Homicide and Organised Crime: Ethnographic Narratives of Serious Violence in the Criminal Underworld [1st ed.] 978-3-030-16252-8;978-3-030-16253-5

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xvii
Introduction and Methodology (Mohammed Rahman)....Pages 1-24
History, Homicide, Organised Crime, and Theory (Mohammed Rahman)....Pages 25-61
Contract Killers and Glocal Organised Crime: A Case Study of the ‘Baby-Faced’ Assassin (Mohammed Rahman)....Pages 63-87
Drugs, Guns, and Organised Crime: A Case Study of the Journeyman Hitman (Mohammed Rahman)....Pages 89-108
Violent Men: Trauma, Humiliation and Scenarios of Harm (Mohammed Rahman)....Pages 109-135
Homicide and Organised Crime in Birmingham, West Midlands: Future Directions and Closing Comments (Mohammed Rahman)....Pages 137-145
Back Matter ....Pages 147-151

Citation preview

MIGRATION, PALGRAVE STUDIES IN RISK, CRIME AND SOCIETY DIASPORAS AND CITIZENSHIP

Homicide and Organised Crime Ethnographic Narratives of Serious Violence in the Criminal Underworld Mohammed Rahman

Palgrave Studies in Risk, Crime and Society Series Editors Kieran McCartan Department of Criminology University of the West of England Bristol, UK Beth Weaver School of Social Work and Social Policy University of Strathclyde Glasgow, Lanarkshire, UK

Risk is a major contemporary issue which has widespread implications for theory, policy, governance, public protection, professional practice and societal understandings of crime and criminal justice. The potential harm associated with risk can lead to uncertainty, fear and conflict as well as disproportionate, ineffective and ill-judged state responses to perceived risk and risky groups. Risk, Crime and Society is a series featuring monographs and edited collections which examine the notion of risk, the risky behaviour of individuals and groups, as well as state responses to risk and its consequences in contemporary society. The series will include critical examinations of the notion of risk and the problematic nature of state responses to perceived risk. While Risk, Crime and Society will consider the problems associated with ‘mainstream’ risky groups including sex offenders, terrorists and white collar criminals, it welcomes scholarly analysis which broadens our understanding of how risk is defined, interpreted and managed. Risk, Crime and Society examines risk in contemporary society through the multi-disciplinary perspectives of law, criminology and socio-legal studies and will feature work that is theoretical as well as empirical in nature. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14593

Mohammed Rahman

Homicide and Organised Crime Ethnographic Narratives of Serious Violence in the Criminal Underworld

Mohammed Rahman School of Social Sciences Nottingham Trent University Nottingham, UK

Palgrave Studies in Risk, Crime and Society ISBN 978-3-030-16252-8 ISBN 978-3-030-16253-5  (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16253-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: GettyImages-1014984568 This Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Dedicated to my nan (1929–2015) and mum. Two, strong, devoted, and beautiful women— who made sure that I became the author of this book as opposed to its subject.

Foreword

The publication of Mohammed Rahman’s Homicide and Organised Crime is timely, coming as it does against the backdrop of a defining moment in the history of serious violence in England and Wales. After many years of decline, the levels of gun and knife crime began rising in 2014 and reached an all time high in the year 2018. Headline figures emerging from police-recorded crime and NHS data for year end September 2018 (compared with the previous survey year) suggested an 8% increase in the number of offences involving sharp instruments; a 15% increase in the number of hospital admissions for assault; a 14% increase in homicides; and a 17% increase in robbery offences (Office of National Statistics 2019). Evidence suggests that knife and gun crime has risen across almost all police force areas, both victim and perpetrators are getting younger and that a sizeable majority of homicides are linked to the illicit drug market—with the estimated costs of serious and organised crime around £37 billion annually (HM Government 2018a, b). Importantly, but perhaps unsurprisingly, HM Government (2018b) has confirmed that the majority of recorded violence tends to be male-on-male. Much research has, of course, documented the links between the social construction of masculine identities and violent crime. Scholarly insights from gang literature emerging from the period of the Chicago School of Sociology onwards have repeatedly suggested that men sometimes become attracted to gang violence and criminality as a means of asserting the standard bearers of working class hegemonic masculinity (such as toughness, physical prowess and respect) against the backdrop vii

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of marginalisation (for review, see Deuchar 2018). In her seminal work on masculinities, R. W. Connell (2005, p. 83) argued that gang violence is a ‘striking example of the assertion of marginalised masculinities against other men’. Urban ethnographers in the UK have also highlighted the way in which working-class men who are brought up against the backdrop of aggression and domination may come to place the enactment of violence close to their sense of self-identity (Winlow and Hall 2009). The perceived need to uphold a culture of honour is often the driving force behind this violence, as Nisbett and Cohen so eloquently highlighted over thirty years ago: Many patterns of behavior continue because they are defined as things that a man just does; he protects his family from threats, he answer serious insults with violence, he spanks his children to discipline them, and he protects his honor and status in the community. Reasons are irrelevant. These are just things you do. (Nisbett and Cohen 1996, p. 93)

Recent research has indicated that gang life is evolving in urban contexts within the UK. For example, Densley (2014, p. 22) has highlighted that recreation, crime, enterprise, and governance represent ‘actualization stages through which gangs progress’ in London, and alludes to similar evolution processes emerging in other English cities. Further, the work of McLean (2018) in Glasgow suggests that, while purely recreational-style violence and the traditional ‘cafeteria style’ offending associated with street gangs has somewhat diminished in the city, there has been an emergence of ‘speciality’ gangs that involve young men concentrating on drug sales and other forms of organised criminal activity (Densley et al. 2018). However, as Winlow (2001, p. 171) has observed, ‘violence will never go out of fashion or lose its perceived uses, or its aesthetic and seductive qualities’. Mohammed Rahman’s book is one that is essentially about violent men, all of whom have been part of organised crime networks in and beyond the West Midlands area of England. The particular geographical backdrop to his research is highly pertinent, given that Birmingham has been branded the ‘gun crime capital’ of the UK in recent years (Anderson 2017, p. 13). Rahman’s ethnographic approach is focused on interviews and informal conversations with offenders, associates and key informants as well as the analysis of multiple documents and ‘grey’ literature to unravel the nature, extent and meaning of violent practice in and around Birmingham.

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However, what is really novel about Rahman’s approach is his pioneering use of ‘dash-cam’ ethnography where he has virtually been able to reconstruct key criminal events by recording the views that drivers would have had in ‘getaway’ cars linked to key street-level incidents in the West Midlands’ criminal underworld. During a recent visit to Birmingham, I was able to experience the insights emerging from this methodological approach firsthand when I had the unique privilege of riding around with Rahman in and around Birmingham’s gangland neighbourhoods with the ‘dash-cam’ activated. I could instantly see how this unique approach had led Rahman to skilfully provide a deep and candid account of the nature and meaning of violence in organised crime within an often under-researched locale. At times, the richness of the data and insights combined with the lucidity of Rahman’s description and analysis of key incidents in the criminal underworld gives the reader the impression of actually being in the cars and the neighbourhoods with him, as I had the opportunity to do. There has been growing attention paid to the role of deindustrialisation and the related issue of social and economic inequality in generating a crisis of masculinity in disadvantaged communities within the UK. Rahman’s observations about the impact of neoliberalism in terms of the related transition from conflict to entrepreneurial crime and the structural backdrop of violent masculinities builds on the earlier, noteworthy work of Winlow (2001) in Sunderland; Deuchar (2009, 2013), Fraser (2015), and McLean (2018) in Glasgow; and Densley (2013) and Harding (2014) in London. Across the pages of the book, Rahman mostly places the spotlight on Birmingham—from the explosive inventiveness and business expansion during the core years of the Industrial Revolution, through the presence of the ‘peaky blinders’ in the early 1900s to the organised and entrepreneurial crime groups emerging against the backdrop of the deindustrialisation and structural inequality associated with both Thatcherism and New Labour. His use of visual and urban ethnography, life history interviews with the ‘hard to reach’ and the creative analysing of his insights using ultra-realism in combination with psychoanalysis and Bourdieusian epistemologies leads to a continuously rich narrative. The middle chapters of the book are particularly compelling. First comes the focus on the often under-researched area of hitmen and Rahman’s rich analysis of the murders of Gary Morgan by Peter O’Toole in 2002 and Richard Deakin by David Harrison in 2010. While the

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former enables Rahman to demonstrate how violence at times transcends beyond international borders, the latter provides an opportunity to build understanding of the modus operandi of the ‘journeyman’ hitman. Second, Rahman explores the criminal underworld of Birmingham in even more depth by introducing the reader to biographical accounts of three violent men who have committed serious offences in and beyond the West Midlands. In presenting the latter, Rahman carefully and sensitively explores the links between the harm these men have inflicted on others and the trauma and humiliation they have experienced in the past. On the latter point, Father Greg Boyle (2017), founder of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, USA, has observed: There is violence in gang violence but there is no conflict. It is not ‘about something.’ It is the language of the despondent and traumatised.

Rahman’s compassionate unravelling of the root causes of these men’s violent dispositions ultimately illustrates the way in which violent male identities often emerge as a result of dark memories, rumination on past humiliation and current, deep-rooted but well disguised feelings of inadequacy (Winlow and Hall 2009). The release of the book comes at a time when UK politicians are recognising the need for a public health approach to tackling the long-term causes of violent crime, such as poverty and mental ill-health (HM Government 2018a). Agencies are being called to commence a conversation about ‘healing’, and to show genuine love, care and concern for victims but also for perpetrators caught up in a cycle of trauma, crisis and criminality (Anderson 2017). Within this context, Rahman’s work provides a textured and compelling evidence-base for researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers alike. This is a stand-out text. Carefully researched, innovative in approach and accessibly written, it is a must-read for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the structural backdrop of lethal violence within the West Midlands, and its ‘glocal’ influences. Paisley, Scotland

Professor Ross Deuchar Assistant Dean (Research, Enterprise and International) University of the West of Scotland

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References Anderson, C. (2017). Commission on Gangs and Violence: Uniting to Improve Safety. Birmingham: Birmingham City University. Boyle, G. (2017). I Thought I Could ‘Save’ Gang Members: I Was Wrong. America: The Jesuit Review. Available at: https://www.americamagazine.org/ faith/2017/03/28/father-greg-boyle-i-thought-i-could-save-gang-membersi-was-wrong. Accessed 10 Feb 2019. Connell, R. W. (2005). Masculinities. Cambridge: Polity Press. Densley, J. (2013). How Gangs Work: An Ethnography of Youth Violence. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Densley, J. (2014). It’s Gang Life, but Not as We Know It: The Evolution of Gang Business. Crime & Delinquency, 60(4), 517–546. Densley, J., McLean, R., Deuchar, R., & Harding, S. (2018). Progression from Cafeteria to à La Carte Offending: Scottish Organised Crime Narratives. The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice. https://doi.org/10.1111/hojo.12304. Deuchar, R. (2009). Gangs, Marginalised Youth and Social Capital. Stoke-onTrent: Trentham. Deuchar, R. (2013). Policing Youth Violence: Transatlantic Connections. London: IOE Press. Deuchar, R. (2018). Gangs and Spirituality: Global Perspectives. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Fraser, A. (2015). Urban Legends: Gang Identity in the Post-industrial City. London: Oxford University Press. Harding, S. (2014). The Street Casino: Survival in Violent Street Gangs. Bristol: Policy Press. HM Government. (2018a). Serious and Organised Crime Strategy. London: HM Stationery Office. HM Government. (2018b). Serious Violence Strategy. London: HM Stationery Office. McLean, R. (2018). An Evolving Gang Model in Contemporary Scotland. Deviant Behavior, 39(3), 309–321. Nisbett, R. E., & Cohen, D. (1996). Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence in the South. Boulder, CO: Westview. Office of National Statistics. (2019). Crime in England and Wales: Year Ending September 2018. Available at: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/buletins/crimeinenglandandwales/yearendingseptember2018. Accessed 8 Feb 2019. Winlow, S. (2001). Badfellas: Crime, Tradition and New Masculinities. Oxford: Berg. Winlow, S., & Hall, S. (2009). Retaliate First: Memory, Humiliation and Male Violence. Crime, Media and Culture, 5(3), 285–304.

Acknowledgements

Acquire knowledge and impart it to the people. (Tirmidhi, Hadith 107)

I am mindful of the well-known African proverb—I am because we are: we are because I am. This book would have been impossible to achieve without the contribution of the participants in this study. They all gave up their valuable time to partake in this research. Many had nothing to gain by speaking to me, and I thank you all for your insight, honesty, and wisdom. Profound gratitude goes to Professor Ross Deuchar for writing the articulate Foreword, and to Professor Imran Awan and Dr. Martin Glynn for mentoring me throughout this book. Special mention goes to my good friend Dr. Yusef Bakkali, whose pioneering work on road life has inspired me to think critically about Bourdieusian epistemologies and its relevance in relation to serious violence. I would also like to thank Tanayah Sam, who is a leading practitioner on gang culture, and has always been a voice of reason, especially during the empirical stages of this book. My pressing debt goes to my former colleagues at Birmingham City University and current colleagues at Nottingham Trent University. There are too many to name, but you have all provided me with endless support and stimulating conversations, which invariably shaped the trajectory of this book. My special thanks, as always, go to my parents, family members and friends. xiii

Contents

1 Introduction and Methodology 1 2 History, Homicide, Organised Crime, and Theory 25 3 Contract Killers and Glocal Organised Crime: A Case Study of the ‘Baby-Faced’ Assassin 63 4 Drugs, Guns, and Organised Crime: A Case Study of the Journeyman Hitman 89 5 Violent Men: Trauma, Humiliation and Scenarios of Harm 109 6 Homicide and Organised Crime in Birmingham, West Midlands: Future Directions and Closing Comments 137 Index 147

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List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Fig. 3.1 Fig. 3.2 Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2

An example of dash-cam ethnography fieldwork. The location of a double homicide Aerial view of the location of the shooting of Gary Morgan The car park of Aston Hall Hotel, Aston, and Birmingham. The picture was taken in 2016 during fieldwork David Harrison entered Richard Deakin’s home through the black gate. The picture was taken from Meadway Street in 2015 during fieldwork Aerial view of the location of the shooting of Richard Deakin

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction and Methodology

Abstract  This chapter succinctly discusses the personal and ­professional journey that led to the fruition of this book, and makes clear the case for studying homicide and organised crime. In addition, it charts the research methodologies utilised in the empirical investigations and provides an outline of each chapter. Towards the end of the chapter, a brief account is offered on why the content of this book offers a unique contribution to criminology and wider aspects of social sciences. Keywords  Birmingham · Case study · Criminological autopsy · Critical realism · Dash-cam ethnography · Epistemology · Ethics · Ethnography · Ethnographic content analysis · History · Homicide · Methodology · Narrative criminology · Ontology · Organised crime · Ultra-realism · Violence Violence Noun: Behaviour involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill. Harm Noun: Physical injury, especially that which is deliberately inflicted. Abridged from Oxford English Dictionary

Primarily, this book is a culmination of three years of criminological ethnographic research. It explores several under-researched areas of the criminal underworld in Birmingham, England. Geographically, © The Author(s) 2019 M. Rahman, Homicide and Organised Crime, Palgrave Studies in Risk, Crime and Society, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16253-5_1

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the journey of the book extends to the region of the West Midlands, England, and in addition provides case examples of organised crime and violent practice within national and international parameters. I would argue, that most of the research encounters in this book were of highrisk. So too, I had to keep myself in check, while reminding myself on a regular basis that I was dealing with some of the most difficult and distasteful people in our society. Sometimes it became challenging to work alongside these narcissistic and status-driven chancers, but let us leave the discussion about British academics for a chat over coffee. On a serious note, I spent prolonged periods with people who were involved full-time, part-time, temporary, or permanently in serious crimes. These individuals were from various backgrounds, race, and ethnicity. I spent time with their family members, friends, and associates. In some cases, I attended celebrations, and sadly in other instances, I participated in traumatic processions like funerals and burials. Some of the individuals in this text are career-hardened offenders, who went to the extent of running background checks on me before allowing me to enter their world. Others operated enterprises that featured illegal activities, while some drifted in and out of illegal practice. Irrespective of criminal involvement, most men in this book were heavily connected in the British criminal landscape, and were not to be taken lightly.

Exploring Violent Practice: Focusing on Homicide and Organised Crime Within the West Midlands This book stems from funded doctoral research that I conducted between 2014 and 2017. On a professional level, the foundations of the study were laid out a couple of years before. After successfully completing an MA Criminology degree, I was employed by Birmingham City University as a Research Assistant. The role was a perfect platform for me to advance my academic curiosity about crime, harm and crime control. It also enabled me to gauge an understanding of my position within criminological scholarship, namely in relation to violence. Violence has been omnipresent in society since the dawn of civilisation. Indeed, it is through violence and its judgement that one can see the heart of darkness in civilisation (Gilligan 2000). Over the years, academics have attempted to provide sustained accounts of violence, of which includes violence exerted by individuals, by states, and by imbalanced societal

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structures. My curiosity of violence stems from my own life experiences. On a personal standpoint, the reader should be mindful that I am the product of the culture that I attempt to describe in this book, although the distinction to be made is that academia in the past 10 years has served a much-needed distance from what is depicted in the forthcoming chapters. Born and raised in the inner-city areas of Birmingham, I come from a small British-Bangladeshi working-class family. While my upbringing at home was somewhat harmonious, the communities that I called ‘the ends’, were often volatile and chaotic. My socialising experiences throughout my adolescent years were like many of the participants in this book. It is hard to imagine that 16 years have passed since my first (and hopefully last) encounter of being a victim in hands of what I consider to be a criminal group. One day, I was walking home from school. The route that I took was routine, which meant that I would walk past several socially deprived neighbourhoods. I was a few hundred yards away from my street. As I was just about to cross a road, I felt a strong hand grabbing the back of my neck and pulling me back. Instantaneously, I attempted to turn around to find out who was manhandling me, however my left arm was twisted, and within a few seconds I was thrown into the back seat of a saloon car. Sat with me at the back of the car was the man who grabbed me. I knew him from the ends. His physique was muscular and he always looked intimidating. Sitting in the front passenger was a female, who made no eye contact with me. Sitting next to her in the driver’s seat was Clive, an individual who was feared locally. Clive lived in a council estate that was adjacent to the road that I lived on for 10 years. Strangely, after seeing Clive in the car, I felt at ease, and the reason for me being in the car was because he needed my help: Clive: Little man from across the street, I know you’re good with wires, screens, and computers. I need you to unlock a few laptops. Can you do that for me?

Clive was right, I knew a lot about computers from a young age, which transpired to completing a Forensic Computing undergraduate degree many years later. However, before I could give him a response, the man sat next to me placed two laptops on my lap, that had the logo of a local double glazing company. Immediately, I knew that they were stolen. Importantly, I knew not to ask any questions. What baffled me

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was that I was given an official copy of a CD that was much-needed to unlock the stolen devices. Without any hesitation, I got to work. I knew that each laptop would take 10–15 minutes to process. During this time, what I could not get my head around was how the CD was obtained. Stupidly enough, I decided to ask. It was the only time I spoke, and I felt the physical consequences immediately: Clive: Man, leave him alone. Let him do his fucking thing. Chill.

The above was Clive’s response, after my face got slammed on the headrest of the front passenger seat by the man who sat next to me. My eyes welled up because of the impact, however I contained my emotions and carried on working. I was angry, not because I was assaulted, but because I could do nothing about it. I kept thinking: ‘If only I could smash his face right now’. Once the laptops were unlocked, Clive gave me a scrunched up £5 note for my troubles and I finished the rest of my journey home with a sore nose. For me, it was a keystone moment, which made me realise the dynamics of violence, a behaviour that I consider to be a viable commodity that is often used with other interactions to start, maintain and advance criminal identities and enterprises. Growing up, despite all the pandemonium, my diverse upbringing enabled me to connect with an array of communities with ease. Some of these communities encompassed those that have deep-rooted criminal identities. In essence, the cultural and social capital that I have acquired over time has been useful for providing a swathe of social perspectives, and as such, I started to consider them critically when I pursued academia to read criminology. At the basic level, criminology has allowed me to unpack complex social issues that I grew up experiencing and witnessing. Simply put, academia has given me the platform to ‘make sense’ of individuals whom I share similar social upheavals with. On a superficial level, growing up my question has always been, why them, and not me? In recent times when thinking about violence on an empirical level, I have found asking myself, what are forces behind these harms? Hence, I often contemplate about the aetiology that manifests harmful behaviour. Lethal violence within illicit networks is complex. It does not necessarily fall under one strand of homicide, nor does it fall under victimisation studies that consider the ‘ideal victim’ (Christie 1986). Often, however, the criminal motives of members from nefarious fraternities are

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multifaceted. As such, if criminology is to develop a comprehensive analysis of the driving forces behind those that employ violent practice in the underworld, it must borrow from cognate fields (see, Wieviorka 2009; Hall 2012; Holligan and Deuchar 2014; Winlow 2014a; Ellis 2016). In addition, the nature and extent of violence is one of the official indicators for academics and policy-makers when classifying gangs and organised crime groups. Gangs are often considered to use violence ‘sporadically’ (Densley 2014), whereas the use for organised crime groups is ‘instrumentally to protect their interests’ (UNODC 2013, p. 42). I would argue that these explanations are limited, as they only ­consider the act of violence and therefore fail to explore the structural and ­cognitive forces behind violent practice (Bakkali 2019). This further reiterates the need for criminology to connect with cognate and sociological arenas for a penetrating analysis when it comes to making sense of the backdrop to violence, namely fatal violence within criminal groups. In the present day, the West Midlands is exposed to active, lucrative, expansive and extreme violent forms of organised crime. Regional law enforcement agencies are aware of the threat that organised crime poses to national security. For instance, the aim of the Regional Organised Crime Unit (ROCU) (2015) is ‘to reduce the impact and increase the disruption of serious and organised crime across the region and beyond’. At the time of writing, Birmingham is the ‘gun capital’ of England and Wales and has been for two consecutive years (Gall 2018). To understand the magnitude of gun crime in England’s second city, between April 2017 and July 2017, there were 57 firearms discharges in the West Midlands, compared to the 52 for the whole of Greater Manchester, Merseyside and West Yorkshire (Rodger 2017). Furthermore, recent figures from the Office for National Statistics (2017) report that the West Midlands had more than double the national average of gun crimes between 2015 and 2016, with 19 offences per 100,000 residents. Here, it should be noted that not all gun-related incidents are linked to criminal networks, but it is imperative to consider at the very least that the current landscape of violent practice within illicit networks in Birmingham and the region of the West Midlands is active, yet academically neglected. By utilising persuasive theories, this study aims to go beyond a social constructivist focus, and towards a realist trajectory that explores how deterministic forces have enabled individuals to exert special liberties on others (Hall 2012).

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Research Philosophies and Methodologies Before offering an overview of the book chapters, it is first ­worthwhile establishing the ontological and epistemological position of this study. This subsection also explores the methodologies used for all the research encounters and explains why they were best suited for a criminological study of this nature. In the present day, mainstream criminology fails to offer convincing responses about harmful activities within criminal groups. As Matthews (2009, p. 345) reminds us, ‘the inability to theorise “crime” in a meaningful way is indicative of a lack of understanding about the role of social categories and the processes associated with their development and interpretation’. As a critical criminologist, my goal is to contextualise the relationship between structure and agency. In doing so, I aim to locate crime, deviance and harm within their determining contexts, which naturally means that I endeavour to broaden the scope of analysis beyond the realms of criminology. Since the concept of harm occupies a swathe of disciplines in social sciences, I believe that there is more to be gained by borrowing and fusing ideologies together. So too, this subsection details how realist approaches can be utilised to provide a deeper exploration of harmful subjects. Ontology and Epistemology: Making Sense and Approaching Harm Within Criminal Groups Criminology as a rendezvous discipline (Downes 1983), has often made sense of criminal groups through sociological inquiries. Most of these studies consider the social world a ‘construction’, whereby multiple truths and realities come into play through individual experiences within the social epoch (Shaw 1930; Shaw and McKay 1969; Anderson 1999; Venkatesh 2008; Goffman 2014). As Matthews (2009) crucially argues, crime should not be merely considered as a ‘top-down’ or ‘bottom-up’ process. Rather, it should be viewed as a complex socio-legal phenomenon that requires extensive scrutiny. Readers should be aware that crime has no ontological reality, for indeed it is a construct that is contingent upon social judgements. What I mean by this is that there are no set parameters that pertain to ‘crime’; thus, interactions that are deemed ‘criminal’ vary across time and space. This research refutes a nominalist standpoint and considers a critical realist ontology, which aims

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to provide novel perspectives of harm. Below I provide the influence of critical realism and then draw upon ultra-realism, a burgeoning western criminological paradigm that provides fresh insights on contemporary subjectivity in its socioeconomic context. I will also draw upon how these critical strands of social sciences compliment the utilised research methods. The fundamental premise of critical realism is that causal language can be used to describe the world. As Sayer (2000, p. 14) notes, ‘in both everyday life and social science, we frequently explain things by reference to causal powers’. So too, critical realists position an ontological realism that goes beyond interpretation, moral agency and language in society’s intransitive element. In theory, critical realists venture towards a visceral system of structures and processes ‘that produce very real consequences, all of which can be detected and understood as probabilistic tendencies and patterns, not iron laws’ (Hall and Winlow 2018, p. 52). An example of this would be macro-patterns of interpersonal violence, namely during the crime explosion during the 1980s in the UK and USA has a direct correlation with changes in the political economy. Alongside ontology, critical realism has a refined epistemological outline. Below are the three layers of how critical realists derive knowledge: 1. Empirical – representative knowledge of events and their patterns; 2. Actual – events and subjective experiences; 3.  Real – underlying generative mechanisms that probabilistically cause events. (Hall and Winlow 2018, p. 51)

In sum, critical realism empowers social scientists to excavate beneath the empirical and actual. However, its perception of the ‘individual’ and the ‘social’ is questionable. For instance, the premise of ‘analytical dualism’ (Archer 1995) distinguishes the individual from system structures, processes, events, and hegemonic ways of thinking. Indeed, scholars argue this misconception and note how the everlasting moral agent set in opposition of unfair socioeconomic structure has hindered our thinking over time (see, Hall 2012; Winlow et al. 2015). Put simply, while this issue has been discussed elsewhere, the eminent critical realist philosopher Roy Bhaskar (1997) failed to consider his own paradigm of causative absence to the issue of ‘subjectivity’.

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Of note, ultra-realism develops from critical realism, but takes the onus of theorising subjectivity rather than merely considering it to be some everlasting presence that is separated from the social epoch. So too, the ultra-realist framework does not take away the gap or figure that is human subjectivity. Furthermore, for critical scholars, absence is causative of harm, and certain absences such as: unity, politics, employment, welfare, and so on—are influential when considering possibilities and restraints (see, Deuchar 2009, 2013; Fraser 2015; Ellis 2016; Lloyd 2018). Futhermore, ultra-realists persuasively argue for retooling Freudian and Lacanian thoughts, as both Freud and Lacan foretold a lot of recent successes of natural sciences (Hall 2012; Winlow 2014b; Winlow et al. 2015). Thus, on an epistemological standpoint, if we consider crime as events and their harms as subjective experiences, it is crucial to formulate a juxtaposition between the empirical and actual levels. Often, crimes are concealed, namely serious crimes such as homicide and organised crime. For this reason alone, criminologists should not be dependent on quantitative methods, and instead should utilise penetrative ethnographic methods practised by realist researchers who have in recent times been successful of revealing certain aspects of the ‘dark figure’ of crime (see, Winlow and Hall 2006; Hall et al. 2008; Hall 2012; Winlow and Atkinson 2012). While ethnography is an established methodology in sociological studies of deviance, its position in mainstream criminology is weak. In recent times, scholars of pioneering research on interpersonal violence and illegal trading networks have fearlessly used ethnographic methods to offer rich narratives and perspectives of urban crime (Hobbs 1988, 1995, 2013; Winlow 2001; Briggs 2013; Winlow et al. 2015; Briggs and Gamero 2017; Deuchar 2018). Indeed, the ultra-realist movement advocates ‘researchers to generate rich and conceptually advanced qualitative data that represent different subjective experiences of individuals and localised populations’. So too, ‘views of harmful events from multiple observational positions can be used to displace standard views’ (Hall and Winlow 2018, p. 54). I echo such sentiments and consequently in the next subsection I draw upon the value of ethnography and its wider facets when conducting criminological research. In addition to this, I also consider ‘case study’ methodology, which is an established research approach that is encouraged by critical researchers (see, Sayer 2000).

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Research Methodologies As noted earlier, this book is a three-year ethnographic study. It is ethnographic in the sense that I could overtly observe social interactions as they organically occurred. In doing so, as an ‘outsider’, I benefitted from gaining ‘insider understanding of people involved in criminal activities or indeed of those who are involved in responding to criminal activities’ (Caulfield and Hill 2014, p. 118). Essentially, ethnography is the systematic study of people and their cultures (Atkinson 2015). Criminologically, the pioneering studies of ethnography stem from various Chicago School texts (see, Park and Burgess 1921; Thrasher 1927; Shaw 1930), which took its research focus on the city of Chicago, USA, and the associated problems of urban decay, delinquency, crime, race relations, and family unity. MacDonald (2011) observes how ethnography immediately draws upon symbolic interactionism, as well as phenomenological and hermeneutic perspectives. Based on this, if actions are constructed and reconstructed as individuals interpret and reinterpret in scenarios that they find themselves in, ethnography becomes a means through which access to, and an understanding of situations, decisions, actions, and meaning is achieved. Moreover, ethnomethodology approaches provide cultural interpretation, alongside prolonged participant engagement of specific populations in natural settings that is not achievable in quantitative approaches (Silverman 1993). Interestingly, Hobbs (2000) considers ethnography to be a cocktail of methodologies, which therefore makes the method a flexible and accommodating phenomenon. Dash-Cam Ethnography Much academic debate has centred on collating, interpreting and analysing ethnographic data (Schensul and LeCompte 2013; LeCompte and Schensul 2013; Atkinson 2015). Ultimately, the method of collating data constructs the interpretation and analysis. Indeed, this research has utilised the ‘traditional’ sense of acquiring ethnographic data, which encompassed observations of people and their cultures for a prolonged period. Immediately after observations, I would make field notes, which would then be interpreted and analysed accordingly. The documentation of field notes and reflexive extracts of encounters organically fostered a recursive ethnographic analysis. Schensul and LeCompte (2013, p. 9)

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consider this to be when ‘analysis is done in the field while researchers still are involved in the data collection process’. While undertaking analysis may seem to be counterintuitive during fieldwork, the exploratory nature of ethnographic study warrants such a process to identify, clarify and alter initial impressions and biases. The work of LeCompte and Schensul (2013) address several enhanced strategies of collating ethnographic data. These include, but are not limited to; cognitive cultural maps and consensus analysis, audio and visual recording, collecting and cataloging cultural artefacts, digital storytelling and photo-voice, using secondary sources, and collecting digital data. For this research, I identified an innovative method for collating ethnographic data during the fieldwork of cases and biographical accounts. This was achieved through visual ethnography. While visual ethnography is not a new concept in social sciences (Pink 2013), the pragmatics and the technology platform that I used offers new perspectives to the phenomenon. I have coined this approach as ‘dash-cam ethnography’. Dash-cam ethnography involves the observation of space through the recording of a car ‘dash-cam’. Essentially this involves a car journey, whereby the dash-cam records the view that the driver would see while driving. After establishing the cases for this research, and identifying those knowledgeable to discuss them, I had a vested interest in visiting all the crime scenes that this book considers. Wilson et al. (2016) consider this exercise to be a ‘criminological autopsy’, as it helps the sense-making around cases of homicide. Indeed, crime scene visits enable researchers to get a sense of the flow of life around a location as people go about their day to day activities as opposed to the abstracted snapshots that reports of a homicide represent. Furthermore, as a researcher, I felt that visiting all crime scenes and utilising a ‘dash-cam’ approach would be beneficial. For instance, the cases that I discuss in Chapters 3 and 4 were similar in the sense that they both involved the use of cars for the commission of a homicide. Therefore, I felt that understanding the nature and extent of the crimes in both cases could be enhanced better through a more realistic and simulated approach. For example, through court transcripts, it was easy to establish the driving route that the perpetrators took for both cases. To gain further insight, I drove to all crime scenes with a willing research participant, and essentially I did a reconstruction of events through the lens of the getaway driver. In many ways, this approach changes the

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traditional structure of ethnography. In terms of observation and space, this is restricted to the confinements of a vehicle and the journey of the vehicle. Irrespective of this restriction, I believe that this approach has many benefits for acquiring rich ethnographic data (Fig. 1.1). First, the dash-cam ethnography process becomes a reconstruction of events, which therefore allows researchers from ‘outsider’ perspectives to make sense of places and spaces that are essential for the crime under investigation. In addition, this provides the potential to identify additional places and spaces that may be of significance. Second, as the process is essentially a journey of space, if the researcher is accompanied by a participant, then there is a likelihood of narratives emerging about spaces that are socially, culturally, economically or criminally significant to the participant. In turn, this may prove to be beneficial for the researcher when analysing the overarching factors of his or her subject. Third, the process can have an impact on emotions and recollections, and this may also prove to be crucial for the trajectory of participant narratives and lived experiences. Finally, as the journey is recorded visually, the researcher does not have the burden of recollecting the ethnographic encounter once it is finished, and has the luxury of replaying the footage. In short, the points above identify how an innovative method can help the collation, interpretation, and analysis of criminological data.

