Scotland’s Gang Members: Life and Crime in Glasgow [1st ed.] 9783030477516, 9783030477523

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xxi
It’s the Scheme that Binds Us (Robert McLean, James A. Densley)....Pages 1-27
Growing Pains (Robert McLean, James A. Densley)....Pages 29-49
The School Years (Robert McLean, James A. Densley)....Pages 51-70
Breaking Through (Robert McLean, James A. Densley)....Pages 71-88
Things Get Serious (Robert McLean, James A. Densley)....Pages 89-108
Nightmare on The Street (Robert McLean, James A. Densley)....Pages 109-126
Show Me the Money (Robert McLean, James A. Densley)....Pages 127-153
All Things Must Pass (Robert McLean, James A. Densley)....Pages 155-162
Back to the Future (Robert McLean, James A. Densley)....Pages 163-175
Conclusion (Robert McLean, James A. Densley)....Pages 177-184
Back Matter ....Pages 185-188

Citation preview

Scotland’s Gang Members Life and Crime in Glasgow

Robert McLean · James A. Densley

Scotland’s Gang Members “Scotland’s Gang Members successfully harmonizes gang research and narrative criminology. McLean and Densley defy convention by interweaving indepth life history accounts with core substantive themes in the literature. They expertly situate people within places and institutions, groups and networks. The challenges young people face in navigating family, school, neighborhood, and imprisonment are laid bare. The evolving gang landscape, including its territoriality, relationships, and conflicts, is captured excellently. Readers will depart with a new understanding of gangs and violence and hope for the future of young people in Glasgow and beyond.” —David C. Pyrooz, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Colorado Boulder

Robert McLean · James A. Densley

Scotland’s Gang Members Life and Crime in Glasgow

Robert McLean Interdisciplinary Research Unit on Crime, Policing and Social Justice University of the West of Scotland Paisley, Scotland

James A. Densley School of Law Enforcement & Criminal Justice Metropolitan State University Saint Paul, MN, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-47751-6 ISBN 978-3-030-47752-3 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47752-3

(eBook)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020 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, express 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: Richard Johnson/Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For Hendo—Backpooost!!! I’m going to miss you mate. —Robert McLean For Andrew—because I love you, and because your brother got the last one. —James A. Densley

Foreword

In a recent Scottish Government-commissioned report, Batchelor, Armstrong, and MacLellan (2019) draw attention to a range of official sources that confirm that rates of violence across Scotland have fallen significantly over the past decade. However, the report also highlights that some communities still experience a “disproportionate level of violence” (p. 4) and that, in 2017/2018, Glasgow had the highest number of homicide cases in Scotland with the majority being committed by young men and typically involving a knife or other sharp instrument. Given that some of the most socially disadvantaged areas are located within the Glasgow area (Scottish Government, 2020), it is unsurprising to find higher than average levels of violence still occurring there. Against the historical backdrop of a city that was once dominated by heavy industry and overcrowded tenements, working-class young men from deprived Glaswegian neighbourhoods have traditionally been driven by a culture of honour (Deuchar, 2016). Territorial street gangs have been part of the city’s landscape for over 150 years.

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A wide range of research has drawn attention to the way in which street gangs in the west of Scotland have tended always to be inherently different from their counterparts in major cities in England and Wales—with largely flexible structures, a tendency towards recreational, territorial violence and no intent to engage in organised forms of criminal activity focused on financial gain (i.e. Bannister, Pickering, Batchelor, Kintrea, and McVie, 2010; Deuchar, 2009; Fraser, 2015; Kintrea, Bannister, Pickering, Suruki, & Reid, 2008). However, ground-breaking insights by McLean (2018, 2019) challenged these traditional assumptions, suggesting that gangs in the west of Scotland may increasingly exist on an evolving continuum. Drawing on earlier insights in London (Densley, 2013), McLean outlined how ‘young street gangs’ (YSGs) have the potential to evolve into ‘young crime gangs’ (YCGs). And, in some cases, as members become adults and financial gains increase, the gang’s purpose may ultimately become one purely focused on business—at which point the gang may evolve into an organised crime group (OCG). Importantly, McLean (2018) notes that not all young teams will evolve into YCGs in Glasgow; nor will all YCGs evolve into OCGs. Rather, gang evolution is a potential and requires ‘not only the right blend of individuals being brought together but also the right conditions’ (McLean, 2018, p. 319). With the publication of Scotland’s Gang Members: Life and Crime in Glasgow, we gain a close-up, real-world insight into what can actually happen when such a blend of individuals and conducive social conditions converge. Robert McLean and James Densley bring us right into the hearts and minds of the ‘young team’ as they document the lived experiences and existential transitions of Leo, Ralph, Mikey, Donnie and their various friends and associates in and around Glasgow in the 1990s and 2000s. They skilfully and creatively present insights into the lives of these young men in relation to gang onset, continuity, change, and desistance. They chronicle the multiple marginality that first stimulated their violence; the ways in which masculinity was socially constructed and reinforced within their gang culture; how they carved out and built their street reputations and status; the way in which they individually and collectively transitioned from street violence to organised crime as they became the founding members of The Street Boys gang; and ultimately

Foreword

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how they began to disengage from gang culture and (in most cases) desist from crime. Importantly, McLean and Densley capture the geographical, historical, and cultural specificities particular to the west of Scotland that provided the backdrop to the young men’s gang-oriented criminality (Fraser, 2015). The reader thus becomes acquainted with the masculine subcultural importance placed upon building street reputation, demonstrating physical prowess and toughness, engaging in football and sectarian-oriented tribalism, and gaining sizeable criminal capital as masculine performance. Throughout, the authors bring to their work a special ability to relate to their research participants; they appreciate and capture their personal challenges, while also outlining the sometimes brutal nature of the violence they engaged in. In doing so, McLean and Densley write about these men in a way that is neither judgemental nor overly excusing. Notably, against a landscape where the academic discipline of Criminology is awash with gang studies, McLean and Densely’s work is non-traditional in its methodological and presentational approach—and herein lies its most prominent strength. Drawing on elements of Narrative Criminology, the authors form a case study of The Street Boys gang and its members and significant events, by examining and unpacking the young men’s stories and mapping these stories onto their patterns of criminality (Presser, & Sandberg, 2015). As Sandberg and Ugelvik (2016, p. 129) highlight, the sharing of stories is “an important part of the human condition” and storytelling is a great device for making simple what is complicated. By drawing on this creative and compelling methodological approach, McLean and Densley provide the reader with a deep and candid account of the nature and meaning of violence and organised crime in the west of Scotland during a particular period where gang culture was hugely prominent. The narrative insights turn the complex lives of the young men into a clear textural description that is refreshingly easy to read. At times, the richness of the narrative data combined with the lucidity of the authors’ analysis of key incidents and stories gives the reader the impression of actually being in the neighbourhoods and communities where the young men operated.

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Foreword

The release of this book comes at a time when UK politicians are recognising the need for a public health approach to tackling gang-related violence (HM Government, 2018). At its heart, this involves developing insights into the deep-rooted causes of violence, drawing on smart use of data and working across organisational boundaries (Catch 22, 2019). This focus has become embedded within HM Government’s (2018) Serious Violence Strategy, which argues that “tackling serious violence is not a law enforcement issue alone [but] requires a multiple strand approach involving a range of partners across different sectors” (p. 9). Given the strongly recognised link between drugs and serious violence, HM Government’s strategy is focused on four key themes: “tackling County Lines and misuse of drugs, early intervention and prevention, supporting communities and partnerships, and an effective law enforcement and criminal justice response” (ibid.). Importantly, the strategy identifies the need for Police and Crime Commissioners and Directors of Public Health to work closely together, particularly with regard to drug and alcohol treatment and prevention services. These principles draw very much on the model in place in Glasgow, where the issues of knife crime and gang violence have been treated like an epidemic or disease and a focus on prevention through multi-agency intervention work was pioneered by the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit over a decade ago (Deuchar, 2013; Williams, Currie, Linden, & Donelly, 2014). It is fair to say that the city has experienced a considerable reported decline in street violence and knife crime incidents since the days when Leo, Ralph, Mikey, and Donnie were active (see Batchelor et al., 2019), and many attribute this to the numerous intervention strategies that have been put in place, focused on the adoption of a ‘public health’ perspective on violence. However, it is also true to say that while these somewhat reactive, problem-solving interventions have seen considerable recorded success, the underlying structural issues (including poverty, unemployment, and social inequality) that often cause gang membership, violence, drug misuse, and organised criminality still persist. Within this context, McLean and Densley’s work provides a compelling reminder of the lethal consequences that can emerge when the root causes of marginality remain unresolved.

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This is a first-rate text, carefully researched, refreshingly creative, and innovative in approach. It is accessibly written not only for academics and practitioners but also for the general public. A must-read for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the structural backdrop of gang violence and its relationship with organised crime in the west of Scotland.

Ross Deuchar University of the West of Scotland Paisley, Scotland

References Bannister, J., Pickering, J., Batchelor, S., Kintrea, K., & McVie, S. (2010). Troublesome youth groups, gangs and knife carrying in Scotland. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Batchelor, S., Armstrong, S., & MacLellan, D. (2019). Taking stock of violence in Scotland. Glasgow: Scottish Government. Catch 22 (2019). Tackling crime together: A public health approach. London: Catch 22. Densley, J. (2013). How gangs work: An ethnography of youth violence. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Deuchar, R. (2009). Gangs, marginalised youth and social capital. Stoke on Trent: Trentham. Deuchar, R. (2013). Policing youth violence: Transatlantic connections. London: IOE Press. Deuchar, R. (2016). Scottish youth gangs. In H. Croall, G. Mooney & M. Munro (Eds.), Crime, justice and society in Scotland. London: Routledge. Fraser, A. (2015). Urban legends: Gang identity in the post-industrial city. Oxford: Oxford University Press. HM Government (2018). Serious violence strategy. Retrieved from https://www. gov.uk/government/publications/serious-violence-strategy. Kintrea, K., Bannister, J., Pickering, J., Suruki, N., & Reid, M. (2008). Young people and territoriality in British cities. York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation. McLean, R. (2018). An evolving gang model in contemporary Scotland. Deviant Behavior, (39), 309–321.

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McLean, R. (2019). Gangs, drugs and (dis)organised crime. Bristol: Bristol University Press. Presser, L., & Sandberg, S. (2015). Narrative criminology: Understanding stories of crime. New York: New York University Press. Sandberg, S., & Ugelvik, T. (2016). The past, present, and future of narrative criminology: A review and an invitation. Crime Media Culture, (12), 129– 136. Scottish Government (2020). Scottish index of multiple deprivation. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Retrieved from: https://www.gov.scot/collections/sco ttish-index-of-multiple-deprivation-2020/. Williams, D. J., Currie, D., Linden, W., & Donelly, P. (2014). Addressing gangrelated violence in Glasgow: A preliminary pragmatic quasi-experimental evaluation of the Community Initiative to Reduce Violence (CIRV). Aggression and Violent Behavior, (19), 686–691.

