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The English street gang and government policy

Research Output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding Chapter Peer-review

Sustainable Development Goals

  • SDG 16 - Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
    SDG 16 Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

Abstract

John Pitts outlines governmental responses to ‘gang’ and serious youth violence in the twenty-first century. He observes that although gang-related knife and gun crime among children and young people of African Caribbean descent was rising rapidly in London from 2004, it was the murder of Rhys Jones, an 11 year-old White boy, in Liverpool, in August 2007 that caused Prime Minister Gordon Brown to launch the Tackling Gangs Action Programme (TGAP). Later, the 2011 riots triggered the Ending Gang and Youth Violence programme of 2012, initially targeting 30 areas and extended to a further 22 in 2016. Evaluations of the programme were equivocal but by now the government’s focus had shifted to child sexual and criminal exploitation and County Lines drug dealing, withdrawing funds from local authorities and handing responsibility to the National Crime Agency. Nonetheless County Lines proliferated and knife crime soared, leading PM Theresa May to convene a Serious Youth Violence Summit in February 2019. Maintaining that we could not ‘arrest our way out of the problem’ May placed a requirement on health and welfare agencies to prioritise youth violence prevention. However, July 2019 saw the election of Boris Johnson and Home Secretary Priti Patel who promised more stop and searches, more police and more prison places.

Publication Information

Output type

Research Output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding Chapter Peer-review

Original language

English

Pages from-to (Number of pages)

Pages 491-517 (27 pages)

Publication milestones

  • Published - 18/02/2023

Publication status

Published - 18/02/2023

Publisher

Springer, Japan, India, Australia, Germany, United States, United Arab Emirates, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, China, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Brazil, France, Singapore

ISBN (Print)

9783030996574

ISBN (Electronic)

9783030996581

External Publication IDs

  • handle.net: 10547/626892
  • Scopus: 85161249644

Host publication title

The Palgrave Handbook of Youth Gangs in the UK

Host publication editors

  • Paul Andell
  • John Pitts

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