Fig. 1.1  An example of dash-cam ethnography fieldwork. The location of a double homicide

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This therefore allows rich narratives to be attained while appreciating the importance of space and place. In addition to in-depth ethnography, I have also utilised a case study approach. So too, this has allowed me to develop strong, deep, complex and long-term research relationships with those researched. Also, it allowed the ethnographic strand of the research to be ‘triangulated’ through selected case studies, which were then theoretically analysed for in-depth subjective understandings. Subsequently, this challenges Noaks and Wincup’s (2004) concerns of ethnography lacking ‘research rigour’. Case Study Denscombe (2010) argues that the real value of case study research is that it offers the opportunity to explain why certain outcomes might happen, as opposed to just finding out what those outcomes are. This implies that research ‘cases’ already exist and are not artificially generated, nor is it ‘like an experiment where the research design is dedicated to imposing controls on variables so that the impact of a specific ingredient can be measured’ (Denscombe 2010, p. 54). The choice to employ a case study approach was strategically and theoretically in line with the scope of the research. Yin (2009) observes how regardless of the subject under investigation, the case study usually depends on a conscious choice about what case to select from many possibilities. Denscombe (2010) rightly argues that cases are not randomly selected, as they are often selected based on known attributes. He also alludes that the criteria used for the selection of cases needs to be made explicit and therefore needs to be justified as an essential part of the methodology. For the empirical work of this book, the set attributes were: cases from the West Midlands, England, which provided the descriptions of homicide and organised crime. The identification of cases of organised crime in the West Midlands was aided by a Nexis database search. Nexis is an electronic database that houses all major British newspaper, including both national and regional titles. A Nexis search of a combination of the following terms yielded 165 newspaper articles: ‘organised crime’, ‘murder’/‘manslaughter’/‘homicide’, ‘violence’ and ‘Birmingham/West Midlands’. So too, a total of 10 cases were identified from this initial search, of which two will be critically explored later (see Chapters 3 and 4). I would argue the benefits of conducting case study research outweighs the pitfalls, especially when using a ‘multi-method’

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approach for acquiring knowledge. Critics of Nexis would argue that the database merely houses high-profile or ‘newsworthy’ cases (Jewkes 2015), thus it does not provide an accurate representation of the potential pool of all relevant homicides that have descriptions of organised crime. However, here it is important to note that burgeoning criminological research has relied on the use of Nexis to generate typological understandings of homicide (Yardley et al. 2014; MacIntyre et al. 2014); hate crimes (Awan 2014); and in other instances, ‘case study’ based research on homicide (Lynes and Wilson 2015a, b; Rahman and Lynes 2018) and terrorism (Awan and Rahman 2016; Rahman 2016). By employing the use of Nexis, some pieces of scholarship have been crucial in illuminating new and much-needed debates on homicide (Yardley et al. 2014), while others have been influential in changing policy on the use of social media (Awan 2014). Ethnographic Content Analysis After utilising Nexis to generate case data, I interpreted all case information by employing ethnographic content analysis (ECA). ECA is widely considered to be an integrated methodology, procedure and technique in qualitative research for locating, identifying, and analysing documents or texts (Altheide 1987, 1996). Altheide and Schneider (2013, p. 26) posit that ‘ECA involves focusing on and collecting numerical and narrative data rather than following the positivist convention’. While ECA may be not ‘ethnography’ in its purest sense; before I commenced fieldwork, the method allowed me to invest a considerable amount of time to critically consider a plethora of information from a range of sources in relation to the two cases that will be discussed later. Thus, I analysed 71 documents for the murder of Gary Morgan (see, Chapter 3), and 423 documents for the murder of Richard Deakin (see, Chapter 4). Since both cases under investigation secured prosecution, any novel information regarding the cases would emerge from primary accounts. Some may argue that ECA is redundant as a method for this research, as it does not consider the coverage of ongoing cases. Nonetheless, I argue that this ethnomethodology was crucial for achieving ‘narratives’, which organically allowed me to be reflexive and filter those that would be viable to offer primary research accounts. In regards to primary accounts, alongside ethnographic encounters, a combination of unstructured and semi-structured interviews were

14  M. RAHMAN

conducted as they are deemed to be ‘flexible’ qualitative methods that allow the ‘interviewee to develop ideas and speak more widely on the issues raised by the researcher’ (Denscombe 2010, p. 175). These methods were also useful for gathering life histories of violent offenders. In total, I observed and interviewed nine individuals, of which encompassed: violent offenders, retired police officers, ex-military personnel and informants. To ensure anonymity was maintained, I used pseudonyms and below is the demographical information of those researched (Table 1.1). Access to some violent offenders was achieved through personal contacts. In some cases, those researched for this book have been used for previous unpublished research, which therefore meant that my rapport with certain participants was strong. In some cases, I relied on gatekeepers, who negotiated and facilitated contacts, namely for the two cases. Also, on a few occasions the ‘snowball sampling’ approach was utilised, which means that established participants influenced the recruitment of other participants among their acquaintances. By default and design of the methodologies, research sites varied throughout the course of the fieldwork. Indeed, conducting high-risk research on sensitive topics raises many ethical issues that require careful consideration (Lee-Treweek and Linkogle 2000). The Business, Law and Social Sciences Faculty Research Ethics Committee of Birmingham City University approved this research in October 2015. Wherever possible,

Table 1.1  The research participants Name

Age range

Occupation

Ethnicity

Region(s)

Murphy John

60–65 40–49

Construction Private Investigator

White White

Patrick James Steve Michael Clive

50–59 40–49 60–69 40–49 30–39

Investigative Journalist Unemployed Retired Unemployed Unemployed

White White White White Mixed

Marco Zane

30–39 21–30

Logistics Logistics

Asian Asian

West Midlands East Midlands/West Midlands Various East Midlands West Midlands West Midlands South West/West Midlands West Midlands West Midlands

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I ensured that participants anonymity, privacy, and confidentiality was maintained. In addition to this, I made it my priority to base my research on professional integrity and on the freely given informed consent of those studied. Of note, nuanced specifics about research sites, data gathering, and ethics associated with research participants in each ethnography and case study is outlined in relevant chapters. In those chapters, excerpts from interviews and fieldnotes are made explicit and rich narratives are often critically explored with insights from literary sources. On the topic of narrative, here it is important to consider that one of the unique contributions of this book is that it offers novel biographical data of violent men, as well as their perceptions of violent encounters that have the descriptions of organised crime. It is for this reason that in the next subsection, I offer a brief, albeit a critical exploration of narrative criminology and its importance for this book. Narrative Criminology Criminological studies that place the spotlight on offender narratives tend to neglect harms inflicted on such individuals, and how such harms construct violent trajectories. However, narrative criminology, a burgeoning framework with roots in cross-disciplinary literature, encourages scholars to base their analysis on telling and sharing stories that discuss the committing, upholding, and effecting desistance from crime and other harm based activities (Presser 2009; Sandberg et al. 2015; Sandberg and Ugelvik 2016). Hence, the driver for the paradigm is to acquire an interpretation of criminal experiences. For me as a narrator, it provides the opportunity to make sense of lived experiences that offenders have attained in the social world, whether it be experiences constructed around them or those that have been constructed by them. Narratives are often achieved through autobiographical and biographical accounts. Indeed, some social scientists question the validity of such materials and argue that these sources are not a complete portrait of an individual, rather they are selections of one’s life that refer to the past while being tailored to suit the present. So too, thoughts of reliability come into play as to whether such encounters happened. With this in mind, as humans we should always be mindful that validity and reliability are contentious in relation to any claims made by criminals, victims, or even the state. For indeed, each group presents dangers for their own prerogatives.

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Taking the above into consideration, I made a habit of cross r­eferencing offender narratives with legal papers and other official testimonies. Furthermore, Presser (2009) discusses that it is imperative for researchers to consider exploration of the emplotment of the story, that is, to establish the different types of experiences discussed in the story, and what they mean to the narrator. In other words, why select such experiences and events as opposed to others. To attain rich and critical narratives from offenders, I was required to invest time with such individuals. In turn, this allowed me to achieve ‘the growth of familiarity and trust’ (Ellis et al. 2017, p. 2). Of note, it is important to consider that narrative criminology aligns with Bourdieusian theory and ultra-realism; as both paradigms advocate how language is filled with emotion, experiences, and the lived experiences of individuals (Hall 1997; Harding 2014; Ellis et al. 2017; Deuchar 2018).

Overview of the Book Chapters To contextualise this book, Chapter 2 offers a review of literary sources exploring history, industry, crime and working-class masculinities of Birmingham and the region of the West Midlands. The rationale to draw attention to the history of crime in Birmingham and the wider region is that historical studies offer the chance for a sustained analysis of organised crime with minimal personal risk (Hobbs and Antonopoulos 2014). The best of these studies, of which are ethnographic (Hobbs 1988, 1995, 2013; Winlow 2001; Fraser 2015; Ellis 2016; Deuchar 2018), remind us that ‘crime can only be understood by comprehending the socioeconomic context in which it is enacted’ (Chambliss 1978, p. 2). Chapter 2 also offers extensive insight into post-war Birmingham, new waves of working-class masculinity, organised crime and conceptual ambiguities. The literature within the chapter draws attention to advent of globalisation and its role in the development of organised crime (Decker and Pyrooz 2014). This chapter also considers homicide broadly, as well as within the context of criminal networks. It does this by drawing upon the different forms of homicide, and argues how homicide conducted by members of illicit networks is not necessarily restricted to one form or type, but in some cases a fusion of two or more. While the term ‘organised crime’ has been around for over a century, to date there is still no set universal definition of the phenomenon. Therefore, I offer a critical definition, which I believe justifies and strengthens

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some of ongoing scholarly debates about organised crime. The chapter concludes by considering the keystones theories that will help make sense of violent practice within criminal groups. For many years, the UK government has distinguished urban street gangs from organised crime groups. It is only in recent times that national law enforcement agency is starting to realise the nexus between urban street gangs and organised crime groups. I explore the administrative flaws of central government, and critically consider how the nature of illicit markets has blurred the boundaries of criminal networks. It is for this reason that I will use the terms ‘organised crime’, ‘criminal groups’ and ‘criminal networks’ interchangeably. Chapter 3 investigates the murder of Gary Morgan, who was assassinated by Irish hitman Peter O’Toole. Once labelled as ‘Britain’s most feared hired killers’ (Worden 2012), O’Toole within a two-year period was linked to several national and international gangland hits. On July 2002, he lured his friend, Gary Morgan to a Birmingham car park following a dispute over an unsettled drugs debt. Contract killer O’Toole had extensive links to the Irish criminal underworld within a transnational context. His ties with London’s notorious Adams family has connected him to the 2001 murder of Scott Bradfield, whose mutilated body was found in a suitcase in Costa del Sol, Spain. Subsequently, with the murder of Gary, he was found guilty of the attempted murder of drug dealer Anthony Morecroft, who was shot twice by O’Toole two weeks’ prior the murder of Gary. The chapter also considers the ‘glocal’ nature of organised crime and draws attention to the notion that criminal enterprises are no longer restricted in fixed terrain. Rather, they are manifested because of local and global networks of opportunities (Hobbs 2013). Following on directly from this, Chapter 4 investigates the murder of Richard Deakin. Richard, a 27-year-old skip hire business owner, was shot twice at point-blank range by David Harrison as he slept in his home in Chasetown, Staffordshire, England in 2010. Harrison, who was 61-years old at the time of murder—the oldest ‘hitman’ uncovered by MacIntyre et al. (2014), had an accomplice, Darryl Dickens, who acted as his getaway driver. Both Harrison and Dickens lived approximately 20 miles from the site of the hit, in Wolverhampton, England, and it was local intelligence provided by a former criminal accomplice of Harrison that led to his eventual arrest. Harrison denied being involved in the murder, even though police recovered £26,000 in cash from his second

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home in Kent, England, which was believed to have been his payment for carrying out the hit. The case itself has connections to Birmingham’s illegal trading network as Harrison was a known drug dealer and the uncle of John Anslow, an international drug kingpin who is the first man to escape from a Category A prison in 17 years. Similarly, to the case of Peter O’Toole, this chapter will draw attention to actors of organised crime, who make interactions within a transnational context to fulfil the demands of those that seek illicit products. Through primary accounts, this chapter will explore various perspectives of violent practice through several theoretical paradigms, and will critically analyse how violence is an alternative form of criminal justice that is used to establish, maintain, and advance criminal enterprises. Developing from case studies, in Chapter 5, I take readers on an eclectic tour through biographical accounts of three men who have spent considerable time within Birmingham’s criminal underworld. Some of the men will have been introduced in Chapters 4 and 5 due to their proximity to the cases. The chapter starts off by discussing Clive, a violent offender who has previously been incarcerated for manslaughter. I have known Clive since 2002, and his biography provides psychoanalytical and Bourdieusian understandings of violence, trauma, and humiliation. This chapter then focuses on the biographical accounts of brothers Marco and Zane; two violent offenders, who have previously been incarcerated for multiple violent offences linked to Birmingham’s underworld. Similarly, to the biographical account of Clive, their biographies provide some socio-analytical and psychoanalytical understandings of trauma and humiliation acquired through violent and fatal encounters. The concluding chapter draws together the findings and themes emerged from case and biographical data, with empirical and theoretical understandings. It concludes by summarising the study and discusses recommendations for future work.

Unique Contributions to the Field This book will attempt to bridge the gap in criminological research on violence by combining the conceptual frameworks of; violent masculinities, ultra-realism, psychoanalysis and Bourdieusian theory. I envisage that a fusion of approaches will aim to provide a holistic criminogenic understanding of illicit networks in the West Midlands, and as aforementioned, the need to explore this locale is timely. To date, there is no

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scholarly work on the nexus between homicide and criminal groups in the region. Notable academic work within a national context focuses on post-industrial cities either north (see, Winlow 2001; Fraser 2015; Ellis 2016; Deuchar 2018; Harding et al. 2018; McLean et al. 2018) or south (see, Hobbs 1988, 1995, 2013; Hallsworth 2013; Densley 2014) of the West Midlands. As an academic criminologist, this research has required to venture into the world of contract killings in the UK. This phenomenon is a strand of homicide that has been academically overlooked, and both case studies in this book offer rich descriptions of hitmen and their kills. As mentioned above, criminological scholarship often neglects harms inflicted on those that are simply deemed ‘criminal’. In this study, I unpack experiences of trauma, humiliation and betrayal. In doing so, I make the argument that there is a complicated synergy between traumatic experiences and deep subjective commitment to violent practice in adult life. Moreover, by introducing the concept scenarios of harm, I put forward the importance of criminologists unravelling harmful thoughts that are suppressed, and ones that make individuals suffer in silence. I believe, aside from novel data on violent practice within underworld settings, what distinguishes this text from those that have been acknowledged is the novel visual ethnographic approach I undertook for street-level research. Overall, for criminologists and students, this book offers empirical analysis about the precursors of violence and homicide in criminal groups. I am hopeful that these insights fuel my academic colleagues to conduct further research in overlooked locales. For practitioners, policy-makers and others who wish to make positive change, this book encompasses crucial perspectives on the extent to which deterministic forces manifest criminal markets, and how violent practice is a double-edged sword that requires critical consideration when seeking interventions.

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Rodger, J. (2017). Summer of Gun Crime in Birmingham. Available at: https:// www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/summer-gun-crime-birmingham-11-13348185. Last accessed 12 Jan 2019. Sandberg, S., Tutenges, S., & Copes, H. (2015). Stories of Violence: A Narrative Criminological Study of Ambiguity. British Journal of Criminology, 55(6), 1168–1186. Sandberg, S., & Ugelvik, T. (2016). The Past, Present and Future of Narrative Criminology: A Review and an Invitation. Crime Media Culture, 12(2), 129–136. Sayer, A. (2000). Realism and Social Science. London: Sage. Schensul, J. J., & LeCompte, M. D. (2013). Designing and Conducting Ethnographic Research: An Introduction. Plymouth: AltaMira Press. Shaw, R. (1930). The Jack-Roller: A Delinquent Boy’s Own Story. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Shaw, R., & McKay, H. (1969). Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Silverman, D. (1993). Interpreting Qualitative Data. London: Sage. Thrasher, F. (1927). The Gang: A Study of 1313 in Chicago. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. (2013). Global Study on Homicide. Available at: https://www.unodc.org/documents/gsh/pdfs/2014_GLOBAL_ HOMICIDE_BOOK_web.pdf. Last accessed 14 Aug 2018. Venkatesh, S. (2008). Gang Leader for the Day. London: Penguin Books. Wieviorka, M. (2009). Violence: A New Approach. London: Sage. Wilson, D., Yardley, E., & Pemberton, S. (2016). ‘The Dunblane Massacre’ as a ‘Photosensitive Plate’. Crime Media Culture, 13(1), 55–68. Winlow, S. (2001). Badfellas: Crime, Tradition and New Masculinities. Oxford: Berg. Winlow, S. (2014a). Trauma, Guilt and the Unconscious: Some Theoretical Notes of Violent Subjectivity. The Sociological Review, 62(2), 32–49. Winlow, S. (2014b). Some Thoughts on Steve Hall’s Theorizing Crime and Deviance: A New Perspective. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Criminology, 6(2), 168–193. Winlow, S., & Atkinson, R. (2012). New Directions in Crime and Deviancy. London: Routledge. Winlow, S., & Hall, S. (2006). Violent Night: Urban Leisure and Contemporary Culture. Oxford: Berg. Winlow, S., Hall, S., Treadwell, J., & Briggs, D. (2015). Riots and Political Protest: Notes from the Post-political Present. Abingdon: Routledge. Worden, T. (2012). British Hitman Grilled Over Spanish Murders. Available at: http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/260903/British-hitmangrilled-over-Spanish-murders. Last accessed 22 May 2019.

24  M. RAHMAN Yardley, E., Wilson, D., & Lynes, A. (2014). A Taxonomy of Male British Family Annihilators, 1980–2012. Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, 53(2), 117–140. Yin, R. (2009). Case Study Research: Design and Methods. London: Sage.

CHAPTER 2

History, Homicide, Organised Crime, and Theory

Abstract  This chapter offers insight into post-war Birmingham, new waves of working-class masculinity, organised crime and conceptual ambiguities. Furthermore, this chapter also considers homicide broadly as well as within the context of criminal networks. It does this by drawing upon the different forms of homicide, and argues how homicide conducted by members of illicit networks in not necessarily restricted to one form or type, but in some cases a fusion of two or more. The term ‘organised crime’ has been around for over a century, however, to date there is still no set universal definition of the concept. Thus, I offer a critical definition, which I believe justifies and strengthens some of ongoing scholarly debates about organised crime. The chapter concludes by considering the keystones theories that will help make sense of violent practice within criminal groups. Keywords  Birmingham · Bourdieu · Class · Consumerism · Criminal undertakers · Cultural homicide · Definition · Ego · Fatal violence · Field · Freud · Gangs · Government · Habitus · History · Homicide · Id · Industrial revolution · Industry · Kray Twins · Instrumental homicide · Law enforcement · Legislation · Masculinity · Murder · Neoliberalism · Organised crime · Peaky blinders · Psychoanalysis · Situational homicide · Special liberty · Super ego · Richardson gang · Sloggers · Theory · Ultra-realism · Working class · Violence © The Author(s) 2019 M. Rahman, Homicide and Organised Crime, Palgrave Studies in Risk, Crime and Society, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16253-5_2

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In what follows, I explore key literature on criminal groups, namely those that consider organised crime. I take readers on a ‘glocal’ understanding of organised crime, which therefore means engagement with international research that identifies the nexus between neoliberal global structures and criminal networks. I also offer a brief, albeit critical accounts of homicide. In doing so, I discuss the varied nature of homicide and how little has been written about the phenomenon within the context of organised crime. Of note, the rationale for adopting the term homicide as opposed to murder for this book is because homicide incorporates within its jurisdiction criminal manslaughter and murder. I conclude the chapter by providing insight of key theories that will help unpack data attained from research investigations. Before discussing all the above, I start this chapter by shaping this criminological inquiry within the context of history. By history, I mean that this book will primarily draw upon Birmingham and the region of the West Midlands, where much of England’s industrial revolution began (Hopkins 1998; Jones 2008; Uglow 2011). It is hoped that the socioeconomic development of Birmingham will provide a sound context to discuss violent crimes within the periods of modernity and post-modernity.

A Brief Overview of History and Industry of Birmingham and the Wider Region Modern Birmingham. Vibrant dynamic, exciting, innovative. A City of constant change, adaptation, and inventiveness. A great working town, sounding with the clash of machinery, echoing with the noise of transport, resonating to the voices of cultures from across the world. Throw out those dated and demeaning clichés about bleak and philistine industrial cities. Modify those images of dark satanic mills and of a dismal, deary, and dank environment. Birmingham’s picture is not grey and boring. It is bright and rousing. Dinginess and drabness have not brought people here. They have come looking for opportunity, they have arrived in the hope of a better future, they have appeared in search possibilities. (Chinn 1994, p. v)

The observations of Carl Chinn presented above seem very dated in 2019. Known as the ‘city of a thousand trades’ (Dick 2005), the industrial working class of Birmingham with strong heritage ties is now a post-industrial epoch. In the present day, contemporary business

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innovation, cultural development, and social change have allowed Birmingham to become an international city. Nevertheless, Hopkins (1998, p. 25) argues that it is hard to think of Birmingham without considering its role during the industrial revolution, and without ‘attributing great importance to the role of new machinery’. Moore (1965, p. 4) defines the term industry as ‘the fabrication of raw materials into intermediate components or finished products by primarily mechanical means dependent on inanimate sources of powers’. Here, it is imperative to consider key variables that fast-tracked Birmingham’s industrial development. First, and perhaps most importantly is the city’s geographical location, which is positioned central to the Midlands. Major routes were turnpiked in the mid-eighteenth century, and such improvements in Birmingham’s road system certainly boosted trade. However, when roads started to deteriorate, transportation charges increased and the city adjusted to its transport changes by building canals as a new means of cheap transportation (Hopkins 1998). Another driving force for Birmingham’s industrial growth was the technological innovation of the Black Country’s iron industry. Situated approximately 10 miles west of Birmingham, the Black Country became one of the leading producers of finished iron in the United Kingdom (Hyde 1977). Its ability to do so meant great demands for products, of which included raw materials for the gun trade (Griffin 2010; Uglow 2011). By supplying each other with valuable markets, both Birmingham and the Black Country rapidly grew side by side. Of note, there is an interesting contrast between the economic changes in both locales. While the Black Country’s technological innovations of ‘iron’ and ‘steam power’ ignited a revolution in what were perhaps the most important industries during that period, it was Birmingham’s diversification and thousands of workshops that separated itself from other major cities during the industrial revolution. For instance, the Gun Quarter during the mid-eighteenth century was the epicentre of the world’s gun-manufacturing industry. Indeed, Birmingham’s gun trade had become highly specialised and the ‘first available Birmingham directory, dated 1767, lists gun-makers and pistol-makers separately, together with the makers of different parts of guns such as barrel-makers and gun-lock makers’ (Hopkins 1998, p. 40). This reveals the complexity of gun trade, which by 1861 was led by the Birmingham Small Arms (BSA) company (Dick 2005). So too, Upton (1993, p. 193) offers an impressive account of the BSA’s contribution:

28  M. RAHMAN …made the Lewis gun, was producing 10,000 guns a week, and Kynoch’s 25 million cartridges and 300 tons of cordite. They were engaged in munitions; others, such as Longbridge, switched production to shells and armoured vehicles, at the same time increasing the work-force from 2,800 to 25,000. The Mills hand grenade was a Birmingham product.

In the present day, little remains of Birmingham’s Gun Quarter. Nonetheless, the reason why I have decided to take a strong focus on this legitimate trade is because later, I critically explore through real life examples of how this trade is now at centre of controversy in modern-day gangland activities. Based on what has been discussed in relation to industry, large-scale industries are characterised by the advent of inanimate power (Moore 1965). Aron (1967, pp. 73–74) reiterates the implications of large-scale industry as ‘the major source of production in a society, since these implications are likely to be common to all industrial societies’. While the city’s landscape was built on adaptability and creativity of a highly paid and highly skilled workforce (Jones 2008), workplace disorders were commonplace during the nineteenth century. As Gooderson (2010) observes, employment strikes were reputed to be infrequent and mainly non-violent. Cases of violence, namely in the form of ‘slogging’, was traditionally rife within Birmingham workspaces during the twentieth century. Here, it is worth noting that there is little literature on slogging. That which tends of exist are well-researched texts by Philip Gooderson’s (2010) From the Sloggers to the Peaky Blinders; and Carl Chinn’s (2014) The Real Peaky Blinders. Both books are thoughtfully analysed by eminent historians, who have extensive research experiences in writing about local history. Before considering the criminal landscape of working-class Birmingham, it is important to contextualise historical patterns of crime in England.

Historical Patterns of Violent Crime, Birmingham’s Earliest Criminal Groups and Working-Class Masculinity If motivation and opportunity to inflict harm on others for self is to be established as a basic ontological principle at the core of criminological metatheory, then it is crucial for us to have a brief idea of how humans have practised harm across time and space. Hall (2012, p. 20), in detail reveals:

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After the Norman Conquest, righteousness and justice were established by might; victory in war and the ability to maintain some semblance of security were the main legitimising factors. Throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a period in which violent governance of the Norman rulers had failed to restore order, gangs of brigands periodically exercised control over the whole towns and rural areas, a practice that continued in remote northern areas well into the sixteenth century. Gang rule was not simply about power and domination but also practical economic concerns, such as monopolizing import and export nodes, confiscating gold and silver and counterfeiting money. Kidnapping for large ransoms was common, along with violence and torture.

While early forms brigands were entrepreneurially driven, their lack of interest in politics, agriculture and craft production meant that they were solely dedicated on being dominant forces in the highly lucrative illegal trading marketplace. To restore law and order, Edward I, crowned in 1274, reorganised the entire criminal justice system (Hibbert 2003). This paved the way for the 1285 Statute of Winchester that emphasised on the significance of ‘self-policing’ (Joyce 2011). Cohen’s (1985) analysis of ‘master patterns’ of the criminal justice system argues that justice and social control during this period was decentralised and informal. Hall (2012, p. 21), persuasively refutes Cohen’s comments as ‘dubious’ and regards this period as a time of formal reconstruction of previously ‘informal local and regional control systems that had been disrupted in the violent aftermath of the Norman invasion’. As formalisation was crucial for the pacification of a country that endured violent chaos in the years following the Civil War, in the later Middle Ages, serious crimes were a combination of violent brigandage and economic monopolisation. Modern England during the mid-sixteenth to mid-eighteenth centuries saw a decline in most homicides, except for infanticide. According to Sharpe (1996), the decline in fatal violence was as a result in economic crimes, whereas Eisner (2001) argues that homicidal rates of Europe declined during the Middle Ages due to the ‘spiritualisation’ of traditional male honour, that was for most of pre-capitalist history, a bodily form established and defended by violent practice. Eisner’s theory is debatable in contrast to long-term empirical trends. Why would a population that is spiritualised or pacified involve themselves in economic crimes ranging from petty pilfering to major fraud? This would mean that as society became less murderous, it became richer and pacified, but

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potentially less honourable. In relation to ‘class’—society became less egalitarian. As Hall (2012, p. 25) makes clear: What we seem to be looking at is the process of social diffusion and ethical evacuation wherein honour was relocated to the external symbolic economy to make room for motivations and practices that were by standards of the day dishonourable vices, yet which were vital for the expansion of the capitalist economy.

So too, the historical process that underlined the decrease in rates of homicide was not oriented to complete the civilisation or pacification of the soul. Rather, it is useful to consider this through the concept of ‘pseudo-pacification’ (see, Hall 2012 for a critical analysis), which argues that violent dispositions have been sublimated, channelled and harnessed by the nascent bourgeoisie into what we now see as aggressive and non-violent forms of symbolic competition. The above depicts how gangs of brigands were early forms of criminal groups in England. In Birmingham, joint enterprise violent crimes in the nineteenth century were carried out by slogging gangs, who were employed in skilled trades such as: brassfounding, bedstead-making, wiremaking, and stone masonry (Chinn 2014). For instance, Gooderson (2010) identifies the first slogging gang to be originated in Cheapside, in the south-eastern part of Birmingham. He argues that the Cheapside sloggers were men from the iron trade, who used brute force attained from laborious work to pilfer others. This alone suggests that such men were adaptive individuals in the working sphere as well as in criminal networks. Indeed, Eisner (2001) makes clear how pilfering was part of parcel in nineteenthcentury working-class culture, which therefore created what is now known in organised crime studies as ‘blurred boundaries’ (von Lampe 2008)—a small degree of separation between the legal and illegal economies. Another feature that was deeply embedded in working-class culture, and is to a certain extent in the present day is hard drinking. Pubs during the nineteenth- and twentieth-century periods were a key leisure location for individuals of all ages and major providers of the alcohol that fuelled much of the town’s violence (Harrison 1943). In fact, pubs became shared spaces that allowed workplace friendships to continue, and as Winlow (2001, p. 38) notes, they also became a ‘welcome escape from the problems of everyday life’.

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Slogging gangs, unlike contemporary urban street gangs, did not operate on a territorial basis. Sloggers were always willing to partake in violence, often maintained through bare-knuckle boxing. Essentially, the workplace, pubs and street-level violence were integral components that epitomised a slogger. Put simply, these environments allowed working-class masculinities to be re-examined, reinterpreted and reaffirmed (Winlow 2001). Moreover, Tolson (1977) believes such behaviours may are carried out due to physical and social insecurities. This coincides with Daly and Wilson’s (1988) claim that men’s violence towards other men involves a masculinity of status rivalry and boasting among peers. After being granted ‘city status’ by Queen Victoria in 1889, Birmingham advanced as city by improving its transport routes (Dick 2005). By being geographically positioned central in England, the city by default became a transport hub for citizens on the motorway, rail and canal networks. Often, this facilitated a new wave of joint enterprise criminality, and during the early 1900s, these individuals were known as the ‘peaky blinders’. By becoming the successors of sloggers, the peaky blinders would ‘extend beyond the city’ (Gooderson 2010, p. 216), as they could freely travel to other major cities to pursue their criminal activities. Chinn (2014, p. 44) identifies a man by the name Billy Kimber, whom in the early 1900s was regarded as a fearless criminal operative: … [he] was not a man to be crossed. Tall, powerfully built, strong and charismatic, he feared no man but many men feared him. A tough fighter himself, he was the key figure in a group of vicious and frightening thugs called variously the Birmingham Gang, the Burmmagem Gang and the Burmmagem Boys. Drawn from across the city, these were not teenaged hooligans; rather they were dangerous men who had long led lives dominated by fighting, pick-pocketing and intimidation. In the brief boom that followed the end of the First World War, this Birmingham Gang controlled the protection rackets on the racecourses of England and made huge sums of money.

Although there are no reports of Kimber being in such gangs, Chinn (2014, p. 46 All subsequent quotes are taken from Chinn) reveals that ‘he must have gain[ed] a reputation for violence because in 1901, and as a nineteen-year old, he was in Winson Green Prison serving time for wounding’. Kimber’s penchant for violence grew. Soon after being

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released, he was arrested, charged and sentenced to two months in prison for assaulting two police officers. The Birmingham Daily Mail of August 28, 1901, recalled how ‘he had hit one with a violent blow, causing cut lip, and then acted in a violent manner at the police station’ (p. 47). Upon release and after his divorce, Kimber extended his criminal activities as he ‘travelled the country doing what he did best – picking pockets at racecourses and other big sporting events where crowds gathered’ (p. 50). In 1911, he was recorded by the Census as a 28-year-old, single man, who worked as a ‘turf accountant’. In reality, he was leading a group known as the Burmmagem Boys, who travelled the country in the pursuit of controlling England’s racecourse rackets. According to Chinn (2014), it is likely that loose and flexible national networks enabled Kimber and the Burmmagem Boys to control protection rackets. Of note, what Chinn overlooks is the geographical and transport advantages that Birmingham offered during that period for those operating legal and illegal markets. In sum, while some of the proletarian class used Birmingham’s transport systems to find legitimate work, others used the same services to identify criminal opportunities to expand their criminal enterprises beyond fixed terrain. However, the operational activities of gangs like the Burmmagem Boys ceased in 1914 due to the outbreak of the First World War (1914–1918). What is clear from the above is that slogging gangs positioned themselves in innovative, dynamic and expansive economies that provided them the opportunity to employ violent practice. Indeed, the gangs comprised rational actors that realised ‘slogging’ in ill policed areas would maximise their nefarious pleasures (Clarke 1997). Although sloggers would happily welcome gang-related confrontations; in most cases, they would operate within their own ‘awareness space’, which Brantingham and Brantingham (1981, p. 35) considers to be a ‘cognitive map of their known surroundings which influences what locations they will commit crimes’. In contrast to sloggers, Kimber and other peaky blinders can be classified as entrepreneurial offenders (Hobbs 2013), who could dominate lucrative markets. Unlike sloggers, Kimber and his gang were financially motivated, and therefore could be considered as one of Birmingham’s early forms of organised crime networks, who worked on loose structures but could impose power, continuity and rationality (von Lampe 2016). Based on historical accounts, it is evident that the propensity of violence employed by sloggers was greater than those that had the descriptions of being a peaky blinder. So too, it is here

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that we consider the ultra-realist pseudo-pacification framework, whereby high levels of physical violence declined and was replaced by new forms of economically driven and useful symbolic violence that acted out in cultures and social relations as socio-symbolic competition.