Acknowledgments

Robert McLean: I have many people to mention so please bear with me. I would like to thank my loving wife Nicola, and the children Jack, Max, Chloe, Clair, Faith and Jackson. I would also like to mention my brothers William, Graeme (his brother Robert), Leonard, and my other siblings Hamish, Cameron and Eilidh. I would also like to mention all their children in Gabriella, Izzy, Ciera, Leo and Kay. I would like to thank Allan, who earned the right to be called Dad. I would also like to mention his new family, and thank Elizabeth for once again allowing us to see a smile on Allan’s face, as we had been so worried, for so long, after my mother sadly passed. I want to mention my extended family. First of all, my in-laws Sheila, Gordon, Jasmine, John, Tam and his family. My aunts—Mary, Kit, Annie, Rosie, and Catharine—and my uncles—Jamie, George, the two Johns, Peter, and Jim—and all the rest, and in particular, Uncle S. I would like to mention my cousins in Mush and his three brothers, Annie, Meme and her countless siblings and three kids, Karen and Jojo, Chaz, Andy, James, Ross T, the English mob, and the rest. Earlier this year we lost someone very close to ourselves in Hendo. Alongside Steve, Fraser, Shand, Andy and other friends, or those I

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socialised with, or ran in the same circles as, such as Lee, Fraser C, wee Gareth, Johnny W, and Jamie, and others who have gone too soon, I learned that life is fleeting. All too often people go without us really getting to tell them what they mean to us. Similarly, we are usually guilty of only looking to our nearest and dearest in the present time, and overlook the part that, in reality, a wide variety of people play. Many come and go, sometimes so briefly, yet play a significant part in shaping our memories and indeed who we are, sometimes without us even noticing until it is all too late. I too am guilty of this, and regret the times that I did not keep in touch or I let a friendship fade, or let petty feuds get in the way, or worst of all, simply did not take the time to get to know someone. I would like to mention my friends from Erskine, like Gary, Moe, Dempsey, Geo, Wade, Fuzzy, Wullie A and his brother, Scott, Skippy (see I mentioned you this time, lol), Purdy, Gordy, Drummy, Dooltz and his brothers, Finley, Chewy and his bro. I would like to mention my friends from Govan, like Steg, Scotty, Jerry (fae pollok), Haddow, Denzo, Del, and Goffer. I would like to mention friends from Paisley, Barrhead, and the footy, like Gav, Shearer, Don, Davie aka tights, Paul Macca, wee Mick C, Rydo and the Madco FC, Adds, Murphy, Pratty, the Hendersons, Tommy, Roy and Danny, Richie, Fleming, Ears, and all the rest from Bridge, Cobras and Croft FC. As stated earlier, I would like to mention all of those I was friends with but for whatever reason are no longer in touch with. Whether it faded, we grew apart, or whatever, the irony is when we see each other we speak as though the last time we hung out was only yesterday. These people have played a huge part in shaping the amazing memories I have. To Sean, Henry, Terris, Davie G, John Mck, McShane, Scott and Ross McKee, Chrissy and Iain T, Big Nicky C, Nicol, Ian, Straiten and Co, Big Simon, Beard, KP, Bistow, Algie and his lot (Kev, Albert, Davie, Chris), Price, Spice, Big Al, and all those from Bagarren, Gallowhill, Renfrew, Govan, the Nav’s (i.e. Steve, Campbell, Kenko, Camy, Ramsey), the church, and the wider west coast, there are far too many to mention—thank you. I would like to also mention family friends like Clair and Paul and kids, Tracey, Sharon and David, and the rest.

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I would like to sincerely thank my co-author James for putting up with me (and having to learn to translate Glaswegian!), Prof. Simon Harding, Prof. Ross Deuchar, Prof. Chris Holligan, Dr. Carlton Brick, Dr. Gareth Rice, Dr. Iain McPhee, Dr. Geraldine OD, Dr. Alan Moore, Dr. Irene Rafanell, and the rest of the Criminal Justice Dept at UWS. I would like to mention my mate Jack. I hope you have found peace mate wherever you are. I would like to last of all mention my mum. I love you so much, and life has never been the same since you passed away that clear spring morning. I miss you every day like you would not believe. I would of course like to thank God for the life, the blessings, and the salvation he has given. James A. Densley: Working with Robert McLean is a pleasure and privilege and I’m very grateful he invited me on this journey into Glasgow’s underworld. His expert fieldwork is the spine of this book and the people who spoke their truth to him are its heart—sincere thanks to all of them for trusting us with their stories. Thank you to my friend and collaborator Ross Deuchar for writing the excellent foreword and for continuing to push both Robert and I to be better scholars and better people. And thanks to another good friend and colleague, David Pyrooz, for reviewing a draft of the book (in record time!) and offering insightful comments. To my brilliant colleagues at Metropolitan State University, and to Jillian Peterson, my partner in crime at The Violence Project, thanks for your enthusiastic support. And thanks to the team at Palgrave Macmillan for helping bring this book to market. I grew up Leicester, not Glasgow, but writing this book had me reminiscing about friends past and present who in ways large and small shaped my life today. To all of them, thank you. Writing a book is a labour of love and would not be possible without the patience and understanding of my family. To my Mum, Dad, and sister, my in-laws, and especially to my wife Emily and children Alex and Andrew, thank you for reminding me always why I do this work. This book is for you.

Contents

1

It’s the Scheme that Binds Us A Brief History of Gangs and Gang Research in Glasgow The Current Study Govan Preview of the Book References

1 2 9 16 19 21

2

Growing Pains Leo Raph Mikey Donnie Concluding Remarks References

29 29 36 41 44 48 49

3

The School Years With a Little Help from My Friends A School and Scheme Divided

51 51 57

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Concluding Remarks References

69 70

4

Breaking Through Moving on Up Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting Concluding Remarks References

71 71 79 86 87

5

Things Get Serious In Too Deep Blood on the Streets Prison Time Concluding Remarks References

89 90 96 101 107 107

6

Nightmare on The Street The New Frontier (Dis)Organising for Crime References

109 110 119 126

7

Show Me the Money Go Big or Go Home The Meeting (Getting the Gang Back Together) Concluding Remarks References

127 140 145 151 152

8

All Things Must Pass Disengagement and Desistance Where Are They Now? References

155 157 160 161

9

Back to the Future Implications for Research and Practice References

163 171 173

Contents

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Conclusion Why This Book? Capturing the Scene with Narrative Criminology: Strengths and Limitations Final Remarks References

Index

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177 177 180 182 183 185

About the Authors

Robert McLean is lecturer in the Interdisciplinary Research Unit on Crime, Policing and Social Justice at the University of the West of Scotland. James A. Densley is professor and chair of the School of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice at Metropolitan State University, part of the Minnesota State system.

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1 It’s the Scheme that Binds Us

Glasgow has a tough reputation. Sectarian violence, gangs, and knife crime have ebbed and flowed with time, but they are a constant feature of the city’s modern history, to the extent that they are embedded into its social fabric (Fraser, 2015). Living in the post-industrial city during the 1990s and early 2000s was like navigating a minefield for many young, white working-class boys. Conflicts unresolved and frustrations primed to explode lay hidden beneath the surface of every housing scheme. There was an inevitable loss of innocence. Children, ground into the mould were on high alert for someone or something out of place. They traversed “invisible” borders by a combination of gut and luck (Pickering, Kintrea, & Bannister, 2012), adhering to unwritten rules about what words to speak, what clothes to wear, and what side of the street to walk on. When they were asked, “where you from mate?”, “you smoke?”, or “could you tap me a pound?”, the questions were loaded and the answers could, in some cases, dictate who lived or died that day. Fights with bats, bottles, bricks, and blades were routine, so much so that adults and passers-by would barely blink at groups of young boys, some as young as 10, bathed in blood, lashing out at one another in a busy city centre during business hours. © The Author(s) 2020 R. McLean and J. A. Densley, Scotland’s Gang Members, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47752-3_1

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Around the turn of the Millennium, Glasgow’s violent crime rate was three times greater than London’s (Deuchar, 2013). By 2005, the city had six times as many gangs as the English capital, despite the population of London dwarfing that of the whole of Scotland (Adam, 2018). Gang youth were fighting over turf and, in some cases, drug markets, but for the most part they were fighting just because. A United Nations report said Scotland was the most violent country in the developed world (UNODC, 2005). Scotland endured an unprecedented 137 homicides that year and in Glasgow, which was shamefully named the murder capital of Europe by the World Health Organisation, there were 40 cases alone,1 double the national rate (Adam, 2018). Almost half of the murders were committed by people under the influence of drink or drugs. What was it like for a young person living in Glasgow and in a gang at this time? What was it like to be so immersed in drugs, crime and violence, a life less ordinary, yet apparently so common? Was there any rhyme or reason for it? Any humanity in that “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (Hobbes, 1651, pp. xiii–xiv) state of nature? These are just some of the questions this book tries to answer because if one wants to understand gang membership in Scotland, one needs to understand gang membership in the Glasgow conurbation. First, therefore, we must put all this in its appropriate context, with a brief history of gangs and gang research in Glasgow.

A Brief History of Gangs and Gang Research in Glasgow Glasgow has long been synonymous with gangs, with the tradition said to date back to the 1880s (King, 2011). In 1935, H. Kingsley Long and Alexander McArthur published the novel, No Mean City, an account of life in the Gorbals, a rundown tenement slum, which introduced Glasgow’s street-fighting hard men and ‘razor gangs’ to the world. 1 In

addition to the 40 cases within the city’s boundaries, a number of homicides occurred in the wider conurbation of villages and towns immediately attached to Glasgow.

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Although criticised for its sensationalism, no book is more associated with the city. No Mean City (McArthur & Kingsley Long, 1956) foreshadowed modern works exploring the darker corners of Scottish society, like Irvine Welsh’s (1993) Trainspotting (and Danny Boyle’s 1996 film of the same name), and helped make Glasgow, a city divided by religious sectarianism, the “city of gangs” (Davies, 2013). Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland, but not its capital, and in the 1930s it was a city devoid of the spirit of industry that had once seen it crowned the Second City of the British Empire (Gray, 1989). It took the brunt of the depression and the Roman Catholic Irish immigrants who had settled there when Clydeside was still one of the world’s pre-eminent centres for chemicals, textiles, shipbuilding, and engineering were unduly blamed for rising unemployment and ‘taking jobs’ from the majority Protestant population (Devine, 1991). Hostilities eventually boiled over into pitched battles, where gangs armed with razors, hammers, broken bottles, and chains would fill idle time fighting for pride and supremacy over the corpse of an industrial city (Davies, 2013; Humphries, 1981). The most famous gang in “Scottish Chicago” (Davies, 2007) was the staunchly protestant Billy Boys, named for William of Orange (King Billy), whose victory at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 secured protestant rule in England, Scotland, and Ireland. As well as engaging in religious fuelled hatred expressed via gang violence, The Billy Boys ran illegal scams and protection rackets from the neighbourhood of Bridgeton, and feature in the fifth series of the hit BBC TV series, Peaky Blinders. The Second World War, as well as a police crackdown (Sillitoe, 1955), brought the first chapter of Glasgow’s hard-knuckled gang culture to an end, but by the late 1960s there was rising concern about a younger, more violent, successor to the razor gangs of the interwar years (Bartie, 2010; McLean, Densley, & Deuchar, 2018). Such gangs were first documented by sociologist James Patrick (a pseudonym), who in 1966, infiltrated himself into a gang in Maryhill, one of many outlying public housing schemes built after Glasgow’s overcrowded inner housing

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districts were demolished in the 1950s.2 Patrick, a 26-year-old schoolmaster at a Scottish reformatory school, spent four months as a gang member, observing their behaviour, but was forced to withdraw from the field and live in hiding after being drawn deeper into escalating violence (Patrick, 1973, pp. 135–139). Patrick’s (1973) classic, A Glasgow Gang Observed , is notable because it is one of the only empirical studies of a structured, territorial, youth group equivalent to an ‘American gang’ in Great Britain before the 1990s (Campbell & Muncer, 1989). Many of the factors that Patrick identified as contributing to the growth of gangs, namely crushing poverty and aspirations failure, only intensified in the years following the publication of A Glasgow Gang Observed . Industrial disputes in the early 1970s preceded two international oil crises (the Arab Oil Embargo of OAPEC caused the first in 1973, and the Iranian Revolution caused the second in 1979) and a period of deep economic recession. By the time Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979, lowering inflation was paramount, achieved only through cuts in public expenditure, privatisation, and the powering down of the Trade Unions. The push for rapid economic restructuring killed traditional industries, like textiles and steel, that, thanks to the globalisation of economic life, were already on life support having been propped up through government funding for decades (Daiches, 1977). In the decades between the administrations of Clement Attlee and Margaret Thatcher, Scotland became a nation of council tenants. An internal migration into grey houses built by and rented from the local authority between the 1940s and 1970s, gave Scotland the highest ratio of public to private housing of any country in Western Europe (Daiches, 1977). Many council estates were dreary and dangerous places, isolated from basic amenities and services, built in such a hurry that they degraded at an alarming rate (Grieve et al., 1988). Official government documents designated them “centres of social deprivation” and “areas of need” (Drucker & Clarke, 1978). Media reporting was less kind. A 1983 2 Maryhill

traditionally comprised of 4-storey Victorian tenement buildings, but after the 1950s much of the slum was demolished to make way for newer housing in the form of tower blocks, deck access maisonettes, and three- or four-storey post-war tenements. Several additional schemes where built as the Maryhill estate expanded North and West. This included schemes such as Wynford and Summerston.

