Gangs Project in south London

18 November 2009

Over the past two years, more than fifty young people have died as a result of violent incidents in London alone, many the victims of knife attacks by other young people.

Nationally, many high profile gun crimes have been reported linked to Manchester and Birmingham gangs, along with a boom in knife ownership.

The Home Office says that high levels of knife violence since 2006 seem to result from conflicts between rival inner city gangs and whilst most crimes remained constant in the last quarter of 2008, markedly, knife crime increased by 5%. The Home Office links knife crime with deprivation. In the five poorest areas of Britain, 60% of murder victims die from being cut with a knife or sharp object, as opposed to 30% in the richest.

While knife crime is mainly a male issue, how it affects girls isn’t as well known. The Home Office calls for more intervention with young people at high risk of serious gang, gun and knife crime and the Youth Justice Board strongly believes programmes addressing offenders’ moral judgements has great potential in changing their way of behaving.

Y Care International’s ‘Gangs, Guns, Knives’ project, which took place over four weeks in October, responded to this growing issue affecting young people around the country. The project worked with young women aged 17 in the juvenille unit of HM Prison Downview, a women's closed category prison in South London. The aim of the project was to look at the reasons behind young women’s involvement in gangs. The women are predominantly from the London area and have experienced gang crime and membership, gun and knife crime, including personal involvement in London’s ‘postcode wars’.

This pilot project is part of Y Care International’s global youth work programme, which has increased in profile over the past five years. Our programmes work with socially excluded young people, empowering them to be more aware, responsible and active about the world around them.

The Downview prison project drew heavily on the work of Y Care International’s partner, the Honduran YMCA (ACJ). In Honduras, many young people face poverty and exclusion, often the reason behind them coming into conflict with the law. A Save the Children UK and YMCA/ACJ report found that in Honduras, the total number of gang members and affiliates is estimated to be 34,202; approximately one third of whom are girls/young women aged 12 to 25.

Female gang members in Honduras are stereotyped as either sex objects or tomboys - representing either supposed equality or sexual suppression as victims of male exploitation and abuse.

The basis of Y Care International’s global youth work is that of education for social change; making change in individuals, communities and global society. The Gangs, Guns, Knives project intervened with the young women in Downview, helping them explore this global problem and focus on the commonalities of their experience with similar young people in Honduras and elsewhere in the world.

Wide ranging conversations explored the commonalities of experience between Central America and the UK around issues such as respect, neighbourhoods and abuse.

When asked why they had joined a gang, 71% of the group said they had joined to get respect. This respect was often won by undertaking gang related violence. Yet, similar to the Central American experience, whilst they may join a gang to get respect, the opposite is often true and there was much discussion around the sexual use and abuse of young women in gangs.

As an initiation and entry into the gang, the principal role of women is to gratify male gang members’ sexual needs. The sessions in Downview, however, revealed more complex sexual relations. Gang relations and activity are highly ritualised, and have different and negative effects on the well being of women. My perception is that gang involvement is more harmful for women than men.

Although some were pressurised to join a gang, for many of the young women, gang involvement was based on ‘neighbourhood’. Loyalty to fellow gang members underscores their gang behaviour; the young people grew up together in the same ‘ends’ (neighbourhoods) and ‘blocks’ (housing projects). They went to the same school together and went into the same gang together. Reflecting the Central American experience, gang involvement was territorial, with protection of the ‘ends’ seen as important, and the neighbourhood and gang often being synonymous.  

In these London gangs, ‘the olders’ (older children/young people) direct the activities of ‘the youngers’ (children aged 12/13, though increasingly in primary schools). The gang gives them ‘power’. It was thought that gang involvement was escalating and children were starting younger.

Half of the young women agreed that the gang was a ‘family’ for them, for many an alternative family, a place where they could find asylum from abuse and failing families (43%). Levels of abuse suffered at home have been found to be particularly high among female gang members in Honduras who also identified the initial purpose of the gang as ‘a surrogate family’ and place of refuge from abusive family relationships.  

Half of the young women in Downview said that the gang helped them escape from poverty and 43% felt the gang provided them with their ‘basic needs’. The well known Brixton PDC gang in London derives its initials from ‘Poverty Driven Children’.

These discussions helped to address some of the root causes behind young people’s involvement in gangs, gun and knife crime. The aim of the project was also to identify personal solutions to their involvement.

Contemporary research into gang participation identifies causal factors of gang participation, including low levels of self-esteem. Solutions offered by the young women in Downview included ‘be yourself’, ‘respect yourself’ and ‘you’re worth more’. It was identified that it was ‘never too late for anything’ and the quicker the action to tackle gang involvement, the better. The young women readily identified their own need to be strong and to act on their gang membership. One young woman had thought of moving to a different city as a solution and as an expression of strength and self-respect, but the call of the ‘ends’ was strong.

Many of the young women at Downview identified that gang involvement is age-related and that once in their twenties they would occupy a position of an associate – associated with the gang, but separate from it. These young women acknowledged that they were of an age and ready to leave their gangs on leaving prison. One young woman expressed she would be; ‘not gang banging, (but) going to college’.

Discussions over the four weeks were well received by the young women. By looking at the commonalities of experience with young people in Honduras, they could identify the reasons behind their involvement in gangs and start to consider what choices they could make on their release from Downview. But some of our discussions also highlighted the constraints these young women would face, not least around peer pressure, when they were back in their neighbourhoods. The YMCA Offender Services Unit offers support for these young women through a post-release worker, who helps those who have taken the decision to leave their gang.

So it’s a slow process, but a worthwhile one. Y Care International is committed to extending this pilot project and has been invited back to Downview in 2010 to work with new groups of young women.

By Stuart Wroe, Senior Global Youth Work Coordinator

This project builds on previous work in HMYOI Wetherby and New Hall prison in the north of England. Find out more here.