Post-war Birmingham: Working-Class Identity, Neoliberalism, and Consumerism Scholars of violent crimes, that have investigated working-class communities in England for criminological research, often consider employment and housing to be the bedrock of working-class identity (Hobbs 1995; Winlow 2001; Ellis 2016). As Britain emerged victories, albeit destroyed from the terrors of the Second World War (1939–1945), the defining feature of Birmingham’s political economy in the post-war epoch was the loss of its well-earned independence and the prevention of future growth. Various historians note that central governments bigger role for British life meant that Birmingham’s future was often decided in Westminster (Sutcliffe and Smith 1974; Ward 2005). Thus, the future of planning, development and other municipal functions of the city were dictated by legislation and national policy; of which centred around, but not restricted to: full employment, the growth of trade union, the establishment of a strong welfare state an importantly the capitalist shift into a consumerist phase whereby spending power of the masses became essential for economic fuel. Here it is important to note that The 1945 Distribution of Industry Act was introduced to redevelop areas that relied on heavy industries, but were hard hit by unemployment in the inter-war and post-war periods. Tyler (1980) notes how this resulted in at least 39,000 jobs redirected out of the West Midlands between 1960 and 1974. While the redistribution of manufacturing shrunk employment by 10% between 1951 and 1956, employment in the service sector flourished from 35% in 1951 to 45% in 1966 (Cherry 1994). However, the rapid growth of the service sector also drew central government attention, who in turn placed similar growth restrictions on industrial employment. The aforementioned provides a crucial overview of Birmingham’s economic growth. The city’s economic success over the previous two centuries was based on the ability to adapt and innovate, which invariably attracted businesses and industries that demanded skilled labour and a dynamic

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entrepreneurial culture. While central government policies restricted economic growth, Birmingham’s existing industries grew and kept the local economy buoyant. Cherry (1994) highlights while trade union power flourished, Birmingham was renowned for weak trade unionism but known for its strong cooperation between workers and management. Often, in the post-war period, industrial conflict became commonplace. It can be argued, that not only did central government’s economic restructuring hinder Birmingham’s economic prosperity, but it also increased social inequality and fragmented collective identity amongst the proletarian class. The reason why most Birmingham’s working class were strongly anti-establishment and united with their workforce was often centred on ‘solidarity’. Indeed, it was unity that fostered the city to become an industrial powerhouse in the first place, but also helped workers to secure finances that would help achieve better health, housing, and other family prosperities. During the 1970s, Birmingham remained one of England’s prosperous provincial cities (Sutcliffe and Smith 1974). As central government still controlled economic growth by dispersing its population and industries to the Home Nations, this avowedly hindered the ‘self-regeneration of businesses in Birmingham, leaving it top-heavy with the old and infirm’ (Heard 1989, p. 28). It was during this period that the decline of the post-war consensus, Thatcherism and neoliberalism surfaced; which meant a restructure of working-class and criminal identities. Here, we should remember that the term ‘consensus’ is not to ideal, as it may suggest that there were no political differences between the centre-left and centre-right parties. Maintaining full-time employment by Keynesian techniques of economic management, acceptance of trade unions, state ownership of natural resources and welfare were often challenged by the left of the Labour party, and the free market, or right wing of the Conservatives. The term ‘urgency’ is perhaps fitting than consensus, as policies were pursued by both governments to acquire working-class support to win elections. As both parties focused on reversing Britain’s economic decline, the nation was plagued by low growth, high inflation, and reckless trade unionism. It was during this period that Britain underwent waves of deindustrialisation, and for the working class, Margaret Thatcher’s 1979 election was catastrophic. Although Thatcher eased some tension with trade unions, she caused an ‘industrial holocaust’ (Hobsbawm 1994, p. 304) by privatising and deregulating industries. This meant that major state regulated firms such

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as: British Aerospace (1981), British Telecom (1984), National Express (1988) and British Steel Corporation (1988) were privatised. In relation to Birmingham, this included: British Leyland (1984), Severn Trent (1989), Midlands Electricity (1990) and Birmingham Airport (1993). The relevance is, as neoliberal modes of doing business improved Britain’s net assets abroad considerably, in mainland Britain, unemployment rose above three million in the early 1980s. Critics of neoliberalism, who state that the ideology is responsible for most of the Western world’s functional issues, claim that the concept views competition as the defining characteristic of social and human relations (Winlow and Hall 2006; Monbiot 2000, 2016). So too, it redefines citizens as mere consumers, whose choices are centred on buying and selling. Put simply, we are now governed in a world by consumerism, which became an established phenomenon for all cultures by the end of the twentieth century. Hayward and Smith (2017, p. 308) argue how ‘the consumption practices associated with a burgeoning consumer society tended to coalesce around issues of class and culture’. Within the context of Birmingham, the origins of class and cultural consumerism stem from Marxist inspired views by academics from the University of Birmingham’s Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS). Various scholars based their work on the premise that deviant behaviour by working-class youths should be viewed as symbolic rebellion against a capitalist society that imposed dominant values and social inequalities (Willis 1977; Urry 1995; Hall et al. 2013). For instance, Willis’ (1977) pioneering ethnography on the sociology of education within a Midlands based school highlighted that education was longer a system that continued intellectual and economic growth, but instead became a platform were conflict was emitted. Willis’ observation centred on what he called the ‘counter-school culture’; a culture that he felt could only be unpacked within the larger framework of the working-class culture. He argued that the counter-school culture had rich indicators of rebellion and resistance against the formal procedures of the school. Describing his participants as the ‘lads’, Willis considers their knowledge of capitalism as limited, and considers any meaningful insights as ‘penetrations’, whereby the lads could infiltrate through various layers of ideological fog formed by the capitalist system. In relation to consumerism, Willis observes that cigarette smoking and openly drinking when playing truant were key signifiers of symbolic rebellion. This marked the lads shaping their culture external to school and therefore gravitated them towards the dominant male

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working-class world, and one that is evident in achieving youth identity within the British night-time economy (Smith 2013). As Hayward and Smith (2017) posit, members of the Birmingham School felt that deviant consumerism was somewhat ‘liberating’. Such sentiments resonate with the post work leisure that was often associated with sloggers during the industrial revolution. Indeed, in the neoliberal epoch, a new set of cultural signifiers shaped on mass consumption and influence enhanced a new set of working-class identities and autonomy. This challenged conventional norms and thwarted what seemed to be a burgeoning oppressive social order. Of note, the growth of consumption of neoliberal technologies fostered the explosion of a swathe of leisure and cultures. The proliferation of youth and student cultures (from Mods to Goths, skinheads to smoothies) to violent and masculine cultures (streets gangs to organised crime networks), have structured politics and culture in the post-social milieu (Ellis 2016; Deuchar 2018). Indeed, this also includes consumerism in the night-time economy, and the wider established Birmingham crime-consumerism nexus. Based on the above, the changes in occupational structure, the growth of cultures, the growth of consumption, the expansion of leisure and new social movements are all series of developments that took on greater salience as the century came to an end in Birmingham (Webster 2004). Most of these developments, at the very least, help us to understand oppression within the working class, and in some cases, harmful behaviour. According to the official figures by the Office for National Statistics (2018), the murder and manslaughter rate in England and Wales has risen to its highest in a decade. There were 719 homicides—murders and manslaughters—in the year to June 2018, a 14% increase from 630 in the previous year. This excludes the 2017 terrorist attacks in London and Manchester. In relation to Birmingham, over the course of 2015–2016, the city endured 13 homicides and 50 attempted murders, which meant an increase of 19% from the previous year (ONS 2016). Based on my impressionistic observations, I have established that some of these fatalities have been because of gangland activities. The need to investigate serious and fatal violence is timely, as Birmingham’s homicide rate is likely to increase. Investigating this is not only beneficial in making sense organised crime groups, but also crucial in understanding the influences of social developments for an overarching explanation of such harms. This chapter now explores the current landscape of homicide before discussing the phenomenon of organised crime.

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Homicide As is in many other nations, the concept of homicide in England and Wales is varied in terms of scale. Nonetheless, the number of homicides is relatively low in comparison to other developed nations (Brookman 2005; Brookman et al. 2017). Before offering a critical understanding of homicide within the context of organised crime, first it is worthwhile considering the phenomenon within its legal framework. Indeed, homicide refers to the unlawful taking of a human life, to which a range of legal definitions can then be applied—including manslaughter and murder. It can be argued that whether a killing is classified as murder or manslaughter is not necessarily reflective of the act itself, but the nature of evidence that exists in relation to it. Brookman et al. (2017, p. 321) note how all characteristics of homicide in the English legal system share a common actus reus (guilty act), but are separated by ‘the extent to which the offender is deemed to have intended to cause the victim’s death’, that is their mens rea (guilty mind). Before I offer detailed characteristics of homicide within organised crime, below is a brief overview of the sociodemographic characteristics of offenders and victims. The ONS (2016) categorises the sociodemographic characteristics of offenders and victims in regards to gender, race, and age. Like most nations, males dominate as offenders and victims. For instance, for the year ending March 2015, 90% of homicide suspects were male, and 64% of victims were male. Brookman et al. (2017) note that young males between 20 and 24 are at the greatest risk of a homicidal act, and in terms of race and ethnicity, those that are Black and Asian are overrepresented as homicide victims in England and Wales when compared to their numbers in population. Interestingly, the Ministry of Justice (2017) reveals that those who kill often belong to the same ethnic group as the victim. For example, in 2011/2012 and 2013/2014, 94% of white suspects killed someone belonging to the same ethnic group. All the above is relevant for understanding the landscape of homicide within a British context. Nevertheless, it fails to consider explanations of homicide, particularly from a masculine perspective. Given the diverse range of theories for homicide, it would be impossible to cover all potential explanations. Nonetheless, in the next subsection, I consider three theories that are prevalent forms of homicide within the context of criminal groups.

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Situational Explanation of Homicide The pioneering work of Wolfgang (1958, p. 10) argues that homicide ‘involves intense personal interaction in which the victim’s behaviour is often an important factor’. Essentially, the foundations of his work focused upon the interactional dynamics of violent ­ encounters. Wolfgang’s study has guided other studies that have considered the broader situational identities and self-images in interaction (see, Toch 1969), as well as wider aspects of criminological research on the micro-environments of crime (Parker 2008; Ray 2011). The latter also encompasses homicide studies of the interactional dynamics of offenders and victims, as well as the lethality of situations (Luckenbill 1977; Polk 1994). For instance, Luckenbill’s (1977) ‘six-stage model of conflict’ considers dynamic interactions involving a victim, offender and the audience in front of whom these actors play. Within a ‘masculine’ context, Luckenbill’s (1977) stages three and five are of significant interest. In the third stage, he argues that rather than excusing or ignoring the provocation, or leaving the scene, an offender responds with ‘retaliatory move aimed at restoring face and demonstrating strong character’ (Luckenbill 1977, p. 181). In the fifth stage, Luckenbill (1977, p. 184) provides a battle scenario and states that fearful of ‘displaying weakness in character and consequent loss of face’, the victim and offender are embroiled in a ‘working agreement that violence was appropriate’. So too, both stages provide the understanding of masculine honour (Rahman and Lynes 2018). Demetriou and Johnson (2016, p. 4) state that ‘masculine honour has usually been thought to depend on the man’s virility, martial valor, and willingness to defend his woman and social prerogatives with violence’. This suggests that violent encounters are frequently an occasion for men to flaunt their courage and martial excellence. Various scholarly sources have suggested that such male on male violence features in legitimate venues of social interaction (see, Polk 1994; Winlow 2001; Hobbs et al. 2005; Hayward 2004; Winlow and Hall 2006), and that the construction of masculine identities is a result of socioeconomic and cultural influences. Thus, to acquire a comprehensive understanding of structural homicide, or violent practice for that matter, we should always consider the significance of space (Canter 2003; Ray 2011), for as Foucault (1984, p. 252) states, ‘space is fundamental in any exercise of power’.

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Ray (2011, p. 63) highlights that ‘the spatial organization of the city is structured by wider global socioeconomic processes which in turn structure patterns of violence’. For Birmingham, historically speaking, this was evident during the period of those that were sloggers, whose violent practice also inhabited the production of legitimate goods and services. Leferbvre (1991) would argue such areas to be ‘abstract space’, that is separated into clusters to facilitate the control of capital or the state, which he contrasts with space that is ‘lived’ and one that can be contested and reclaimed. The redevelopment of post-war Birmingham, along with new waves of immigration introduced new spatial divides, which by default contributed towards divisions in class and race. Ray (2011) considers the importance of reordering urban space during the last quarter of the twentieth century, which he describes as neoliberal characteristics, creating what Soja (2000, p. 299) calls ‘islands of enclosure’. Of note, academic work that considers violent crimes in UK post-industrial locales argue the systematic link between structural transformations of capital (Castells 1998), the burgeoning neglect of the ghetto, and the emergence of a global decentralised criminal economy (Hobbs 1988, 1995, 2013; Ellis 2016; Fraser 2015; Pizzaro 2017; Deuchar 2018). In sum, the above illustrates a twofold understanding of violent practice and homicide within a situational context, one being interactionist and the other being systemic. Both understandings share the consensus that violence is contingent upon urban spaces, which by design, creates masculine identities. From a systemic standpoint, persuasive research pieces argue that neoliberal restructuring has produced a culture of terror, that manifests regular displays of violence in a de-pacified society, which in turn inhabits an underground economy (Hayward 2004; Wacquant 2004; Hall 2012). Moreover, below I present cultural explanations of fatal violence. Cultural Explanation of Homicide The fundamental premise of cultural theorists is that violent individuals share ideologies that are favourable to the use of physical force when insulted or contested due to an exaggerated sense of honour, pride, courage and manliness. Indeed, cultural explanations of homicide have been useful for cases of domestic homicide, honour killings and organised crime. As Gill (2017) argues, intra-familial honour killings are considered acceptable reactions in certain communities. To exemplify this,

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Arin’s (2001, p. 823) study on femicide revealed that trivial acts, such as socialising alone or requesting a love song on a radio channel can tarnish a woman’s ‘virgin’ status, and such ‘beliefs are so powerful that families are prepared to sacrifice the life of one of their female members to restore their honour and standing in the eyes of others’. In the context of criminal groups, the concept of honour is often achieved through collective practice. In their study of young Southern Italians, who engaged in illicit networks, Travaglino et al. (2014a, p. 799) allude to codes of honour and masculinity, as well as the ‘important values in the context where they originated’. Further to this, they propose that the entrenching of these values at an individual level may reduce young men’s group-based opposition to such organisations, and incidentally generate spaces in which such organisations can continue to operate. Similarly, Travaglino et al. (2014b, p. 183) argue how local populations in Italy exhibited ‘collective passivity against organised crime, a phenomenon known as omerta’. Omerta is related to the concept of masculine honour; that is, to fit ideological constructions of manliness, individuals should display indifference towards illegal activities and should not cooperate with legal institutions. In his study of male aggression, Bernard (1990) observes how the truly disadvantaged, that is those who suffer from isolation, often conform to the subculture of informal rules. Convincing research offers synergy and rich narratives of the circumstances under which violence, or lethal violence is sanctioned, and how such cultures are created because of the neglect of certain segments in society (Garot 2010; Brookman et al. 2011). Therefore, this is a critical link between cultural explorations of homicide within illicit networks and structural explanations (Pizzaro 2017). Having said this, instrumental violence is explicit within criminal groups, and below is a critical exploration of this within real life examples. Instrumental Explanation of Homicide D’Cruze et al. (2006, p. 125) consider instrumental violence as harmful practice that is ‘used to achieve a recognised objective’. The authors argue that this type of violent practice is often employed for gain, and while all homicides have different meanings, instrumental violence is one that is widely associated with criminal groups (UNODC 2013). It is however one that is often misunderstood. According to the UNODC (2013, p. 39), organised criminal groups carry out acts of homicide for

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a swathe of reasons, of which includes ‘the elimination of rivals’. This aligns with Hobbs’ (2013) viewpoint that criminal syndicates in most cases acquire profit and power through the deployment of violence. Furthermore, the strategic deployment of violence, or its threat of use, are means by which criminal syndicates exert monopolistic control over a product or service (von Lampe 2016). Hence, to speak of strategy implies that criminal fraternities employ the act of homicide rationally, and thus instrumentally. Having said this, notable cases show otherwise, and D’Cruze et al. (2006, p. 130) state: …particular murders associated with organised crime can seem a good deal more expressive than rational – gestures of power which assert (masculine) identity and authority through their very recklessness or the excess of violence.

Within the context of organised crime, an example of the above can be seen in the case of the Kray Twins. Born in working-class conditions in the East End between the world wars, Ronald ‘Ronnie’ Kray and Reginald ‘Reggie’ Kray entered organised crime in London as part of the new post-war generation and quickly built up a profitable empire through criminal entrepreneurship (Pearson 2015). The Kray’s utilised their penchant for violence for the acquisition of legitimate businesses, and once they were established, they hoped to leave the world of gangsterism behind by pursuing legitimate and quasi-legitimate enterprises. However, their careers from the mid-1960s were marked by catastrophic acts of fatal violence. In February 1966, George Connell, long known to the Kray’s as a Richardson gang associate was shot in the face unceremoniously by Ronnie while he sat drinking at the Blind Beggar pub in Whitechapel, London. There are ambiguities surrounding motive of his murder, with some sources suggesting that Connell had called Ronnie a ‘fat poof’. With the demise of the Kray’s rival gang—the Richardson gang—Connell was no threat to the Kray’s which meant that his killing held no logic. Hence, the explanation of the murder is often misrepresented. The shooting of Connell was by no means instrumental, rather it was a powerful expressive gesture, as Ronnie demonstrated his capacity to destroy the face of a man who humiliated him. This confrontational act of homicide (Brookman 2005) also demonstrated his ability to publicly execute a man in front of witnesses, which therefore illustrates his transcendent position of special liberty (Hall 2012).

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A year later, in 1967, Reggie murdered Jack ‘The Hat’ McVittie. McVittie was also known to the Kray’s and was a long-term criminal. Often, through the consumption of drink and drugs, McVittie became unreliable. For the Kray’s, McVittie was a nuisance, and it is alleged that McVittie was ordered to kill Leslie Payne—a former financial adviser of the Kray’s. Although he failed to kill Payne, the motive for McVittie’s murder is heavily contested, but the nature of his killing parallels Connell’s. On one evening, McVittie was invited to flat in London. Upon his arrival, he was confronted by the Kray’s. In the first instance, Reggie attempted to shoot him, but the gun jammed. Moments later, he stabbed McVittie multiple times in his face, abdomen, and throat (Morton and Dickson 2002). It was then the job of junior members of the Kray firm to dispose McVittie’s body once the twins left the crime scene. The killing was by no means clinical. Similarly, to that of Connell’s, McVittie’s face was destroyed in front of individuals who were culturally adept of their responsibilities as witnesses, that is to maintain the code of silence (Anderson 1999). The level of fatal violence displayed in both murders exceeds rationality. That is not to say that acts of homicide in organised crime cannot be rational or instrumental, nor is it to say that the Kray’s intention to kill their victims did not encompass rationality in their own minds. The point that I am trying to make is that as criminologists, we tend to categorise explanations of homicide and overlook the complexities of subjective violence. We tend to narrow our focus on the offender and their offences, as opposed to taking into consideration the deeper aspects of the social world that facilitates the construction of violent practice. It is for this reason that the situational, cultural, and instrumental explanations of violence, namely fatal violence should not be considered separate and unrelated. Through primary investigations, I will later argue how violent practice requires a cognate understanding for a deeper understanding of the forces that drive individuals to inflict harm on others. To situate violent practice within the context of ‘organised crime’, in the next subsection I examine the label organised crime and some of the ongoing scholarly debates about the concept.

Organised Crime: Definitions and Ambiguities The etymology of organised crime as it is used in the present day is essentially a United States invention (von Lampe 2016). While the origins of organised crime date back to the nineteenth century, it was not until the

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early twentieth century that a consistent meaning was attached to the combination of the words organised and crime in the USA. Inspired by US federal debates in the mid-twentieth century, the term has come to use on a consistent basis in other parts of the world, namely in Europe, since the 1960s and 1970s. In 1986, The US President’s Commission on Organized Crime indicated that the problem of defining the concept lay not in the word ‘crime’, but in the word ‘organised’. Indeed, while this is a fair point that I will return to shortly, it is first worth noting that the phenomenon is a strong example of how, in modern societies, problems are identified and placed on the political agenda. By 1990, the concept reached global heights, namely during the run-up to the 2000 UN Convention against Transnational Organised Crime, which is also widely known as the Palermo Convention. Simply put, the adoption of the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime in Palermo identified organised crime as a key criminal policy concept on a global scale. Of note, before adopting the UN resolution, the UK in 1993 embraced organised crime as a national policing issue. Formal dialogues first emerged at a conference in Bramshill Police College, where it was announced that ‘organised crime has many definitions; this may be because it is like an elephant—it is difficult to describe but you know it when you see it’ (Hobbs 2013, p. 47). Often, when discussing organised crime academically, scholars immediately highlight definitional obscurities (see, Levi 2002; Wright 2006; Hobbs 2013). Here, it is important to note that poorly defined concepts are not simply an academic inconvenience; for indeed they have ramifications for police and practice, which leads to constrains in multi-agency cooperation, thus limiting policy evaluation (see, Marshall et al. 2005; CSJ 2009). So too, a narrow definition can cause an ‘underestimation’; resulting to inefficient responses, and too broad of a definition can result to an ‘overestimation’ of the problem, leading to wasted resources. In recent years, the UK Government have argued that acts such as: illegal drugs, human trafficking, fraud, money laundering, armed robbery and theft are all associated with organised crime groups. A HM Government (2011a, p. 3) report predicted that ‘the overall cost to the UK from organised crime is estimated at between £20 billion to £40 billion a year. It involves around 38,000 individuals, operating as part of around 6000 criminal gangs’. As a result, the National Crime Agency (NCA) was established in 2013 and subsequently replaced the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA). Put simply, the NCA equates to the FBI of UK policing. In doing so, as a national law enforcement agency,

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it takes regional, national and international approaches when combatting serious and organised crime. Through a UK standpoint, the international dimensions of organised crime was first academically introduced by Hobbs (1988), who coined the term ‘glocal crime’. Over the years, Hobbs (2013, p. 153) argued how serious crimes are no longer in fixed terrain, rather they are ‘manifested as both local and global networks of opportunity’. The Serious Crimes Act (2015, p. 39) provides the understanding that an organised crime group means a group that (a) ‘has as its purpose, or as one of its purposes, the carrying on of criminal activities’, and (b) ‘consists of three or more persons who act, or agree to act, together to further that purpose’. As noted above, a broad definition of any global phenomenon can result to an ‘overestimation’ of the problem, leading to wasted resources, which therefore makes the Serious Crimes Act definition ineffective. Moreover, von Lampe (2008) persuasively argues that considering the sophistication, continuity, and rationality of organised crime groups is key for contextualising the concept. In addition, the work of Fijnaut and Paoli (2006) argues the importance of making sense of the ‘structured’ and ‘unstructured’ aspects of criminal organisations when considering a definition. Furthermore, commentary on the ‘organised’ aspect of organised crime extends to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (2002), which argues how transnational organised crime groups often comprise of loose and unstructured networks. I created a working definition by critically scrutinising contemporary legislation, policy and academic discussions that impact organised crime in the UK on an operational level. The reason why I decided to produce a definition is because it allowed me to establish research focus, as well as capturing precise characteristics of contemporary organised crime. So too, I define the phenomenon as: A self-formed association of adults that are (i) united structurally and/or loosely within a regional, national, and transnational context, (ii) who are bounded by the mutual interest of committing sophisticated and continuous forms of serious crimes for an immeasurable period, and (iii) act collectively to achieve outcomes that generally include the pursuit of profit and/ or power of a given commodity, territory, and/or enterprise.

The working definition starts by considering the construction of organised crime and those immersed in the phenomenon. Based on

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my thorough examination of literature, such descriptions have been neglected in current definitions, but are imperative for the compositional understanding of organised crime. In the UK, I argue that organised crime is contrived, which makes it a self-formed phenomenon as opposed to one that is inherited by default like the Sicilian Mafia (see, Sergi 2017). Based on the fieldwork that I have conducted for this book, as well as established empirical work on UK organised crime, the actors are primarily adults, and it is demographical information that law enforcement chiefly consider when distinguishing members of organised crime groups and urban street gangs. The operators for the latter are often categorised as ‘youth’s or ‘teenagers’ (Klein et al. 2001; Densley 2013; Decker and Pyrooz 2015). In regards to the structural aspect of organised crime, the definition provides an adaptable positionality, which considers that organised crime syndicates can either form structurally or loosely, or they hold the descriptions of both. The latter description of being loosely united can be associated with those operating transnationally, which some scholars argue that organisation becomes flexible, intermittent and weak, rather than hierarchal and stable (Van Duyne 1996; Coles 2001; Williams 2001). In relation to criminality, the offences that are committed by organised crime syndicates are deemed to be serious. According to the Serious Crimes Act (2015), a serious crime carries an imprisonment of 7 years or more. Crimes such as the illegal drugs trade, illegal firearms trade, fraud, cybercrime and child sexual exploitation are all categorised as serious crimes by the NCA, and ones that can be argued as sophisticated, and occur in continuous forms. Often, such crimes are achieved by being bounded by mutual interest, that means in most cases there is an unwritten collective agreement among members of a criminal entity. Moreover, definitions of organised crime place significance on the duration of criminal activities. Personally, I believe this to be pointless debate, simply on the basis that the sophisticated nature of organised crime makes it virtually impossible to consider the length of criminal activities in most cases. For this reason, I use the term immeasurable to depict the inestimable nature of the phenomenon. Of note, some scholars have recently suggested replacing the term ‘organised crime’ with the ‘organisation of crime for gain’ (Naylor 2004; van Duyne et al. 2006; Edwards and Levi 2008; Levi 2012). Indeed, such studies have focused on organised crime in Europe and in some cases the pragmatics of the crimes discussed in the studies resonate to that of organised crime in the

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West Midlands. Hence, the notion of organisation of crime for gain is considered in the final aspect of the definition, thus considering an adaptive understanding of motive. It can be suggested that organised crime groups operate either for profit or power, or a combination of both. Here, it is important to briefly consider the ambiguous nature of organised crime, namely in the UK. In 2011, the HM Government released two strategic reports: one focusing on organised crime (HM Government 2011a) and the other on gangs and youth violence (HM Government 2011b). The reports essentially consider both concepts separate and unrelated. Conversely, four years later, the same coalition government combined organised criminal groups and gangs in the Serious Crime Act (2015) under the heading ‘organised, serious and gang-related crime’. One of the prevalent reasons for the change is because of recent developments within the UK illicit drug market: that is, ‘the commuting of gang members from major cities to small rural– urban areas for the purpose of enhancing their profit from drug distribution’ (Robinson et al. 2018, p. 1). This type of contemporary practice has been dubbed by law enforcement and government as ‘County Lines’ (HM Government 2018; NCA 2015, 2016, 2017). In sum, this burgeoning phenomenon considers how illicit products, namely drugs, are delivered in rural locales by youths, who may operate within a gang, but are subordinately controlled by a wider criminal network. Interestingly, Robinson et al. (2018) highlight how ‘exploitation’ was exercised by criminal syndicates from major cities, and this was prevalent in activities that had the descriptions of County Lines. Moreover, recent UK based research considers the evolution of gangs (Densley 2014). For instance, Densley (2014) persuasively argues that some gang members can ‘evolve’ into, or be employed by organised criminal groups, thus suggesting a fluidity to the concept. Whereas, McLean’s (2018) empirical work on Scottish street gangs presents an evolving gang model in which the sequential stages are outlined as recreational, criminal and syndicate. The above highlights the blurred, slippery and indistinct understanding of organised crime in the UK. Irrespective of UK law enforcement and central government establishing a firm nexus between street gangs and organised crime groups because of County Lines; it is important to be mindful that this contemporary concept only exists because of organised crime groups, who exert control and coercive practice on those that are junior to them, yet beneficial for their pursuit of profit and power. Indeed, I would argue that my definition of organised crime

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embraces County Lines, as it pragmatically considers the flexibility of the phenomenon within the context of actors, interactions and motivations. While organised crime is a nebulous construct, the harm that it projects is ever-present. The latest Serious Violence Strategy report (2018) notes that one of the drivers of serious violence is because of an increase in organised criminality. Before discussing real cases of serious violence because of organised crime, it is first important to consider the theoretical paradigms that will complement the data that I have attained through fieldwork.

Theory I mentioned in the opening pages of this book that criminologists in the present day are finding it difficult to offer convincing responses for criminological issues. As Winlow (2014) observes, criminologists have now become ‘contrologists’, who spend majority of their time as social reaction theorists. Moreover, Winlow argues that mainstream criminology fails to address complexities of subjectivity and motivations. The reason behind this is that scholars fail to explore the aetiology of criminality (Hall 2012; Ellis et al. 2017), that is to explain the ‘causes of causes’. Of note, ultra-realism, a burgeoning criminological paradigm influentially argues that recent scholarly failings have occurred because of discussions being limited to the empirical and the disregarding of the Real. Put simply, for a penetrative understanding of harm, the ultra-realism branch of social sciences encourages criminologists to extend beyond the parameters of criminology by borrowing from cognate fields. So too, keystone discussions of this book flow over criminological boundaries, thus below is an overview of theories that will help deconstruct precursors to violent practice in Birmingham’s criminal underworld. Ultra-realism The ultra-realist branch of criminology in recent years has provided thought provoking research on interpersonal violence, harm and violent offenders (see, Winlow 2001, 2014; Winlow and Hall 2006; Hall 2012; Winlow and Atkinson 2012; Smith 2013; Ellis 2016; Ellis et al. 2017). Advocates of this paradigm stress the importance of establishing the aetiology of crime, as well as encouraging the consideration of external

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forces that manifest harmful practice. Within the capitalist epoch, the prevalent forces are consumerism and market competition. While some may argue how such legitimate daily practices manifest harm, Hall (2012) theorises this shrewdly within his pseudo-pacification analysis. Hall (2012) provides a critical perspective of Norbert Elias’ notion of ‘civilization’ by stating that the decline in interpersonal violence was not because of an increase in Western civilization, but the ‘emergence of a dualistic economic need for pacification in an emerging market economy’ (Hall and Winlow 2015, p. 116). In short, Elias’ prerequisites of the pacification of the population entailed the State’s monopoly of violence, the maintenance of social interdependencies, and the development of behavioural codes. Nevertheless, his prerequisites downplay the connection between the developing capitalist economies. Below, Hall and Winlow (2015, p. 116) note the key interactive functions of a dualistic economic need for pacification: 1.  The protection of property rights and the reduction of violent interactions between traders to enhance safer trading activity throughout the nascent market economy’s arteries and nodes—this provided a crucial condition for expanding the production and circulation of commodities; 2. The sublimation of destructive and repressive physical aggression into functionally aggressive yet physically pacified rule-bound competition for wealth and status represented by the acquisition and display of sociosymbolic objects in a burgeoning consumer culture—this expanded the demand for commodities. Point two above is of interest when it comes to the breakdown of the pseudo-pacification process. Hall (2012) challenges ideas around the civilising process in the context of violent practice. The notion that we have ‘civilised’ ourselves out of violence, thus consequently becoming empathetic and having non-violent dispositions is not necessarily the case. Rather, violence endured during the medieval period has been channelled, repressed and harnessed by the nascent bourgeoisie into what we now see as extremely aggressive and non-violent forms of social and symbolic competition. Therefore, the core of the pseudo-pacification paradigm is that violent practice and altruism which ordered the Dark Ages and Middle Ages was harnessed, and converted in the capitalist epoch to achieve a burgeoning consumer-driven economy (Hall 2012). Of note,

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the pseudo-pacification theory is extremely relevant within the context of criminal markets, namely the ‘glocal’ role of organised crime in the West. Neoliberalism, a by-product of capitalism, has dispersed the pseudopacification process across the world. By default, the nature of neoliberalism displaces and in some cases, eradicates traditional cultures and their politics with the depoliticising form of consumer culture. Along with this, innovations in technology, communication, and transport has manifested conditions that are favourable to the development of criminal enterprises. In doing so, the facets of aggressive capitalism have warranted individuals to undertake special liberty within the global structure. The concept of special liberty is apparent through this book in the context that individuals surpass the Big Other’s ethical codes in order to create wealth and crucially exercise freely one’s urges and desires. Hence, the individual is the ultimate fantasy of liberal capitalism; an unapologetic individual whose motivation revolves around self, which allows him to deprive, rob, and destroy with impunity without ever acknowledging the harms placed upon others (Hall 2012). As Winlow (2014, p. 175) notes, rather than admitting such harms, ‘individuals who believe that they are entitled to special liberty remain attached to an image of themselves as the most useful circulators of commodities and the most transcendent free individuals, the creators of a prosperous future and the pioneers of the free expression of the full spectrum of drives and desires’. In recent times, through case study and ethnographic methodologies, scholars have made this concept explicit within local drug markets (Winlow 2001; Ellis 2016; Rahman and Lynes 2018), corporate boardrooms and even in passages of state power (Winlow and Atkinson 2012). So too, the fantasy of special liberty has enabled every environment to have its rightful purpose built criminals. This parallels Zizek’s (2006) notion of ‘fetishistic disavowal’, which tells us of the harmful subjects that surround us, yet we systemically repress such criminal undertakers. Similarly, to special liberties, the notion of criminal undertakers is visible throughout this book, and one that has become a permanent fixture in legitimate and illicit realms. Within the context of the UK underworld, this has been depicted in various London based research (Hobbs 1988, 1995, 2013; Pitts 2008; Densley 2014; Harding 2014). For instance, Densley’s (2014) well-researched ethnography on gangs in London argues that the issue of urban street gangs is serious and one that cannot be shunned. While loosely structured hierarchies consist

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of ‘the top dog’ at the top end—and ‘runners’ at the bottom end— ranking systems are defined by criminal undertaking as opposed to endowed titles which we often see within the Italian mafia. The concept of the undertaker should not be mistaken with one who buries the dead, rather it is one who gets things done in the name of business. As Densley (2014, p. 75) observes, ‘violence is also key to maintaining leadership during the enterprise stage. But a penchant for violence is not enough. The leadership must also display a certain degree of entrepreneurial acumen because without a strategy for growth, the gang stagnates and its members defect’. The rationale offered by Densley mirrors boardroom entrepreneurialism. For instance, the oligarchic undertakers of the 2008 financial crash, known officially as ‘bankers’, undertook considerable economic change which resulted in catastrophic implications for current and future generations. Here, it should be argued that the corporate gangsters responsible for the 2008 economic crash are the epitome of ‘systemic violence’. So too, while the violence caused by such individuals tends to be ‘invisible’, Zizek (2008, p. 6) argues that ‘it has to be taken into account if one is to make sense of what otherwise seem to be “irrational” explosions of subjective violence’. In addition to Zizek’s thoughts, ultra-realist researchers emphasise the importance of borrowing from cognate fields for an extensive discussion on crime, harm and crime control. Hence, below I offer the fundamentals of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis For ultra-realists, psychoanalysis is crucial in making sense of unconscious thoughts, which in turn provides social scientists a critical insight of offender motives beyond the superficial empirical world. First, it is important to distinguish the difference between psychoanalysis and psychodynamics. The theory of psychoanalysis primarily applies to the work of Sigmund Freud, the founder of the paradigm, who also used the concept as a therapeutic model. So too, psychodynamic approaches encompass theories that have been developed because of Freud’s seminal work (Erikson 1950). Nonetheless, the kernel of the theories argues the importance to discharge repressed emotions; which means to make the unconsciousness—conscious. Consequently, this means that harm can be viewed via the mental health praxis. Freud (1923) championed the notion that psychological problems are rooted in the unconscious mind,