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BBC documentary said Glasgow resembled “a country which has known a major war”. The five-part series, Glasgow, painted a grim picture of a city and in the third episode, The Scheme, reporter Eric Robson visited Barrowfield, near Celtic Park, “one of the roughest housing schemes in Britain”, to find, “a sullen, futile mixture of crime and unemployment, single parent poverty, and a daily fear of vandalism and violence”. At the heart of it all was youth gangs, who ran the housing scheme, “to their own rules”. It was the worst possible advertisement for Glasgow, solidifying its reputation as a redundant, post-industrial city, divided by sectarianism and fuelled by alcohol and violence (Daiches, 1977; Maver, 2000). Glasgow worked to reform its image in the 1990s (Kintrea & Madgin, 2020). New building projects spread along docks, and the city was designated European City of Culture in 1990 and UK City of Architecture and Design in 1999. However, many of the city’s peripheral housing schemes, which visitors would never see, fell into terrible states of disrepair, with some of the worst rates of poverty in Britain (Holtermann, 1975), and the highest levels of problematic drug use in the world (McCarron, 2014). It was here where workless hard-drinking, hardliving, working-class boys and men, destined to languish in low paid, part-time food service, leisure, or retail jobs, struggled to demonstrate protest masculinities (Connell & Messerschmitt, 2005). Scotland’s masculinity crisis is a recurrent theme of gritty film dramas such as Red Road and Under the Skin (see Fraser, 2015), but also features heavily in contemporary academic accounts of Scottish gangs (Batchelor, Armstrong, & MacLellan, 2019; Davies, 1998; Deuchar, 2009, 2018; Fraser, 2015). Other studies have centred on the unique marginalisation of local housing schemes and embedded attachment to territoriality as a means to achieve respect and recognition (Bannister et al., 2013; Deuchar, 2016; Holligan & Deuchar, 2009, Kintrea, Bannister, & Pickering, 2010; Miller, 2019; Pickering et al., 2012). Street socialisation (Miller, 2019), knife carrying (Bannister et al., 2010; Holligan, 2015; Holligan, McLean, & Deuchar, 2016), and religious sectarianism (Deuchar & Holligan, 2010), palpable during Old Firm clashes between Scottish football clubs Celtic and Rangers, are other common threads in this work.

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Everyday experiences of violence and repeat victimisation lay at the heart of World Health Organisation figures that said a person is more than three times as likely to die from a stab wound in Scotland than in England and Wales (Fraser, Burman, Batchelor, & McVie, 2010). The idea of being in a street gang or young “team” in twenty-first century Scotland continues to be passed down from generation to generation (Bradshaw, 2005; McAra & McVie, 2010; McVie, 2010; Miller, 2019; Smith & Bradshaw, 2005). Yet, there is some debate about what that gang culture now looks like (Batchelor et al., 2019). Based on street work in Langview (a pseudonym), Fraser (2015) argues that global changes may have affected the nature of street gangs, but gangs are ultimately a “local phenomenon, rooted in local history”. Against a backdrop of limited licit and illicit opportunities, Glasgow’s gangs represent a “root of identity and a route to masculinity”, that maintains a link with the past as the city has evolved. While gangs in other cities often evolve into entrepreneurial adult crime organisations (e.g. Densley, 2013; Roks & Densley, 2019; Whittaker et al., 2019), Fraser (2015) found gang membership in Glasgow had remained mainly a rite of passage for teens, with few going on to become career criminals. Teenagers were also less likely to “hang about in the streets” today than in years past owing to the growth in technology like social media and gentrification of public space diluting the street culture that gangs are part of. Like the father of gang research, Frederick Thrasher (1927, p. 26), Fraser sees gangs as an extension of “play groups”, noting his research cohort would even play hide and seek when bored. Gang membership was somewhat performative and never got too serious in terms of violence, or harm done to any of the young people Fraser worked with. The assumed verity in contemporary Scottish gang literature is that Scottish gangs are recreational or even weekend fighting teams with no definable leadership, hierarchy, or structure and little capacity or involvement in profit-related crime (Bannister et al., 2013; Kintrea et al., 2010). However, recent studies have identified knowledge gaps and a changing national crime landscape. The Scottish Government (2015; Fraser et al., 2018) finds Fraser’s (2015) ‘gangs’ are declining whereas serious and organised crime groups are ascendant (see also, Findlay, 2012). Notably, McLean (2018, 2019), found the sharper end of gang culture, in the

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Glasgow schemes where the drug barons moved in and created new opportunities and preferences for crime and violence. McLean argued that past scholarship never moved beyond the entrylevel gang and contemporary scholars had only studied, and labelled as ‘gangs’, what were essentially found to be ‘peer groups’ in other contexts, such as London. This collective failure of imagination wrongly discounted the potential for young street gangs to evolve into serious organised crime groups, which, McLean’s research showed, was both possible and occurring. McLean argued that part of the problem was sampling—because they were easier to access, interviewees in prior studies were children from gang-affected areas who talked about gangs, not older, more serious offenders who were fully embedded within them. To wit, real gangsters don’t play “hide and seek” (Fraser, 2015). Drawing on Densley’s (2014) gang evolution model, McLean (2018, 2019) thus called for a better contextual understanding of Scottish gangs, which exist on a spectrum of organisation and activity, not limited to ritualised, recreational violence and escapism for marginalised youth (see also, McLean, Deuchar, Harding, & Densley, 2019). Using McLean’s data, recent studies have documented the role of gangs and gang members in street robbery (Harding, Deuchar, Densley, & McLean, 2019) and in Scotland’s drug economy, especially the sale of street drugs like cocaine and heroin (Densley, McLean, Deuchar, & Harding, 2018; McLean et al., 2018). There is even evidence of urban Scottish gangs following the “county lines” model of drug distribution to travel outside of their territorial borders and deal drugs in outlying areas (Holligan, McLean, & McHugh, 2020; Robinson, McLean, & Densley, 2019; McLean, Robinson, & Densley, 2020). While Scotland struggles to manage problem drug use and related harms (Lowther & Brocklehurst, 2019), the good news is the number of murders nationwide have more than halved over the last decade, and 2018 saw the lowest number of recorded homicide cases in Scotland for a single 12-month period since 1976 (Batchelor et al., 2019). A recent analysis of police and survey data found that the biggest overall contributor to the reduction in violence was the decline in incidents involving young people using weapons in public places (Skott & McVie, 2019). And this is thanks in

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part to the much-celebrated Violence Reduction Unit (VRU), which was set up in 2005 to stem the tide of knife crime. Inspired by the Cure Violence project in Chicago (Butts, Roman, Bostwick, & Porter, 2015), Boston’s Operation Ceasefire (Kennedy, 2011), and Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles (Boyle, 2010), among other initiatives, the VRU’s (2011) key message was that gang-related stabbings and slashings were not just a policing issue but a public health issue. By working closely with partners in the National Health Service, education, and social work, and stressing the importance of positive role models, the VRU has shown the world that violence is preventable, not inevitable (Deuchar, 2013). Following a “focused deterrence” strategy, also called “pulling levers” (Braga, Weisburd, & Turchan, 2018), Glasgow’s most prolific young offenders were called to Glasgow Sheriff Court and urged in simple, no-nonsense terms to renounce violence or suffer the consequences. Alongside the police message of enforcement was a softer message of empathy. Former offenders were drafted in to share their experiences with the next generation and the Community Initiative to Reduce Violence (CIRV) offered young people an alternative to gang membership, such as youth clubs, and the prospect of education, employment, and training (Deuchar, 2013; Deuchar & Weide, 2018; Williams, Currie, Linden, & Donelly, 2014). The VRU also launched mentoring projects in schools and workplaces as part of its holistic approach to violence reduction. In sum, Glasgow has experienced an intense criminological gaze and by viewing the city through a wide lens of religious sectarianism, local territorialism, de-industrialisation, toxic masculinity, and global organised crime, existing research has well explored the intricacies of the city’s violent street worlds (Deuchar, 2013; Fraser, 2015; McLean, 2019). This is not the first book documenting the gangs of Glasgow, therefore, and it probably won’t be the last. What sets this book apart is a commitment to exploring the lives of a select few gang members in depth and in their own words, illuminating their fascinating personalities and the profound social and cultural impact that gang membership has had on their private and public lives. What further distinguishes this book is its narrative nonfiction style, which is a break from traditional academic writing, oft laboured by overinterpretation and devoid of context. Do

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not mistake this approach for sensationalist ‘true crime’. The writing is deliberately descriptive in order to preserve the detail and integrity of the data. We want the data to speak for themselves and for the book to be as readable as possible.

The Current Study For nearly a decade, the first author was in regular contact with the four people at the heart of this book—Leo, Raph, Mikey, and Donnie—and conducted a series of semi-structured life history interviews that called on them to provide a subjective account of their lives before, during, and after gang membership and criminal offending. The data do not lend themselves well to generalisation because each person’s story is unique, but they do allow for a more contextual understanding of how and why certain decisions were made and the important events, or “turning points” (Sampson & Laub, 1993), that shaped each individual’s immersion in street life and “embeddedness” in street gangs (Pyrooz, Sweeten, & Piquero, 2013). The goal of this book is to provide a deeper understanding of the events that shape a gang member’s life—to go beyond the macro social, cultural, and economic conditions that have given rise to gangs in Glasgow and delve into the subjective perspectives and meanings that people ascribe to their personal experiences in and around them. This is a book about family and friendship, offending and victimisation, choices and consequences. It is a book about people and all the messy things they do. It is not our place to pass judgement, but rather to present the data; all we will say is that our interviewees did many things that we cannot condone. Critics may argue the style of this book inadvertently glorifies gangs. We vehemently disagree. The book exposes in immersive and uncompromising detail, the reality of gangs from the perspective of gang members. To achieve this, we engaged in deep fieldwork. As is common with qualitative research, data collection for this project was time-consuming, with interviews lasting two to three hours each on average and each participant sitting for multiple face-to-face and telephone interviews over a period of nine years (2012–2020). The book

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also draws on the first author’s own ethnographic fieldwork (McLean, 2019) and deep contextual knowledge of the people, groups, and areas under investigation, having grown up amongst them in the 1990s and 2000s; which adds an observational element to the research. Ethical approval for the study was obtained from the first author’s university ethics committee. Note, any research on gangs that leaves out crime “leaves out a critical part of the phenomenon” (SánchezJankowski, 1991, p. 16). To safeguard against any risky disclosures, interviewees were asked only to talk about crimes that had been litigated or that other people knew about and could have reported if they were so inclined. They also were asked never to discuss the details of any planned offences. Participation in the study was voluntary. The interviewees all consented to be interviewed without fear or favour. They were all informed about the procedures and risks involved in the research and appropriate steps were taken to mitigate any risk of harm pursuant to their participation. For example, great care was taken to protect the confidentiality of all participants. Transcripts were carefully anonymised and, to protect respondents’ identities, some minor details and demographic information were changed. The interviewees all self-nominated as gang-involved, which is a validated and robust measure of gang membership (Esbensen & Carson, 2012). They were accessed originally during the first author’s earlier ethnographic research with gangs in Glasgow and West Scotland (e.g. McLean, 2019; McLean et al., 2020), which facilitated trust and rapport, but also helped inform the write up of the data. Those prior studies examined gang organisation and evolution, criminal activity, offender morality, drug supply, and more, with a focus on the larger empirical and theoretical questions about gangs. This book is different because its purpose is not to present broad discussions on gangs, drugs, and crime in Scotland, but rather to use a single case study of the rise and fall of a criminal gang, as told by the people who were there, to better understand “life in the gang” in depth (Decker & Van Winkle, 1996). Academic writing is often hostile to storytelling as a way of conveying important truths. However, narratives have always been central to criminology (for example, Shaw, 1930; Sykes & Matza, 1957), and storytelling and mythmaking are almost defining features of gang life (Howell,

