Ganging up

'Do you wanna be in my gang my gang my gang, do you wanna be in my gang? Oh yeah!' sang Gary Glitter hopefully back in the seventies. He also told us that he was 'the leader, the leader, I'm the leader of the gang I am, oh yeah!' Hmm. Well things did not turn out too well for Gary in the end, and I don't know if many people followed the leader too closely and through thick and thin after that. Strange times, the seventies. All I really thought I wanted to be was a roller and sing shang-a-lang as I ran with the gang and the doo-wup de doodie do why (etc).

The home secretary recently said '“ before everyone has got involved in the spat about how many terrorists made it into the country when nobody was looking '“ that she is keen to tackle the gang culture and we need to keep young children out of gangs. Well this has got to be right. Gone are the days when Gary's gang would have been a bit of fun '“ him and the boys ('playing with my toys again'); no gang is singing 'shang-a-lang' anymore '“ in fact they are singing songs about shooting along and it isn't the breeze that they are shooting. Gun crime, drugs, sexual violence, robbery and violence are the currency of the modern day gang and it is truly terrifying. The toys are shooters and when they play somebody gets seriously hurt.

But how on earth do we stop it? Like most crime, and medicine, prevention is better than the cure. On the news recently was a genuinely brilliant man who had been in a gang and renounced it and was now out in the schools telling kids about the dangers of gangs and trying to keep them out. Of course scary gangs aren't new '“ Glasgow has had a youth gang culture for years where knifing was the weapon of terror and choice. The gangs grow up where any form of parental influence has waned or disappeared, where the conspicuous wealth is in the hands of those who break the law with impunity. Sex and money comes to the young gang member much quicker than it ever might to the diligent kid who is studying for his GCSEs and then goes on to college. Hard work, long hours studying and conforming are a poor route to wealth, status and sex compared to joining the gang. Hard urban environments and a life that is the street mean that the neighbourhood is tight and unlovely if you do not belong on the inside.

Back we come then to education, to the environment, to effective teaching, to health and respect. Jimmy Boyle wrote about his upbringing in Glasgow and how he was impressed as a child to see the local hard man go into the chip shop, lift the kids up on to the counter and treat the lot for free '“ all because the chippy was scared and in his thrall. Jimmy and his friends were dead impressed '“ and that is what they wanted to be like.

Dwindling respect

Respect is elusive '“ time and again the people that we hope might engender respect fail us and our children. Why play fairly and honestly when conning and abusing the ref is what the heroes do on television? Cheating at cricket, fiddling your expenses, lying your head off, giving yourself a bonus as you lay off some of the workforce '“ all of that diminishes respect.

So in the courts, how are we to deal with gangs and gang culture? Locking people up is not a solution '“ gangs are active in Feltham YOI just as they are on the outside; sending people back home means returning them to the environment where the gang flourishes and there are no friends outside the gang. Sadly we can't break them up by getting them on tax evasion charges like Al Capone.

Gangs have always been in society, and their activities have always led to the doors of the courts. Never before have they been swallowing up our young people in such a disastrous and destructive way. The reality is that the law cannot legislate to turn people away from gangs and gang culture; it cannot stop people posting messages and listening to music that glorifies shootings. The law can only react. This is an area where we are all to blame '“ we have a society that we have let happen, and one that we can no longer control. The hope that there is lies within the good offices of those who have been through it and have come out the other side, and who are talking to the kids and saying don't do it '“ we have to listen to what those people say, and support them, and look at the rotten bits of society and make them better where we can.

We do need the home secretary's new laws, we do need tough sentences, and we do need better education, visible police, better housing and an experience of education that engenders aspiration. Sadly our part in the courts comes at the end in the form of some sort of casualty clearing station. It is a bit sad when that is the case '“ unless, with the enormous input of those who know what they are talking about, we can find some sort of 'gang rehabilitation treatment programme' like we do for drugs and domestic violence. How's that for a new sentence? As Gary sang, 'Oh yeah!'

Copyright & permissions