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thus symptoms are triggered by latent disturbances. Often, however, it is argued that his most important work was the exploration of the human psyche, and how one’s personality can be holistically viewed in three major parts. Freud (1923) labelled his tripartite system as the id, ego, and superego. Here, it is important to clarify that all three stages develop at different periods of human life and by no means are these stages physical in any form. The ‘iceberg’ analogy is often used to simplify Freud’s (1915) analysis, as he argues that similarly to an iceberg, the most important part of the mind is the one that cannot be viewed. This is known as the id. The id is the primeval component of the human personality, which comprises of all inherited dispositions. These range from biological functionalities present from birth, of which include the Eros—the libido instinct, and Thanatos—the death instinct. Of note, Freud (2010) views the id to be the ‘impulsive’ aspect of the psyche, and one that remains functionally infantile but demands pleasure. In short, the id operates purely in a wishful and selfish basis, and its primitive nature makes this part of the psyche irrational, illogical, and fantasy driven. Freud (1923) argues that the next stage developing from the id is the ego, that acts as a portion of the id which has been altered by direct influences of the external world. Put simply, the ego floats between the primitive id and the external real world. Thus, the ego works by reason, as it is the decision-making component of the human personality, whereas the id is unreasonable and perverse. The commonality of both personalities is that they seek pleasure. Having said this, the ego operates on a reality value, which means it can be at the mercy of the chaotic and unreasonable id. For instance, Freud (1923, p. 15) makes the analogy of a horse being the id and a horseback rider being the ego. Hence, the ego is ‘like a man on horseback, who has to hold in check the superior strength of the horse’. Based on the analogy, the ego (horseback rider) at the very best can only point the id towards the right trajectory and in doing so, claim credit as if its actions were uninhibited. Known as the above I, the superego incorporates a person’s morals and ethics of society which are educated by their parents and wider relationships. According to the psychosexual model, this occurs around the ages 3–5 years in what is widely known as the ‘phallic’ stage (Freud 1905). The phallic stage is regarded to be the psychosexual stage of development whereby pleasure based sensitivities becomes more concentrated in the genitals for both sexes. Freud (1923) states that it is the superego’s

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role to control the id’s Eros and Thanatos impulses, especially those that are forbidden in society. Hence, its role is to urge the ego to conduct ethical goals rather than realistic ones. Of note, the superego itself is a twofold system, that consists of the conscience and the ego-ideal. First, the ‘conscience’ can punish the ego in regards to causing feelings of guilt. For instance, if the id overrides the ego in terms of demands, the superego can make a person feel bad about primitive instincts through guilt. In regards to the ego-ideal, this is viewed as the image of a perfect self in regards to aspirations, temperament, and the overall behaviour in society. Criminologically, this is of extreme interest, namely within the context of actors and interactions of organised crime. Examples of the ego-ideal are recurring in the upcoming cases, which present the understanding that certain members of the criminal underworld reconfigurate their ethical and moral standards to undertake special liberties. In the present day, psychoanalysis is an established therapeutic technique, that is held in high esteem in social sciences. Comparatively to the work of Bourdieu, psychoanalytical approaches help us to understand the individual and social. In what follows, I consider the work of Bourdieu, and hope to elucidate some of the similarities between Bourdieusian epistemology and psychoanalysis. Bourdieu As a sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu’s initial anthropological work concerned the dominant paradigm of structuralism. Developing from this, Bourdieu produced a series of concepts, including field and habitus. He considers the field as a backdrop that houses agents and their social positions. The position of each agent is configured because of engagement between the field, an agent’s habitus, and its capital (economic, social, and cultural) (Bourdieu 1984). By no means do the fields operate in silos, rather they are in constant interaction, albeit subordinate to the larger fields of class and power. What separates Bourdieu’s analysis of social relations is that it does not restrict itself to class as a structural relation; rather he uses the agency-structure association to bridge the concept of field. In Bourdieu’s (1984, 1992) work, the notion of habitus considers ingrained dispositions that help individuals identify their social world and their reactions. Such dispositions are shared by individuals within the context of economic, social and cultural capital. Of note, these capitals

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within the field are underpinned by what is known as symbolic capital. Bourdieu (1989, p. 17) defines symbolic capital as ‘the form that various species of capital assume when they are perceived and recognized as legitimate’. In addition, Skeggs (1997, p. 8) argues that ‘legitimation is the key mechanism in the conversion to power’. So too, the capital that has been developed via the habitus needs to be considered legitimate before it can be utilised accordingly in the field. Indeed, all capitals are context specific and the social space that we populate is historically produced. Hence, the distribution of people is contingent upon the ‘global volume of capital they possess; the composition of their capital, the relative weight in their overall capital of the various forms of capital and evolution in time of the volume and composition according to their trajectory in social space’ (ibid.). Returning to the relationship between Bourdieusian epistemology and psychoanalysis, it is worthwhile noting that there is little by the way of explicit references made to psychoanalysis in Bourdieu’s work (Darmon 2016). Scholars who have raised this discussion in the past note that Bourdieu’s texts are scattered with psychoanalytical terms—‘unconsciousness, misrecognition, projection, reality principle, libido, ego splitting, negation, repression, phallonarcissism, compromise formation, and anamnesis’ (Steinmetz 2013, p. 108; see also, Fourny 2000; Steinmetz 2006)—but without any explicit acknowledgement of psychoanalysis as a standalone discipline. In fact, when Bourdieu was quizzed by fellow social scientist Gerard Mauger about habitus and whether there was resemblance between ‘socio-analysis’ (social unconsciousness) and Freud’s psychoanalysis (unconsciousness), Bourdieu answered without referring to psychoanalysis, but alluded at the psychologisation of social problems (for a full discussion see, Mauger and Pinto 1994). While commentators continue to discuss Bourdieu’s relation to psychoanalysis, I believe that there is much to be gained by fusing both ideologies when exploring to what extent violence, namely lethal violence is meaningful for those in Birmingham’s criminal underworld. To ascertain the aetiology of violence in underground settings; I illustrate the relevance of capital in my fieldwork, but in conjunction with the mental health praxis of individuals, namely those who were ethnographically observed. In sum, I envision the mixture of theories contributing towards novel perspectives of those that have committed serious and fatal violence because of organised crime.

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Concluding Comments This chapter has provided a historical and criminological account of criminal groups in Birmingham. The understanding of early forms of Birmingham’s criminal groups, of which we may now view as organised crime groups has mainly been achieved through historiography. As noted, the rationale for this is that historiography allows scholars to challenge and contest well-established assumptions about organised crime through its retrospective nature. So too, a historiographic analysis has revealed that there is a reputable link between criminal groups and homicide in Birmingham, with cases dating back to the early-twentieth century. Essentially, this chapter has demonstrated that there is a prolonged consistency of violent practice among criminal groups in the West Midlands, and this has been overlooked in historical and criminological research. Moreover, in the present day, the understanding of organised crime and criminal groups is ambiguous in the context of policy, and is far from clear in mainstream criminology. Hence, this book will aim to consider the structural backdrop of lethal violence in organised crime within a locale that is currently one of the most violent in England and Wales. It is for this reason that this book now moves on to the first case study.

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CHAPTER 3

Contract Killers and Glocal Organised Crime: A Case Study of the ‘Baby-Faced’ Assassin

O’Toole was a right little bastard. That fucker was born to simply raise hell. —John

Abstract  This chapter explores the nebulous concept of hitmen and their position in the criminal underworld. It does this by investigating the 2002 assassination of Gary Morgan, who was murdered by prolific hitman Peter O’Toole. O’Toole, at the height of his criminal exploits, was regarded as one of Britain’s most feared hired killers, and in court was once described as a ‘professional hitman’. In this chapter, I argue that O’Toole was by no means a professional hitman. Rather, O’Toole, at the most, should be considered a ‘Journeyman’ hitman (MacIntyre et al. in The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice 53: 325–340, 2014). To offer a comprehensive account of the ambiguous position that O’Toole held in the underworld, his role as a hitman is triangulated with the critical biographical analysis of a notorious British hitman, and the understanding of ‘glocal’ organised crime (Hobbs in Lush Life: Constructing Organized Crime in the UK, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013).

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Keywords  Adams family · Birmingham · Case study · Contract killing · Drugs · Gary Morgan · Glocal · Hitman/Hitmen · Homicide · Interviews · Jimmy Moody · Journeyman · Murder · Neutralisation · Organised crime · Peter O’Toole · Provisional Irish Republican Army · Richardson gang · Robert Dawes · Typology · Violence · West Midlands

A Note on Hitmen Contract killers and their ‘hits’ are underexplored in the academic world, although a more recent interest in the topic is now apparent. To my knowledge, this is the first British-based academic book to consider the concept to be associated with organised crime. Research that tends to exist is either American (Levi 1981; Black 2000; Black and Cravens 2001) or Australian (Blackshaw 1996; Mouzos and Venditto 2003). The pioneering work of MacIntyre et al. (2014, p. 3) defines a hitman as a person who accepts an order to kill another human being from someone who is not publicly acknowledged as a legitimate authority regarding ‘just killing’, and this work is of importance, as it sketches the broader contours of the phenomenon by offering a strong typology of hitmen in Britain between 1974 and 2013. Of note, the typology has been useful in recent research when critically exploring British-based hits (see Wilson and Rahman 2015; Rahman and Lynes 2018). For instance, based on several cases, Wilson and Rahman (2015) studied the psychological reframing processes of becoming a hitman. Their findings resonate the work of Sykes and Matza (1957), in the respect that hitmen drift into this lethal practice, which involves the killers separating their morally responsible self from the rest of themselves to strategically kill. In other words, it is crucial for hitmen to ‘depersonaliz[e] their intended victim’ so as to be able to conduct the hit successfully (Wilson and Rahman 2015, p. 263). Moreover, Rahman and Lynes’ (2018) research on the Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang highlights how the role of a hitman is pivotal when it comes to maintaining masculine honour and collective identity when confronting gangland conflict. To contextualise what follows, it is worth briefly exploring MacIntyre et al.’s. (2014) four-division typology: Novices, Dilettantes, Journeymen, and Masters. According to MacIntyre et al. (2014), a Novice is a trainee, or a beginner, although the researchers argue that this does not imply that the hitman is unable to plan the hit, or carry it out successfully.

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On the other hand, a Dilettante is older than the Novice when he attempts, or indeed carries out the hit. Most Dilettante’s do not come from an offending background and only seem to have decided to accept a contract as a way of resolving some form of personal crisis. In addition, MacIntyre et al. (2014) suggested that this personal crisis was usually financial. As such the Dilettante dabbles and dips into the culture of contract killing, but not necessarily with any enthusiasm, or indeed with much skill. For this study, the ‘Journeyman’ hitman description is of interest, as MacIntyre et al. (2014, p. 10) put forward that Journeymen operators are either affiliated, or somewhat attached to the criminal underworld, and define a Journeyman hitman as someone who is ‘capable, experienced, and reliable but not an especially exceptional performer’. They suggest that Journeymen are likely to be ‘organised’ in how they go about conducting the hit, but may nonetheless leave traces of forensic evidence at the crime scene. The reality of this assumption is proven as this chapter progresses. Moreover, Brolan et al. (2016) provide exploratory understanding of contract killers in their discussion of ‘spaces’ for ‘hits’. They argue that while homicide studies place heavy emphasis on victim and offender relationships, this relationship is disrupted in contract murder, and therefore the significance of ‘space’ becomes more notable. Brolan et al.’s (2016) investigation of two cold cases, which have the descriptions of ‘doorstep’ killings, reveal that hits that occurred on doorsteps had several pragmatic and instrumental advantages. Using an informant for primary insight of the practicalities of hits in certain spaces and the state of mind of victims, Brolan et al. (2016, p. 11) note: …our informant perceived the intended target as being distracted by ‘concentrating on their door’, perhaps ‘fumbling for keys’ to get into their house and is, therefore, ‘not on the ball’. This suggested state of mind ensured that the intended target was ‘at ease’, ‘safe’ and ‘very comfortable with where they are’, ‘going through a familiar ritual’, and therefore would not be concentrating on what was going on behind him/her and so would therefore be less vigilant than they might have been about watching who was behind them, and what might be about to happen.

To a certain extent, this chapter parallels the work of Brolan et al. (2016), as it seeks to investigate ‘hits’ that occurred in circumstances and spaces whereby the victims, namely Gary, would have had a false sense

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of security. The hitman in question is Peter O’Toole, a Birmingham born and raised contract killer, who had extensive contacts in the criminal underworld on an international scale. On 3 July 2002, Gary was lured into the Aston Hall Hotel Car Park, Aston, Birmingham by Peter O’Toole. He was shot at point-blank range. Based on primary data of this case, the hit was connected to an organised crime group that O’Toole worked for as a hired gun. I argue that O’Toole’s role as a hitman was freelance, which therefore positioned him in an ambiguous place within the criminal underworld. Similarly, the work of Shaw and Skywalker (2016) investigates the role of South African hitmen, who are often recruited by gang bosses on the order to kill. Shaw and Skywalker (2016) argue that hitmen, often referred to as ‘hammermen’ in Cape Town, have an equivocal role in the South African gangland scene. To shed light on hammermen, Shaw and Skywalker (2016) provided understanding of the functionality and socialisation of these gang-based hitmen. In regard to the function of hammermen, the authors suggested that it is mainly related to the control of the illegal drugs market. According to one of the gang bosses used in the research, targeted hits are partly symbolic, which resonates with Gambetta’s (2009) viewpoint of how violence needs to be demonstrated in order to be effective. Shaw and Skywalker (2016, p. 385) highlight the uneasy truce between police and gangsters in South Africa, which means that hammermen can ‘kill in a limited way that demonstrates that [they mean business], without excessive bloodshed’. In relation to the socialisation, Shaw and Skywalker (2016, p. 387) consider the position of hammermen in the criminal underworld, and suggest that they are a part ‘of a gang, but in many ways are independent from it’. They reflect on this through recruitment, training, and maintenance processes of hitmen. According to their research findings, there is no formal recruitment for hammermen, but there are desirable characteristics often required, such as firearms experiences. Shaw and Skywalker (2016) note that some hitmen have previously been ‘recruited’ or ‘identified’ while serving a prison sentence. The prison recruitment example is widely accepted for various forms of serious crimes, and as research participant Murphy puts it: Prison is a fucking university for criminals, my friend. It’s a space where some of most dangerous men are put in one place, who are caged for years. This obviously allows them to share stories and contacts. It also allows them to think about crimes that they can commit together when they get out, or crimes that they work together on while inside. (Murphy)

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Nonetheless, similarly to MacIntyre et al. (2014), Shaw and Skywalker (2016, p. 388) allude that some hitmen are equipped with military training, which therefore suggests the acquisition of professional skills that are much favoured to ‘weed out individuals who may not have the characteristics to perform the function’. Of note, to investigate the nature, extent, and meaning of homicide within organised crime, this chapter will explore the underpinning factors leading up to the murder of Gary.

Approach to the Case While O’Toole was once considered ‘Britain’s most feared hired killers’ (Worden 2012), there is little secondary information about him and his crimes. To fill this void, I acquired primary insights from an individual who met O’Toole on three separate occasions. The individual who provided information in regard to O’Toole has been anonymised as John. I assessed John as a credible source, as he showed physical evidence of his interactions with O’Toole. Additionally, John comes from a decorated law enforcement background. Some of his verbal accounts were either verified via court transcripts, or were corroborated by Murphy, an ex-criminal, who was made aware of O’Toole through several social gatherings. Indeed, it was during this period that O’Toole was at the height of his criminal activities. In regard to the background of John, he has over three ­decades of experience as a law enforcement agent, who first worked as a police officer during the peak of the Irish troubles and then served as a soldier during the Iraq war. In the past 15 years, John has worked as a close protection officer for high-profile celebrities and has also operated as a freelance investigator. His expertise as an investigator has also been used by members of the criminal underworld for countering police surveillance. It was during his time as an investigator whereby he met O’Toole. John was interviewed for this case on two occasions, and both interviews were conducted in remote areas in the Midlands. To strengthen the primary understanding of O’Toole as well as moving beyond an exploratory understanding of hitmen, O’Toole’s murder of Gary will be triangulated with his ‘glocal’ role in organised crime, and a biographical account of Jimmy Moody, a notorious hitman who seemingly operated similarly to that of O’Toole. Here, it is important to note that the biographical account of Jimmy Moody entitled: Moody: The Life and Crimes of Britain’s Most Notorious Hitman

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(written by the ‘true crime’ author, Wensley Clarkson, and published in 2003), has previously been used by Wilson and Rahman (2015) for their research on the psychological reframing process required to become a hitman. Nonetheless, for this case, the biography will be explored to acquire a criminal, functional, and social understanding of Moody, and how this can be compared to O’Toole and his experiences in the criminal underworld. Indeed, Wilson and Rahman (2015, p. 258) rightly consider Clarkson’s account of Moody being a credible source, as it was ‘painstakingly researched and has the added advantage of being able to build up a detailed picture of Moody’s life, crimes, death, and the relationships that he had with his family and friends’. Moreover, Clarkson interviewed all the surviving members of Moody’s family and his criminal associates. Similarly, to this research, he also triangulates his information with what is known about Moody from more official sources, such as police and prison files. This chapter now continues by critically exploring the biographical account of Jimmy Moody, before investigating the death of Gary and the ambiguous role that O’Toole occupied in the criminal underworld.

Jimmy Moody: A Legacy of Fear James Alfred Moody was born in Looe, Cornwall, on 27 February 1941. His father, Richard Moody died during the Second World War. After the war, his mother Rosina Moody married Freddie Mills, although neither Moody, nor his elder brother, Dickie, were fond of their ‘disciplinarian’ stepfather (Clarkson 2003, p. 18; all subsequent quotes in this section are taken from Clarkson). By the time Moody reached age 13, he was almost 6 feet tall, and possessed an aggressive streak that made him appear worse tempered than his classmates. It was during this period when his dislike for his stepfather became intolerable, to the extent where a violent confrontation took place, which led to Moody, Dickie, and their mother leaving Mills. Moody’s promise of never to struggle financially led him to become criminally entrepreneurial from an early age. By 15, he was handling stolen bicycle parts, which warranted him to boast to his schoolmates that he earned more money than some of their dad’s. His criminal trajectory soon moved to stealing cars, partly because he was obsessed with cars and considered them to be the ultimate status symbol. After a brief stint in the Merchant Navy, Moody started to acquaint himself with members

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from the criminal underworld. By the age of 19, standing at 6 feet 1, with a muscular and intimidating look, ‘Moody was known as a useful strong-arm man who dealt with scrap metal – lead pipe, copper sheeting, cast iron and steel – old and new’ (p. 27). During this time, Moody was always conscious that his physical stature and connections with villains from London would soon enable him to associate with the upper echelons of the south-east London underworld. Seemingly, Moody spent time drinking extensively with some hard characters, before being deemed fit to join the underworld. As former Kray Twins associate Freddie Foreman puts it: You’ll meet a certain person and you’ll get a rapport with them, you’ll like them and the best way to get to know that they’re OK is through the belly of that man. You get drunk with them. You have a night out and then you see the way they perform and handle themselves: if he doesn’t get soppy and start running off at the mouth, or get insulting to women or in company, and if he can conduct himself with or without a drink. Then you know he’s a good guy. (p. 29)

In relation to Moody’s criminality, his involvement in the scrap trade meant that sooner or later he would encounter the Richardson brothers. In the upper world, Charlie and Eddie Richardson were running a company called the Peckford Scrap Metal Limited. However, in the underworld they were feared as extremely violent criminals who recruited Moody as a ‘henchman’. The Richardsons were dubbed the ‘Torture Gang’, as they would employ sadistic forms of violent practice on their victims. This brutal practice of ‘justice’ was carried out in ‘trials’ that were held in rundown warehouses that they called ‘courtrooms’. In September 1966, aged 25, Moody was indicted with 15 other defendants including the Richardson brothers, all accused of torture. Fortunately for Moody, he was found not guilty, but the brothers were found guilty on many accounts and were imprisoned. With the Richardsons incarcerated for a lengthy time, ‘Moody was like a solider without any commanding officer’ (p. 55). The word on the streets of London during this period was that Moody was up for ‘challenging’ jobs, which included contract killings. As one retired criminal put it: ‘We all knew that Jimmy Moody was capable of anything. He’d proved that with the Richardson’s. So he was offered contract killings

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of other criminals’ (p. 56). It is speculated that Moody received anywhere between £5000 and £10,000 per hit. His first assignment was killing Scotch Jack Buggy—an American gangster who was lured into the Lederer’s Bridge Club, in Mount Street, Mayfair. The club was a regular stomping ground for Moody during his days with the Richardson’s, and once inside the club, Buggy was shot twice in the head at point blank range. Moody’s reputation as a freelance contract killer, who was a professional in what he did, earned him respect from crime bosses dotted all over the UK. In other words: He’d slip into a city, carry out his ‘assignment’ and be gone before anyone had even worked out he was there in the first place. The key was that he wouldn’t be recognised. As such he became, in effect a commuter killer who could melt back into the Smoke [London] before his crimes had been discovered. (p. 77)

Moody’s fearless reputation was recognised by organised crime groups, namely the London-based Thursday Gang, who used him as an enforcer for violent robberies during the mid-1970s. Eventually, Moody was apprehended for a string of armed robberies and while on remand in HMP Brixton for his part in several armed robberies; Moody escaped from the prison in the company of Gerard Tuite, a senior member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) and Stanley Thompson, who was renowned for having escaped from other prisons in the past. Thompson, Tuite and Moody tunnelled through the walls of their respective cells until they were able to drop down into the yard below. As Tuite remembers, given Moody’s fearsome reputation, he was ‘a man I need[ed] to get to know’ (p. 139). During his time on the run, Moody taunted police officers, who were always one step behind. As one detective explained: A lot of us wished that Moody would just go away and stop taunting us. We knew he was around cooking a snoot at us but we also knew we had no chance of getting to him. I remember one senior detective said he wished somebody would take Moody out and pull us all out of our misery. (pp. 167–168)

Quite soon, through his connections with Tuite, Moody was working with a PIRA internal security unit known as ‘the nutting squad’, who

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tortured suspected informers before shooting them in the back of the head, otherwise known as being awarded the ‘OBE’, or ‘one behind the ear’ (p. 162). It is claimed that Moody may have killed up to 50 people in this way and was described as ‘a perfect secret weapon for the IRA’ (p. 162). However, while PIRA members used violence because they were committed to ‘the cause’ for political and cultural reasons, Moody simply ‘looked on the Provos as nothing more than another gang of villains paying him some decent wedge’ (p. 162). Indeed, Moody was connected with several hits that were seemingly ordered by crime bosses that were rooted in the Irish Republican Army. Many years later, according to an old face: ‘Moody was a gun for hire and all those killings had his calling card stamped all over them’ (p. 171). In his later years, Moody’s temperament became unpredictable. After being on the run for almost a decade, Moody was extremely paranoid and insecure. By this point, Moody’s status as a premier criminal was secured. As former criminal Bernie Khan puts it: We all knew Jimmy was a hitman. Obviously, we didn’t know which people he’d done. Even before the Chainsaw jobs he was known as a heavy fella. I would never ask him anything awkward. Villains just don’t do that to each other. They can volunteer if they want. If I hear things I don’t want to know I just tell ‘em to stop rabbiting’. (p. 209)

Despite his volatile and paranoid nature, Moody was heavily connected to the Irish underworld, and it is alleged that he was the primary hitman for Irish criminals if they needed someone to be killed in London. Moody remained on the run until June 1993, when he fell victim to a hit, executed in his favourite pub, The Royal, on the edge of Victoria Park, Hackney. What is clear from the above is that Jimmy Moody was an individual who exercised the notion of special liberties (Hall 2012) in search of a super status in London’s criminal underworld. In the next subsection, I contrast the crimes of Jimmy Moody to that of Peter O’Toole, a criminal operative whose interactions in the underworld were ‘glocal’.

Peter O’Toole: The Baby-Faced Assassin Little is known about the childhood of Peter O’Toole, but from a young age he was a violent individual who was fully immersed in Birmingham’s illegal drugs scene. Originally from Frankley, Birmingham, he received

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his first custodial sentence at the age of 17 for grievous bodily harm after stabbing a security guard who caught him shoplifting. Three years later in 1998, at the age of 20, he appeared in court for the same offence. This time the victim was a 16-year-old, who was left needing 118 stitches after being savagely attacked at a chip shop in Rubery, Birmingham. Knowing this time that he would face a lengthy sentence, O’Toole escaped from court before sentencing could be passed. He vaulted from the dock at Redditch Magistrates Court, and jumped into a waiting Ford Montego. O’Toole fled England, and for the next few years resided in southern Spain. It was in Spain where John first met O’Toole: I first met him in the early 2000s. Back then I was doing a lot of close protection work for some high-profile celebrities. I worked for this firm that was based in the US, so I’d often look after a lot of hip-hop rappers when they’d come over for concerts and stuff. Whenever I was off work, I’d head to Fuengirola. Usually you’d find all the Brits there fucking pissing the locals off and what not. But in the mix, were some heavies from back home and O’Toole would hang around some of them. In total, I met Peter three times. He would hang out in bars, and often get involved in silly brawls. That was his forte.

When asked how O’Toole was as a person, John responded: He was a nightmare. I was an Intelligence Officer for the Intelligence Unit back in Northern Ireland. I studied body language for three years. And when I met O’Toole, after a few drinks I knew he was a right little bastard. They used to call him ‘baby face’, because he looked fucking eight years old. I didn’t rate him at all. I can tell you now, all the stabbings and face slashing that happened in Fuengirola, Benalmadena, and Torremolinos during the 2000s were mostly done by him. He was doing most of them. He was a loose cannon, and a loud mouth too. Put it this way, O’Toole was a right little bastard. That fucker was born simply to raise hell.

The above narrative of O’Toole resonates the temperament of Moody, who was renowned in his close quarters as an individual who was not shy to employ irrational forms of violence. Indeed, recent cases of organised crime firms based in the UK have revealed social connections to Southern European countries, namely Spain. When asked why this was the case, Patrick, a journalist provided a multifaceted response:

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Well there’s a few instrumental reasons as to why underworld operators set base in Spain. The obvious one being that law enforcement in Spain, especially in the remote and southern parts is appalling. They are so behind with what’s going on, my God it’s incredible. So in essence you have these criminals running away from law enforcement in England, who are hot on them, to ones that don’t even know what on earth is going on. Living out in Spain is a pragmatic approach when it comes to operating as a drugs baron internationally. If you’re thinking about flooding the streets of England and Scotland with drugs, and continuing your operations on a vast scale, you need to remember that this encompasses a global operation, which southern Spain often plays a transient role in.

Patrick’s analysis of the advantages for criminals residing in southern Spain mirrors theoretical understandings of criminals and organised crime. His thoughts on criminals fleeing to Spain from England provides the descriptions of ‘rationality’, that is, for criminals to progressively move forward their criminal operations, they are continuously required to weigh up the risks and rewards which are presented to them (Cornish and Clarke 1986). Moreover, Murphy’s sentiments echo the work of von Lampe’s (2008) work which argues that ‘continuity’ is one of the characteristics needed to conceptualise organised crime. Additionally, Murphy offers long-term and target-driven motives of why underworld operators ‘set base’ in Spain: You also often find that a lot of these top end criminals set up legitimate businesses in southern Spain, ranging from gyms to real estate. Plus, there’s that end goal aspect to it too. These criminals come from rough estates in the UK, and for them to be living in luxurious areas in Spain is like making it to the promise land.

The above is a glimpse of what Hobbs (2013) has recently characterised as the gangster’s ‘lush life’. Returning to O’Toole, his escape to Spain allowed him to forge alliances with the Adams family, a powerful North London notorious organised crime firm who have been dubbed the ‘modern-day Krays’ (Wells 2005). The Adams family comprises of three brothers; Terry Adams, Patsy Adams, and Tommy Adams, who come from a large Irish Catholic family of 11 children. Terry, the eldest brother, who is renowned for his ‘genteel persona’, has been widely referred to as the ‘British Godfather’, and it has been reported that the three brothers have amassed a fortune estimated at £200 million through

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a vast racketeering and drug trafficking empire that has been linked to 25 murders (Whittington 2010). It was this connection that made O’Toole a key suspect for Scott Bradfield’s murder. Bradfield at the time of his murder was living in southern Spain, and was wanted by Scotland Yard for the murder of James Gaspa, who died after being shot in the abdomen with a single handgun bullet in Islington, north London, on 8 May 2000. In October 2001, 17 months after the murder of Gaspa, Bradfield’s dismembered body was found in two suitcases, which were found dumped in a rubbish tip in Torremolinos, Costa del Sol, Spain. Scotland Yard linked Bradfield as a drug dealer who was associated with the Adams family, and believed that he was killed to keep his silence, as he was due to be extradited to England. O’Toole, who was also linked to the Adams family at the same time, was heavily suspected of committing the murder, but was never formally charged. According to John, speculations remain of him being the perpetrator: I know O’Toole wasn’t charged for the murder, but I can tell you now, there’s a dozen violent and serious crimes that he’s committed in that Malaga strip and he’s never been called up for it. I remember a time when this one guy stole a kilo of cocaine from a guy. But the repercussions of that involved O’Toole. I was with him at a bar whereby he was instructed to send out a message. He tracked down that guy’s sister and slashed her face to shreds. At the end her face was something out of Zorro. That’s the kind of person he was, and never afraid to get a blade out and do a job on someone. One minute he’s drinking and causing nuisance, and the next he’s involved in a serious incident.

O’Toole was also linked to the February 2002 shooting of Alan Southern. Alan from Liverpool, England, was a holidaymaker who was left paralysed after being shot in the neck at a bar in Benalmadena, 5.5 miles southwest from Torremolinos. Detectives have said that O’Toole had been ordered to leave the bar by the landlord after he began throwing snooker balls at passers-by, only for him to return armed for revenge. They believe that he came back with a shotgun and sprayed bullets, which tragically caught Southern in the crossfire (Worden 2012). O’Toole was put on trial for Alan’s attempted murder, however the case was thrown out after a key witness failed to identify O’Toole in court, and all other known witnesses that were present at the bar were either dead or missing. In court, while denying attempted murder, O’Toole

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admitted that he was at the bar on the night of the shooting, but could not explain as to why he left Spain the day after the shooting (Jones 2012). According to John, it is this type of behaviour that enabled O’Toole to acquire an ambiguous position in the criminal underworld: The only reason why he was able to get away with the bar shooting was because the Spanish authorities are weak, and because someone higher than O’Toole was looking out for him. But at the end of the day, he was a guy that was used consistently by bigger fish. He was a loose cannon that everyone knew who couldn’t be trusted because of his volatile nature. He’d never be involved in the ‘business side’ of criminal operations. But he was a guy that you could rely on to do your dirty work. In a weird way, he was good at it too. Because he’d always go fucking overkill on his victims, the police would often think the victim was personal to him, and would often overlook the fact that a hit or whatever you want to call it, was in fact ordered by someone high above. But at the same time, those high above would look out for him in case he went AWOL.

Based on the above accounts, there are parallels to chart with Moody and O’Toole. Both individuals acquired a penchant for violence from a young age, which they successfully transferred in various underground settings as a commodity that enabled them to earn the kudos and respect of established criminal operatives. It is also clear that their role in criminal networks was the role of an enforcer, whose task is to follow instructions and employ violence to maintain or advance a criminal enterprise. Moreover, the violence employed by Moody and namely O’Toole often extended beyond underworld settings, which reiterates John’s sentiments that O’Toole was a ‘loose cannon that everyone knew who couldn’t be trusted because of his volatile nature’. Returning exclusively to O’Toole, he left Spain the day after the Benalmadena shooting. He returned to Birmingham, England, undetected for the first time since his escape from Redditch Magistrates Court in 1998. During his time away, his extended family had found itself at the centre of a high-profile murder. His uncle, Sean O’Toole, was shot at point-blank range at PJ’s Bar (now called Reflex), in Birmingham’s Arcadian Centre, after a £175,000 cannabis deal went wrong. Sean, 34, was gunned down by narcotics boss Nelson Forest, who blamed him for betraying a drugs deal that he belonged to (BBC News 1997). Even though O’Toole was a wanted man by British authorities, he was still

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active in the criminal underworld. Within months of the Benalmadena shooting, O’Toole prepared himself for his next hit. On 12 June 2002, he shot Anthony Moorcroft twice in broad daylight on a canal side in Brindley Place, Birmingham. The prosecution’s case alleged that Gary Morgan, an associate of O’Toole acted with him in the shooting of Moorcroft, who was a known drug dealer. Moorcroft was shot twice. He had a bullet hole in his chest and right buttock. Luckily he survived by diving into the canal. When rescued, he declined to cooperate with the police and refused to give evidence in trial (R v. O’Toole 2006). There were several eyewitnesses to the shooting, of which none picked out O’Toole as the gunman in an identification process. Patrick believes that this ‘botched attack’ on Moorcroft would have had implications for O’Toole and Gary in the criminal underworld, and it is for this reason why O’Toole was perhaps pressurised to execute a hit on Gary: Put it this way, O’Toole fucked that one up bad. His intentions were fatal, which involved him blasting Moorcroft and then kicking his body into the canal. Forensically it would have been a perfect hit if it happened that way, but unfortunately for O’Toole, Moorcroft survived. Now the problem is, the issue is still outstanding in the underworld. Questions will be asked, which means soon everybody connected to O’Toole nationally and internationally are gonna get fucked. Now it’s all about survival of the fittest and what’s best for business, and someone has to go. O’Toole must have felt that even if Moorcroft kept his mouth shut, sooner or later, Morgan would start speaking like Scott Bradfield, and being a wanted man already, O’Toole probably felt he no choice but to take Morgan out.