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2007; Lauger, 2014; Miller, 2019). Everybody lies or, at the very least, embellishes (Sandberg, 2010), which is why narratives are an important tool for understanding individual pathways to offending, the lived experience of offending, and, for ex-gang offenders, the processes of disengagement and desistance—central tenets of life-course criminology (see Farrington, 2003). In recent years, a truly narrative criminology has emerged (Densley, McLean, Deuchar, & Harding, 2019; Harding, Dobson, Wyse, & Morenoff, 2017; Presser, 2016; Presser & Sandberg, 2015) and following suit, this book takes a constitutive view of narrative as shaping experience, rather than as an objective record of events (Presser, 2009). Many gang studies are really studies anchored in perceptions about gangs. They are guided strongly by criminal justice (control) agency accounts, which do not necessarily depict the reality of life for youth of marginalised backgrounds accurately (Hallsworth, 2013). By contrast, this book gives voice to the experienced life of gang members—who often are unheard, suppressed, or purposefully ignored—to challenge commonly held beliefs that “otherise” such people (Williams, 2015). Beyond our four central personalities, we interviewed 13 other ganginvolved people who could help verify or elaborate on stories shared because they were in “the room where it happens”, as they say in LinManuel Miranda’s hit musical, Hamilton. Their words are raw and real, with their Glasgow patois preserved. They also are retrospective, with all the limitations that entails. The data chart violence trajectories from fist to stick to knife to gun (Canada, 1995). They speak to individual offending patterns, including how and when offending began, the duration of offending, the type of offending, and if and how offending ended. They also speak to the comedy and tragedy of gang life, the mistakes that make us human, and the moments that give us pause. This book is a meditation on personal relationships, adverse childhood experiences (Felitti et al., 1998), seductions of crime (Katz, 1990), situated choices (Sampson & Laub, 1993), group processes (Short & Strodtbeck, 1965), cycles of violence and victimisation (Decker, 1996), pains of imprisonment (Sykes, 1958), drug dealing, drug addiction, and what it means to be a gang member in Glasgow. It’s all in here, even if we don’t belabour the points. The goal

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here is to understand gang members and gang membership from the ground up, before and beyond the context of the gang. We agree with Miller (2019) that street socialisation, territorial othering, and storytelling are critical to appreciating the intergenerational transmission of gang membership in Glasgow. Table 1.1 introduces the study participants and their gang affiliations. We use pseudonyms to protect all identities. Throughout the book, people’s backgrounds, personalities, and exploits are introduced as needed. For clarity, basic information also is provided about some individuals referenced by our interviewees but not interviewed directly— people like Greg, Jay, and Ricky. The interviewees were all male, thus masculinity is a tacit theme of the book. The narratives speak to common (hegemonic) masculine ideals such as social respect, physical strength, and sexual potency (Messerschmidt, 2005), and the reader will see that violence typically follows whenever masculinity is threatened, questioned, or undermined. Messerschmidt (1993) argued violence was a suitable resource for “doing gender” when other resources were lacking. It is important to clarify that violence emerges not from something “toxic” that has invaded the nature of masculinity itself (Connell, 2005). Rather, there is something about Glasgow—its economic, social, and political history—which sets people up for inner conflicts over social expectations and male entitlement. Prior research in Glasgow has illustrated how violent gangs provide young men with opportunities to express “narrowly-defined but widely accepted views of masculinity” (Deuchar, 2018, p. 27). The current study follows in this rich tradition. Some of our interviewees were more deeply embedded in gangs than others and, in some cases, they maintained multiple gang affiliations or had shifting allegiances. But they each share a connection to one gang in particular. The group had no unanimous name, but was known colloquially as The Street Boys (a pseudonym) because it was orientated to a particular street (“The Street”), and gangs very often derive their names from local geography. The street in question was a single street comprised almost exclusively of single bedroom homes and bedsits. Thus with almost no family units (e.g. parents and children) in the street, the average tenant tended to be 16–25 years of age.

N/A N/A N/A

Poe Tinky Dipsey Ringo

Neo Mid 50s Sandy Deceased Affiliates of “The Street Boys” Apoc Late 30s Cypher Late 30s Mouse Late 30s

2008–2015 2007–2013

N/A

(continued)

Seedy Ganja YT Yellow Team; Gocuho YT Seedy Ganja YT; Goucho YT

2002–2009 2003–2007 2009–2013 2007–2008

Donnie Early 40s Lived on “The Street” Lala Late 30s

Early 40s Deceased Deceased Deceased

[Paisley based] OCG; Raph’s YCG; Yellow Team [Paisley based] OCG; Agent Smith’s OCG Seedy Ganja YT; Colin’s YCG Johnstone YT; [Greenock based] OCG Green Team; [Greenock based] YCG; Ernest’s YCG [Govan based] OCG Green Team; [Greenock based] YCG

2003–present

Mid 30s

Mikeyd 2009

2005, 2012

Mid 30s

Raphc

Other gang affiliationsa Ricky’s YCG; Red Team; Yellow Team; Goucho YT D&D’s YCG; Ricky’s YCG; Yellow Team; [North Glasgow based] OCG; [Paisley based] OCG; Hillington YT; Ernest’s YCG; Goucho YT Barrhead YT; Sean’s YCG; Yellow Team; Goucho YT Goucho YT

Years resident on “The Street” 2003–2005, 2012

Approx. age in 2020

Central narrative Early 40s Leob

Name

Table 1.1 The study participants (N = 17)

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Mid 30s

Mid 30s Mid 40s

Tank

Choi Agent Smith

N/A N/A

N/A

Years resident on “The Street” Blue Team; Ferguslie YT; Yellow Team; Ernest’s YCG; Goucho YT Goucho YT; Cardonald YT; Ryan’s YCG Govan YT; [Paisley based] OCG; Agent Smith’s OCG

Other gang affiliationsa

Legend a YT = Young Team; YCG = Young Criminal Gang; OCG = Organised Crime Group (McLean, 2018) b Raph’s older brother c Leo’s younger brother d Leo and Raph’s cousin Source Author

Approx. age in 2020

Name

Table 1.1 (continued)

14 R. McLean and J. A. Densley

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Please observe that while our interviewees were intimately connected to The Street and to each other, this does not mean that (a) others not interviewed were not equally or more associated with The Street, or (b) our sample share the same opinion on everything. Instead, our interviewees offered the richest data about key events and offered narratives that overlapped, thus aiding fact-checking and triangulation and giving greater depth to ongoing processes at the time. Following McLean’s (2018) evolving gang model, The Street Boys is best described as a Young Criminal Gang. Gang definitions are tricky, but the group had moved beyond simple recreational and delinquent pursuits to engage in more entrepreneurial criminal activities such as wholesale drug dealing. Per the consensus Eurogang definition (Esbensen & Maxson, 2018), it was a “durable, street-oriented youth group whose involvement in illegal activity is part of its group identity”. Closer to organised crime (Varese, 2010; von Lampe, 2016), moreover, the group provided illicit goods and services and generated fear in the community, but fell below the threshold for extra-legal governance because it had limited capacity to coerce legal businesses or influence official figures (Campana & Varese, 2018). The Street Boys existed because members inside the group, and people outside the group, think and feel the gang was a distinct social entity. The data presented help chart the emergence of the group, its group processes, continuity and change over time, including its concordant and discordant ties to other groups, gangs, and organised crime syndicates in Glasgow and West Scotland—some of which no longer exist, or have evolved over time to adopt new names, activities, and territories. Criminal networks are complex and individuals and groups do not operate in isolation, which is why we include discussion of these other groups. Of course, people are connected to one another for many reasons beyond gang or group affiliation. Alongside kinship, ethnicity, and religious practice, geography creates practical and affective ties which bind people. These points of connection are often important in shaping gang formation. Given that The Street comprises of housing which is orientated to single occupants, none of the participants grew up there, but rather relocated to the area in their late teens or early adulthood. Still, most of the participants in this study have in common

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the district of Govan, Glasgow’s old shipbuilding quarter. Everybody either originated from Govan, or knew somebody from Govan. Some interviewees were born and raised there, or their parents were; others frequented the place because their family and friends lived there; and still others were victims or offenders in the area. Thus the role the district played in helping shape identity, bonds and relationships, cannot be underplayed. Given this point, it is important to journey to and explore the area. Govan has gentrified in recent years and now houses a more diverse population, including refugees and asylum-seekers. But it is important to describe the district and the housing schemes within it as remembered by our interviewees. Therefore, much of the account that follows is derived from the participants’ own words, which may deviate from official histories and accounts written in conventional textbooks.

Govan Space is a physical construct about physical proximity to things, whereas place is a social construct. Places are contained in spaces and they are sites of social interaction (Massey, 1994). Spaces can be large or small, from a continent or country to a city or neighbourhood. But places create a sense of commonality, shared language, history, norms, values, and culture. And in small spaces, like the housing scheme, places can create intimate commonalities that can transcend even kinship, ethnicity, and religious practice. As one of our interviewees said, “It’s the scheme that binds us”. This case study is based primarily around The Street Boys, but gang membership doesn’t exist in a vacuum, so the group’s links to Govan cannot be ignored. Before the expansion of the city and the surrounding areas, Glasgow was a strip running from East to West along the bank of the river Clyde. The Burgh of Govan was situated to the west of the city centre and located south of the river Clyde, a natural water supply that helped the region become the industrial heartland of the British Empire. Back then, people lived in overcrowded tenements dwarfed by shipyard cranes and entire multi-generational families could be found living in single apartments. Today, the District is divided into a number

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of housing estates—Govan, Moorepark, Kinning Park, Cessnock, Ibrox, Drumoyne, and Linthouse—the latter of which features prominently in this book. See Fig. 1.1 for a map. While these are the official estates recognised by Glasgow City Council and other local and national authorities, the unofficial landscape of the District looks somewhat different and local residents will use official and unofficial area names interchangeably. For example, the official estate of Cessnock is bordered by the official estate of Kinning Park. However, locals typically refer to both areas collectively as Kinning Park and only use the name Cessnock in reference to specific streets; much to the confusion of outsiders. The unofficial schemes tend to more or less retain the same boundaries as the official housing estates, but there are some exceptions. The unofficial schemes are: Govan (Govan Centre); Linthouse; Drumoyne (including Teucherhill, sometimes shortened to Teuch); Wine Alley (officially known as Moorepark); Crossie (officially the estate of Govan); Ibrox; Kinning Park (officially the estates of Kinning Park and Cessnock). Surrounded by industrial estates, Wine Alley was the largest scheme, named for the cheap fortified wine that was the last refuge of the Glasgow

Fig. 1.1 Govan and its Gangs (Source OpenStreetMap and Author)

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drinker (for history, see Darner, 1989). Originally built after the 1930 Housing Act to receive families displaced by slum-clearance projects elsewhere in the city, the scheme comprised about 500 houses and flats built on 16 acres of land next to a railway line.3 Houses were cheaper and denser than those in Glasgow’s earlier estates (built under the Housing Acts of 1919 and 1924, respectively), but famed for having the first indoor private bathrooms, at a time when communal toilets were located outside. The first tenants were shipwrights, caulkers, cabinet-makers and coppersmiths, labourers, locomotive drivers, widows, and spinsters. However, the estate fell into disrepair when work disappeared, becoming, in eyes of our interviewees, a jungle of overgrown gardens and broken and bricked-up windows. They reminisced about a playpark there, buried under hypodermic needles, cigarette butts, and piles of rubbish. Owing to its large population, Wine Alley housed two primary schools and a secondary school, thus experienced a lot of foot traffic. But in recent years, gentrification has seen the old tenements and tower blocks of the estate replaced by a mix of socially and privately owned singlefamily homes. Nearby Kinning Park is the other largest estate and while a substantial amount of the area had been pulled down to make way for the construction of the M8 motorway, the original three- and four-storey Victorian tenement housing remain largely intact. A number of schools have closed in the area following demolition and a decline in the resident population. Ibrox, Crossie, Govan Centre, and Linthouse are small, geographically speaking, but nonetheless densely populated estates housing several thousand people each. They all tend to be characterised by three or fourstorey Victorian and post-war tenements. Ibrox also had six tower blocks, although five were recently demolished. These areas have a fair degree of new build housing, which has replaced demolished tenements. In recent years, all three have undergone gentrification, and also house a number of immigrant families. Drumoyne is larger geographically than the prior four estates, yet similar in terms of population size. This is because while the scheme 3 When built, this housing was situated within an area surrounded by older Victorian tenements. The population of Govan also term this wider area as being part of the Wine Alley.

