children and young adults, there are many local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCBs) which have the main handle on these situations. A recent review of all of the LSCBs in the UK showed that under 30% confirmed they met their dual responsibility to protect children from exploitation and decrease the contact the children have with police collaboration.

Prevention programmes are a crucial tactic to stop gangs forming, and hopefully resulting in less gang crime. The programmes should start at an early stage in the target demographics’ life to have an effect. Prevention programmes are not all created by the police service, for example, a lot of these programmes come from other services such as the Youth Alliance against Youth Violence (YAAYV) group and many charities helping the country better themselves; a lot relate to youth programmes. As mentioned previously, gangs are typically males under the age of 30, although females are also likely to join. Gang prevention programmes often focus on discouraging the youths, especially those of a disadvantaged background, from joining any gang. Research indicates that delinquency in youths often show a variety of deficient social-cognitive processes compared to non-delinquent citizens. This involves perception of social cues, aggression management and self-control. Wasserman et al (2003) stated that cognitive development could potentially influence the control of social behaviour from as early as 2-years-old. This tends to depend on the upbringing and the environment the child is brought up in. They’re most likely to turn into an offender when they’re older if their parents are drug abusers or already associated with a gang. Research that has focused on the causes and links of criminal behaviour has enabled the progress of treating the youths at risk for antisocial behaviou. Many of these programmes are designed to target people with mental health issues and potential bad parenting. Cognitive-behavioural prevention programmes are used to address these cognitive discrepancies to decrease debilitated behaviour. It is possible that by decreasing offending actions, the cognitive-behavioural interventions may have an effect on any impacts of criminality. An example of a prevention programme which was previously mentioned is conducted by the Youth Alliance against Youth Violence (YAAGV) based in Canada targeted people aged 12 to 21 who were either already involved in a gang (49%) or at high risk of joining (51%). This programme aimed to help these people resist gang-related activities or to quit the gang altogether. This was a successful prevention technique as all of the young people involved, complied with the programme and resisted and/or left their gang. Statistics have shown that a total of 147 youths were served, 59% of them were male and 41% female. Effective programmes like this allow the police to continue their work on more ‘major crimes’ such as homicides or sexual assault cases. Another programme which is similar to the YAAGV would be the ‘Safer London Foundation’ which was formed to work with youths of all ages to help those either involved or wanting to be involved in crime. This programme focuses on prevention, diversion and targeted intervention projects to enable young people to make good choices and better themselves. The interventions mostly focus on tackling gang crime and serious youth violence which are revolved around young women and girls, primarily. This is obviously situated in London boroughs which have high criminal activity which is why the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) have invested in this charity, as well as the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC). This prevention programme has been quite successful and has seen a growth within the years, in just one year it has grown to around 1,600 young people. However, not all prevention programmes are effective, as mentioned before, a lot of prevention programmes are for the younger demographic because they hope to stop people from joining gangs early on in their lives. But this still leaves the rest of the gang members above the age of 30, this should also be an important focus for gang crime. The gang leaders are usually the oldest or more experienced and programmes should be enforced on these members just as much.

In conclusion, gangs themselves aren’t the sole responsibility of the police, unless they commit crime. This was shown in Public Health Approach, it was mentioned that the police may still be involved in some of the responsibility of gang crime, for example; reporting to the family of the victim that their relative has been severely injured or deceased. Throughout this essay, there has been a number of reasons that tackling gang crime is not the sole responsibility of the police service, this includes prevention programmes and approaches that involve many other organisations, proving this point. One of the main approaches in preventing gang crime is safeguarding and how it can help protect youths and young adults from getting involved in gangs, this has proved to be successful. The LSCBs are the main organisation to support this with partial responsibility of the police service where they help protect children from getting involved in a gang or helping them from doing illegal activity, keeping them away from the danger. This concludes that the police service aren’t the main handlers for these tackling gang crime, these organisations help assist the police to ensure prevention and protection is there too. For future research, it may be important to discuss more lengths in the topic of punishment and enforcement and whether it would be critical to tackle gang crime, especially for people over the age of 30, or if it would be a bad idea in the sense that it could create worse scenarios and anger the individuals involved.

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