Indeed, Patrick’s viewpoint of Gary’s death can be considered more plausible than the official account. The police believe that Gary ordered Moorcroft’s hit, and then did not pay O’Toole, leaving the baby-faced assassin fuming (Wells 2005). On 3 July 2002, with the help of getaway driver Thomas Geohegan, O’Toole lured his once friend and criminal associate Gary Morgan to the car park of the Aston Hall Hotel, Birmingham. He was shot twice in the head while sitting in his car. A .38 calibre pistol had been used. There were no witnesses to the shooting and no CCTV evidence. It has been alleged by the prosecution that O’Toole received £2900 to carry out the hit, which was commissioned by a drug lord whose operations extend beyond the Midlands

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(R v. O’Toole 2006). Once arrested, O’Toole was charged for the attempted murder of Anthony Moorcroft and the murder of Gary Morgan. He was found guilty on both counts, and the prosecution heavily relied upon cell site and the testimony of Gary’s wife. O’Toole is currently serving life in HMP Frankland. According to Wells (2005), a murder squad detective who investigated Gary’s murder stated that O’Toole was more dangerous than any member of Birmingham’s feared gangs, and concluded (Figs. 3.1 and 3.2): He was clearly a very dangerous individual, based on the fact he pulled out a gun and shot a man in the back after walking around with him for half an hour and shot another man in the head twice. He got mixed up with people involved in criminality while on the run from this country. The only way we can protect the public from someone like that is to put them in prison for a very long time.

This subsection has revealed how O’Toole’s criminality extended beyond the West Midlands because of the hits that he was either accused of or involved in. However, little is known about his association

Fig. 3.1  Aerial view of the location of the shooting of Gary Morgan

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Fig. 3.2  The car park of Aston Hall Hotel, Aston, and Birmingham. The ­picture was taken in 2016 during fieldwork

with Robert Dawes, a Nottingham-based drugs kingpin. It is through this case, I draw attention to the concept of ‘glocal’ organised crime.

The ‘Glocal’ Underworld Based on the above, it can be said that O’Toole’s role in the criminal underworld was ‘glocal’. This means that a criminal who is part of an organised crime group has interactions that are beyond fixed terrain. The glocal viewpoint of organised crime considers how the advent of globalisation has increased the individuality and viability as a context for a distinctive social order (Roberston 1992). Moreover, Pakulski and Waters (1996, p. 110) note that ‘the dissolution of the traditional working class milieu with its particular domestic arrangements, organisation of leisure time, neighbourhood patterns and oral networks’, has led to the dissolution of ‘traditional’ forms of organised crime which were heavily reliant upon working class milieus, and upon traditional family structures. The London-based Richardson gang is a prime example of how organised crime was once localised, and was inherited and adapted from the

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indigenous socioeconomic sphere (Block 1991). Indeed, the changes in the criminal market have influenced the glocal nature of criminal practice, as drug networks for instance, constitute ‘continuous paths that lead from the local to the global’ (Latour 1993, p. 117), unlike armed robberies that are quite often local and static. This viewpoint is also echoed by Murphy, who was a prolific bank robber during the 1970s: Organised crime in my day was just your armed robberies on banks and the odd one at the bookies. No one got hurt and no one was killed. Innocent public or bystanders would never get hurt. These days you’ve got feral little bastard around about your age waving around shotguns like a flag and fucking killing each other over drug disputes and drug deals. I see them every day, and sometimes I feel like getting a chainsaw a fucking slicing their hands off. They’re getting these drugs from Europe and far beyond, and feeding all these drugs to people over here, and it ain’t right.

With the above in mind, the new entrepreneurial arena of organised crime markets are supportive of networks that function as fertile terrain for a range of entrepreneurial options, both licit and illicit. As Potter (1994, p. 12) notes, these networks are ‘…flexible adaptive networks that readily expand and contract to deal with the uncertainties of the criminal enterprise’. Here, it should be noted that the most what separates O’Toole from Moody is his glocal position in organised crime. While it has been widely established that O’Toole was affiliated with the Adams family during his time in Spain, the primary investigation into this case has revealed that O’Toole was also connected to an international drugs ring that was headed by a much bigger and relatively unknown operator called Robert Dawes. Similarly, to O’Toole, little is known about Dawes’ early years. Originally from Sutton-in-Ashford, East Midlands, England, Dawes started his career in organised crime by committing sophisticated acts of fraud in the early 1990s. One of his associates during the 2000s, who will be referred as ‘James’, provides a brief overview of his relationship with Dawes and his criminal activities: I’ve known Robert Dawes since the late 90s through another chap who I was in prison with. I can tell you that Robert Dawes is one of the most intelligent blokes you’ll ever meet. If you want to know one person that’s

80  M. RAHMAN connected illegally as much as legally, it’s Robert. He was doing things in the early 90s that people are only picking up now. He started off in fraud, and that’s pretty much where he got his finances to go into the drugs trade. The thing with Robert was, he was never afraid to graft. What I mean is he wasn’t afraid to go and make contacts and connections in different countries. That’s what helped him get into the drugs trade on a massive scale. He was a businessman. He made businessman like deals. I got myself into a sticky situation once, and he helped me out to the extent I’ll always be indebted, you know. I did a brief stint of bird [prison], and while he was in Spain he sent over money to my family to see them through.

Equally to the Adams family and O’Toole, Dawes resided in Benalmadena, Costa del Sol, Spain. According to James, Dawes loathed O’Toole, but used his services as an enforcer on a few occasions: Robert couldn’t stand O’Toole. He considered him a liability, but used him a few times. I’ve been told that O’Toole has often associated himself with being a person in Robert’s inner circle. That is a complete lie. Robert would never put himself in such a position because he’s too clever to have a ticking time bomb like O’Toole in his close quarters. But for Robert he did come in handy a few times, and he’d use him if he ever wanted to get a violent message across to someone.

Known as ‘The General’, Dawes has been connected to transnational underworld murders. According to press reports, the British authorities regard Dawes a ‘person of interest’ linked to the October 2002 assassination of Nottinghamshire businessman David Draycott. Moreover, Dawes has been considered the man who ordered the November 2002 murder of Dutch school teacher Gerrard Meesters. Gerrard was killed by Dawes’s foot soldier Daniel Sowerby, after his sister Janette Sowerby and her friend Madeleine Brussen stole a haul of drugs that belonged to Dawes. Sowerby is currently serving life in an Amsterdam prison, and refused to say in court who ordered him to commit the hit (Fellstrom 2014). In 2015, Dawes was arrested by Spanish authorities after being linked to a transnational drugs operation. French authorities have since charged Dawes after they seized 1.3 tonnes of cocaine that arrived at Paris’ Charles De Gaulle airport. The intended destination for the drugs was Nottingham, where according to law enforcement it would then be

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distributed across England and Scotland. Dawes is currently in French custody awaiting a trial date, and while James refuses to discuss the case, he said the following when asked how Dawes has managed to forge criminal career estimated to be worth a 9-figure sum: You have to remember, Dawes isn’t your typical modern day crime lord who spends hundreds and thousands on cars, watches, jewelry and what not. I remember being out with him once, and he made me pay for my own coffee because he was so vigilant about whether he was being watched. This is a guy who would wear hoodies and joggers, who looked like a normal guy from the estate, but made his criminal operations work like a legitimate business. Because of that, it’s probably the reason why he’s been able to invest his money in legitimate companies all over the world. He has connections in Spain, Holland, Dubai, Malta, and there’s even talks of him having direct connections to the President of Afghanistan.

The above confirms Bauman’s (1992, p. 52) thoughts of how contemporary serious crimes are the ‘arch enemy of uniformity’. It was Dawes’s initial ‘connectedness’ approach that has allowed him to operate in a transnational capacity (Le 2012). Various sources consider criminal networks to be highly adaptable and fluid networks comprised of individuals with various skills and characteristics, who are recruited for complex assignments. In addition, Le (2012) notes that the pooling of resources, including individual skills, contacts, and knowledge, is a significant advantage when undertaking trafficking activities within a criminal network. Of note, members of sophisticated criminal networks organise themselves around ongoing criminal enterprises, thus they may not necessarily be connected by social or ethnic ties (UNODC 2002). Indeed, this was the case for Dawes, who is reported to have reached out to the Medellin Cartel of Columbia, and the Italian Mafia for his drugs operations. With this in mind, the UNODC (2002) suggests that the maintenance of criminal networks is heavily dependent on personal ties and loyalties between participants and to the criminal enterprise. As James puts forward, this for Dawes roots back to local, social, and ethnic ties: At the end of the day, Robert could now be in prison for life, if for example [Daniel] Sowerby was to turn around and say: “yeah he gave the green light for that Dutchman’s hit”. Even Peter O’Toole for example; although he’s one mad bastard, and even though he wasn’t involved much

82  M. RAHMAN with Robert, he still could have said quite a bit about Robert when he got arrested by the Spanish [authorities]. Robert Dawes, like O’Toole, like the Adams family and the rest are from a run-down housing estates. So, Dawes, regardless of his criminal accomplishments would naturally be loyal to his own, and in return he would have got back respect. Don’t forget, he didn’t just wake up one day and become an international drugs kingpin. In his early days, would have gravitated and worked with individuals from similar cultural and family backgrounds. He would have associated himself with individuals from his secondary school, and from pubs and gyms. I know this because some of his nearest and dearest are lads the he’s been friends with since his school days. It would have been these kinds of people that were pretty much the springboard of his successes and current situation, you know.

Interestingly, James refers to public houses as a hub for facilitating criminal networks, and seemingly this was also the case for Jimmy Moody during his stint in organised crime. This further reiterates Winlow’s (2001) assertion of how public houses act as a hub that strengthens working-class customs, of which in some cases includes the development of criminal identities. Based on primary data, it can be said while O’Toole by his own rights was a glocal criminal, albeit being on the periphery when it came to Dawes’s criminal operations. Both O’Toole and Dawes share the commonality of operating within multiple, interwoven illicit networks that comprise certain spatial, social, and ethnic ties, which invariably allows them not to limit themselves to the parameters of a specific neighbourhood or locale.

Discussion Based on the primary and secondary data in relation to Moody and O’Toole, there are some parallels to consider. In regard to functionality, both hitmen engaged themselves in violence from a young age. The violent crimes that they committed before affiliating with organised crime syndicates was achieved through physical coercion, which often had the hallmarks of power and dominance. As Hearn (1998, pp. 35–36) puts it, ‘violence is a means of enforcing power and control, but it is also power and control in itself’. It was this power and dominance that allowed Moody and O’Toole to develop criminal reputations that appealed to members of the underworld. While both men are from different generations, they both experienced similar socialisation

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experiences, which in hindsight became pivotal for them to undertake ‘special liberties’, which according to Hall and Winlow (2015) means that these individuals would feel a sense of entitlement when committing harm in order to advance their instrumental or expressive desires. Both Moody and O’Toole have been known to frequent pubs and bars, a custom that has often been associated with men from working-class cultures (Winlow 2001). While the pub has been considered a welcoming escape from the problems of everyday life (Cavan 1966; Gill 1977), the link between alcohol and men’s aggression is well established (Hobbs et al. 2005; Winlow and Hall 2006), which seemingly is also embraced and accepted by criminals themselves. Establishing whether a man could ‘conduct himself with or without drink’ was essential for serious criminals like Freddie Foreman. For instance, in the case of Moody, it can be said that the large consumption of alcohol was Freddie Foreman’s litmus test which Moody passed, and one that determined he could ‘perform’ and ‘handle’ himself when drunk and vulnerable, and invariably this allowed Moody to enter the armed robbery scene. Pubs during the era of localised organised crime can be viewed as recruitment hubs that validated and forged working relationships. In the case of O’Toole, his socialisation experiences in drink venues was pragmatic. It can be suggested that the bars which O’Toole ‘often got involved in silly brawls’ in were in the Malaga strip that catered for tourists who sought leisure. With O’Toole, his position with British organised crime groups operating in Spain was on the periphery. However, it can be assumed, his role as a commodifier of death in the criminal underworld, meant that ‘someone higher than O’Toole was [always] looking out for him’. Having said that, O’Toole was never involved in the ‘business side’ of transnational organised crime operations. This is perhaps due to his erratic and irrational temperament, which may have been perceived by someone like Robert Dawes as an individual who is bad for business (Hobbs 1988). As such, there was a role for O’Toole in the division of labour. This line of thought resonates with the work of Shaw and Skywalker (2016, p. 389), who see restrictions to the growth of organised syndicate hitman, and state, ‘they are well paid to maintain loyalty, but do not constitute the core of the gang. This suggests that a hammerman is ultimately expendable’. Additionally, in O’Toole’s case, ‘those high above would look out for him in case he went AWOL’, which depicts that the superstructure of support from a criminal syndicate seems to be essential for the longevity of a hitman.

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O’Toole’s glocal role as a hitman meant that his support mechanisms extended beyond national borders. His affiliation with glocal criminal syndicates like Robert Dawes, as little as it may be, suggests that g ­ local hitmen like O’Toole are linked to licit businesses. This sketches the paradox of his ambiguous and tenacious role in the underworld. While O’Toole’s role in the criminal underworld is restricted, he is still likely to have a wider set of contacts with licit businesses than a low-level organised crime member.

Concluding Discussion This chapter depicts how the need for Peter O’Toole to achieve, and appear to be in possession of a form of violent masculinity in the underworld, was always crucial for his criminal status (Ellis 2016). His fracas in a bar, which resulted to an innocent man being shot dead illustrates O’Toole’s prerequisite of exerting dominance and power over others when confronted and when in need to defend his ‘manhood’ (Fraser 2015; Ellis 2016). As Kimmel (1996, p. 25) states: [H]egemonic definition of manhood is a man in power, a man with power, and a man of power. We equate manhood with being strong, successful, capable, reliable, in control.

Indeed, being strong, successful, capable, reliable, and in control enabled Moody and O’Toole to enter the contract murder scene. They became men who could, by the virtue and rarity of their specialism, establish themselves in a rarified niche within the criminal labour market (Hobbs 1995). Based on the findings, both Moody and O’Toole dealt with the ambivalence of being ‘inside-outsiders’ when operating as hitmen on behalf of criminal syndicates. While Moody had established strong links with the IRA during his time on remand, there are no established records of him travelling to Ireland. By default, and design, it would have been difficult for Moody to be associated with the IRA due to his English heritage. However, he was still able to be as effective on the periphery as a perfect secret weapon for the IRA by executing hits in England that were ordered by crime bosses (Clarkson 2003). As one enforcer stated: ‘Moody was a gun for hire and all those killings had his calling card stamped all over them’ (Clarkson 2003, p. 171). Shaw and Skywalker (2016, p. 389) point out that operating as a hitman on

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behalf of a criminal syndicate requires ‘discipline and the ability to control fear, and support from gang structures’. While this was not clarified by Clarkson (2003), it can be assumed that Moody was supported by the IRA financially and when it came to receiving firearms for hits. O’Toole’s crimes, and the various primary accounts about him in this investigation would indicate that he was a man who always aimed to maintain a violent presentation of self. In sum, as O’Toole was often restricted from entering the higher echelons of organised crime; for him, the presentation of toughness became the production of street capital, a commodity that he used to distinguish himself in the criminal underworld. In the next chapter, I continue to place the spotlight on contract killings by examining the murder of Richard Deakin.

References Bauman, Z. (1992). Intimations of Postmodernity. London: Routledge. BBC News. (1997). Police Step Up Hunt for Pub Gunman. http://news.bbc. co.uk/1/hi/uk/41584.stm. Last accessed 23 Aug 2018. Black, J. A. (2000). Murder for Hire: An Exploratory Study of Participant Relationships. In P. H. Blackman, V. L. Leggett, B. L. Olsom, & J. P. Jarvis (Eds.), The Varieties of Homicide and Its Research: Proceedings of the 1999 Annual Meeting of the Homicide Research Working Group. Washington, DC: Federal Bureau of Investigation. Black, J. A., & Cravens, N. M. (2001). Contracts to Kill as Scripted Behaviour. In P. H. Blackman, V. L. Leggett, & J. P. Jarvis (Eds.), The Diversity of Homicide: Proceedings of the 2000 Annual Meeting of the Homicide Research Working Group. Washington, DC: Federal Bureau of Investigation. Blackshaw, R. E. (1996). Criminological Aspects of Contract Assassination. Unpublished M.A. thesis in Criminological Studies, School of Law and Legal Studies, Faculty of Economics, Education and Social Sciences, La Trobe University, Victoria, Australia. Block, A. (1991). Masters of Paradise. New Brunswick: Transaction. Brolan, L., Wilson, D., & Yardley, L. (2016). Hitmen and the Spaces of Contract Killing: The Doorstep Hitman. Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling, 13(3), 220–238. Cavan, S. (1966). Liquor License: An Ethnography of Bar Behaviour. Chicago: Aldine. Clarkson, W. (2003). Moody: The Life and Crimes of Britain’s Most Notorious Hitman. Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing. Cornish, D. B., & Clarke, R. V. (1986). The Reasoning Criminal: Rational Choice Perspective on Offending. New York: Springer-Verlag.

86  M. RAHMAN Ellis, A. (2016). Men, Masculinities and Violence: An Ethnographic Study. London: Routledge. Fellstrom, C. (2014). Violent Dutch Gang-War Spreads Across Europe. Available at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/violent-dutch-gang-warspreads-across-europe-9923371.html. Last accessed 3 Sept 2018. Fraser, A. (2015). Urban Legends: Gang Identity in the Post-industrial City. London: Oxford University Press. Gambetta, D. (2009). Codes of the Underworld. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Gill, O. (1977). Luke Street: Housing Policy, Conflict and the Creation of the Delinquent Area. London: Macmillan Press. Hall, S. (2012). Theorizing Crime and Deviance: A New Perspective. London: Sage. Hall, S., & Winlow, S. (2015). Revitalizing Criminological Theory: Towards a New Ultra-realism. London: Routledge. Hearn, J. (1998). The Violences of Men. London: Sage. Hobbs, D. (1988). Doing the Business: Entrepreneurship, Detectives and the Working Class in the East End of London. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hobbs, D. (1995). Bad Business: Professional Criminals in Modern Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hobbs, D. (1998). Going Down the Glocal: The Local Context of Organised Crime [Special Issue on Organised Crime]. The Howard Journal, 37(4), 407–422. Hobbs, D. (2013). Lush Life: Constructing Organized Crime in the UK. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hobbs, D., & Dunnighan, C. (1998). Glocal Organised Crime: Context and Pretext. In V. Ruggiero, N. South, & I. Taylor (Eds.), The New European Criminology (pp. 289–303). London: Routledge. Hobbs, D., Hadfield, P., Lister, S., & Winlow, S. (2005). Bouncers: Violence and Governance in the Night-Time Economy. Oxford: Clarendon. Jones, M. (2012). English Killer Not Guilty. http://www.theolivepress.es/spainnews/2012/07/27/english-killer-found-not-guilty/. Last accessed 23 Aug 2018. Kimmel, M. S. (1996). Manhood in America. New York: Free Press. Latour, B. (1993). We Have Never Been Modern. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Le, V. (2012). Organised Crime Typologies: Structure, Activities and Conditions. International Journal of Criminology and Sociology, 1, 121–131. Levi, K. (1981). Becoming a Hit Man: Neutralization in a Very Deviant Career. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 10(1), 47–63. MacIntyre, D., Wilson, D., Yardley, E., & Brolan, L. (2014). The British Hitman: 1974–2013. The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, 53(4), 325–340.

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Mouzos, J., & Venditto, J. (2003). Contract Killings in Australia (Research and Public Policy Series No. 53). Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. O’Toole, R. v. (2006). ECWA Crim 951. Pakulski, J., & Waters, M. (1996). The Death of Class. London: Sage. Potter, G. W. (1994). Criminal Organisations. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press. Rahman, M., & Lynes, A. (2018). Ride to Die: Understanding Masculine Honour and Collective Identity in the Motorcycle Underworld. Journal of Criminological Research, Policy and Practice, 4(4), 238–252. Roberston, R. (1992). Globality and Modernity. Theory, Culture and Society, 9(2), 153–161. Shaw, M., & Skywalker, L. (2016). The Hammerman: Life and Death as a Gang Hitman in Cape Town. Howard Journal of Crime and Justice, 55(4), 377–395. Sykes, G., & Matza, D. (1957). Techniques of Neutralization: A Theory of Delinquency. American Sociological Review, 22(6), 664–670. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. (2002). Results of a Pilot Survey of Forty Selected Organized Criminal Groups in Sixteen Countries. Available at: www.unodc.org/pdf/crime/publications/Pilot_survey.pdf. Last accessed 12 Dec 2018. von Lampe, K. (2008). Organized Crime in Europe: Conceptions and Realities. Policing, 2(1), 7–17. Wells, T. (2005). He Would Shoot Anyone for Cash. Available at: https://www.thefreelibrary.com/He+would+shoot+anyone+for+cash+…even+his+pals%3B+BLOODTHIRSTY+LIFE+OF…-a0132864722. Last accessed 3 Aug 2018. Whittington, T. (2010). Terry Adams: The British Godfather. Available at: http://www.express.co.uk/expressyourself/183198/Terry-Adams-TheBritish-Godfather. Last accessed 5 Aug 2018. Wilson, D., & Rahman, M. (2015). Becoming a Hitman. The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, 54(3), 250–264. Winlow, S. (2001). Badfellas: Crime, Tradition and New Masculinities. Oxford: Berg. Winlow, S., & Hall, S. (2006). Violent Night: Urban Leisure and Contemporary Culture. Oxford: Berg. Worden, T. (2012). British Hitman Grilled Over Spanish Murders. Available at: http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/260903/British-hitmangrilled-over-Spanish-murders. Last accessed 22 May 2019.

CHAPTER 4

Drugs, Guns, and Organised Crime: A Case Study of the Journeyman Hitman

Ain’t no one gonna talk. It’s like us – you’re using me for your research, but you know what will happen to you if you reveal who I am. I’ll destroy you. —Michael

Abstract  This chapter explores the 2010 assassination of Richard Deakin that was executed by David Harrison in Chasetown, West Midlands. The case study uses this murder to consider those contract killings which have been described as the work of ‘Journeymen’ hitmen (MacIntyre et al. in The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice 53: 325– 340, 2014). In the previous chapter, I stated that there has been little academic research about ‘hitmen’ and the phenomenon of ‘contract killing’, with Schlesinger (Journal of Forensic Science 46: 295, 2001) forced to describe this form of murder as a ‘poorly understood type of homicide’. In this chapter, the tragic murder of Richard is used to reflect on criminal interactions in organised crime within the West Midlands and the nexus that organised crime has with fatal violence. Keywords  Case study · Contract killing · David Harrison · Drugs · Entrepreneurship · Guns · Hitman/Hitmen · History · Homicide · Interviews · John Anslow · Journeyman · Murder · Narratives · Nexis · Organised crime · Richard Deakin · Typology · Violence · West Midlands

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Approach to the Case I first came across this case in 2013 when I was working as Research Assistant with several academics on British contract killings. As such, I decided to visit the crime scene to make sense of space, as murders of this kind are few and far between in Chasetown. Soon after, I conducted a Nexis search, and the search terms ‘Richard Deakin’ ‘David Harrison’, ‘Murder’, and ‘Hitmen’, produced 123 newspaper articles. A further search specifically about John Anslow—a drug kingpin—and the nephew of David Harrison, produced over 300 articles. The relevance of investigating Anslow will be discussed shortly. All of these articles were then analysed and coded into ‘individuals’ and ‘offences’ so as to familiarise with what was known about the hit. Two additional research visits to the site of the murder was undertaken, so as to familiarise with the geography and pragmatics of the hit. Interviews were conducted with police officers who worked on the case, as well as a local journalist who wrote about the murder. Access with one of the offenders who sprung Anslow out of prison in January 2012 was achieved. The individual provided two brief interviews about his role in the prison van escape. In addition, I attended the court proceedings of John Anslow in 2014. I decided that no contact should be made to any member of Richard’s family, although the family liaison officer attached to the case was informed about the research. Like any limited qualitative sample, it is accepted that for several reasons using secondary sources and interviewees can only take the research so far in building the picture that is endeavoured to be presented. As discussed, most research about illegal trading networks and the violence associated with deviant entrepreneurial culture in post-industrial Britain is unashamedly ethnographic. Much of this research has been undertaken by younger academics who are often fortunate to already have access to the subcultures which they seek to analyse (Winlow 2001; Williams and Treadwell 2008; Treadwell 2012, 2013; Fraser 2015; Ellis 2016). Winlow (2001, p. 14), for instance, in building his ethnography of professional criminality in his native Sunderland, describes how ‘acquaintances were all-important’, to the extent that he became aware of how insular the world that he wanted to describe was, as ‘everyone seemed to know everyone else, or, at least, there existed some link based on friendship and acquaintance’. Such acquaintances were crucial in facilitating his research. Unfortunately for this case, these connections or acquaintances

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were limited, and perhaps this was why my interest in this case seemed to prompt anxiety—sometimes hostility—on almost every occasion when spoken with interviewees, whether from the police, or from individuals classed as informants. As noted, there is the added and considerable difficulty of wanting to discuss ‘hits’ and ‘hitmen’, and therefore attempting to enter a criminal world which has largely avoided academic scrutiny. In short, there was a reluctance to discuss this hit, especially when explained that the case will be researched within the context of organised crime within the West Midlands. However, despite this reluctance and the limitations of sources, it is still possible to offer a contribution to the growing literature about how violence is changing in response to growth and change in the criminal marketplace and a corresponding expansion of criminal opportunities.

The Murder of Richard Deakin In trying to build a further understanding of the modus operandi of the Journeyman hitman, this chapter presents a case study of the murder of Richard Deakin. A brief description of that murder is presented here, before discussing the hit in greater depth. On 5 July 2010, Richard, a 27-year-old skip hire business owner, was shot twice at point-blank range by David Harrison as he slept in his home in Chasetown, England (McCarthy 2012a). Harrison, who was 61 years old at the time of murder—the oldest ‘hitman’ uncovered by MacIntyre et al. (2014)—had an accomplice, Darryl Dickens, who acted as his getaway driver. Both Harrison and Dickens lived approximately 20 miles from the site of the hit, in Wolverhampton, England, and it was local intelligence provided by a former criminal accomplice of Harrison that led to his eventual arrest. Harrison denied being involved in the murder, even though the police recovered £26,000 in cash from his second home in Kent, England, which was believed to have been his payment for carrying out the hit (The Guardian 2012). To date, the contractor of the hit remains unidentified. A third man, John Anslow, was also charged and subsequently tried in 2014 for having been involved in Richard’s murder, after escaping from the prison van that was carrying him from HMP Hewell to his appearance at Stafford Crown Court in January 2012. Anslow is Harrison’s nephew. He was found not guilty of this murder charge in March 2014 at Woolwich Crown Court. Two others were also arrested and charged

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for the murder of Richard—Leigh Astbury and Andrew Hill—although these charges were later dropped. Of note, Leigh Astbury was Richard’s brother-in-law at the time of the murder. Astbury is currently serving a ten-year prison sentence for being part of a gang who hijacked some 40 lorries in the West Midlands, with loads totaling £6 million (Express & Star 2011). Anslow, while found not guilty of murder, remains in prison serving a lengthy sentence for drugs offences. As the above details suggest, the choice to consider this murder as a case study is because it offers rich opportunities to further describe the traits of a Journeyman hitman, as well as enabling the understanding of the broader workings of organised crime within the West Midlands. This was an issue commented upon at the time of the murder, with one local newspaper describing the hit as having ‘ripped open to public gaze the stinking underbelly of organised crime on our doorstep’ (Lockley 2012a). In particular, the case reveals levels of complexity that are absent in other hits identified by MacIntyre et al. (2014), but seems to amplify their suggestion that Journeyman hitmen are often associated with the enabling culture of organised crime. So too, this case will help better understand how Journeyman hitmen might operate, and by placing this murder into the broader context of organised crime within the West Midlands, the case contributes to the ongoing debate about the relationship between lethal violence and illegal trading networks. In this respect, we might also see hitmen as an extension of Hall’s (2012, p. 204) criminal undertakers who ‘get things done regardless of the harm inflicted on others’, or as badfellas, who use crime and violence as ‘careers in themselves’ (Winlow 2001, p. 66).

Organised Crime, Local Geography, Local History The descriptions ‘organised crime’ and ‘illegal trading networks’ have already been used within this case, and will often be used interchangeably. As mentioned in the literary chapter of this book, there are ongoing scholarly debates about what is actually meant by the description ‘organised’ in the term ‘organised crime’ and how there are various ways of answering this question, including the suggestion that this so-called organisation is intermittent, flexible, and weak, rather than hierarchical and stable (Coles 2001; Van Duyne 1996; Williams 2001; Naylor 2004). In this chapter, there will be no engagement in this debate, although it is accepted that it is often difficult to conclude authoritatively about these

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matters given the blurred and slippery world of organised crime and the violence that accompanies it, or at least provides an enabling context. Nonetheless, the approach throughout this book has been to accept that organised crime—covering a wide range of activities in different crime sectors—is not an ‘illusion’, and that ‘people really do get murdered’ (Levi 2007, p. 713). Developing from what was discussed in regard to history in Chapter 2, it should be acknowledged that these local, regional, and national illicit networks are created by geography and by historical patterns of settlement, industry, employment, opportunity, and crime. So too, a brief description of Chasetown is therefore required. Known previously as Cannock Chase, due to its proximity to a nearby forest, the village of Chasetown is in Staffordshire, England. After becoming a coal mining village in the mid-nineteenth century, the settlement of miners began around Rugeley Road, which in 1881 was renamed as ‘High Street’. The High Street runs north towards Chase Terrace and is positioned in the heart of Chasetown, which is approximately 900 yards from the murder site. Since the 1960s, following the closure of the last mine, there has been extensive residential development around Chasetown and neighbouring Chase Terrace, along with some industrial growth. The east and north-west parts remain scenic and agricultural, and the area more generally can be characterised as desirable and suburban. With an area size of 5.41 square miles, Chasetown is in the district of Lichfield, which has a population of 32,219, and is conveniently situated near the M6 motorway (ONS 2013). This proximity to the motorway (and to the vehicles which use it) provides accessibility to neighbouring vicinities such as: Walsall; Wolverhampton; West Bromwich; and central Birmingham. There is no doubt that Harrison and Dickens used the M6 motorway as their route into and out of Chasetown on the day of Richard’s murder. Indeed, Marco draws towards the importance of geography when it comes to the supply and distribution of drugs: Everything runs through Birmingham. Even if it doesn’t run through it, Birmingham is still somewhat to connected to it, you get me? If the boys in London want to do business with the boys in Manchester or Liverpool, then they need to come through Birmingham. There’s been times where I’ve got myself involved in deals with out of city crews only because it can convenient in terms of transport and location. I didn’t necessarily trust them, but trust would often be overruled by the chance of making some good money and convenience.

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Finally, by way of introduction, situating the murder of Richard as the second of three incidents, all of which is believed to be connected to each other in one way or another, we are beginning to tentatively sketch the details of organised crime in the West Midlands. The connections between these incidents are interpersonal, historical, or based on business relationships, but they also serve to reveal the flexible, dynamic, and often chaotic nature of crime opportunities and the networks that can spring up to make these opportunities become viable. However, throughout, the focus remains to better understand the hit itself, and therefore contributing towards the development of MacIntyre et al.’s (2014) hitman typology. Therefore, it is of interest to establish how the hit might have been planned and carried out, as well as uncovering how Harrison and Dickens were eventually brought to justice.

Investigation Results I have sketched above the basic details of Richard’s murder and the fact that this was uniformly described and reported upon as being a ‘hit’. In other words, following Calhoun (2002), Harrison and Dickens had accepted an order to kill another human being from someone who is not publicly acknowledged as a legitimate authority regarding just killing. Here again are echoes of Hall’s (2012) criminal undertaker—an individual who values business more than human life. Indeed, Hall suggests that this type of criminal undertaker has been normalised throughout capitalist history, so that the hitman could be viewed as merely an individualised and extreme practice of a more general assumption. It was impossible to determine from the newspaper accounts who might have contracted the hit, although the price for carrying out this murder would appear to have been £26,000, which is significantly higher than the average values of hits uncovered by both Cameron (2013) and MacIntyre et al. (2014). This higher than average cost may be an indication of either the complexity and danger of the hit to Harrison and Dickens, or of the ‘value’ to the contractor in having Richard murdered. Several newspapers speculated that the hit was the result of ‘skip wars’. In other words, Richard, who owned a skip hire company called ‘On Time Skip’, was thought to have fallen foul of a rival skip hire company. An informant, identified as Michael also suggested that Richard knew that he was a potential target for harm, and therefore attempted to increase his safety

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with the installation of multiple CCTV cameras, which covered the boundaries of his family home: He knew it was coming and did things to prevent it, but obviously didn’t do enough. From what I know, his skip place got burnt down a few weeks or like a month before he got shot. And after he died I also heard things like his [family] home was up for sale before he got killed, so for me that’s saying he knew he was a target and he knew he had to disappear ASAP!

For this case, Michael provided rich and in-depth narratives. My research encounters with Michael was mediated by a gatekeeper. After months of negotiation, I conducted two face to face interviews in an undisclosed locale that was chosen by Michael. Before meeting him, I was made aware that he had been imprisoned several times for minor offences, and spent a lengthy period in a Category A prison for several armed robberies. Also, before my research encounters with him, he requested to see my driving licence. In addition, I was notified by my gatekeeper that he had extensive knowledge about Birmingham’s illegal gun trade. As I mentioned in Chapter 1, the city of Birmingham currently holds the unwanted tag—‘gun capital’ of England and Wales (Gall 2018). In conjunction with the fact that England and Wales have some of the strictest gun control laws in the world, as well as the cases described in this book which involve the fatal use of firearms, I was intrigued to find out the accessibility of firearms in the underworld: MR: This country prides itself when it comes to having some of the tightest gun control laws in the world. What do you make of that? Michael: Well that’s a load of bullshit isn’t it? Guns may not be used much, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t have enough of them. I can make one call right now and I’d have a gun in front of you within 15 minutes. One call, that’s all it’ll take. MR: I see. What a kind would it be? Would it be new or used? Michael: It’d be most likely used, but clean as in not on police radar. To get access to something squeaky clean may take me a little longer. Maybe a few hours or something like that. But, yeah I can make one call to a lad of mine and he’d ask no questions. It’d be here. MR: It appears that you’d have to be well connected, like yourself, to get access to a gun so quick. Except using it on someone, what is the purpose of an individual having access to a gun in the underworld?