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had a number of post-war tenements and two tower blocks, much of the housing has been demolished in recent years. The remaining houses are mostly four-in-a-block cottage style. Govan High School is in Drumoyne and is the main secondary school serving families in Govan, Linthouse, Drumoyne, Teucherhill, and Crossie; although Catholic residents tend to send their children to Catholic schools outside of the community. The last scheme is Teuch, yet little of it remains today. The three-storey post-war tenements were demolished at the end of the twentieth century, and many remaining houses are in a dilapidated state and boarded up, although some four-in-a-block cottages or closes remain. In the decades before and after the turn of the millennium, the District of Govan was a known hotspot for trouble and gang-related crime. Gangs are a prominent feature of the schemes and local residents, even adults, use the name of the scheme and the name of street gang associated with the scheme interchangeably, as follows: Young Linty Goucho (Linthouse); Young Govan Team (Govan Centre); Young Young Winney (Wine Alley); Young Crossie Possie (Crossie); KP Derry (Kinning Park); Young Ibrox Tongs (Ibrox); Young Drumoyne Team (Drumoyne). Whoever is the ‘top team’ has ebbed and flowed over the years, yet, the rivalry of Linty Goucho and Crossie Possie has proven to be consistent and particularly fierce, with persistent intergenerational violence. Both gangs tend to battle within the local public park: Elder Park.

Preview of the Book As discussed, this book draws on rich data to detail the life trajectories of a small cohort of gang members and explores past events they undertook together from different perspectives. The central audience for this book is criminologists in general and gang scholars in particular. We see this book as an excellent supplement for any undergraduate or graduate module on juvenile delinquency or any elective courses focused on gangs, youth violence, organised crime, or the city of Glasgow. At the same time, the book is written to be very accessible to a general audience,

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including practitioners curious about and interested in gangs and youth violence. The chapters are structured around what the research participants’ identified as memorable experiences and key historical events, including episodes called upon by two or more interviewees. This book is organised over ten chapters. This first chapter has placed this study in its historical and social context. Chapter 2 introduces the four key participants in the case study—Leo, Raph, Mikey, and Donnie. This chapter outlines their entry into the world of gangs, with an emphasis on their early (adverse) childhood experiences. Other people are introduced in subsequent chapters, typically in relation to those four central personalities, who serve as a constant reference point but offer different perspectives on the same historical events owing to factors like age, gang status, and geography. Chapters 3 and 4 delve more into the origins of gang formation and offending prior to the formation of The Street Boys criminal gang, with specific focus on the secondary school as a crucible for gang activity. Both chapters demonstrate how gangs and criminal networks shape the lives of Glasgow teens whether they are gang members or not. They also show how joining a gang is not a single event, but rather a process, one that encompasses offending and victimisation, consensus and conflict— experiences that also shape overall gang formation, reformation, and evolution. In Glasgow, most violence is knife violence and Chapters 5 and 6 present an uncensored look at it, with graphic descriptions of bloody street fights, assault with a deadly weapon, torture, and incidents that result in severe injury. The chapters also explore the effects of formal and informal social control on our respondents, plus their experiences in prison. Both chapters lay the foundation for Chapter 7, which focuses more on the entrepreneurial aspects of the gang, access to firearms and other criminal commodities, and gang members’ relationship with serious organised crime. Chapter 7 examines the inner workings of Glasgow’s drug economy, the criminal actualisation of The Street Boys gang, and our respondents’ own struggles with substance abuse and addiction. Chapter 8 then explores the demise of The Street Boys, the process of disengagement from gangs, and life after crime. Chapter 9 reflects on the status

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of gangs and organised crime in Scotland in general, drawing on key findings from the book, with implications for research and practice. Finally, Chapter 10 offers some concluding thoughts and reflections on the research process, the challenges and opportunities of narrative criminology, and the book’s unique contribution to knowledge about gangs and gang members in Glasgow.

References Adam, K. (2018). Glasgow was once the ‘murder capital of Europe.’ Now it’s a model for cutting crime. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www. washingtonpost.com/world/europe/glasgow-was-once-the-murder-capitalof-europe-now-its-a-model-for-cutting-crime/2018/10/27/0b167e68-6e024795-92f8-adb1020b7434_story.html. Bannister, J., Batchelor, S., Burman, M., McVie, S., Pickering, J., & Kintrea, K. (2010). Troublesome youth groups, gangs and knife carrying in Scotland . Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Bannister, J., Kintrea, K., & Pickering, J. (2013). Young people and violent territorial conflict: Exclusion, culture and the search for identity. Journal of Youth Studies, 16, 474–490. Bartie, A. (2010). Moral Panics and Glasgow gangs: Exploring the new wave of Glasgow hooliganism, 1965–1970. Contemporary British History, 24, 385– 408. Batchelor, S., Armstrong, S., & MacLellan, D. (2019). Taking stock of violence in Scotland . Glasgow: The Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research. Boyle, G. (2010). Tattoos on the heart. New York: Free Press. Bradshaw, P. (2005). Terrors and youth teams: Youth gangs and delinquency in Edinburgh. In S. H. Decker & F. M. Weerman (Eds.), European street gangs and troublesome youth groups (pp. 193–218). Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press. Braga, A., Weisburd, D., & Turchan, B. (2018). Focused deterrence strategies and crime control. Criminology & Public Policy, 17, 205–250. Butts, J., Roman, C., Bostwick, L., & Porter, J. (2015). Cure Violence: A public health model to reduce gun violence. Annual Review of Public Health, 36, 39–53. Campana, P., & Varese, F. (2018). Organized crime in the United Kingdom: Illegal governance of markets and communities. British Journal of Criminology, 58, 1381–400.

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Campbell, A., & Muncer, S. (1989). Them and us: A comparison of the cultural context of American gangs and British subcultures. Deviant Behavior, 10, 271–88. Canada, G. (1995). Fist, stick, knife, gun. Boston: Beacon Press. Connell, R. W. (2005). Masculinities. Cambridge: Polity Press. Connell, R. W., & Messerschmidt, J. W. (2005). Hegemonic masculinity: Rethinking the concept. Gender and Society, 19, 829–859. Daiches, D. (1977). Glasgow. London: Andre Deutsch. Darner, S. (1989). From Moorepark to ‘Wine Alley’: The rise and fall of a Glasgow housing scheme. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Davies, A. (1998). Youth gangs, masculinity and violence in late Victorian Manchester and Salford. Journal of Social History, 32, 349–369. Davies, A. (2007). The Scottish Chicago? From ‘hooligans’ to ‘gangsters’ in inter-war Glasgow. Cultural and Social History, 4, 511–527. Davies, A. (2013). City of gangs: Glasgow and the rise of the British gangster. London: Hodder & Stoughton. Decker, S. H. (1996). Collective and normative features of gang violence. Justice Quarterly, 13, 243–264. Decker, S. H., & Van Winkle, B. (1996). Life in the gang: Family, friends and violence. New York: Cambridge University 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, 517–546. Densley, J., McLean, R., Deuchar, R., & Harding, S. (2018). An altered state? Emergent changes to illicit drug markets and distribution networks in Scotland. International Journal of Drug Policy, 58, 113–120. Densley, J., McLean, R., Deuchar, R., & Harding, S. (2019). Progression from cafeteria to à la carte offending: Scottish organised crime narratives. The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice, 58, 161–179. Deuchar, R. (2009). Gangs, marginalised youth and social capital . Stoke on Trent: Trentham. Deuchar, R. (2013). Policing youth violence: Transatlantic connections. London: Institute of Education Press. Deuchar, R. (2016). Scottish youth gangs. In H. Croall, G. Mooney & M. Munro (Eds.), Crime, justice and society in Scotland . London: Routledge.

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Harding, S., Deuchar, R., Densley, J., & McLean, R. (2019). A typology of street robbery and gang organization: Insights from qualitative research in Scotland. The British Journal of Criminology, 59, 879–897. Harding, D., Dobson, C., Wyse, J., & Morenoff, J. (2017). Narrative change, narrative stability, and structural constraint: The case of prisoner re-entry narratives. American Journal of Cultural Sociology, 5, 261–304. Hobbes, T. (1651). Leviathan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Holligan, C. (2015). Disenfranchised violent young offenders in Scotland: Using actor-network theory to explore an aetiology of knife crime. Sociology, 49, 123–138. Holligan, C., & Deuchar, R. (2009). Territorialities in Scotland: Perceptions of young people in Scotland. Journal of Youth Studies, 12, 727–742. Holligan, C., McLean, R., & Deuchar, R. (2016). Weapon-carrying among young men in Glasgow: Street scripts and signals in uncertain social spaces. Critical Criminology, 25, 137–151. Holligan, C., McLean, R., & McHugh, R. (2020). Exploring county lines: Criminal drug distribution practices in Scotland. Youth Justice, 20. Holtermann, S. (1975). Areas of urban deprivation in Great Britain: An analysis of 1971 Census data. Social Trends, 6, 33–45. Howell, J. (2007). Menacing or mimicking? Realities of youth gangs. Juvenile and Family Court Journal, 58, 39–50. Humphries, S. (1981). Hooligans or rebels: Oral history of working class childhood and youth, 1889–1939. Oxford: Blackwell. Katz, J. (1990). Seductions of crime. New York: Basic Books. Kennedy, D. M. (2011). Don’t shoot. New York: Bloomsbury. King, P. (2011). Urbanisation, rising homicide rates and the geography of lethal violence in Scotland 1800–1860. History, 96, 231–259. Kintrea, K., Bannister, J., & Pickering, J. (2010). Territoriality and disadvantage among young people: An exploratory study of six British neighbourhoods. Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, 25, 447–465. Kintrea, K., & Madgin, R. (2020). Transforming Glasgow: Beyond the postindustrial city. Bristol: Policy Press. Lauger, T. (2014). Violent stories: Personal narratives, street socialization, and the negotiation of street culture among street-oriented youth. Criminal Justice Review, 39, 182–200. Lowther, E., & Brocklehurst, S. (2019). Scotland’s drug death crisis in six charts. BBC News. Retrieved from: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland48853004. Massey, D. (1994). Space, place and gender. Oxford: Polity Press.

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Maver, I. (2000). Glasgow. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. McAra, L., & McVie, S. (2010). Youth crime and justice: Key messages from the Edinburgh study of youth transitions and crime. Criminology and Criminal Justice, 10, 1–32. McArthur, A., & Kinsgley Long, H. (1956). No mean city. London: Transworld Publications. McCarron, M. (2014). It is in the interests of justice and health to decriminalise drug users. Scottish Justice Matters, 2, 17–18. https://web.archive. org/web/20041221160154/http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm? id=312182004. McLean, R. (2018). An evolving gang model in contemporary Scotland. Deviant Behavior, 39, 309–321. McLean, R. (2019). Gangs, drugs, and (dis)organised crime. Bristol: Bristol University Press. McLean, R., Densley, J., & Deuchar, R. (2018). Situating gangs within Scotland’s illegal drugs market(s). Trends in Organized Crime, 21, 147–171. McLean, R., Deuchar, R., Harding, S., & Densley, J. (2019). Putting the ‘street’ in gang: Place and space in the organization of Scotland’s drug selling gangs. The British Journal of Criminology, 59, 396–415. McLean, R., Robinson, G., & Densley, J. (2020). County lines: Criminal networks and evolving drug markets in Britain. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. McVie, S. (2010). Gang membership and knife carrying: Findings from the Edinburgh study of youth transitions and crime. Edinburgh: Scottish Government Social Research. Messerschmidt, J. (1993). Masculinities and crime: Critique and reconceptualization of theory. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Messerschmidt, J. (2005). Men, masculinities and crime. In M. S. Kimmel, J. Hearn, & R. W. Connell (Eds.), Handbook of studies on men and masculinities (pp. 196–212). London: Sage. Miller, J. (2019). Passing on gang culture in the theatre of the streets: ‘They’ll grow out of it, then our age will grow into it and then we’ll grow out of it’. Journal of Youth Studies, online first. https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261. 2019.1655534. Patrick, J. (1973). A Glasgow gang observed . London: Eyre-Methuen. Pickering, J., Kintrea, K., & Bannister, J. (2012). Invisible walls and visible youth: Territoriality among young people in British cities. Urban Studies, 49, 945–960. Presser, L. (2009). The narratives of offenders. Theoretical Criminology, 13, 177–200.

