S H Thesis Final 2019 Updated August
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
UNDERSTANDING VIOLENT STREET WORLDS Simon Hallsworth PhD by Prior Publication Law School, University of East Anglia 2019 THE COPY OF THIS THESIS HAS BEEN SUPPLIED ON CONDITION THAT ANYONE WHO CONSULTS IT IS UNDERSTOOD TO RECOGNISE THAT ITS COPYRIGHT RESTS WITH THE AUTHOR AND THAT THE USE OF ANY INFORMATION DERIVED THEREFROM MUST BE IN ACCORDANCE WITH CURRENT UK COPYRIGHT LAW. IN ADDITION, ANY QUOTATION OR EXTRCT MUST INCLUDE FULL ATTRIBUTION !1 Table of contents Table of contents______________________________________________________ 2 Abstract______________________________________________________________ 4 Section 1. Critical Analysis_____________________________________________ 6 Introduction__________________________________________________________ 7 Context______________________________________________________________ 11 Historical Perspectives _______________________________________________26 The aetiology of street violence_________________________________________ 35 Street Organisation and Structure______________________________________ 43 Street Representations and Street Realities______________________________ 48 Conclusion: On originality and contribution ____________________________56 Section 2. Published Work_____________________________________________ 59 A summary of the papers submitted ____________________________________60 Street Violence in a Historical Perspective _______________________________62 Folk Heroes and Folk Devils: The Janus face of the robber in popular culture_ 63 The fists and the fury: My life in a sea of gangs ___________________________87 Continuities and discontinuities in street violence_______________________ 117 The aetiology of street violence________________________________________ 145 The Production of Motivated Offenders________________________________ 146 ‘That’s Life Innit’: A British perspective on Guns, Crime and Social Order _175 Violence and Street Culture___________________________________________ 201 !2 Street Organisation and Structure_____________________________________ 229 Arborealism and Rhizomatics: A treatise on Street Organisation__________ 230 Understanding Street Collectives______________________________________ 265 Street Representations and Street Realities_____________________________ 292 Gangland Britain? Realities, Fantasies and Industry ____________________293 Deciphering Gang Talk_______________________________________________ 314 Tilting at Windmills: In Pursuit of Gang Truths in a British City__________ 342 Bibliography________________________________________________________ 371 !3 Abstract The thesis is composed of two sections. The first provides a critical overview of the published work assembled in the second. This body of work is composed of journal articles, monographs, papers published in educated collections and research reports. Though these papers address a range of different subjects from street robbery, the culture of gun users to the study of urban street gangs, what unifies these papers is that they collectively help make sense of the violent street world occupied by young men, overwhelmingly from deprived backgrounds, who use weapons, collectively and individually, in street confrontations. In the critical analysis the term violent street world is defined and the body of published work which examines it is then contextualised; first, by a consideration of the external political and social forces that led to its production; second, by reference to the internal academic traditions in which and at times against which these papers were produced. Rather than approach the study of the street world by reference to the actors who inhabit it, the crimes they do or the weapons they use, the thesis makes a case for making the street world itself the object and focus of enquiry. The street world is then studied thematically in four chapters. The themes selected are: street crime in a historical context, the aetiology of street violence, the structure and organisation of the street world and the distinction between street representations and street realities. The analysis concludes with reflections on the key contributions the work assembled has made to our understanding of violent street worlds and their social analysis. The work is original in so far as it contests many current myths that have been proposed to explain street violence while producing more compelling explanations for it. These help explicate why !4 the violence occurs, how and why it is changing, who is involved and why people engage in it. Key words: Gang, street culture, guns, knives, weapons Word count: 112,328 words !5 Section 1. Critical Analysis !6 Introduction This document introduces the published work submitted in support of this thesis. These papers, derived variously from journal articles, research reports, chapters in edited collections and sole authored monographs, were written over the last two decades. At face value they cover a diverse array of subjects from street robbery, urban street gangs to the culture of gun users. What unifies this body of work is that they collectively help make sense of what I will term the violent street world inhabited largely but not exclusively by young men; primarily those who derive from poor and deprived backgrounds; who confront and perpetrate violence in street settings. The environments where the violence is predominantly performed are the areas these young men inhabit and frequent; typically areas subject to multiple types of deprivation and poverty. In the case of the UK where the research for this thesis was principally conducted, this violence finds its most visceral expression in the inner city areas of its metropolitan cities. The critical narrative has two sections. In the first (Chapter 2) I situate the published work within a consideration of the external (political and public) context that led to its production and the internal (academic) traditions, in which and, at times, against which, these papers were produced. In relation to the external context I describe how my research broadened out from a consideration of street robbery and the study of urban street gangs, to focus more broadly on the street world itself studied as a complex whole. Underpinning this shift in focus was not only the recognition the street world needed to be studied as a totality, it was shaped by my conviction that most approaches to the study of violence in street settings was not only unduly reductive but often mobilised descriptive labels which, on inspection, were little !7 better than unhelpful, inaccurate reifications. Instead of studying street violence and street actors by reference to a particular street actor (such as the gang); or by focusing upon a particular category of offences (street robbery or knife crime, for example) I argue for a wider and more inclusive approach which prioritises the street world as the object of enquiry. I then contextualise the work assembled here by reference to the academic tradition of British Critical Criminology. This was a tradition which, in its late 20th century incarnation, had largely neglected the study of street actors such as muggers and gangsters in favour of studying youth subcultures and which, when it did attend to the study of street actors (such as ‘muggers’), tended to study them either by considering the visceral social response these provoked on the part of control agencies (moral panic theory), or by considering how deviants were constructed as such (social constructionism). While critical criminology in its 21st century ‘Left Realist’ incarnation, had discovered street violence and seemed inclined to study it, when academics reached for explanations, those supplied were often dubious and highly reductive. This is particularly evident in many current attempts to reduce and explain away contemporary street violence by reference to urban street gangs (Pitts 2008). In the second section I explore the nature of violent street worlds thematically. The themes I have chosen reflect my research preoccupations - which also raises the possibility that the street world I want to make sense of can be approached in other ways. I acknowledge this. The themes I have chosen, however, throw light on some of the key features of the street world. My four themes are: street crime in a historical context; the aetiology of violence; the structure and organisation of the street world; and the distinction between what I call street representations and street realities. !8 In Chapter 3, I introduce three papers that have a historical inflection. I begin with The Janus face of the robber in popular culture which examines how street robbers can be constructed as both a folk hero and folk devil (Hallsworth, 2017). I then introduce a paper that mobilises an auto-ethnographic methodology, The fists and the fury: My life in a sea of gangs, in which I document the UK’s recent history of urban street gangs by reference to my own experiences of having my head ‘kicked-in’ by various iterations of them from the 1960s to the 1980s (Hallsworth, 2014). I conclude with a paper, Continuities and discontinuities in street violence, which explores the changing face of street violence in the post war period whilst also reflecting on its causes (Hallsworth, 2014). In chapter 4 I introduce three papers which explore the aetiology of violence in street settings. The production of motivated offenders (Hallsworth: 2005) examines the factors that would propel a population of young, disadvantaged, Black males to embrace street robbery. The second