96  M. RAHMAN Michael: What do you mean, like carrying or being in close distance to a gun? MR: Both. Michael: Well it depends. Some guys like me that are connected can get hold of a piece, but they don’t really have any reason to have one. Others won’t necessarily need one, but will have it close to them just in case. They’re the stupid ones that you hear about whose place gets raided for drugs and then the police end up finding a gun. And then obviously, you got those that will want one to inflict harm. It varies, but it’s all about who you know. If you’re trusted and known by many, it ain’t no big deal. You’ll trust them to deliver and they’ll trust you not to get them in trouble.

The above depicts a narrative of the underexposed nature of access to illegal firearms. While it is problematic to generalise the nature of guns in the underworld based on one account, Michael’s ability to use his social capital as a resource that facilitates the access to a gun is quite concerning. He draws attention to the concept of ‘trust’, a quality that is reciprocal in interpersonal relationships, and one that clearly acts as a broker when it comes to being in possession of a firearm, which in England and Wales carries a maximum imprisonment of 10 years. Returning to the case, the hit itself was organised and well planned. On Monday 5 July 2010 at 0830 hours, Harrison entered Richard’s detached home through an unlocked back door immediately after his fiancée Megan had left for the morning school run with their two daughters. Armed with a sawn-off shotgun and wearing a balaclava, Harrison walked into Richard’s bedroom and shot him twice—once in the chest and then in the leg. Conscious of not wanting to leave forensic evidence behind at the crime scene, Harrison wore a pair of blue, surgical gloves. This was later confirmed by a witness who saw the gunman emerging from Richard’s home sporting blue surgical gloves (Lockley 2012a) (Figs. 4.1 and 4.2). Meanwhile Dickens waited in the getaway vehicle, which was soon abandoned and subsequently identified as a stolen, black, Vauxhall Corsa. It was later revealed that, minutes before the killing, Richard’s fiancée had seen the Corsa drive past the house as she was putting her daughters into the family car to take them to school (Express & Star 2012a). I believe that this might also be evidence of the planned and premeditated nature of the hit, given that the time to commit the murder would have been small. The fact that Harrison waited until Richard was alone

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Fig. 4.1  David Harrison entered Richard Deakin’s home through the black gate. The picture was taken from Meadway Street in 2015 during fieldwork

Fig. 4.2  Aerial view of the location of the shooting of Richard Deakin

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might indicate that he did not want to have to involve his fiancée or their two children, or that he was aware that his target would have been at his most vulnerable while alone and asleep. The issue of vulnerability is emphasised by Michael who said: He had no fucking chance. The man [David Harrison] went in and blew Richard to bits. But he knew what he doing, because that kind of thing ain’t easy, you get me. He even used a swan-off, which I personally would have avoided because it can get messy with them.

Indeed, Harrison pulled off the assassination successfully without leaving any forensic evidence behind at the crime scene. The police therefore relied on the grainy CCTV footage captured on cameras, which Richard had installed at his home and which captured a man entering through the garden gate. Initially the police withheld these pictures but they were subsequently aired on the popular BBC TV show Crimewatch. A former criminal associate of Harrison—Alan Cash—identified Harrison as the individual in the footage shown on the programme because, it was claimed, of Harrison’s distinctive swagger, although there is no evidence as to why he offered this information. Alan is now in a witness protection scheme. Along with Alan’s testimony, a number of other evidential discoveries after Harrison had been identified led to his eventual conviction. For example, once arrested, the police discovered: the payment for the hit; newspaper cuttings about the murder; facial disguises; and blue surgical gloves identical to those used in the hit. Cell site analysis of Harrison’s mobile phone also confirmed that he was at, or near, the scene on three mornings prior to the hit. According to detectives he was ‘casing’ the crime scene. This is also indicative of the levels of organisation and planning within the murder. As for Dickens, he was later identified by Richard’s partner in an identity parade held by the police almost a year after the hit had taken place. The motive and the contractor of the hit have still to be definitively identified although Richard’s mother Carol has vowed that she ‘won’t rest until the Mr Big who paid for her son’s execution by sawn-off shotgun is caged’ (Stacey 2014). Thus far, the details provided about the hit resonates the ‘Journeyman’ definition provided by MacIntyre et al. (2014). Indeed, Harrison was ‘capable’ of committing the ‘hit’, as he once proposed to Cash to be his driver for a hit he wanted to execute on a man called Michael Reegan (Express & Star 2012b). Moreover, he was also ‘experienced’ and ‘reliable’ in firearms use, as it was previously reported that Harrison would often use

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a garage inspection pit to test out various weaponries (Lockley 2012a). Ultimately, however, Harrison was not an ‘exceptional performer’, as he was unable to ‘cover his tracks’ according to Michael, who adds: Like most cons, he got carried away and didn’t do the job properly. He was so concentrated on killing the man that he forgot the basics. I know for a fact if you’re going for a house, whether it be a theft, robbery or even this, you’d ‘case’ the scene. Harrison must have done that, and must have known the CCTV’s were there, but still forgot to leave the house with the CCTV hard drive. Madness, absolute madness.

Two Other Incidents There are two other incidents which I believe can be related to this hit. The first incident is connected through intra-familial relationships and the second by the murder itself. The first incident involves a series of armed robberies the West Midlands. These armed robberies were committed by a gang of ten men who targeted lorries carrying copper, bronze, and nickel. Gang members, often wearing fluorescent jackets, would tap on the window of the lorry driver who had parked up for the night, supposedly to warn them that the curtains on the sides of their vehicles had been slashed. The driver would then exit his cab to investigate, which allowed the gang to attack the driver, steal the load and then dump the lorry. Many of the lorries were subsequently found in Willenhall (10 miles south of Chasetown) or Shenstone (5 miles east of Chasetown). In total, some 40 lorries were robbed with the total value of the goods stolen estimated to have been £6 million. One such robbery involved Dennis Clarke of Middlesborough, who was dragged out of his vehicle by four masked men, after parking his lorry at an overnight stop in Pope Street, Smethwick (15 miles south of Chasetown). The men were armed with hammers and wrenches, who bundled Dennis into the boot of a car before dumping him some twenty minutes away, after stealing his load of nickel ingots valued at £200,000 (Express & Star 2011). Two members of this ten men gang were subsequently jailed—Peter Saunders (37) and Leigh Astbury (29). At the time of his imprisonment in May 2010, just under two months prior to the hit, Astbury was in fact Richard’s brother-in-law, having married Marie Deakin. Marie Deakin, Richard’s sister, also admitted to perverting the course of justice by disposing of some of the property stolen in these robberies. Leigh Astbury

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was sentenced to ten years in jail and was later charged with being part of the hit conducted on his former brother-in-law. This charge was subsequently dropped, although it has also been reported that Marie later divorced Astbury (Lockley 2012b). The second incident involves Anslow’s escape in January 2012 from the prison van that was taking him from HMP Hewell in Redditch, Worcestershire, to Stafford Crown Court, where he was also facing charges of having murdered Richard. The prison van was ambushed by a three-man gang wearing balaclavas and wielding sledgehammers, just after it had left the prison. The windows of the van were smashed and the van driver was hit in the face. A member of the staff was forced to release Anslow, who was quickly transferred into a silver, Volkswagen Sirocco, which headed in the direction of Birmingham at speeds estimated to be in excess of 100 miles per hour. The police were later to characterise the escape as ‘well orchestrated’, ‘sophisticated’, and ‘perfectly executed’ and noted that Anslow had strong connections to London and overseas (Lockley 2013). It is worthy to also note the similarity between the prison van ambush and the lorry hijackings that had taken place earlier. In regard to the prison van ambush, a retired police officer, whom I have anonymised as Steve, provides brief understanding of its organisation: There was a lot of desperation from John Anslow’s end. He knew that we were on to him and once we arrested him he knew that we had overwhelming evidence against him. We knew him as Skitz, as a drug kingpin, as a national distributor and the nephew of David Harrison. I can’t say much because of the Official Secrets Act, but his escape was very well executed through his contacts inside and outside of the prison walls. He would have needed equal amount of support from both ends, and I’m assuming he was able to forge that type of success because of his major links with men from Birmingham’s underworld.

Indeed, the level of sophistication required for a prison van escape orchestrated from a Category A prison would have been complex and intricate. Stuart Reid—now a convicted fraudster and drugs baron, helped communicate the escape by sending Anslow a coded Christmas card that ended with: ‘Wishing you a very Merry Christmas filled with fun and surprises, love from Stratford’ (Express & Star 2016). With this in mind, Marco, an associate of one of the men who sprung Anslow out of prison, is sceptical about the official account of the escape, and provides an alternative account, which can also be considered plausible:

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Man, are you telling me that a few letters, Christmas cards and a few phone calls was enough to pull that kind of job off? No fucking way, man. People have been played because only a minority know how transportation works in prison. On the day of the escape, out of that prison there would have been dozens of prison vans going to different courthouses holding different offenders. How is it that the guys who busted Anslow knew what van it was? Police are saying that he made a phone call in the van. No way man, get the fuck out of here. It ain’t that fucking simple, because the amount of times a man like Anslow would have been searched would have been ridiculous. Or maybe he never was [searched]. Maybe he was allowed a phone, but what I am saying is, there was an inside element to it all.

While there is no direct quotation to illustrate this, it was alluded from the interview with Marco that prison officials, would have, to a certain extent facilitated Anslow’s escape. Of note, in recent years there have been cases of prison officials in England and Wales found guilty of corruption (Bennett et al. 2007). Anslow was eventually captured in Northern Cyprus in November 2013, which underscores his abilities to organise and coordinate fleeing from Britain, without being apprehended and establishing himself in another country. He had hoped to start a new life with his wife and son in Cyprus and was at large for thirteen months. He was extradited back to England and further details emerged at the time of his extradition about how the escape had been planned. These details involved a mobile phone that had been smuggled into the prison; coded messages; reconnaissance trips to the prison and to Stafford Crown Court; false passports; and, finally, a series of ‘handovers’ of Anslow to different accomplices, so as to deter, or at least confuse the police. The police noted that ‘the [escape] required a large team to make it work. A team of people he trusted, people he knew wouldn’t talk and would be able to follow orders to the finest detail’ (Express & Star 2013). Such sentiments by the police were also reaffirmed by Marco, who was able to exemplify the unwritten ‘code of silence’ within the context of criminal entrepreneurship: It obvious people ain’t gonna talk init, you know how it goes man. Doesn’t matter if you’re white, black, brown; if you’re on road, then you’re on it until the end. If you look at who was involved in it, you’ll see how some of these man’s didn’t even know each other properly. Most of it is prison connect[ion]. At the same time these man’s might work on the streets as it may make business sense you get me? So why would someone

102  M. RAHMAN talk? … Ain’t no one gonna talk. It’s like us – you’re using me for your research, but you know what will happen to you if you reveal who I am. I’ll destroy you … But I know the guys that busted him out were serious, and it wasn’t necessarily a swift transaction. Anslow paid them well, and may have paid more than expected.

Fatal Violence, Organised Crime and Criminal Entrepreneurship There is an understandable, popular, temptation to employ Schlesinger’s (2001) characterisation and simply describe Harrison as a ‘professional’ hitman, who would plan and organise his offending. This was exactly how he was described in court with the prosecution noting that Richard’s murder was a ‘professionally executed contract killing’ (The Guardian 2012). However, while it is important to acknowledge the level of planning and organisation within the hit, applying MacIntyre et al.’s (2014) typology of British hitmen, would seem to allow us to better understand this particular murder. At the most immediate level, it is clear, for example, that Harrison was neither a Novice or a Dilettante hitman (see, Chapter 3) for, at the very least, the shooting itself demonstrated his experience with firearms. This was later confirmed when police informant Alan Cash told the jury that Harrison had claimed to have previously shot a drug dealer with a crossbow (McCarthy 2012b). In short, Harrison did not seem to dabble in the world of organised crime and the violence that is associated with it, but fully embraced that world and the opportunities that it could provide. Again, by applying MacIntyre et al.’s (2014) typology, nor would it appear that Harrison was a ‘Master’ hitman. Not only do Master hitmen avoid arrest, they would also appear to enter a community to commit the hit and then leave that community shortly afterwards. This ensures that there is relatively little—if any—local intelligence about the case. So too, with the hit conducted on Richard, a variety of local intelligence ultimately brought Harrison to justice, albeit prompted by the police’s use of Crimewatch, and it is also clear that he had many connections to the local community in which the hit took place. In all of this, we might note the recurring and seemingly inevitable disintegration of social and business networks, with all its associated acrimony as participants attempt to squeeze a surplus out of each other, or outcompete for opportunities and market share (Jameson 1991).

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Within this case study the criminal networks uncovered were revealed in several ways. First, through intra-familial relationships, but also, secondly, through trading and business associations, some of which could be legitimate, while others were less so. So too, many key players from each of the three incidents that were identified can be linked to Richard’s murder. For example, it is important to note Leigh Astbury’s role in 40 lorry hijackings within the space of 18 months, which exemplifies both his ability to plan and organise and how routine violence is used in the furtherance of his criminal entrepreneurship. Richard was undoubtedly aware of his brother-in-law’s involvement in this form of organised crime, although this is not meant to imply a motive for the hit. While I am certain about the roles of Harrison and Dickens in the murder of Richard, we need to be more circumspect about the roles of Astbury and Anslow in this hit—even if both were, at one stage, charged with murder. Nonetheless, their respective and proven offending histories suggest something of the opportunities for criminal entrepreneurship within the West Midlands and how some of these entrepreneurs perform on a national and international stage. Anslow, for example, described by many newspapers as ‘Britain’s most wanted man’, was eventually tried in London at Woolwich Crown Court for the involvement of Richard’s murder, rather than at a court in the West Midlands. This suggests something of his abilities to plan and organise an escape, given that Woolwich, is seen as one of the most secure courts in the country, with underground access to prisoners located in HMP Belmarsh. It is also clear that the police were keen to prosecute Anslow. That case was mainly built on cell-site analysis, revealing an exchange of phone calls and text messages between Harrison and Anslow before and immediately after the murder. In total, Harrison had spoken to, sent and received text messages to Anslow on 163 of the 180 times the phone was used (McCarthy 2014). The prosecution claimed that these communications had been made on ‘dirty phones’, suggesting that Anslow and Harrison frequently changed mobiles and sim-cards to avoid police attention. However, Anslow was not in Chasetown on the day of the murder, and nor was he involved in the ‘facilitation or disposal’ of the getaway vehicles. It is also important to note that Anslow voluntary gave evidence during the trial and ‘denied ever hearing of Mr. Deakin’, suggesting that his ‘phone contact with Harrison had been about drug dealing’ (McCarthy 2014).

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Having been found innocent of Richard’s murder, Anslow remains in prison serving 29 years for his previous offences, including playing a ‘pivotal role’ in the supply of drugs and a further seven years for his escape from police custody in 2012 (Lichfield Mercury 2014). It is interesting to note that the full extent of Anslow’s previous convictions was only publicised after the murder trial. Here it should be remembered that Anslow’s escape from a prison van by a sledgehammer-wielding gang, was the first Category A prisoner to escape in 17 years (McCarthy 2014). Indeed, his lengthy prison sentence for drugs offences suggests that he was far more than an ordinary, street-level drug dealer, but was in fact, a major player in a UK-wide network which had been distributing huge quantities of cocaine and cannabis (Express & Star 2014). This illegal trading funded what was described at court as his luxury lifestyle of expensive cars and watches—a life style recently characterised more generally by Hobbs as a lush life (Hobbs 2013). Furthermore, Anslow’s acquittal for Richard’s murder brought jubilation in the communities of Tipton and Dudley—both areas being described as family strongholds in a number of local and regional newspapers. One family member styled Anslow as a ‘Robin Hood–style’ character and insisted that he was respected rather than feared. As evidence to support this narrative, Anslow’s financial generosity within the Tipton estate was described with local football teams, boxing clubs and musically talented locals, all welcoming and acknowledging his sizeable charitable donations (Lockley and McCarthy 2014). This form of philanthropy has been a strategy used by a number of men who were seen to have been involved in organised crime (Pearson 1972; Hobbs 1995).

Concluding Discussion This chapter reveals how David Harrison would seem to conform to MacIntyre et al.’s (2014) Journeyman hitman in several key areas. First, there is evidence of planning in relation to where and when the hit would take place, with the police providing evidence that Harrison had been in Richard’s home on several occasions prior to the murder. Second, the crime scene itself was organised, with little or no forensic evidence found, however we might speculate whether a Master hitman might have disabled the CCTV which was covering Richard’s house and which is obvious to anyone in the street. It was, after all, this CCTV

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footage which was later used to help the police identify Harrison. Third, it should be noted that Harrison was ‘geographically stable’—in other words, he lived just 20 miles north-east from the scene of the hit. Finally, it is important to remember Harrison’s previous offending history and his involvement with firearms. All of this would seem to confirm MacIntyre et al.’s (2014) assumption that although they are not exceptional performers, Journeymen are capable, experienced and reliable. In other words, they are able to carry out their hit successfully, although they will eventually be apprehended. While the newspaper clippings that the police recovered from Harrison’s home, was at the most, one of the many forms of circumstantial evidence for being involved in the hit, criminologically this depicts him as a sadistic offender. The concept of sadism has been long attached to murderers, as it involves indulging in cruelty, by deriving gratification from inflicting harm, suffering, or humiliation to an individual (Ray 2011). Psychoanalytically, it can be argued that sadists like Harrison are able to repress and push outside their consciousness behaviours that would be considered distasteful in mainstream society. However, we should be mindful that repression does not mean that the sadistic impulse has gone. Rather it is ‘rationalised’ by the offender, or as Wilson and Rahman (2015) consider ‘neutralised’ in the context of hitmen. Put simply, for a sadistic offender like Harrison, rationalisation involves a believable pretence that the impulse can be expressed freely with impunity (Winlow 2014) without the associated guilt that would accompany the conscious awareness of its true nature. So too, offenders like Harrison would rationalise his sadism by first viewing his offending as righteous slaughter, which was carried out for the sake of ‘Good’ (Katz 1988). Therefore, Harrison views himself within his consciousness as what Hall (2012) would call a ‘criminal undertaker’, an individual who has the adversarial attitude of inflicting harm under the rubric of justice. I now turn attention to the biographical accounts of violent men in Birmingham’s underworld. Through several accounts, I provide Bourdieusian and psychoanalytical understandings of trauma, humiliation and crime within the context of harm. So too, I offer an exploratory suggestion of how there is a complicated juxtaposition between experiences of victimisation and a deep commitment to violent aggression in adult life.

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References Bennett, J., Crewe, B., & Wahidin, A. (2007). Understanding Prison Staff. London: Routledge. Calhoun, L. (2002). The Phenomenology of Paid Killing. International Journal of Human Rights, 6(1), 1–18. Cameron, S. (2013). Killing for Money and the Economic Theory of Crime. Review of Social Economy, 72(1), 28–41. Coles, N. (2001). It’s Not What You Know, It’s Who You Know That Counts: Analysing Serious Crime Groups as Social Networks. British Journal of Criminology, 41(4), 580–594. Ellis, A. (2016). Men, Masculinities and Violence: An Ethnographic Study. London: Routledge. Express & Star. (2011). Lorry Hijackers Must Pay Back £89,000. Available at: https://www.expressandstar.com/news/2011/03/28/lorry-hijackers-mustpay-back-89000/. Last accessed 7 July 2018. Express & Star. (2012a). Body Buried at Dudley Zoo, Murder Trial Told. Available at: https://www.expressandstar.com/news/2012/11/22/bodyburied-at-dudley-zoo-murder-trial-told/. Last accessed 14 July 2018. Express & Star. (2012b). Mother Vows to See All of Richard Deakin’s Killers Jailed. Available at: https://www.expressandstar.com/news/2012/12/22/ mother-vows-to-see-all-of-richard-deakins-killers-jailed/. Last accessed 11 July 2018. Express & Star. (2013). How Daring Plot to Bust John Anslow Out of Prison Sparked Worldwide Hunt. Available at: https://www.expressandstar.com/ news/2013/11/16/how-daring-plot-to-bust-john-anslow-out-of-prisonsparked-worldwide-hunt/. Last accessed 23 July 2018. Express & Star. (2014). Drug Baron John Anslow Sprung by Pals to Flee to Sun. Available at: https://www.expressandstar.com/news/crime/2014/03/26/ drug-baron-john-anslow-sprung-by-pals-to-flee-to-sun/. Last accessed 29 July 2018. Express & Star. (2016). Crime Boss Who Helped Spring Drugs Kingpin John Anslow from Ordered to Pay Back £1.3m. Available at: https://www.expressandstar.com/news/crime/2016/09/16/crime-boss-who-helped-springdrugs-kingpin-john-anslow-from-prison-ordered-to-pay-back-1-3m/. Last accessed 22 July 2018. Fraser, A. (2015). Urban Legends: Gang Identity in the Post-Industrial City. London: Oxford University Press. Gall, C. (2018). Ex-gang Members Speak Out on Birmingham Gun Crime. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-43570280. Last accessed 12 Jan 2019. Hall, S. (2012). Theorizing Crime and Deviance: A New Perspective. London: Sage.

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Hobbs, D. (1995). Bad Business: Professional Criminals in Modern Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hobbs, D. (2013). Lush Life: Constructing Organized Crime in the UK. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jameson, F. (1991). Postmodernism: The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press. Katz, J. (1988). Seductions of Crime. New York: Basic Books. Levi, M. (2007). Violent Crime. In M. Maguire, R. Morgan, & R. Reiner (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Criminology (4th ed., pp. 687–722). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lichfield Mercury. (2014). John Anslow Not Guilty of Murder Following 2010 Killing of Burntwood Dad Richard Deakin. Available at: http://www.lichfieldmercury.co.uk/john-anslow-guilty-murder-following-2010-killing/story-20854621-detail/story.html. Last accessed 25 July 2018. Lockley, M. (2012a). Inside the Mind of the Contract Killer. Available at: http:// www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/local-news/richard-deakin-murder-trial-inside-381844. Last accessed 10 July 2018. Lockley, M. (2012b). Murder Charge Over Dad’s Shooting Dropped. Available at: https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Murder+charge+over+dad%27s+shooting+ dropped%3B+EXCLUSIVE-a0308018259. Last accessed 20 July 2018. Lockley, M. (2013). Police Knew Where Britain’s Most Wanted Man John Anslow Was Hiding for Weeks. Available at: http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/ news/local-news/police-knew-britains-most-wanted-1752888. Last accessed 21 July 2018. Lockley, M., & McCarthy, N. (2014). As Notorious Drugs Anslow Family Claim Dealer Put Behind Bars, He’s Just Like ‘Robin Hood’. Available at: https://www.thefreelibrary.com/As+notorious+drugs+Anslow+family+ claim+dealer+put+behind+bars,+he’s…-a0363013281. Last accessed 29 July 2018. MacIntyre, D., Wilson, D., Yardley, E., & Brolan, L. (2014). The British Hitman: 1974–2013. The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, 53(4), 325–340. McCarthy, R. (2012a). Richard Deakin Murder Trial. Available at: http:// www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/local-news/richard-deakin-murder-trial-hired-309375. Last accessed 1 July 2018. McCarthy, R. (2012b). Richard Deakin Murder Trial. Available at: http://www. birminghammail.co.uk/news/local-news/richard-deakin-murder-trial-accused-325739. Last accessed 23 July 2018. McCarthy, N. (2014). Midland Drug Dealer John Anslow Not Guilty of Richard Deakin Murder. Available at: http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/richard-deakin-murder-john-anslow-6880084. Last accessed 25 July 2018.

108  M. RAHMAN Naylor, R. (2004). Wages of Crime: Black Markets, Illegal Finances, and the Underworld Economy. New York: Cornell University Press. Office for National Statistics. (2013). Area: Lichfield (Parish). Available at: http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/dissemination/LeadTableView. do?a=7&b=11125588&c=lichfield&d=16&e=61&g=6463512&i=1001x1 003x1032x1004&m=0&r=1&s=1398366983205&enc=1&dsFamilyId=25 79&nsjs=true&nsck=false&nssvg=false&nswid=1276. Last accessed 24 Apr 2018. Pearson, J. (1972). The Profession of Violence: The Rise and Fall of the Kray Twins. London: HarperCollins. Ray, L. (2011). Violence and Society. London: Sage. Schlesinger, L. B. (2001). The Contract Murderer: Patterns, Characteristics and Dynamics. Journal of Forensic Science, 46(5), 1119–1123. Stacey, A. (2014). Devastated Mum of Midland Murder Victim Reveals Anguish at Court Verdict. Available at: http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/richard-deakin-murder-devastated-mum-6887404. Last accessed 14 July 2018. The Guardian. (2012). ‘Hitman’ and Getaway Driver Jailed for Life for Murder. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/dec/21/hitman-getaway-driver-jailed-life-murder. Last accessed 6 July 2018. Treadwell, J. (2012). White Riot: The English Defence League and the 2011 English Riots. Criminal Justice Matters, 87(1), 36–37. Treadwell, J. (2013). The English Defence League and Counter Jihad. Criminal Justice Matters, 93(1), 8–9. Van Duyne, P. (1996). The Phantom and Threat of Organised Crime. Crime, Law and Social Change, 24(4), 341–377. Williams, K., & Treadwell, J. (2008). Similarity and Difference: The Ethnographer, the Subject, and Objectivity. Methodological Innovations Online, 3(1), 56–68. Williams, P. (2001). Transnational Criminal Networks. In J. Arquilla & D. Ronfeldt (Eds.), Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime and Militancy (pp. 61–97). Santa Monica, CA: RAND. Wilson, D., & Rahman, M. (2015). Becoming a Hitman. The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, 54(3), 250–264. Winlow, S. (2001). Badfellas: Crime, Tradition and New Masculinities. Oxford: Berg. Winlow, S. (2014). Trauma, Guilt and the Unconscious: Some Theoretical Notes of Violent Subjectivity. The Sociological Review, 62(2), 32–49.

CHAPTER 5

Violent Men: Trauma, Humiliation and Scenarios of Harm

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail… If you’re prepared to fight, then when it comes down to it there won’t be no problems. —Clive

Abstract  In this chapter, through numerous in-depth ethnographies, I explore the biographical accounts of several violent men that have committed serious criminal offences. Some of the men in this chapter have served custodial sentences for committing acts of homicide. All the men, however, have been part of organised crime networks, with some being involved in criminal operations beyond the West Midlands. In addition to exploring their criminal activities, I present rich narratives of these men through their life histories, which in turn provides an understanding of harms inflicted on them, and the harms that they have inflicted on others. To provide a persuasive analysis, theoretically I decipher biographical and reflexive accounts of these men through psychoanalysis and Bourdieusian epistemologies. Indeed, it is through narrative accounts that I present what I have coined: scenarios of harm, and how imaginary situations contribute towards the shaping of an individual’s street habitus (Wacquant in American Journal of Sociology 107: 1468–1532, 2002; Sandberg and Pedersen in Street Capital: Black Cannabis Dealers in a White Welfare State. Policy Press, Bristol, 2009; Fraser in Journal of Youth Studies 16: 970–985, 2013), and how this then valorizes their capital and position within the field. Ultimately, I draw towards a speculative suggestion that the containment of © The Author(s) 2019 M. Rahman, Homicide and Organised Crime, Palgrave Studies in Risk, Crime and Society, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16253-5_5

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harmful dispositions becomes integral for a person’s behaviour, interaction and trajectory in the underworld. Keywords  Biography · Bourdieu · Capital · Consciousness · Criminal entrée · Drugs · Ego · Ethnography · Field · Freud · Guns · Habitus · Harm · Homicide · Humiliation · Language · Latent · Narrative criminology · Organised crime · Psychoanalysis Reflexivity · Scenarios of harm · Semi-structured interviews · Spectator violence · Street capital · Street field · Street habitus · Trauma · Unconsciousness

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Before delving into the biographical accounts of several underworld figures, it is worthwhile alluding to the significance of narrative criminology. Advocates of narrative criminology have a vested interested in how storytelling depicts cases of harmful behaviour (Presser and Sandberg 2015). Researchers that have utilised semi-structured interviews and ethnographic frameworks in recent years have persuasively theorised rich narratives of violence in street level settings (Bourgois 2003; Fraser 2015; Deuchar 2018). Interestingly, Bourdieusian theories have been consistent in some of these contemporary studies. Offender based studies have amplified Bourdieu’s framework of capital when considering Norwegian drug dealer’s street smarts as street capital (Sandberg and Pedersen 2009), whereas others have considered the role of gender for this capital (Grundetjern and Sandberg 2012). In a British context, Winlow and Hall (2010) explored the notion of habitus when discussing the influence of industrialisation on working-class men, which Fraser (2015) later developed through the notion of street habitus to offer a thought provoking perspective of gangland culture in Glasgow, Scotland. Irrespective of the Bourdieusian frameworks that the above studies have considered, the common thread that they all share is the importance of language when exploring harmful practice and social inequality. In his notion of symbolic violence, Bourdieu (1990, 1991) refers to linguistics, by considering how those with capital naturalise social inequality through the effective use of language. Even in Bourdieu’s (1985) field theory, Hanks (2005, p. 73) argues that the field encompasses ‘…a language game in which certain ends are pursued with certain discursive resources according to established guidelines’. In their seminal work on ‘street field’, Shammas and Sandberg (2015) theorise how fields revolve

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around social games which are underpinned by certain rules. Here, it is important to note that the use of ‘street’ is intended in a non-literal sense, as ‘the field is defined with reference to criminal and deviant activities which can take place anywhere and are not physically confinable to the street’ (ibid., p. 201). Similarly, to Bourdieu, I acknowledge the creative force of language, namely the discourse that stems from thoughts that are harmful and often suppressed. So too, below, through biographical accounts of violent men, I chart how hypothetical scenarios of harm consist of situations that are found to be favourable to the individual, but are often shaped by real encounters that have been unfavourable to the individual. In most cases, it is impossible to repress harrowing experiences into one’s unconsciousness, hence such experiences are sublimated through hypothetical scenarios. It is this interplay that becomes a stimulus for shaping the street habitus and field relations of a person, and their legitimate and illegitimate practices.

‘Never Show Love on the Streets, Love Can Get You Killed’: A Biographical Account of Clive In the opening chapter of this book, I introduced Clive. I have known him since 2002, and at the time of my empirical work, he is in his mid-thirties. His late twenties to early thirties were spent in several prisons after being found guilty of manslaughter. The victim was a rival drug dealer, who attempted to ambush Clive on one winter night, as he thought Clive was in possession of ‘a distribution level of cocaine’ (all subsequent quotes are from Clive). Standing just under 6 feet tall, Clive claims that his 14-stone muscular physique has remained consistent for ‘the past 15 years’. In my first interview with him, he recalled how on the night of his ambush, his victim was armed with ‘a Rambo knife’, and attacked him twice before he disarmed the individual and smacked his head several times against a metal pole. The injuries that Clive inflicted were so horrific, a police officer testified in court that she ‘fainted’ when she attended the crime scene. Bleeding profusely after being stabbed in his right shoulder blade, Clive staggered a few yards from his victim before being found unconscious by paramedics. Clive’s foundations of physical violence started at home. He is the youngest of three brothers, and growing up he would often find himself ‘play fighting’ with his siblings, which would often result in ‘blood stained tops’ and ‘bruises’. He developed his reputation for violence

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in secondary school. During the middle years of his secondary school education, he was known as the guy ‘not to be fucked around with’ after winning a series of ‘back to back fights’ against older and bigger peers. It was during this time when Clive started earning what he described as ‘serious money’ by selling marijuana to fellow classmates, and ‘spent more time with girls’ than he did ‘in the classroom’. Throughout my time with Clive, I observed that he was forthcoming about his family life in comparison to the others that I researched. I put this down to the fact that I lived near Clive for a few years in the early 2000s. When Clive was five, his parents separated, and he met his father for the first time in his mid-twenties when he was hospitalised after being shot twice in the leg over a drugs dispute. Clive denied having any ill feelings towards his father and said the following about his family life: My dad’s dead now. But to be honest, for me he’s been dead to me since I was 5. Like, majority of us ain’t got dads, you get me? They’re either gone, in prison or dead, so I don’t feel like I missed out on much in that respect because I never had him in the first place. You can’t miss what you don’t have, you know. But what I can say is not having him meant that my mum was everything during those [childhood and adolescent] years. She worked, put food on the table, and had to look after three rough boys. Even when we did wrong, she always backed us up, you know. Man, the amount of times I put hurt on people and she backed me up was unbelievable. There were times when she’d fucking convince me that I didn’t do the things that I did, ha! And for her it must have been difficult. Us boys were all born in the 80s and back then shit was tense on the streets. So, can you imagine my mum? A white woman with three little ones that were mixed race. She must have got shit from black and white people… Growing up, my relationship with my siblings was fine, I guess. It was normal. They were older than me, but by the age of 15, I outgrew and outmuscled both of them. I hear that’s quite natural anyway, that the youngsters tend to outgrow the elders.