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Presser, L. (2016). Criminology and the narrative turn. Crime, Media, Culture, 12, 137–151. Presser, L., & Sandberg, S. (Eds.). (2015). Narrative criminology. New York: New York University Press. Pyrooz, D. C., Sweeten, G., & Piquero, A. R. (2013). Continuity and change in gang membership and gang embeddedness. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 50, 239–271. Robinson, G., McLean, R., & Densley, J. (2019). Working county lines: Child criminal exploitation and illicit drug dealing in Glasgow and Merseyside. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 63, 694–711. Roks, R., & Densley, J. (2019). From brakers to bikers: The evolution of the Dutch Crips ‘gang’. Deviant Behavior. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639625. 2019.1572301. Sampson, R. J., & Laub, J. H. (1993). Crime in the making: Pathways and turning points through life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Sandberg, S. (2010). What can “lies” tell us about life? Notes towards a framework of narrative criminology. Journal of Criminal Justice Education, 21, 447–465. Sánchez-Jankowski, M. (1991). Islands in the Street. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Scottish Government. (2015). Scotland serious organised crime strategy report. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Shaw, C. (1930). The jack roller. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Short, J. F., & Strodtbeck, F. (1965). Group process and gang delinquency. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Sillitoe, P. (1955). Cloak without dagger. London: Pan. Skott, S., & McVie, S. (2019). Reduction in homicide and violence in Scotland is largely explained by fewer gangs and less knife crime. Applied Quantitative Methods Network Research Briefing 13. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh. Smith, D. J., & Bradshaw, P. (2005). Gang membership and teenage offending. Edinburgh: Centre for Law and Society, University of Edinburgh. Sykes, G. (1958). The society of captives: A study of a maximum security prison. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Sykes, G., & Matza, D. (1957). Techniques of neutralization: A theory of delinquency. American Sociological Review, 22, 664–670. Thrasher, F. M. (1927). The gang. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

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2 Growing Pains

This chapter introduces the four main participants and presents insights they shared in response to questions about their upbringing and early childhood. Their responses get to the core of their identities, their sense of self, family, and masculinity, and some of the early life experiences that helped shape them into the boys and men they would become. This chapter examines their lives up until the transition to secondary school. Leo and Raph are brothers. Mikey is their cousin. Donnie is one year older than Leo, who is four years older than Raph. Raph is one year younger than Mikey.

Leo Robert first met Leo when Leo was in his late 20s, but he was in his late 30s when he was interviewed again for this book. Leo is just short of medium height, around 5 ft 8 in, but carries himself such that he gives the illusion of stature. A little pudgy around the waist, Leo has broad shoulders and a strong back. His hair has receded some over the years,

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particularly on his right side, but he masks it well with a modern, flicked hairstyle. When asked about his childhood, he smiles and says: I loved my childhood. It was chaotic looking back at it now, but it didn’t seem like that at the time. I was in it, and so just lived it, know.—Leo

Leo was raised in the Govan district of Glasgow, primarily in the scheme of Linthouse, until turning a teenager. As a child, his family frequently relocated around the scheme, moving between private and social housing accommodations. Leo highlighted several memories as being his earliest. Playing in the sandpit in nursery alongside his then friend April. Listening to nursery rhymes being spoken by his teacher, the first black person he ever met. However, one memory in particular stood out: I must have only been around three years old I think [be]cause my mum was still pregnant wi’ my wee brother Raph. Can remember sitting on the living room floor just playing wi’ Lego bricks or something, might even have been a wee fire engine. My brother’s dad was playing wi’ me. I liked him, he was always taking me places and that, know. Him and my mum were speaking, and he got up and went into the kitchen and grabbed her by the neck and [picking up a plate] smacked her over the head wi’ it. Smashed everywhere. She just decked it.—Leo

Leo doesn’t recall feeling shock or fear or anger at the event, just passively watching the violence unfold before his very eyes. He remembers the argument was over something minor, like dinner being late or burned, but otherwise the assault came from nowhere. There was no prior warning. No escalation. It just happened, like it was nothing. Like it was normal. The police were called. Fuck knows who called them. I might be making this up but think it might have been my mum. Raph’s dad handed her the phone, or just didn’t care. Fuck knows. They turned up anyways. Mind they asked me about it. I just said she got whacked wi’ a plate and decked it (laughs). I even did the wee action and flung myself down. Everyone was just laughing. Pure fucked up actually.—Leo

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Everyone was just laughing. But it was no laughing matter. The violence continued. In fact, it got worse. Leo couldn’t recall specifics, only being told about it by his family, but eventually he and his pregnant mother fled the household to live with his aunt and uncle in the neighbouring scheme of Crossie. Leo had fond memories of the move, although he had to share a bed with his aunt and uncle while his gravid mum slept on the couch in the living room. During this time, he and his mother would travel back and forth to Linthouse on weekends to visit his grandparents. One such afternoon, Leo and his mum were walking through the public park that separated Linthouse from Crossie when she suddenly grabbed his arm and drew him in tight. ‘Stay close Leo’, she said. On the horizon were two groups of adolescent boys, who at the time, Leo said, looked like giants. The boys were arguing and facing off, armed to the teeth with bats, bricks, and bottles. Leo was surprised to find that rather than shrink from the incident they were approaching, his mother spoke up and asked the boys to halt their dispute so that she and her son could pass by safely. The boys obliged, albeit reluctantly—one lad gave Leo’s mum some stick. Once they had crossed the threshold, Leo’s mum thanked the boys and the two sides resumed their disagreement over whose Pit Bull Terrier would win in a fight. Leo craned his neck to keep watching, until, moments later, the boys began assaulting one another. His mother tried to shield his eyes. Those were ‘bad boys’ she said and Leo should have nothing to do with them. However, Leo’s first interaction with, what he later learned were local street gangs, made a lasting impression: The cunts just started fucking leathering one another, people were running everywhere. I heard my mum talking about it later with my aunt Margret. She wasn’t a real aunt, more an honorary aunt (laughs). Aunt called in her boy [Bean] and gave him an earful. Think Bean knew the boys. Said it was Goucho and Crossie boys. Said he would sort the boy that was cheeky to my mum.—Leo

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Eventually Leo, his mother, and his newborn baby brother Raph were able to move back into the family home in Linthouse. Raph’s dad was convicted for a range of offences against the mother and forced to vacate the property, moving back north of the river Clyde into Maryhill. Leo’s mother was glad to be home in Linthouse, closer to her parents and aunts and uncles. During his brother’s birth, Leo temporarily stayed within his grandparents in Linthouse. Leo was close to his grandparents, and in particular his grandfather, Jack. Leo idolised grandfather Jack growing up, yet in the preceding years it would emerge that Jack was in fact a paedophile who had abused several members of his own household, including Leo’s mother. Leo was about nine years old when this truth finally came to light, and it had a drastic impact on him and his brother. They gradually ceased visiting their grandad, struggling to process a range of complex emotions: It was heavy fucked up man. I pure loved my grandad. We were heavy close. I stayed at his all the time. He was really close to me. He did hate most of the other grandkids [though]. He use to batter fuck right out them all the time but he never hit me or Raph but, neither my big cousin Katie either. Mind my mum use to always say if anything ever happened to me I could tell her, and would get me these books about sexual abuse and shit, get them from the Govan library. I never understood why and would just be like “what?” and laugh and that. I know now why she said that now but. [Be]cause my grandad. I ain’t ashamed to say my mum was abused [be]cause she did nothing wrong. It was that fucking prick. I want people to know what he did and who he was. A fucking beast. I don’t know why she let me stay at his [house]. Still don’t get it. Mind even though he was a pure bastard to all my aunts and uncles, they all pure feared him and flocked to him. Looking for his approval man. Must be like mind control [be]cause I hear of other families being the same. If it was me I would be like ‘fucking here you go ya prick, get to fuck’ (Leo motions a head butt), but I wasn’t brought up like that, with that, so I probably wouldn’t be in reality. See to be honest, he has fucked up all my family mate, the grand wains, their wains. My kids have to live wi’ the shit he done three generations back cause it effects how I bring them up. That’s going to affect how they even bring up their kids.—Leo

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At the time Leo was developmentally too young to fully grasp the concept of what had happened with his grandad, and because of his loving attitude towards Leo and his brother, he developed confusing, somewhat dichotomous, feelings: It is fucked man. I loved him, but my only regret [before he died] is that I didn’t get the chance to cut his fucking eyes out his bastard’n head and watch him bleed out. I was too young at the time. Lucky he died before I was a teen.—Leo

As discussed in later chapters, Leo’s mother suffered a mental breakdown after her father died. It was all too much to bear. As a child, Leo didn’t have many hobbies and wasn’t involved in sport, nor was he encouraged to be by his mother. But this all changed when his cousin Anton’s family moved from Ireland back to Linthouse. Anton was an adept footballer and embarrassed by his cousin’s lack of foot skills, so he took it upon himself to train Leo. They would spend time out in the tenement backcourt practicing drills. At the same time, Leo’s future stepdad arrived on the scene. His stepdad, much like Anton, was shamed by Leo’s inability to play football well and actively encouraged Leo to take sport seriously. Leo’s practice paid off and as his footballing technique improved, he found that his pull with the other boys in the scheme did too. His popularity crested once the local youths decided to form their own football teams, one of which Leo captained: I wasn’t good at footy until my cousin taught me basically. I had always been a good runner and was like a determined wee cunt. When I started playing [football] I was good at running about and getting stuck in so people liked picking me to play. I made loads a new pals [be]cause of footy. I moved to a house in Katana Drive and [be]cause it was like two lines of tenements everyone played in the street. I made loads a pals there… [eventually] started a wee street team and we played another street team. Even traded jingy (glass bottles of juice) to the other managers to buy players (laughs). Had a dedicated ref and everything. Was pure sophisticated considering we were only in like Primary 5 or 6.—Leo

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Being small and slender built, Leo hated physical confrontation and while he had lots of friends, he was always shy in large groups and preferred to interact one-on-one or in smaller groups of three or four friends. This all changed when he moved to a new home on Katana Drive. Leo’s old house was located in a single tenement, but Katana Drive was a long street lined with parallel four-storey Victorian tenements on either side of the road. The design of the street meant that the resident children would either play out in the courtyards at the rear of the tenements or on the main street, which was quiet at that time with little traffic. They played in age cohorts two or three years apart, but younger and older groups occasionally came together for intergenerational games of tig (tag), two-man hunt, blue murder, and, of course, football. For a while, the furthest from home Leo would roam was the local primary school at the top of the street, but as he got the lay of the land, Leo travelled further afield to a large public park and playground. He played on the swings and kicked a ball around the abandoned bowling green, which was where primary school age kids from all the surrounding streets came to hang out on evenings and weekends. The public park also served as a gathering point for older generations—secondary school youth, people out of work, alcoholics, and drug addicts—some of whom were gang members. They would occasionally interact with Leo, and in the tradition “street socialisation” (Miller, 2019), tell tall tales about excessive drinking, drug use, sexual encounters with women, and gang fights. Leo would hang on their every word. He idolised the gang boys, not least because some of them were literally family, but especially because they would refer to Leo and his peers inclusively as the ‘next gen[eration]’ or the ‘young young team’ under the umbrella of the gang. With a stepdad who promoted sports and other more traditionally masculine pursuits, new friends, and new influences, Leo grew in confidence. He began voicing his opinions more, pushing boundaries and breaking rules. He would sneak away from Katana Drive to visit the water front, for example, passing under the River Clyde via the Clyde tunnel to wander around Patrick on the other side of the water. He broke into abandoned buildings, and even the large electricity box in the park,

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where he jammed wooden sticks into the wire; something which scares Leo to even think about now. He was ‘stupid’ he says, doing such reckless things. In the nearby Bo Drive, youth Leo’s age (i.e. 9–11 years old) tended to have closer kinship ties because several large families were housed together in neighbouring tenement buildings. One family in particular were problem tenants, career criminals, with kinship ties to organised crime throughout the Govan district, and their children were keeping up appearances. Not a “gang” per se, this band of brothers was referred to by the family’s surname—Donaldson—and the group’s unofficial leader was Murray. Murray was the smallest of the children but by far the worst in terms of aggression and violent behaviour. He had an explosive temper and loved nothing more than to intimidate and assault his peers, backed up by several of his cousins of similar age, and his younger sibling. One day, someone asked Leo, who was building a troublesome reputation of his own on Katana Drive, to comment on “The Donaldsons” because they had beaten up another Katana Drive youth. Leo said he would “not stand for such things” should it be him, and the message was relayed directly back to The Donaldsons. A few days later, while Leo was in the park with his little brother, Raph, The Donaldsons confronted him. They initially acted in a befriending manner, before turning on Leo, punching his face once and kicking his leg twice. Leo and Raph fled the scene but dropped a hat as they ran. The Donaldsons’ picked it up and tossed it back and forth mockingly. In frustration, Leo picked up a large bolder and threatened to drop it on someone’s head. The Donaldsons handed the hat back over. Leo learned a lot from his run in with The Donaldsons. For example, he learned that having a weapon, even if only a rock, was a great equaliser when outnumbered or facing a bigger foe. Hence why Leo brought a kitchen knife from his mother’s cutlery drawer with him to confront a local youth in the park a few months later. Leo’s opponent was a year younger but bigger and prone to violent outbursts, or “maddies”. Leo doesn’t recall why the confrontation took place, but he remembers taking the knife out his trouser waistband and the youth looking at it and calmly asking, “Are you going to stab me? ” Having proved his point, Leo just pocketed his knife. The pair never spoke of the incident again.

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By Primary 7, the last year of primary school in Scotland, Leo was established in Katana Street as a “top boy”. This status was not mirrored in his primary school class, where he operated a more mid-rank status. Criteria for top boy designation were unwritten, but kinship, sporting prowess, a winning fight record, or at least a willingness to fight, an ability to banter or talk well, and to attract females (the more attractive the better) were contributing factors. Leo had them all to varying degrees, except any skill with the ladies—he claims he was extremely shy around girls. However, Leo was only a top boy in his street while in primary 7. This status would again change in secondary school, as the transition to secondary school meant that he would be considered older and a teenager. Thus among this group he would be one of the younger individuals and again starting at the bottom rung of the ladder. Ultimately, the boys in secondary school had their own pecking order, even if the primary and secondary boys were related and would interact with each other. Leo lived in Linthouse until the end of his first year in secondary school, until his family moved to Grasstown.

Raph Raph is Leo’s younger brother of four years and, in the tradition of snowball sampling, it was Leo who introduced us. Leo’s description of Raph’s past crimes created a picture of a man with a specific look, demeanour, even sound, so we were surprised to meet a man who still looked like a teenager; someone who was soft spoken, well mannered, and almost the opposite of his billing. Leo is slightly taller, but the brothers share the same stocky build and a lot of the same mannerisms. You can’t help but imagine how alike they must have been as children. Raph doesn’t remember his biological dad. He met him only once or twice, as a child, when his dad still had visitation rights. Instead, Raph can only remember life with his stepdad, who he calls ‘dad’, and would take him out to play and watch football regularly. Raph recalls spending a lot of his time as a child in the house sitting at his mother’s side, watching television or playing with toys. He was close to his immediate family

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members, especially his big brother Leo, who was a huge influence on Raph throughout his childhood and early adolescent life: Me and my brother were always close. He was always made to watch me so I mostly hung about with older boys [be]cause it was him and his pals. My cousin Anton as well. He said he wanted me to be better than him. He would teach me to fight and teach me to play football.—Raph

Leo would train Raph to be ‘the best’ at whatever he did and would spend time, even though they were but children, helping his brother improve. Although Raph primarily socialised with his older brother, his older cousin, and their friends, he was also very popular at school; however few of his primary school classmates lived in his street, so socialising was largely left to school hours or chance meetings in the public park. A few younger boys from the street hung around with the group, but those boys were Catholic and did not attend the same primary school as Raph. Thus, Raph had separate groups with whom he socialised during school and after school. When asked about his early experiences in Govan, Raph first recalled memories such as playing football, two-man hunt, and climbing trees in the park, but also remembered falling into the pond in Elder Park and almost drowning, sitting on the window ledge of a tenement building four storeys up, and playing truant from school at the river Clyde, for which his mother severely beat him and his brother. Other events included his brother and his friend Gordon falling out following an argument between Raph and Gordon’s favoured friend Pringo. The older boys forced the younger duo of Raph and Pringo to fight one another to decide who the best fighter was; the first of many fights in Raph’s life. Raph said he was quiet in terms of speaking out, but ‘wild’ in his actions. He was impulsive, took unnecessary risks, and was full of bravado. This only intensified when, while still in primary school, his family moved from Linthouse to the developing suburb of Grasstown: We (the family unit) were always visiting houses for a bit. Mum and Dad (who were married by then) were asking us if we liked this one or that one and where would we want to live. The houses were always in Govan

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[be]cause we walked to them. Then about a year later my dad passed his test and got a car, and we started looking a houses pure far away. We went to see one and it was nice. I think my mum’s aunt lived out there and she went to visit her when she was a wee girl and liked the place. Next thing I knew we came back from our first holiday and about a week later moved to a house in Grasstown. It was the end of the summer holidays so I started the school class that year from the start, like in August I think. I didn’t want to leave Govan, but was young so wasn’t too hard [to start a new school]. My brother really didn’t want to leave. He was a few years in high school and had pals so he just stayed at Govan High.—Raph

Raph’s family relocated to the rapidly expanding Grasstown at the same time that a number of other families did the same, arriving from Glasgow and its environs: I wasn’t the only new start in the class, there was another one in my class and two boys in the [class] year below, [and] a new lassie in the class above me. A lot of houses were getting built in Grasstown when we moved. We would play after school in the houses being built, just dodged watchy (watchman). Was good [that I wasn’t] the only new boy. Made it a wee bit easier.—Raph

At this time, old slum housing areas were being demolished, so residents were relocated and dispersed throughout the city and surrounding areas. Glasgow City Council was selling off a number of social houses to new or existing authorities who would build new housing developments. Transport infrastructure improvements, incentives to encourage home ownership, wage increases, and the growing appeal of urban living were also contributing to huge internal migration. Families previously in condemned social housing who had the opportunity, resources, and desire to become homeowners began buying homes rather than being rehoused by the local council. Raph’s family had some money saved. His stepdad worked a well-paid job in a specialised area of heavy industry and his mum, who was training to become a nurse, had a night job in the care sector, which also paid well. This enabled the family to purchase a home on the private market for the first time.

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Although new homes were being built in Grasstown, the existing houses were both well sought after and widely available thanks to the local authority’s sell off of housing stock. Grasstown is comprised of bungalows, mid-terrace homes, and townhouses, each with their own front and back doors. The houses are bunched together and connected by pathways. Only a few main roads encircle the town, but Grasstown is split into two main areas—the district of Sandstone and the district of Redbrick. There are two primary schools in Sandstone, one Catholic and one non-denominational. Redbrick has several primary schools, both Catholic and non-denominational. The town has one high school at the centre. While most towns which border Glasgow are immediately attached, making it hard to see where the city ends and the towns begin, Grasstown is unique because it is surrounded by fields and only one, small, neighbouring village called Quartz. Grasstown’s nearest large town, called Royaltown, shares a boundary with Glasgow and is less than a mile down the road. This process of expansion and relocation changed the youth culture of the suburban town, which was becoming more and more influenced by the Glasgow conurbation. Prior to expansion, the town was a large village before becoming an independent, and separately located, town. This meant that even though a street gang did exist in the area beforehand, gang culture itself was not a deeply embedded issue. Rural living and poor transportation meant there was a smaller pool of youth and they primarily socialised in their own area. But now, the youth who had moved to Grasstown, like Raph, who originated from rival schemes in Glasgow like Linthouse and Crossie, had their resettlement experience and common history to bond over, while, at the same time, their new surroundings rendered any old territorial disputes moot: [When] I moved to Grasstown, so did Alex. He was from Crossie. I am from Linty. My brother’s mates had fought his older sister’s mates when we stayed in Govan. … But [in Grasstown] we got on. We didn’t fight for Govan gangs. We spoke all the time [be]cause we knew the people from Govan, and still had mates and family there telling us stories… [we would] gossip about it (laughs). Grasstown is good that wi’. [Initially] I hung about wi’ three boys who grew up in Grasstown,

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Alex fae Crossie, Ricky fae Royaltown. Think my other mate came from Clydebank originally.—Raph

Raph and his brother Leo were able to embed themselves into suburban life relatively easily because they were both good at sports. Most youth in the area played football, and this was something which both boys could participate in. Intergenerational football matches meant that Raph could introduce Leo to older boys in the community and vice versa. Hailing from Govan also afforded Raph and Leo a little assumed reputation on the streets. Linthouse and Crossie were notoriously rough housing schemes to grow up in. Most Grasstown children had parents or grandparents who originated from Glasgow during the overspill of the 1960s and they had handed-down stories of gangs and gang violence from their own youth, immortalising Linthouse and Crossie as “no go areas” in the minds of many youth. Anyone who originated from these areas, in turn, was endowed with some form of, what Harding (2014) calls, “street capital”. They were assumed to have both some inherent fighting chops and to retain kinship ties with serious criminals in these areas. This also explained why local females would take an immediate interest in new boys, furthering their street cred: We (Raph and his brother) were probably given a bit of status because we came from Govan. Govan is well known for being a hard place and having like loads a crime and criminals. Think people kind of pass judgement a bit before they meet you. Aye, we defo acted up to that label but…. [so did] most the boys who moved in [to Grasstown].—Raph

This blend of incoming youth, meant that certain elements of Glasgow gang culture began penetrating Grasstown’s cheery exterior. Territoriality grew because other little towns kept popping up nearby, close enough to fight with. The growing population, and expansion of the area, along with neighbouring areas, also coincided with the growth of the internet, which projected a “glocal” gang culture for youth to follow (Van Hellemont & Densley, 2019). Very quickly, gangs became of fixture of life in the community. The Blue Team was Royaltown, arguably the most fearsome gang in the wider county, and competed regularly

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with more established gangs from the tough towns nearby and with Glasgow youth also.1 The rise of the “other” resulted in the Grasstown youth congregating together under one banner in response to perceived threats from neighbouring areas: [Royaltown youths fighting for] Blue Team and [youth from] Grasstown have always had a few run-ins, but when I was growing up they started to come into Grasstown all the time. You always heard of them battering folk. Aye, it probably did influence us getting together and looking to fight them. Loads a boys who moved in had gang fought before so wasn’t like new to them or nothing. Blue Team had a heavy squad of about sixty, no joke, [be]cause they were really two gangs, that started hanging about. They were always going to the clubs in Glasgow and Paisley and scrapping, even killed a young boy at a [nightclub] in Paisley. They were well known.—Raph

Owing to his young age, Raph was initially more observer than participant in gangs at this time, but he remembers Leo quickly falling in with the crowds of Grasstown. While Raph still hung about with his older brother and his new friends, it was mostly when they played football at the local pitches. Different from life in Govan, the youth in the neighbouring streets all socialised with one another, thus Raph was more in touch with children his own age. Sandstone youth stuck together and Redbrick youth did too mostly because the two areas were at opposite ends of the town centre and the encircled housing design encouraged the youth to congregate inwards.

Mikey Robert had known Mikey prior to the case study interviews both from an earlier interview during his prior fieldwork and from certain social circles in which they both operated. Mikey is over 6 ft tall but looks smaller 1 Royaltown

was always heavily influenced by and connected to Glasgow because the town bordered the city directly and as such Catholic youth from several schemes in Glasgow attended the Catholic secondary school in Royaltown.