Clive recalls the social difficulties that his mother endured as a single parent at a time when Birmingham experienced three race riots. Whilst he did not speak about this in length, he seemed to be mindful about the racial oppression that his mum suffered for having ‘three little ones that were mixed race’ as a ‘white woman’. He proudly comments on how his mother would support him irrespective of his wrongdoings. Additionally, he provides what I judged as an interesting, albeit honest

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account of his father. Scholarly sources have indicated how a lack of fathering or father absence can contribute towards negative social relationships for some men, which invariably increases the chances of criminality and gang-related activity (Roy 2006; Glynn 2014). However, it seems that Clive internalised the absence of his father by comparing his parental situation to that of his peers and acknowledges this void in social capital as commonplace. Moreover, studies have revealed that gangs provide a surrogate family for youths that are alienated from a social or familial aspect (Thrasher 1927; Deuchar 2009). Clive comments on his relationship with his brothers as ‘fine’ and ‘normal’, and offers a physical description of himself in comparison to his brothers. Whilst he starts off by stating that he ‘outgrew’ and ‘outmuscled’ his brothers by the age of 15, he concludes this description in a modest manner, by suggesting that his growth is indeed organic. It was on the topic of brothers that I established two keystone moments that were of extreme interest and what I believe contributed immensely towards shaping Clive’s trajectory of violent practice. Both encompass what I consider to be spectator violence, that is, physical violence which is exhibited within an audience, and one that can be crucial for the acquisition of street capital (Sandberg 2008) and the subsequent positioning in the street field. The first traumatic experience recalled by Clive was on his 10th birthday: Man, growing up, birthdays were the one! Because I’m a summer baby, my birthdays were always good. Good weather, nice food, loud music and a whole lot of fun. On my 10th birthday, my uncle bought two pairs of these massive inflatable boxing gloves. It’s like one of those things that you can play with the family you get me, and no one will get hurt. They were like ‘one size fits all’, so even adults could get involved. Obviously, they’re designed for fun, but at the age of 10, I was like wow, I want to beat people up with them, even if it is for fun. Plus, on that particular day, I was hyped up because I turned 10. Double digits and all that, and loads of my school mates, and neighbours and all came over. I remember on that day I wasn’t even interested in cutting the cake, I was just looking forward to play fighting with the inflatable gloves. So, after all the food and cake cutting was over, I was play fighting with some of my school mates and friends in the garden while my mum was inside with all the other mums. Mum has always said to me that I used to piss off my eldest brother, and to be honest I never knew if I did. Anyways, on that day I kept winning in the play fights, and any time I’d win, I did a victory lap around the garden,

114  M. RAHMAN which meant I had to run past my eldest brother. As a joke, you know how it is, I said to my brother “I’m gonna beat you up”. At this time, he was already in secondary school and there was no way I could even lay a finger on him. However, it must have annoyed him because moments later he got me into a chokehold and didn’t let go until I fainted.

The second encounter occurred a few years later when Clive was in secondary school. He comments on how majority of his fights in school were often race related, which did not bother him: Them [school] fights were crazy. All the motherfuckers back in school were wild. And even though the fights now seem petty, back then they were important because it was all about creating and maintaining a ­rep[utation], you get me? Like for example, the fights would take place in the school playground, and would then be spoken about on road within a day or two. And that’s how people in the ends would know about you. And when you get that rep[utation], you get everything that comes with it, like drugs and girls. It’s a bit like the movies you know, something like Scarface when Tony Montana talks about getting ‘power’. Back then we didn’t have no camera phones ‘n’ shit, so the word of mouth was always the way to keep updated about fights and stuff. Being mixed race was a complex thing, because in my school the black guys would always fight the whites. And I was slap bang in the middle, but most occasions I rolled with the blacks because they were the ones who I grew up with in the streets, and were also the ones that I sold drugs with.

Above, Clive provides a progressive viewpoint of partaking in violent practice. He considers the importance of combat within a subsection of the educational field (Bourdieu 1985, 1989), the school playground. This resonates with Polk’s (1999, p. 22) viewpoint of how ‘in most social milieus, a man’s reputation depends in part upon the maintenance of a credible threat of violence’. For Clive, and his comrades, violence was a commodity, which developed character and reputation. Of note, equally important to acquiring a violent reputation was marketing this reputation. He implies on how ‘word of mouth’ was the primary marketing tool, and it can be suggested that this method influenced the growth of his violent reputation at a time when mobile phones and social media were virtually non-existent in mainstream society. Coming back to Clive’s second traumatic experience, it occurred in school at the age of 15. By this point, he was over 5 feet 8 inches and weighed over 12 stones.

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He would often associate with boys who were older than him, and was selling marijuana on a regular basis. Clive would only attend mathematics classes which he recalled as his ‘favourite subject’. Trouble brewed in school after Clive discovered that one of his classmates was robbed by a sixth former: …Things were going fine in school. You know, Moe, I did my full GCSE maths in year 10. A year before everybody else, and I got an A. I was buzzing, and then I heard from this one girl at school that my friend got robbed by this one sixth former that was in my [eldest] brother’s class. They were actually mates, and I was fucking livid, especially because my mate was a soft guy. So, I got the understanding that this guy was a bully, and I fucking hate bullies. Bullies and pedophiles, I can’t fucking tolerate them. Well actually bullies, pedophiles and woman beaters. I see red mist, when I think of them. When I think of them, I think about how I can go about smashing their faces to bits. Anyway, I track this fucker down within the hour. I walked into his class, and my brother was there. I didn’t make eye contact with him and walked straight up to the guy who jacked my mate, and I said to him “after school I am coming for you, and I am going to rip your heart out and rape you in front of everyone”. I didn’t even know what the fuck rape was back then, but I knew it was something bad, and so did he. More to the point he knew that he needed to get ready for a fight, and I could tell that he could fight.

Clive stormed out the classroom and recalls telling his peer to ‘spread the word’ about an after-school fight. Alongside a dozen of his classmates, he patiently waited for the sixth former, and when he did, he was ready for the showdown: I was ready to hurt him, and when I saw him, I felt like gasoline was running through my veins. I was on fire. Between when I found out what happened to my mate and the fight itself, I couldn’t stop thinking about tearing him up. The punches I’d throw and the knees that I would land. Even though he was bigger than me, I was still ready to put a beat down on him. But he was game, [at the beginning of the fight] he came out swinging, before I speared him down. I went straight through his torso, pinned him to the ground, and I was pounding him like a piece of steak. Fists, knuckles and elbows—they were all going in, and he could do fuck all about it. It was just like how I pictured it. He made a pathetic attempt to gauge my eyes, but it failed when I put my fist through his mouth and broke his front two teeth. He was choking on his teeth before I was

116  M. RAHMAN separated by some of my mates. I searched his pockets, and took his wallet and keys and threw them over a nearby fence… To add insult to injury, I even pulled his trousers down. He was one of those motherfuckers that would have his pants hanging down his backside, so I thought why not go the full mile.

When asked how Clive felt moments after the encounter, he said that he felt ‘powerful’, ‘vicious’ and that ‘justice had been served’. However, Clive’s triumph was instantly diminished, as he became a victim of an assault: After the fight, I walked up to my mate who was holding my coat and bag. My brother was standing behind me and was looking at me looking all pissed off. I looked at him and said, “What are you looking at?” Honestly, hand on heart, I didn’t say it in a threatening manner, but he clearly took it the wrong way because as I was walking towards my girlfriend at the time, he came behind me and got me in a [rear neck] choke. For a few seconds, I was like, what the fuck? I knew it was him and I was telling him to back off. My bag was tangled on my right arm, and my left hand wasn’t strong enough to get him to release the choke as I hurt it during the fight. I couldn’t believe it and moments later and I passed out and smacked my head on the concrete. I was told after by some lads that my girlfriend was screaming at him when I was on lying on the floor, because she thought that he killed me because I wasn’t moving.

When I asked Clive his thoughts on why his brother would do such a thing, his response was: …you know it’s been over 20 years since that incident, and I still don’t have an answer. What you gotta remember is the guy that I beat up was his bredrin, it was his friend. So, after that incident happened, I thought to myself that it was probably his way of letting me know that I can’t get away with beating up his friend. But I would always come to the conclusion of how could he do that to me. I was his kid brother, man. His little bro. His family. His blood. And the man does that to me in front of everyone, knowing that his bredrin was in the wrong. Back then I never confronted him about it, but it’s disturbed me for a long time. People at school spoke about it for time, and plus I missed out on a lot of school because of my head injury. Time to time, I have bad spells of dizziness, and I put it down to that. I should have confronted him about it before he died, but I never.

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A few years after the incident, Clive’s brother was killed after being mistaken for a local drug dealer. He was shot at point-blank range five times. Clive never attended the funeral, and recalls how the school yard incident changed his demeanour towards violent practice: It made me feel vulnerable. Like, I knew no one would ever want to pick a fight with me, but at the same time I didn’t want to fight anymore even though I knew I could. Passing out, and the way I did scared me, man. For a while I felt vulnerable. At first, I found it difficult to lock off the incident, you get me? But over the years I didn’t think too much of it. But after the incident, every time I looked at the mirror, the forehead scar would always remind me of the ringing noise that I heard when I was lying on the floor. At the age of 19 I started to carry [a gun], and I hated doing that because of the risk of getting caught. That’s easily a minimum of 10 (years in prison), and that’s if you’re lucky.

This traumatic experience required Clive to renegotiate his course towards violent practice. After leaving school, Clive worked in a delivery depot before taking the role of enforcer for an organised crime group that had a transnational outreach. This organised crime group required Clive to work alongside the Jamaican Yardies, who in the early 1990s were widely regarded as fearsome Jamaican born gangsters that imported drugs and employed lethal violence in several English cities, including Birmingham. Clive was conscious that his involvement with the Jamaican Yardies posed risks for his well-being: Between 17 to 20, I served some time inside for a few assaults and drug related offences. From 20 onwards, I was involved full time with hard men. The other thing was, I became a dad at 21, so my priorities changed. My first born was my daughter, and I wanted to make sure that I could always be there for her, and not be like my dad. Her [Clive’s daughters] mum was like my mum, a solid and strong woman, so I had to make sure that I stepped up. However, I was on the hustle, and there was no way of getting out. The thing with the drugs trade is, it’s good money. Like everything in life, you must do it for the sake of good. I was all about the money. I wasn’t interested in cars, jewelry or clothes. For me, it was a job. But like you said before, it’s a risky business. And my outlook obviously changed being a dad. When I started on the hustle full time as an enforcer, I was told by a guy who I saw as my mentor that violence was bad for business. And I was like “yeah, you’re right”. However, most in the crew weren’t singing from the same hymn sheet. Especially the ones that couldn’t

118  M. RAHMAN handle themselves. The ones that would talk shit, would be often be the ones that would get fucked up. And then I’d have to step in a deal with things, even though I didn’t want to. Man, I had no choice, and I was known to put in the work.

On many occasions, Clive spoke about how his rationale for entering the illegal drugs trade was entrepreneurial, and the primary goal was ‘strictly money’. As he grew older, his propensity violence became calculated as he knew it was ‘bad for business’. On many occasions, Clive has proudly discussed his monetary gain during his heyday in the illegal drugs trade. He once commented how he almost went two years without any meaningful violence against those involved in the underworld. However, things drastically changed one autumn evening when he was attacked by a rival drug dealer. He was on his way to a family birthday party when he was attacked from behind with a knife. To this date, Clive believes that the offender’s intention was to stab him in the neck. He has previously shown me his keloid scar from the incident, which in length is approximately 2.5 inches, and spreads vertically across his right shoulder blade. Clive admits retrospectively that his response towards the situation was excessive, but at that time he saw no other alternative: When you get into the kind of work that I did, you should expect to get stabbed or shot. Anyone that says otherwise is full of shit. Anyone that thinks that they’re invincible is also full of shit. I expected [to be targeted], but not in that kind of manner. For me it’s just the nature of the incident that ticked me off. He came from the back. He wasn’t that tall, that’s why he couldn’t get my neck, but he was going for it… At one point, he grabbed my neck, and it reminded me straight away about my brother. It was a split-second thing, but that was enough to bring back memories. In jail, I thought about it more. When I smacked his head against the pole, I could have stopped the first time because that was enough, but I hurt him a few more times. I used to think in jail, what if I hit him the once and then passed out myself and he finished the job? I think about these kinds of things daily. It kept playing on my mind. In court, I remember the judge saying that I wasn’t remorseful. For a few years, I thought what the fuck was I supposed to be remorseful about? I was the victim! Me, man! … When I was in jail, I wasn’t pissed off that I was serving time. I was more pissed off with my brother. He’s dead now, so I shouldn’t talk about him like that, init. But what I can say is, some of the hurt that I’ve put on people has been because of him. But thankfully, now, in the last few years I’ve been able to channel myself much better, you know.

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As Ritchie (2014) suggests, understanding why catastrophic assaults take place is vital for a psychosocial lens perspective on violence. Clive’s biographical account depicts three major incidents of violent practice, of which one was fatal. His language highlights experiences of trauma and betrayal. He was predisposed to violence from a young age. During months of observations, I attentively listened to his stories of spectator violence, most of which were in-depth descriptions of his victories. The more detailed accounts were those that took place in school and on the streets during his time as an enforcer. Anggard (2005) notes that ‘boys’ stories’ tend to focus on heroism and fighting, and that even the physical characteristics of ‘boys’ toys’ are designed for fighting games. By his own admission, Clive on his 10th birthday was simply interested in ‘play fighting’ with his school mates with his ‘inflatable boxing gloves’. Thus, by default and design, the nature of the combat for Clive was no more than mere competitive fun, on a day centred on the celebration of his birth. However, for his older brother, who at this point was in secondary school, combat was no fun. Rather, it can be argued, for him, the engagement of combat, especially within a spectator standpoint becomes a means of ‘doing gender’ and ‘doing masculinity’, especially in the presence of peers (Muncie 2009; Deuchar 2013). Winlow and Hall (2010, p. 298) highlight that the ‘presence of an audience can put further pressure on the individual to perform’. So too, it can be suggested that during this time for Clive’s brother, spectator violence, irrespective of purpose, was an ‘honour contest’, which therefore required him to exert dominance to acclaim this honour. Hence, it is plausible that his brother’s perspective of spectator violence alongside his trivial taunts led him to employ a chokehold. Like most scholars who conduct ethnographic investigations, I made a habit of regularly writing reflexive notes. This exercise is useful for the integrity aspect of the research process, the quality of knowledge accumulated, the ethical treatment of those researched, and measuring my own well-being and personal growth. In one of my entries, I offer insight of a research encounter with Clive: Moments ago, I finished spending half of the day with Clive. Majority of my time with him was spent at the cemetery, as we both contributed towards the burial of an elderly woman who he knew from a young age. Afterwards, we visited two places; his secondary school, and the exact spot where he was stabbed many years ago. Many months ago, I asked

120  M. RAHMAN him whether he would feel comfortable visiting such places, namely the location where he was stabbed. He made it clear that he had no problems. After observing Clive for several months, I have concluded that he is a reflective individual, who is quite forthcoming with his thoughts. I’ve noticed in previous car conversations that Clive is quite relaxed and is prepared to speak about pretty much anything. He is aware that I get the most out of him in these situations, and today he spoke extensively about his perspectives on street level violence, namely the thoughts that he keeps to himself. On several occasions, what took me aback was the level of detail that he went into when discussing violent encounters. When I asked him how he could retain so much information in detail, his response was: “Because sometimes that’s all I think about”. I found this extremely intriguing, and decided to ask Clive several questions before dropping him off to his family home.

(Reflexive Extract) MR: You’ve said to me previously that your thoughts of violence have usually been longer than the encounters themselves. There seems to be a lot of reasoning and thinking behind your interpretation of violence. Why is this the case? Clive: By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail. My preparation is always in my mind. I don’t speak out loud. When I was on road, I was always thinking. The best of those who make it on road are always thinking. You think about your strengths, weaknesses and your threats. My threat and weakness on road was that my rivals were carrying [weapons], and were after me. So, I had to make sure that mentally I was always ready for combat. If you’re prepared to fight, then when it comes down to it there won’t be no problems. We live in a world that comes down to, kill or be killed. MR: People would argue that thinking about violence is negative, and therefore it’s not good for the mental state. In the underworld, did it work in your favour? If so, how? Clive: Oh, for sure. In most cases it worked in my favour. Weirdly, in encounters where I ended up being the victim, it also worked in my favour. An example I can give is when I got stabbed. Had I not internalised what my brother did to me, I could have ended up dead when I got stabbed. I internalised it as something that happened to me, but something that could never happen to me again. I could never let someone put me in a state of vulnerability. MR: Most individuals tend to block out thoughts of being a victim. It’s easier said than done, but seemingly you have internalised your harms

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and actualised them in various activities when you acted as an enforcer in the underworld. How important was this for you? Clive: Man, you have to take your L[oses] the same way that you take your W[ins]. I’ve told you before the chances of you getting hurt in this kind of world is relatively high, and therefore you need to always be on your toes. It was important for me to recognise that I could be a victim at any given point. But the question that I’d ask myself was, what am I going to do about it? At the end of the day, I am a realist, you get me? People know that I am a realist, and therefore before being true to others, I had to be true to myself and realise that my shortcomings had a purpose, and that purpose would help me in whatever I would go on to do. MR: Do you think in many ways that being a realist, and not repressing your trauma or violent encounters worked in your favour when it came down to being accepted in the underworld? Clive: On road, people are just looking for your weaknesses. They’re looking for ways to use, manipulate and control you. Never show love on the streets, love can get you killed. I learnt that the hard way. Some will say, keep your weaknesses to yourself. But the thing is, nothing can be kept away from the streets. Eventually, everything comes out and you will get exposed. People know what I am capable of, or I wouldn’t be rolling the way I was. But for me, towards the end, it was about accepting myself before being accepted. In many ways, those that I was working for knew that and may have seen it as a weakness. MR: You make references to what’s known as the ‘road’ and the ‘streets’. How influential is urban space when it comes to your understanding of violence and criminal activities? Clive: It’s everything, man. The streets are spaces where things start and things end. Everything leads to the streets. You don’t even need to think about the streets. You just know that you’re part of it and it’s part of you. The reality is, it’s the streets that pay, but also that contribute towards pain. You’re the most vulnerable when you’re on road, and in many ways, that’s the space that you occupy the most.

Through ethnographic observations, Clive depicts that his motives for engaging in violent practice changed in secondary school. His intimidating physique, alongside his tenacity to engage in combat with whomever was presented to him, earned him a reputation that legitimated him to enter the illegal drugs trade from a young age. He marketed his violence in a manner that transcended in various social milieus (Polk 1999). In doing so, violence for him became a form of social engagement, and the

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fusion of this practice, and crime became a central prop for his masculinity. Here, it is important to note that Clive is the product of north-west Birmingham, a milieu that has already been considered in this book to display violent forms of masculinity since the nineteenth century. Mullins (2006) observes in his ethnographic research that masculinity does not sit within the social setting as a monolithic set of demands and behavioural expectations, rather a locale produces multiple masculinities. Moreover, it can be assumed that Clive’s brother acknowledged this rapid growth of masculinity, and attacked him as he felt insecure about his own masculinity after witnessing his younger brother beating his friend. Where other older siblings would naturally support and defend their younger siblings, Clive’s brother viewed the after-school encounter as a threat to his own manliness, and took special liberties to transcend Clive’s masculine competitiveness without any consideration of its impact and harm (Hall 2012). While those who witnessed the retaliation may have found it difficult to comprehend, for Clive’s brother, it can be assumed that this intrinsic behaviour was carried out righteously for the sake of ‘Good’ (Katz 1988). Clive openly admits that the betrayal by his brother had a profound impact on his physical and mental well-being. While physical injuries healed, damage to his reputation affected him more. He acknowledges that he found coping mechanisms to repress his humiliation and to reduce his vulnerabilities. For instance, his approach to violence changed drastically. From using his physical capabilities that earned him the reputation of a man ‘not to be fucked around with’, he started to carry a firearm for a short period. In their study of violent men, Winlow and Hall (2010) also observed how humiliation does not dissipate, rather it becomes a driver for some men to chart their future approach towards violent practice. With prompt, Clive discussed how his trajectory towards violent practice changed because of his priorities. Based on his comment of violence being ‘bad for business’, he knew that to provide for his daughter, the use of violence needed to be employed for progressive acts as opposed to trivial. However, he acknowledged that he would often be dragged into violent encounters to defend those associated with him. In essence, the nature of his involvement in the underworld required him to adhere to the code of the streets (Anderson 1999), of which encompasses defending one’s peers. Freud (1923) suggested that for one to truly forget something, they must summon up the courage to remember it properly. It is evident that

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Clive has found it difficult to overcome the humiliating experiences that his brother endured on him. His attempt to ‘lock off’ his recollection of the school incident implies that he has faced an ongoing battle with his unconsciousness and consciousness. It can be argued that this abuse and betrayal was repressed in his unconsciousness, and was not capable of becoming conscious in the ordinary way (Freud 2010). Seemingly, Clive could repress his traumatic and betrayal encounter to the best of his abilities; however, the nature of the attack executed by the rival drug dealer triggered his repressed unconsciousness, forcing him to retaliate with catastrophic measures. Furthermore, what is explicit in Clive’s narratives are unconscious attachments to urban space, or what he refers to as ‘the streets’. So too, he reveals the inhabitation of what is known as street habitus, that is ‘the fusion of space and self, developed through repetition of behaviours in physical space’ (Fraser 2015, p. 44). The concept was first used by Wacquant (2002), when noting, that the cognitive dispositions of inner-city American blacks who resided in marginalised neighbourhoods can be theorised as permanent and sometimes unconscious dispositions of individuals in the street economy which is valorised and produced by spending time in the field. Bourdieu (1984, 1993) argues that habitus is contingent upon an individual’s social world and their reactions. So too, Shammas and Sandberg (2015, p. 205) rightly put forward that ‘the concrete manifestation of street habitus will vary between empirical domains’ and ‘although a street habitus will tend to hold certain characteristics in common, including dispositions toward violence or drug use, its tangible contents must be specified empirically’. In relation to this empirical work, I also consider how habitus is produced by historical and social conditions (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992), and argue that street habitus should be considered as a temperament, that serves as a basis to discover the visceral subconscious juxtaposition of an individual and their experiences of harmful practice when making sense of their interactions and positioning in the underworld. For instance, Clive’s biographical account reveals his outlook on the uses and restraints of violence during certain aspects of his life. As a self-proclaimed ‘realist’, he is not oblivious to the nasty realities of physical harm, and makes clear of the encounters that one may face when submerged in illicit settings. Furthermore, his narratives illustrate violence in the first half of his formative years as a spectacle function that was learnt through peers and shaped in social settings. In the second half, his

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temperament towards violence earned him a fearless reputation, which served as a dispositional form of street capital that was legitimated in the eyes of a transnational syndicate who used him as a commodity within an enforcer role. Also, his engagement in violence enabled him to acquire objectified forms of street capital, that is access to weapons and drugs, as well as inscribed markers, which in his case was a keloid scar from a serious stab wound. In addition, there is the institutionalized form of street capital that is much needed for one to be legitimated in the eyes of those who are embedded in the underworld. Clive’s criminal record of multiple offences denotes him being part of the criminal world, which is reinforced by serving time in custodial settings. So too, in essence, his street capital allows him to acquire a criminal entrée in a glocal underworld. Based on his accounts, it is evident that employing violence was one of his repeated behaviours and a currency that served as a deep commitment to the street field. Unlike most, from a young age, Clive understood the business imperatives of the underworld. He makes clear that providing for his daughter was his priority, which therefore meant that he needed to renegotiate his role and interactions in the underworld. This also required him to reevaluate his defining characteristic; violent practice and everything that came with it in the street field. By priortising his daughter, Clive realised that sustaining his longevity in the underworld required minimal use of violence, namely with weapons. Indeed, ‘the risk of getting caught’ when carrying a weapon demonstrates forward thinking and the weighing of rewards and risks when considering the use of violence. It also demonstrates the rational side of an underworld operative, and theoretically reinforces how one’s interactions extend beyond fields. Fields maintain relations with other fields. Shammas and Sandberg (2015, p. 203) state how ‘particularly salient for the street field is the bureaucratic field, which may attempt to control and regulate the street field’. Defining characteristics by the bureaucratic field include passing legislation, court decisions and the creation of regulation and policies. So too, via legislation, the bureaucratic field defines the street field, which therefore shapes the interactions of actors in underworld settings. Of note, Clive provides accounts of latent thoughts of trauma, humiliation and violence. While his intrusive thoughts reveal a deep commitment and obsession towards violent practice, it should be noted that the accumulation of violence against him is disturbing. So too, in most cases, it is impossible for individuals to repress harrowing experiences into

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one’s unconsciousness, hence such experiences are sublimated through hypothetical scenarios. In Clive’s case, it is this interplay that became an incentive for shaping his street habitus and subsequent criminal trajectory. The chapter now moves on to the biographical accounts of brothers Marco and Zane. Both brothers present narratives of harm, trauma and violence. They also offer narratives of hypothetical scenarios of violence, which will be contrasted with Clive’s accounts in the concluding comments.

‘Emotions Alone Can Get You 35 to Life’: Biographical Accounts of Marco and Zane During the time of this research, brothers Marco and Zane are in their thirties, and rank the youngest out of eight siblings. Both men stand over 6 feet tall, with Marco sporting a slender athletic build, in comparison to his younger brother of three years, who is stocky but muscular. Both men have served custodial sentences for serious crimes. Marco served almost three years in a young offender’s institution after being found guilty of violent disorder, and later served a sentence for armed robbery with his brother, Zane. In the violent disorder incident, Marco was part of a mob of youths who targeted a man inside a house party and beat him to death. Marco and his codefendants were due to stand trial for murder, but the case was dropped to violent disorder due to a lack of evidence. It was Marco’s first experience of incarceration that influenced his criminal trajectory: My time at the youth offenders was quite rough. Imagine, I’ve witnessed a lot of horrific things, and I’ve never seen myself to be a violent person. I made one stupid fucking mistake in the heat of the moment, and now suddenly you’re in this cage, locked up and always on edge, looking over you if any crazy bastard is going to come up and stab you. People obviously saw me as this monster, but at the most, I was just running with a crew and selling a bit of drugs on the side. On my first night inside, I saw a guy get dragged out by medics because he was stabbed in the eye… And because I made it obvious that it affected me, a few days later I was beaten in my own cell and my things were stolen… That’s when I knew like I’d be an easy target if I didn’t step up. It was about surviving, and it was about getting to the man before he could get to me, yeah. I started rolling with some of the mandem (group of associates) that I knew of from the streets and week in week out I saw guys get hurt.

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Indeed, Marco’s sentiments resonates Robinson and Ryder’s (2013) psychosocial understanding of ‘courage under fire’, where the term ‘fire’ alludes to destructive factors, that is, violence against Marco. In Marco’s narrative, the institution was a place of ‘battle’ and the ‘survival of the fittest’ (all subsequent quotes are from Marco and Zane). Being institutionalised required him to be violent, even though he ‘was never a fighter’. Marco describes how violence was imposed upon him: ‘…it was about getting to the man before he could get to me’—and justified this as a ‘surviving’ mechanism. While Marco was serving his sentence, Zane would spend his time after school on the streets under the watchful eye of his retired father, who worked in the scrap metal industry for almost 40 years. Zane recalls how his father’s parenting style was often a mixture of authoritarian and disciplinarian, and this exacerbated after Marco’s imprisonment: My dad was a tough guy to please, so no one bothered pleasing him. Out of all of us, mum says that he spent the most time with me. He was a dominos man, and enjoyed playing with the other old men on most nights at the local social club. He enjoyed his drink, horses and boxing. He couldn’t stand any other sports… I’d go to the social time to time after school to show my face, but I would nip around the back and neck down a few Shandy and Hooch bottles. I’d also play some pool with some of the lads. It was fun times, man, a good laugh… Even though home life and school was rough, and trouble was always around, you know how it is in the inner-city. You don’t have much but life back then was good.

According to Zane, spending time with his father meant that he was always earwigging on customary social conversations about work, sports, women and local affairs. Being close to his father meant that Zane was also exposed to familial relations. In Marco’s gym, Zane tells me the complexities in his family life: I noticed from like an early age, he couldn’t stand one of my older brothers. I never understood why because he was a diamond guy. You know, a top man. He was a grafter and always worked hard. And when he didn’t, he was always keeping himself in shape and working out. Plus, he was nice to me. He would call me the “the little bastard of the family”, which was true, because I was all over the place. But my dad couldn’t stand him man, he would curse him at any given chance and you know, put him down. Mum wouldn’t say anything, probably in fear of getting smacked.

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One particular evening, Zane was able to witness his father’s distaste for his older brother. His brother fought in an exhibition boxing match, of which Zane attended. Zane’s brother lost the fight and was knocked out in the process. To his surprise, after the fight, Zane watched his father laugh at his brother frantically while the defeated sibling was being treated ringside. He confronted his father and kicked him in the shin. Zane’s father retaliated, and assaulted him in the boxing gym in front of others, before taking him home and making him an example in front of his mother and his siblings. Zane was also scolded with an iron rod, a mark that is visible whenever his left forearm is exposed: He was a bully, and a piece of shit. The fucked up thing was for a while I was just an angry person. I started doing shit at school and fighting with anyone that reminded me of my dad. It’s funny because, how can a school boy remind you of your dad? But somehow, anytime I thought about him, or someone spoke about him, I’d just want to hurt someone close or next to me really bad. It was messed up, man. He completely fucked me up. And I didn’t have much respect for him after that. I started doing my own shit. I was robbing people and other type of craziness, yeah. But I can’t explain it. I was also missing Marco, and I know that half of the bad stuff I did back then was because he wasn’t there for me… But things just worse when he came out. We started doing [armed] robberies, and all that madness…

Marco provided a vague description of him as an armed robber with his brother, Zane: We were involved in a string of armed robberies. Some of our hits were even featured on TV. We were hitting [cash-in-] transit drivers who would collect funds from banks, supermarket and that. First it started out as a means to put food on the table you get me, but after it was strictly about money. We made some good funds, man, and it was because those jobs were carefully planned. But we spent money on stupid and silly things. In the end that’s what screwed me and Zane up. More so Zane, because he could have got away with it, but got careless because like me he thought he was too much of a big man. We just got too greedy to be frank, and we didn’t know when to stop…I can’t explain, but there was a time when like the adrenaline of going for a job was more of a buzz than actually making money. And that got us nabbed!

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In a psychoanalytical context, Zane’s victimisation experience and his father’s authoritarian and disciplinarian parenting styles, reside within his preconsciousness (Freud 1923), which means that the unconsciousness is latent, and capable of becoming conscious at any given time with ease. In the standard Freudian manner (Freud 2010), the preconsciousness is closer to one’s consciousness than the unconsciousness, which therefore explains that while Zane was consciously aware that being a ‘bully’ was ‘messed up’, he was unconsciously troubled by his inability to repress his disturbing urges. While Zane discussed other traumatic familial experiences, he often returned to this experience as a reference point, of which he also blames for being expelled from school. Interestingly, Zane mentions his absent relationship with Marco at the height of his difficulties. Robinson and Ryder (2013, p. 438) in their psychosocial perspective on violence argue: Those who experience unsuccessful attachment may continue to perceive others as self-objects to use for their own needs, not recognizing those of others, and producing maladaptive defenses. Failure to form empathy or empathetic failure is one such defense. Violence is another.

Based on the above, it can be said that Marco and Zane’s development of violent practice occurred because of enduring traumatic experiences in chaotic environments. For Marco, being imprisoned required him to adhere to the unwritten prison value systems (Ohlin 1956; Sykes and Messinger 1960; Einat and Einat 2000; Einat 2004), of which includes the prescriptions that inmates should hold anti-authority views, fraternise as little as possible with the prison regime, and be loyal to fellow inmates—i.e. display emotional fortitude and physical manliness, which invariably encompasses violent practice. In great depth, Marco discussed with me how most violent encounters during his first stint of imprisonment was because of ‘grassing’, which Sykes and Messinger (1960, p. 7) define as the ‘betrayal of a fellow captive to the institutional officials’, and alluded that ‘in general, no qualification of mitigating circumstance is recognised’. He provided me with multiple examples of inmates that were considered to be a ‘grass’, and how in the grand scheme of prison culture, those fitting the description of a grass are considered equal to sex offenders and paedophiles, which in his own words are ‘scum’ and the ‘lowest of the low’. Furthermore, he noted the gravitas of violence in the penal system, however it could be assumed that to a certain extent, the transition from his social environment to the prison environment in

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regards to principle was simplistic, given the fact that prisoners who are integrated into organised criminal cultures, or those that are from urban knit communities, social; professional; and progressive reputation may hinder on one’s ability to keep his mouth shut (Parker 1970). Of note, during reflexive observations of the brothers, I could identify their transition of violence from what was initially a defensive mechanism, to something that later became a commodity and physical capital: I found it interesting how Marco and Zane have been able to rationalise their violence, and how they have been able to reflect on such acts from two extreme ends of the spectrum. On one side, they discuss cases of violent practice as something that was forced upon them to engage into avoid victimisation and maintain survival in their respective chaotic milieus. And on the other hand, the brothers reflected on how they employed violence to become feared players in Birmingham’s criminal landscape. Theoretically when I reflect on their positions, the conclusion that I come to is that these are not ‘most men’, but men who felt it was necessary to reaffirm and impose their superiority in what Agamben (2005) calls ‘state of exception’, whereby the dominant force refutes ethical codes.

(Reflexive Extract) Indeed, the above reflexive extract presents the understanding that the values and beliefs that these men own are rare in mainstream society, and can only be ignited through a profound conversion of the individual’s psyche, which therefore separates them from ‘most men’ (Polk 1998; Maruna 2001; Hall 2012; Holligan and Deuchar 2014). Through my ethnographic observations, periodically I would have intense discussions with Marco about the business side of crime, namely organised crime. In such conversations, his views would often provide descriptions of capitalist undertones. As this empirical research required me to unravel the meanings of violent practice, on one particular day at his gym I decided to ask Marco a series of questions that considered the entrepreneurial aspect of his criminality. In doing so, I hoped to further chart his motives of being submerged in the underworld. MR: One thing that fascinates me with your story is your focus on money and the acquisition of money. You talked about how you got involved in a string of armed robberies when you got out of prison. I know it’s easier said than done, but did you ever think about going straight by getting yourself a normal job?

130  M. RAHMAN Marco: Hmm. The reason why I think about money is because everything revolves around it. We can no longer function without it. When I was inside, it did cross my mind to go legit, and when I came out I did try. I applied for a few delivery jobs, but every company wanted experience. Some of them would give me lame reasons. And then I used to think to myself, people with degrees and no criminal records around me are finding it difficult to get jobs, so what fucking chance do I have? Money was a big thing for me, and my thing was one way or another, I’d be getting me some money. I grew up with no finances and my thing was that I didn’t want my adult life to be the same. Soon after, I went back on road again. MR: I see. When you think about money and income generation, what goes through your mind? Marco: A lot of things. Growing up, the family would suffer badly during the winter. We lacked the basics, like heating and hot water. At times, we would go hours or days without electricity because the family had no money to top-up the meter. As a child, these things wouldn’t cross your mind too much, but for me I knew it was happening because the family lacked finances. I would go with my mum to the council office when she’d complain to the officers about damp and other property related stuff. For me to see my mother go through that was painful, and I would always think to myself, even back then, that this could never happen to me. MR: It appears that you knew a lot back then about day-to-day living and finances. How much of that played in your mind during childhood and your adult life? Marco: Of course, it played as a massive part during my childhood. School made it worse. You’d compare yourself to other children and realise how little you have. My family was so broke that me and three siblings used to share one school bag. In different ways, it bothers me emotionally and it’s because I’m from a marginalised background. And I think emotions is a powerful thing, because if you find it difficult to channel your emotions, then you’re absolutely fucked. MR: Do you think emotions play a significant role in the underworld, and if so to what extent did emotions impact you as a person? Marco: Mmm [brief pause]… I think so. A guy in prison told me, that emotions alone can get you 35 to life. We all have emotions, right? I guess on road, you’re not meant to show them, but one way they’ll come out. I think for me, a lot of my problems, including money problems are because of emotions. Growing up, I couldn’t afford the basics because I was broke. Even when I had a legit job, I was still broke. I couldn’t afford to buy a car, and instead would take the train [to work],

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and you know how inflated train fucking prices are. People pick up on these things, and see you differently, especially when others are driving and you’re not. And then you got stress on road, especially when you’re involved and surrounded by badness and madness. You need to keep in check those emotions, as you don’t want to do anything on impulse… On road, I used to always vision the future and think about how to get myself out of the struggle, and I would always start off with thinking about money and would end on money… After all, once you’ve got money, you’ve got everything, or everything falls into place. The thing is, you think about these things, but never speak out about them, and that is a massive struggle itself. You only stop thinking about them once you’ve got all the things in front of you.

Marco and Zane provide the understanding that violent practice was not initially part of their identities; however, their participation in violence, albeit victims or offenders, were facets that they are seemingly unable to repress. While this may be the case, within a Freudian context, their reasoning to partake in violence was exacerbated by their superego, which incorporates the values and moral of society. For the brothers, this is the acknowledgement of traumatic experiences witnessed in their respective milieus, which have fostered upon them the need to engage in violence to survive and avoid further victimisation (Freud 1923). Based on the above excerpt, Marco shows deep concerns about the social inequalities that have occurred throughout his life, chiefly due to the advent of neo-liberalism and all that it entails. Indeed, the privatisation of services, such as jobs, housing and transport has created ‘creative destruction’ in the Western world (Harvey 2005). The reduction of state services, such as social security, has resulted in favourable private alternatives that are driven by economic gain. By default, this marginalises those that are mainly from working-class backgrounds, and it is accumulative experiences that exacerbates individuals to feel physically and symbolically devalued. In my lengthy discussions with Marco, I grasped the material and symbolic successes that he craves. He grew up during the New Labour era that championed raising aspirations, albeit under neoliberal values of meritocracy. However, the Third Way was implemented over a backdrop of toxic structural inequalities that offered young marginalised people a ‘cruel optimism’ (Berlant 2011). In addition, he reveals the importance of economic capital for his purpose of being submerged in the underworld. However, Marco rationalises his position as an offender by offering examples of his attempts to

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‘go legit’. His unsuccessful attempts of becoming a law-abiding citizen seemingly affected his masculine currency. By not being able afford a car when ‘others are driving’ depicts how emasculated Marco felt when he occupied a position in the upperworld. So too, the need for men to possess a level of masculinity has significant relevance when it comes to displaying and exerting dominance and power over their peers. In the previous subsection of this chapter, I offered examples through Clive’s biographical accounts of hypothetical scenarios of harm. Whilst Clive’s scenarios of harm were physical and psychological, it is evident that Marco’s scenarios of harm are underpinned because of symbolic struggle in the everyday. Individuals like him are seduced by the possibilities of hope and aspirations, yet they battle to embrace the material bases to actualise self, which then leads them to think deeply about their purpose in life (Bakkali 2019). Indeed, such existential worries accompanied by everyday exposure to road life, namely underworld activities, contributes towards a vicious cycle of mental trauma and existential insecurities. As Marco puts forward, ‘emotions alone can get you 35 to life’. This powerful statement alone returns to the central argument of this chapter, which is that the containment of harmful dispositions becomes integral for one’s behaviours, interactions and trajectories in the underworld.

Concluding Discussion The biographical accounts in this chapter have provided in-depth understandings of violent men and their criminal interactions. Through theoretical inputs, this chapter charts a strong synergy between traumatic and humiliating experiences during childhood and adolescent years, and the propensity of acquiring a violent identity during adulthood. The narrative accounts have been useful for providing an array of meanings for one’s standpoint in the field, and the transmission of values and common ‘schemes of perceptions’ (Bourdieu 1990, p. 60). The acquired biographical accounts depict the significance of how stories convey understandings of social structures and causal relationships. Scholars and critics may argue the relevance of narratives to social structure, but here we should recall the unspoken and internalised thoughts of Clive and Marco, whose harms are visceral and subsequently deep-rooted in their habitus. So too, stories, as well as scenarios of harm reflect one’s position in the social and their perspectives. The ‘scenarios of harms’ discussed in this chapter were not voiced explicitly. Rather,

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understanding one’s latent forms of harm came because of interrogating silences. Indeed, it is the ‘suffering in silence’ (Glynn 2014, p. 43) that shapes a person’s street field and the kind of narratives that are told. Where most men would walk away from violent confrontations by viewing situations as physical risk, the men in this chapter saw such scenarios as challenges that needed to be dealt with head on. Where most men may ‘talk the talk’ about responding to violent encounters, the men in this chapter ‘walked the walk’, and at the same time ensured that they impose their superiority and manliness in full effect. Where most men would be content in having defective social and familial relationships and dead end jobs, those described in his chapter have constructed themselves of what Ellis et al. (2017, p. 4) consider ‘titans of a free market’, and present the narrative of self-pleasure, which in the grand scheme of things presents one as having a self-centred and self-righteous view of what they inhabit. This chapter concludes the empirical aspects of the book. In the next chapter, through theoretical underpinnings, I revisit the cases and biographical accounts to provide summarised accounts. I conclude by recapping the study and discussing recommendations for future work.

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Parker, T. (1970). The Frying Pan: A Prison and Its Prisoners. London: Panther. Polk, K. (1998). Violence, Masculinity and Evolution: A Comment on Wilson and Daly. Theoretical Criminology, 2(4), 461–469. Polk, K. (1999). Males and Honor Contest Violence. Homicide Studies, 3(1), 6–29. Presser, L., & Sandberg, S. (2015). Introduction: What Is the Story? In L. Presser & S. Sandberg (Eds.), Narrative Criminology: Understanding Stories of Crime (pp. 1–22). London: New York University Press. Ritchie, J. (2014). Book Review: Psychosocial Criminology. Social and Legal Studies, 23(1), 141. Robinson, R. A., & Ryder, J. A. (2013). Psychosocial Perspectives of Girls and Violence: Implications for Policy and Practice. Critical Criminology, 21, 431–445. Roy, K. (2006). Father Stories: A Life Course Examination of Paternal Identity Among Low Income African Men. Journal of Family Issues, 27(1), 31–54. Sandberg, S. (2008). Street Capital: Ethnicity and Violence on the Streets of Oslo. Theoretical Criminology, 12(2), 153–171. Sandberg, S., & Pedersen, W. (2009). Street Capital: Black Cannabis Dealers in a White Welfare State. Bristol: Policy Press. Shammas, V. L., & Sandberg, S. (2015). Bringing Bourdieu to Criminology: Notes on Street Capital and Field Theory. Criminology and Criminal Justice, 16(2), 195–213. Sykes, G., & Messinger, S. (1960). The Inmate Social System. In R. Cloward (Ed.), Theoretical Studies in Social Organization of the Prison. New York: Social Science Council. Thrasher, F. (1927). The Gang: A Study of 1313 in Chicago. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wacquant, L. (2002). Scrutinizing the Street: Poverty, Morality, and the Pitfalls of Urban Ethnography. American Journal of Sociology, 107(6), 1468–1532. Winlow, S., & Hall, S. (2010). Retaliate First: Memory, Humiliation and Male Violence. Crime, Media, Culture, 5(3), 285–304.

CHAPTER 6

Homicide and Organised Crime in Birmingham, West Midlands: Future Directions and Closing Comments

Abstract  This chapter summarises the book and reiterates the main arguments that have been drawn from empirical research. Towards the end of the chapter, recommendations are offered on how we can improve our understanding of organised crime within the context of policy, law enforcement and academia. Keywords  Biography · Birmingham · Case study · Ethics · Ethnography · Glocal · Hitman/Hitmen · Homicide · Industry · Law enforcement · Masculinity · Methodology · Organised crime · Recommendations · Scenarios of harm This book has been about the nature, extent and meaning of violent practice, namely homicide and organised crime in the West Midlands. The arguments and evidence presented in the final few pages sketch out that violent practice, namely fatal violence is a recurring feature in Birmingham’s criminal landscape, and this has been the case since the late nineteenth century. It is difficult to think of the industrial revolution without thinking of the West Midlands, namely the city of Birmingham, which has a longstanding history of being Europe’s epicentre of commerce and industry since the eighteenth century. As this book points out, with Birmingham’s bustling economy came violent conflict from subordinate men, who would happily display toughness in a collective capacity. However, the advent of globalisation in a de-industrialised © The Author(s) 2019 M. Rahman, Homicide and Organised Crime, Palgrave Studies in Risk, Crime and Society, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16253-5_6

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epoch has caused major shifts in masculine identities as well as the functional make up of violent practice and organised crime. The shift from industrial to post-industrial masculine identities, and from collective toughness to entrepreneurially driven violent practice has been unsteady. So too, the empirical findings of this book illuminates that criminal identities, of which entails the use of violence, has been influenced by the demise of traditional structures and the provision of illicit goods and geopolitical influences. Pitts (2008) and Densley (2014) agree that the advent of globalisation has changed the business models of traditional criminal enterprises to accommodate youth gangs. This book has considered how some individuals, who had descriptions of being part of youth fraternities, made the successful leap to criminal enterprise and governance. With this leap came the unavoidable world of violence, and in some cases, fatal violence. Indeed, when masculinity and collective identities are challenged, and contested in street-level organised crime, the masculine readiness to engage in physical violence in response to such challenges is paramount. Simply put, there is no room for compromise or negotiation, as in some cases, it is kill or be killed. This book has also identified the ‘glocal’ influences of homicide within organised crime. The murder of Gary Morgan depicts how fatal violence transcends beyond international borders, and how the ‘glocality’ of this catastrophic crime parallels with the business imperatives (Hall 2012). Through primary accounts, this book established the extent of O’Toole’s violent behaviour in the underworld. Moreover, the accounts have been fruitful to identify his role within criminal organisations. John’s intimate account highlighted that O’Toole never had the temperament of being part of ‘the “business side” of criminal operations’, which invariably means the higher echelons of organised crime. With that being said, John noted that O’Toole was a guy who ‘you could rely on to do your dirty work’. These perspectives parallel the European Commission’s (2001) understanding that traditional hierarchal structures are now being replaced by loose networks of criminals. Moreover, Europol (2006) also argue that criminal groups are also becoming increasingly heterogeneous and dynamically organised in structural terms, moving towards loose networks rather than pyramidal monoliths. Furthermore, law enforcement agencies fail to explore what types of individuals are involved in loose networks. Therefore, it can be argued, that contract killers like O’Toole fit into loose networks for various reasons.

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Of note, organised crime groups that operate within a transnational context are likely to be vigilant of law enforcement due to the expansive nature of their enterprises. The core functionalities of their criminal enterprises mirror regional and national criminal syndicates, which is to acquire profit and power. Second, and as discussed in previous chapters, the maintenance of enterprises requires the use of violence, a commodity which is the common thread for an alternative form of criminal justice. Thus, the role of the hitman is to essentially ‘slip into a city, carry out his “assignment”’ and disappear. In the underworld labour market, contract killers, like O’Toole, are essential commodities for criminal organisations, who will hire out this fatal service, to distance themselves in cases of homicide. Here, it is important to consider the psyche of O’Toole. From the narrative accounts, he was a prolific violent offender who had a penchant for inflicting serious harm. His crimes offer the understanding of extreme hedonism and hyper-masculine behaviour. Indeed, he would have been aware that these traits would earn him respect in the criminal underworld, and therefore the need to maintain this idealised image was essential for his role as a commodifier of death. In Lacanian terms, Zizek (2006) considers this to be the representation of the ‘ideal ego’, whereby an individual constructs their identity in a manner that they wish be perceived in the eyes of others. Moreover, the ‘overkill’ nature of his violence illustrates the understanding of painful jouissance, whereby the pleasure for aggressively rectifying a situation becomes a risk worth taking, which in most cases is barely considered (Winlow and Hall 2009). For O’Toole, as exemplified through his career of violence, this ideal ego has been moulded by wider socio-cultural experiences, which Ellis (2016) rightly argues to be connected to the notions of self-worth and dignity, and the willingness to confront any threats with displays of physical aggression. In short, a contract killing is a trait in the underworld that is employed to maintain a set of relationships. While it is accepted that all contract killings are not carried out by gangland-affiliated hitmen, hits are, therefore, a relatively niche function, essential pragmatically and symbolically. The case study of Richard Deakin is one that entails murder and complex webs of organised crime. Organised crime, violence, and hits specifically tend to be blurred, slippery and indistinct phenomena, and are therefore fiercely resistant to absolute and authorative statements, no matter how tempting these might be. That having been said, it is also possible to use Richard’s murder to reveal a little more about the modus

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operandi of Journeymen hitmen and suggest something of their role within organised crime in the West Midlands. So, in using this murder in this broader way, this book has endeavoured to place it within the context of two other incidents, which was established through intra-familial links and illegal trading networks. Similarly, to O’Toole, the weapon of choice for David Harrison was a firearm. It can be argued that this is a point of interest, given the fact that the United Kingdom has some of the toughest gun control laws in the world, and specifically for Birmingham; a city that was once a proud manufacturer of weaponry in the industrial era, that is now renowned as UK’s gun capital due to a spike in firearms related incidents. In many ways, Harrison almost committed the perfect assassination. He left no forensic evidence at the crime scene and successfully disposed of the used shotgun, which to date, has not be recovered by the police. Interestingly, albeit unsurprisingly, Harrison did not cooperate with police when it came to establishing who ordered Richard’s hit. This characteristic is not foreign with actors in the underworld, and aligns with the notion of omertà (Gambetta 2009), which essentially means to adhere to a code of silence about any criminal activity. By successfully adhering to a code of silence, criminal fraternities can then take control of an alternative criminal justice process, which often entails homicidal reprisals. Thus, by positioning themselves as ‘criminal undertakers’ (Hall 2012), individuals aim to journey from the ranks of the exploited to the exploiters (Winlow 2014). Taken as a whole, the incidents leading up to Richard’s murder would seem to reveal both personal and commercial relationships and an often chaotic world of loyalty, distrust and calculation. In doing so, I argue that several characters within this tragic case were clearly ‘criminal entrepreneurs’ (Winlow 2001; Hobbs 2013)— intelligent, resourceful men who were prepared to use violence, including lethal violence, to achieve their objectives, whether the context for those objectives was legitimate or otherwise. The biographical accounts in this book are consistent with recent reviews of the psychosocial roots in the context of young men (Robinson and Ryder 2013; Holligan and Deuchar 2014; Ellis et al. 2017). As Gates (2006, p. 28) rightfully observes, masculinity is not a collection of male attitudes possessed from birth, but rather is a ‘set of expectations that society deems appropriate for a male subject to exhibit’. This study has established that there is a strong link between traumatic and humiliating experiences during childhood and adolescent years, and the propensity

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of acquiring a violent identity during adulthood. However, as Ellis et al. (2017, p. 14) critically observe, ‘traumatic experience by itself is not enough to drive the individual towards violence’, but rather ‘we must also acknowledge the social and cultural specificities’ of those that we study. So too, this study has also acknowledged the social, cultural, social and economic influences of organised crime and violent practice through several persuasive Bourdieusian theoretical paradigms, and in doing so, it depicts how violent men are often in warfare with their mirror image, as criminal fraternities in the capitalist era undertake ‘special liberties’ (Hall 2012), by configurating their ethical codes (Freud 1923) to employ harmful behaviour to elevate themselves within an asocial hierarchy. As humans, we are neurotic. Our predispositions contain curiosities and we often think of solutions to our complex problems. If we do not think about solutions, then at the very least, we think about the problem. When we have limited control over a situation, we become avid scenario creators. We can tell stories, imagine the experiences of others, reflect on moral dilemmas, contemplate potential explanations and picture future situations. It is nested scenario building that helps us to simulate and reflect in a sophisticated manner on things that range from being trivial to harmful, from lawful to lawless. So too, through biographical and ethnographical accounts, I successfully illustrate how hypothetical scenarios of harm comprise of conditions that are found to be favourable to the individual, but are often shaped by real situations that have been unfavourable to the individual. Indeed, a person’s scenarios can be constructed because of their habitus, that is their ingrained dispositions, and their fields, that is their settings which position their social locations. One could argue that scenarios of harm affect all types of individuals, as it is often difficult to suppress harrowing experiences into one’s unconsciousness. However, as this book reveals, the scenarios of harm for actors in the underworld are visceral, and are impactful to the extent that it becomes influential when shaping their street habitus.

Recommendations for Policy, Law Enforcement and Academics: Future Directions and Potential Implications of the Study The intention of this book was never to provide a ‘generalised’ solution for violence in organised crime, nor to design a policy that would somewhat provide an understanding of ‘reducing’ violence within organised

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crime. The aim of this study has always been to provide a ‘reliable’ and truthful account of the nature and meaning of violence and lethal violence in organised crime within a concentrated and overlooked locale. While there is a current UK focus on combatting criminal enterprises, one of the intentions of this research was to unpack how effective or ineffective current policy and legislation is in relation to criminal groups. As discussed in Chapter 2, the current political landscape of serious and organised crime needs dedicated and critical attention. Within a policy standpoint, combatting organised crime in the UK needs to be taken seriously. In the latest Serious and Organised Crime Strategy (GOV.UK 2018), the Home Office committed £48 million for tackling organised crime in 2019. Of note, the National Crime Agency estimate that organised crime economically costs the UK at least £37 billion a year. Put simply, a £48 million budget is not going to eradicate a £37 billion problem. In addition, what is also concerning is the British government’s approach to crimes that are a threat to national security. Both terrorism and organised crime are deemed to be national threats to security, however there are more fatalities in the UK because of organised crime, than all other national security threats combined. Yet, in 2017, £707 million was put forward by central government for counter-terrorism policing, and another £160 million is due to be funded in 2019. In sum, a cash injection is much needed to tackle organised crime and for any national strategy to successfully work. As mentioned, organised crime is a national issue, and by default this warrants local, regional and national law enforcement responses. Although each law enforcement agency leads its own operations, they also develop and disseminate intelligence to partners to disrupt criminal operations. This is no different when responding to serious and organised crime. Periodically, one of the issues that law enforcement agencies face is a lack of communication and coordination with each other. By no means is this due to unskilled agents. Rather, often what facilitates issues of communication and coordination in any organisation is strategic responses to matters that are centralised but not standardised. As it currently stands, responses to organised crime in the UK are centralised, which means that measures are bespoke to a particular region. Indeed, this is effective for crimes that are in fixed terrain, however given the sophisticated and glocal nature of organised crime, responses should angle towards being standardised, which would mean that strategic responses are homogenous and streamlined across all locales. Invariably,

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this would also ensure a more strategic response to combatting serious and organised crime on a national scale. Having said this, I am conscious that the rigidity of standardisation may be problematic, as law enforcement are often challenged by finances, risks, lack of approval from senior stakeholders and other intersectional facets. Nonetheless, I would advocate law enforcement agents to adopt a rudimental unanimity understanding of organised crime and key factors that facilitate this serious crime. While the National Crime Agency have estimated that serious and organised crime has an economic cost of £37 billion a year, we should be mindful that this is a ‘dark figure’ (Coleman and Moynihan 1996), which is a term employed by criminologists to describe the amount of unreported or undiscovered crime. One of the biggest forms of crime, even in organised crime settings is online fraud. Financial estimations within the context of organised online fraud vary, and the same can be said for crimes on the ‘dark net’ (Bartlett 2015). Those that commit these crimes live in the analogue world, however their nefarious actions occupy the digital world. Hence, through Bourdieusian epistemologies, there is potential scope for scholars theorise the digital world as a field that is an extension of street culture and street habitus. To achieve this methodologically, I believe adopting ethnomethodologies is crucial for deep insights about issues that are endemic. Ethically, however, ethnographers must be mindful to treat research subjects with integrity, compassion and empathy. Integrity is a crucial characteristic that should be central to all aspects of academic inquiry. Often, however, compassion is confused with empathy. Compassion is widely defined as the ability to understand the emotional state of an individual. Having compassion entails the desire to alleviate suffering. So too, empathy, as most people know of it, is the ability to literally or figuratively put yourself in the position of another person. If ethnographers incorporate these traits in their work, naturally it will generate novel studies that exude academic rigour.

Closing Comments For most of the men in this study, violence is a prized and marketable asset. Indeed, it is violence that becomes a constant reminder of the nasty realities of the world that they have chosen. For these men, with opportunity came conflict, a vital ingredient for continuous and sophisticated criminality. Along with requisite ambition and aspiration, all those

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involved in this subculture are comfortable for the most part, and live with conflict and its consequences. No matter how at peace they may seem with themselves, and no matter how much they enjoy themselves along the way, they never forget that violence is an alternative form of criminal justice, and more importantly, a justice of self.

References Bartlett, J. (2015). The Dark Net. London: Windmill Books. Coleman, C., & Moynihan, J. (1996). Understanding Crime Data: Haunted by the Dark Figure. Buckingham: Open University Press. Densley, J. (2014). Its Gang Life, but Not as We Know It: The Evolution of Gang Business. Crime and Delinquency, 60(4), 517–546. Ellis, A. (2016). Men, Masculinities and Violence: An Ethnographic Study. London: Routledge. Ellis, A., Winlow, S., & Hall, S. (2017). ‘Throughout My Life I’ve Had People Walk All Over Me’: Trauma in the Lives of Violent Men. The Sociological Review, 65(4), 1–15. European Commission. (2001). Towards a European Strategy to Prevent Organised Crime. Brussels: Commission of the European Communities. Europol. (2006). Organised Crime and Threat Assessment. Available at: https://www.europol.europa.eu/activities-services/main-reports/octa-2006eu-organised-crime-threat-assessment. Last accessed 26 Sept 2018. Freud, S. (1923). The Ego and the Id. SE, 19, 1–66. Gambetta, D. (2009). Codes of the Underworld: How Criminals Communicate. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Gates, P. (2006). Detecting Men: Masculinity and the Hollywood Detective Film. Albany, NY: State of New York Press. GOV.UK. (2018). Serious Organised Crime Strategy. Available at: https://www. gov.uk/government/publications/serious-and-organised-crime-strategy-2018. Last accessed 12 Dec 2018. Hall, S. (2012). Theorizing Crime and Deviance: A New Perspective. London: Sage. Hobbs, D. (2013). Lush Life: Constructing Organized Crime in the UK. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Holligan, C., & Deuchar, R. (2014). What Does It Mean to Be a Man? Psychosocial Undercurrents in the Voices of Incarcerated (Violent) Scottish Teenage Offenders. Criminology and Criminal Justice, 15(3), 361–377. Pitts, J. (2008). Reluctant Gangsters: The Changing Face of Youth Crime. Devon: Willan.

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Robinson, R. A., & Ryder, J. A. (2013). Psychosocial Perspectives of Girls and Violence: Implications for Policy and Practice. Critical Criminology, 21, 431–445. Winlow, S. (2001). Badfellas: Crime, Tradition and New Masculinities. Oxford: Berg. Winlow, S. (2014). Some Thoughts on Steve Hall’s Theorizing Crime and Deviance: A New Perspective. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Criminology, 6(2), 168–193. Winlow, S., and Hall, S. (2009). Retaliate First: Memory, Humiliation and Male Violence. Crime Media and Culture, 5(3), 285–304. Zizek, S. (2006). How to Read Lacan. London: Norton.

Index

A Actus reus, 37 Adams family, 17, 73, 74, 79, 80, 82 Aetiology, 4, 47, 53 Altheide, D.L., 13 Anderson, E., 6, 42, 122 Anslow, John, 18, 90, 91, 100–104 Arin, C., 40 Astbury, Leigh, 92, 99, 103 Atkinson, P., 9 B Bakkali, Y., 5, 132 Bhaskar, R., 7 Billy Kimber, 31 Biographical accounts, 10, 15, 18, 105, 110, 111, 125, 132, 133, 140 Birmingham, 1–3, 5, 12, 14, 16–18, 26–28, 30–36, 39, 47, 53, 54, 66, 71, 72, 75–77, 93, 95, 100, 105, 112, 117, 122, 129, 137, 140 Black Country, 27

Bourdieu, P., 52, 53, 110, 111, 114, 123, 132 Brookman, F., 37, 41 Burmmagem boys, 31, 32 C Capital, 4, 5, 39, 52, 53, 85, 95, 96, 110, 113, 124, 129, 131, 140 Capitalism, 35, 49 Case study, 12, 13, 15, 49, 54, 91, 92, 103, 139 Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS), 35 Chicago School, 9 Chinn, C., 26, 28, 30–32 Christie, N., 4 Class, 30, 32, 34, 35, 39, 41, 52, 115 Competition, 30, 33, 35, 48 Consciousness, 105, 123, 128 Consumerism, 35, 36, 48 Contract killing, 19, 65, 69, 85, 90, 102, 139 County lines, 46, 47 Criminal entrée, 124

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 M. Rahman, Homicide and Organised Crime, Palgrave Studies in Risk, Crime and Society, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16253-5

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148  Index Criminal entrepreneurship, 41, 101, 103 Criminal groups, 5, 6, 17, 19, 26, 30, 37, 40, 46, 54, 138, 142 Criminal networks, 5, 16, 17, 26, 30, 75, 81, 103 Criminal undertakers, 49, 92, 140 Criminological autopsy, 10 Critical realism, 7, 8 Cultural homicide, 39 D Dark Ages, 48 Dash-cam ethnography, 9–11 Dawes, Robert, 78–84 Deakin, Richard, 13, 17, 85, 90, 91, 97, 139 Definition, 16, 37, 42–46, 84, 98 Denscombe, M., 12, 14 Densley, J., 5, 19, 45, 46, 49, 50, 138 Deuchar, R., 5, 8, 16, 19, 36, 39, 110, 113, 119, 129, 140 Drugs, 17, 42–46, 66, 71, 73, 75, 78–82, 92, 93, 96, 100, 104, 112, 114, 117, 118, 121, 124, 125 E Ego, 51–53, 139 Ego-ideal, 52 Eisner, M., 29, 30 Ellis, A., 5, 8, 16, 19, 33, 36, 39, 47, 49, 84, 90, 133, 139–141 Epistemology, 6, 52, 53 Ethics, 15, 51 Ethnography ethnographic content analysis (ECA), 13 ethnomethodology, 9, 13 visual ethnography, 10 Europol, 138

F Fatal violence, 5, 29, 36, 39, 41, 42, 53, 102, 137, 138 Field, 5, 9, 18, 47, 50, 52, 53, 110, 111, 114, 123, 124, 132, 141, 143 Fieldwork, 10, 11, 13, 14, 45, 47, 53, 77 Foucault, M., 38 Fraser, A., 8, 16, 19, 39, 84, 90, 110, 123 Freud, S., 8, 50, 51, 53, 122, 123, 128, 131, 141 G Gambetta, D., 66, 140 Gangs, 5, 17, 29–32, 36, 43, 45, 46, 49, 77, 113, 138 Glocal, 17, 26, 44, 49, 67, 71, 78, 79, 82, 84, 124, 138, 142 Glynn, M., 113, 133 Goffman, A., 6 Gooderson, P., 28, 30, 31 Government, 17, 33, 34, 43, 46, 142 Gun Quarter, 27, 28 H Habitus, 52, 53, 110, 123, 132, 141 Hall, S., 5, 7, 8, 16, 28–30, 35, 38, 39, 41, 47–49, 83, 92, 94, 105, 110, 119, 122, 129, 138–141 Hallsworth, S., 19, 35 Harm, 2, 4, 6–8, 15, 19, 28, 36, 40, 42, 47–50, 72, 83, 92, 94, 96, 105, 110, 111, 120, 122, 123, 125, 132, 133, 139, 141 Hayward, K., 35, 36, 38, 39 History, 16, 26, 28, 29, 93, 94, 105, 137

Index

Hitman/Hitmen, 17, 19, 64–68, 71, 82–84, 90–92, 94, 102, 104, 105, 139, 140 HM Government, 43, 46 Hobbs, D., 8, 9, 16, 17, 19, 32, 33, 38, 39, 41, 43, 44, 49, 73, 83, 84, 104, 140 Homicide. See Cultural homicide; Instrumental homicide; Situational homicide Honour, 29, 30, 39, 40, 119 Humiliation, 18, 19, 105, 122, 124 I Id. See Freud, S. Industrial Revolution, 26, 27, 36, 137 Industry. See Industrial Revolution Instrumental homicide, 40 Interviews, 14, 15, 67, 68, 90, 91, 95, 101, 111 Introduction, 94 J Jewkes, Y., 13 Jimmy Moody, 67–71, 82 K Katz, J., 105, 122 Kray Twins, 41, 69 L Language, 7, 16, 72, 110, 111, 119 Latent, 51, 124, 128, 133 Law enforcement, 5, 17, 43, 45, 46, 67, 73, 80, 138, 139, 142, 143 Legislation, 33, 44, 124, 142 Legitimated, 28, 32, 38, 39, 41, 48, 49, 53, 64, 73, 81, 103, 111, 121, 124

  149

Levi, M., 43, 93 Luckenbill, D., 38 M MacIntyre, D., 13, 17, 64, 65, 67, 91, 92, 94, 98, 102, 104, 105 Manufacturing, 27, 33 Maruna, S., 129 Masculine honour, 38, 40, 64 Masculinity, 16, 31, 40, 84, 119, 122, 132, 138, 140 Matthews, R., 6 McLean, R., 19, 46 Mens rea, 37 Methodology, 8, 12, 13 Modernity, 26 Monbiot, G., 35 Morgan, Gary, 13, 17, 76, 77, 138 Murder, 12, 13, 17, 26, 36, 37, 41, 42, 65, 67, 74, 75, 77, 80, 84, 85, 90–94, 96, 98, 99, 102–104, 125, 138–140 N Narrative, 8, 11–13, 15, 16, 40, 72, 95, 96, 104, 110, 123, 125, 126, 132, 133, 139 Narrative criminology, 15, 16, 110 National Crime Agency (NCA), 43, 45, 46, 142, 143 Neoliberalism, 34, 35, 49, 131 Neutralisation, 105 Nexis, 12, 13, 90 O Offender, 2, 14–16, 18, 32, 37, 38, 42, 47, 50, 65, 90, 101, 105, 110, 118, 125, 128, 131, 139 Office for National Statistics, 5, 36 Omerta, 40

150  Index Ontology, 6, 7 Organised crime, 2, 5, 8, 12, 13, 15–18, 26, 30, 32, 36, 37, 39– 47, 49, 52–54, 64, 66, 67, 70, 72, 73, 78, 79, 82–85, 91–94, 102–104, 117, 129, 137–143 O’Toole, Peter, 17, 18, 66–68, 71–85, 138–140 P Participants (research), 3, 10, 14, 15, 66 Peaky blinders, 28, 31, 32 Pitts, J., 49, 138 Pizzaro, J., 39, 40 Policy, 5, 13, 33, 43, 44, 54, 141, 142 Polk, K., 38, 114, 121, 129 Post-modernity, 26 Preconsciousness, 128 Presser, L., 15, 16, 110 Privatisation, 131 Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA), 70, 71 Pseudo-pacification, 30, 33, 48, 49 Psychoanalysis, 18, 50, 52, 53 Psychosocial, 119, 126, 128, 140 Pubs, 30, 31, 82, 83 R Rahman, M., 13, 38, 49, 64, 68, 105 Ray, L., 38, 39, 105 Real, 7, 12, 28, 40, 47, 51, 73, 111, 141 Recommendations, 18, 133, 141 Reflexivity, 9, 13, 75, 119, 129 Repression, 53, 105 Richardson gang, 41, 78

S Sandberg, S., 15, 110, 113, 123, 124 Sayer, 7, 8 Scenarios of harm, 19, 111, 132, 141 Semi-structured interviews, 13, 110 Serious Crimes Act, 44, 45 Situational homicide, 26, 38, 39 Skeggs, B., 53 Sloggers, 28, 30–32, 36, 39 Special liberty, 41, 49 Spectator violence, 113, 119 Street field, 110, 113, 124, 133 Street habitus, 110, 111, 123, 125, 141, 143 Superego, 51, 52, 131 Symbolic violence, 33, 110 T Thatcher, Margaret, 34 Theory, 7, 16, 18, 29, 49, 50, 110 Thrasher, F., 9, 113 Tolson, A., 31 Trauma, 2, 18, 19, 105, 113, 114, 117, 119, 121, 123–125, 128, 131, 132, 140, 141 Typology, 64, 94, 102 U Ultra-realism, 7, 8, 16, 18, 47 Unconsciousness, 50, 53, 111, 123, 125, 128, 141 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), 5, 40, 81 V Venkatesh, S., 6 Victim, 3, 4, 15, 37, 38, 42, 65, 69, 71, 72, 75, 111, 116, 118, 120, 121, 131

Index

Violence, 2–5, 7, 8, 12, 18, 19, 28–33, 38–42, 46–48, 50, 53, 54, 66, 71, 72, 75, 82, 90–93, 102, 103, 110, 111, 113, 114, 117– 126, 128, 129, 131, 138–144 von Lampe, K., 30, 32, 41, 42, 44, 73 W Wacquant, L., 39, 123 West Midlands, 5, 12, 14, 16, 18, 19, 26, 33, 46, 54, 77, 91, 92, 94, 99, 103, 137, 140 Willis, P., 35 Winlow, S., 5, 7, 8, 16, 19, 30, 31, 33, 35, 38, 47–49, 82, 83, 90, 92, 105, 110, 119, 122, 139, 140

  151

Wolfgang, M., 38 Working-class, 26, 28, 30, 31, 33–36, 78, 82, 83, 110, 131 Wright, A., 43 Y Yin, R., 12 Z Zizek, S., 49, 50, 139