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owing to his average build. He is not slim or overweight or muscular and rather just blends in. He started going bald at a young age, thus shaves his hair in close. Mikey sports a number of tattoos over his body and also has a unique dress style, which defies categorisation. While polite, Mikey’s loud voice and boisterous personality meant he could easily be placed as having grown up in what would be considered a working-class community in the West of Scotland. At the time of his first interview, Mikey was in his mid-twenties but he is now in his mid-thirties. Mikey was born into an intact family unit which comprised of his dad, his mother, and his elder brother of approximately two years, Luke. Although not a practising Protestant, his biological father very much supported Protestant values, lifestyle, and Ulster unionism/loyalism. He expressed this through his support of Rangers FC, and by holding various positions within the Halls of the local Orange Order. Mikey was in fact named after a former Rangers FC player and manager. His dad originated from Govan, and his mother from a nearby town in a neighbouring county. He was raised in Drumoyne in the Govan district of Glasgow, yet until the age of four moved around the area frequently. Mikey consumed a lot of drugs during his teenage years, including hallucinogens, cannabis, speed, ecstasy, and Valium. Drug use had largely erased any memory he had of his early life, but Mikey was able to recall a few vivid moments: I must have been around three years old, maybe four years old, mate when I remember we (the family unit) left Drumoyne. The [scheme] was getting pulled down, but we had decided to move anyways. Basically my mum and dad were splitting up. I heard rumours why, but I don’t know. I can’t really remember everything that happened in between, but I know we went to live with my gran in [Botown] for a bit. Lived down the scheme. My mum’s family came from there, and some of my dad’s… it was Christmas and my mum took us to the phone box in the street to call my dad. I didn’t speak to him on the phone. I could hear him. They were arguing and he said he wasn’t getting us for Christmas. My mum was crying and we went home. She had a heavy barney with my uncle (her brother) afterwards. I don’t know why he didn’t come mate. I was told he thought it would be too hard.—Mickey

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That fact that Mikey could recall this event above all suggests it had a significant impact on him. In many ways, he was still trying to process it. Mikey said that while he had always been a somewhat difficult child, his problematic behaviour intensified after that phone call, which eventually led to a breakdown in the relationship with his mother, which never fully recovered. He took out his childhood frustrations on his mother, so his behaviour was worse in the home than out of it, which was saying something because he regularly hung out in the street with the children of the most notorious criminal families in town. Mikey says he was quite boisterous in the street, although he never got into many fights or much trouble. Botown is a town in a neighbouring county attached to Glasgow, yet Botown shares more in common with Glasgow than the rest of the towns and villages in the county. Like Grasstown, and indeed many large towns in counties around Glasgow, Botown is essentially split into two areas. In Botown, these areas are known locally as The Scheme and the other the much larger Ashcroft. Young people between these areas are fiercely competitive of one another, with engrained issues of territoriality. After arriving in Botown, Mikey’s mother, who was Catholic, changed Mikey from Protestant to Catholic and a few years later he underwent communion. This change allowed Mikey to attend the local catholic primary school in ‘the scheme’ end of the town, where Mikey was given some stick for being named after a former Rangers FC player and manager. At the time, Mikey’s mother became intimately involved with a local man by the name of Sim. They would eventually marry. Mikey recalls the day he answered the door and met Sim: I opened the door and Sim was standing there. Asked if my mum was in. After that he never left. He stayed locally. I had met him before in the street.—Mickey

Mikey and Sim clashed frequently throughout Mikey’s teenage years, but Mikey recognises that most of this was to do with Mikey’s problematic behaviour and Sim taking great strides to correct it. In his pre-teen years, Mikey and Sim actually got on well. Mikey felt that the introduction of

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Sim gave the family home a firm foundation and stability and security for the children. This was important because the environment was far from stable and safe. Mikey remembers one time when a number of police officers and patrol cars were called to a scene near his house because a dead body had been found in a wheelie bin. After the dead body, Mikey’s family felt it was time to relocate. While they continued to stay in Botown, the family moved to the Ashcroft side of town. Much of this area is characterised by four-in-a-block cottage flats. Mikey continued to attend the same primary school, but no longer socialised with youth in The Scheme or with those from school outside of school hours. Rather, Mikey began to hang about with a mixture of boys, and some girls, in the new area in which he lived. The housing estate in this part of Ashcroft was somewhat inward facing, thus kids from all the nearby streets socialised with one another. Primary school kids tended to hang out with others of similar age, while secondary school kids would socialise with other secondary youth in key meeting points around Botown such as the Main Street shops, the local parks and playing fields, or in school grounds after hours. Thus, friendships were primarily formed through proximity and age.

Donnie Tall and slender, with soft facial features and no facial hair, Donnie looked like a teenager, but was actually in his early 30s at the time of the case study interviews. Donnie spoke politely and while he used Glasgow slang, his language was more refined, more ‘proper English’, than the other study participants. Much like Mikey, Donnie had consumed a copious amount of drugs in his teenage and early adult years (mostly cannabis), and he felt this had significantly affected his memory and ability to recall events, particularly from his early life. Donnie was born in the mid-80s in deindustrialised Glasgow. His family originated from the tough Northern schemes of the city, including Springburn, the dangerous Ruchill, and the notorious Possil Park and Milton, which were strongholds for Scotland’s main organised crime families, the Daniels and Lyons (see McKay, 2017). Donnie initially grew

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up in an intact family household that included his biological mother and biological father, along with his two elder male siblings, the oldest of whom was eight years his senior. His younger half-sister was born after the split of his mother and father. Donnie recalls that he felt secure in this functioning, unified family. His dad was a tradesman and after securing a work contract he relocated the family to southern England for two years. However, it was in England where the family broke down. Donnie’s mother and father split up, eventually relocating back to Glasgow independently. Donnie and his brothers stayed with their mother and moved back to the north of the city. Their dad followed suit shortly after. I am not sure what really happened. We lived in England, in Peterborough for a while. There are a couple of Scottish families living there. Well, in the bit we stayed. Stayed there a bit and then my mum and my dad split. I am not sure why. They argued a bit, remember that. My mum took us and moved us back to Glasgow. My family is from the North side. We moved close to them. She ended up meeting this guy Kenny the Cock. Gets called KC for short. Everyone knows him as KC. He answers to it (laughs). Gets called that no[t] [be]cause the size of his manhood but [be]cause he is always moaning about stuff and like a pure kind of negative, whiney kind of guy.—Donnie

Once back in Glasgow, Donnie recalls that his mother started a relationship with local man KC, whom she had befriended upon her return through common social circles. However, his mother’s family did not approve the relationship and after a series of domestic disturbances, Donnie’s grandfather paid KC a visit at home. Armed with an array of weapons, Donnie’s grandfather set upon KC and tried to end KC’s life. KC survived the initial assault, but suffered repeated victimisation at the hands of the family, and spent several months in and out of hospital. Donnie states that it was around this time that he noticed his own attitude towards violence change, and he began engaging in street fights with other youths in the area, as well as hanging about with other young boys in the area who were known to be trouble makers. Much of this link to older boys was facilitated by his relationship with his brothers, who were known and liked throughout the area: particularly as they

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had prior friendships before moving to England, which they picked back up upon their return. Donnie also began to develop a stammer in his voice around this point, which occasionally surfaces even now during times of stress or conflict: When I seen my mum last, and was asking her, she thought that my stammer started round about this time. [She] said that I use to speak like fine. Get the odd word and that mixed up but nothing really. Started properly about then. I can’t really mind but.—Donnie

Donnie recalls that his mother’s relationship with KC continued and was arguably strengthened by her family’s disapproval. His older brothers moved out of the household in the coming years to live with their biological dad, who resided in the neighbouring estate where the brothers had friends and family. The brothers also spent some time living with their grandparents. Owing to his younger age, however, Donnie remained at home with his mum, KC, and younger sister. He would stay with his grandfather or his biological dad at weekends, who had to work full time during the week. Around Primary 5 or 6, the family purchased a house in the Govan district of Glasgow, in the scheme of Teucherhill. KC had managed to scrape together enough money to invest in one of the few true houses in the area (most of the scheme was comprised of post-war tenement flats). Houses in the scheme were either one or two levels, one to three bedrooms, and were generally mid and/or end terrace homes. However, KC wished to build an existing structure on top of the home and develop it into a three, but preferably four, storey town house. The plans were quickly, and Donnie recalls laughably, dismissed, so KC quickly sold the home and moved the family into a social house in the rundown west side of the Drumoyne estate, known as Drum Bosnia, an unflattering reference to the war-torn European state. This was only a temporary move—KC intended to relocate the family back to the north of the city—but it left an indelible mark on Donnie’s life. Donnie easily assimilated into the area. He was a likable character who played sports, enjoyed being sociable, and was somewhat partial to juvenile delinquency. By virtue of living in the roughest part of the

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estate, Donnie found himself in close proximity to some of the more notorious individuals from Drumoyne, indeed many of his neighbours were gang members. Donnie further acquired gang-involved friends by attending the local non-denominational primary school. Both Drum and Teuch kids attended this school, which gave the relationship between these rival neighbouring schemes an unusual dimension. Youth from both areas would have their own street gangs and occasionally fight each other, but also they tended to hang out together and in many cases would join forces to wage territorial battles against youth from outside Drumoyne and Tecuherhill, notably the neighbouring schemes of Crossie, Hillington, Craigton, and Moss Heights. After some time, the social housing where Donnie’s family lived was declared obsolete and unfit for living. Much of the area was scheduled to be torn down and rebuilt as private housing under new buyers. The family were offered social housing back in the North of the city, where KC wished to move to because it was closer to work. However, Donnie had just begun secondary school at Govan High and did not want to change schools. He was in the same year group as Leo. [The family was] only meant to live in Drumoyne for a wee bit. The area was called Drum Bosnia by the other people who lived round about Drumoyne. Most of Drumoyne is like four houses in the one block. The bit we moved to [was post-war tenements]. Mostly like three [story] high buildings. It was a wild bit aye. I moved there and didn’t really known anyone. A few of the boys that attended the school lived there, in the street round the corner. We hung out with each in the back [couyrt uards]. They had older brothers and sisters in the place. That’s how I met most the people and got to known them. Got into a few fights aye. Just because it was a rough bit. No one really cared where I came from. Just in primary school. People don’t bother about that as much till your in like high school. Was okay… we got a letter saying the place was getting tore down. KC managed to get offered a house back in Springburn but I was starting school. I don’t know anyone from Springburn either. I was from Milton so would have got battered probably. Said I was wanting to just go to Govan high. My mum was cool wi’ that aye.—Donnie

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Following a discussion with his family, it was decided that Donnie could, if he wished, remain at Govan High School. Thus, even after the family’s home was torn down and they moved back to the North of the city, Donnie travelled from the North of the city to the Southside in order to attend school. Donnie felt that during this time, his attendance actually improved because while he was not the most academic of students he nonetheless enjoyed secondary school greatly because it gave him the opportunity to socialise with peers. This perhaps coincided with the fact that Donnie never socialised with youth in the Springburn area, and felt that his links with Milton and even to a lesser degree Possil Park, would endanger him. In addition, Donnie was not alone in this process as a number of his peers and friends were undergoing similar experiences of relocation and travelling to Govan High School from areas further afield. His immediate friendship group, in second year onwards, included Leo from Grasstown, Choi from Cardonald, Cypher from Royaltown, Derek and Billy from the Southside. Only Mac-T, James, and Alan continued to live in Govan: despite at first year all being from either Linthouse or Drumoyne. The gang was just beginning.

Concluding Remarks Four lives. Four stories. Four examples of what we might objectively call “adverse childhood experiences” shaping people’s opportunities and preferences (Felitti et al., 1998). The early lives of our four main personalities are punctuated by exposure to physical and sexual abuse; emotional or physical neglect; domestic violence; and/or having one parent or experiencing parental separation or divorce. And they were not alone. Leo’s friend Choi made this point clear when he described the trauma routinely transferred between generations in Glasgow: Of the boys in my primary class, say six fought for [a gang] at some stage. Fact seven. Two moved away, [but] I know one [still] fought for [his local gang]… He was meant to be mental, I heard. [Of those seven], five [were raised in] right [turbulent and disruptive] homes. What you expect but when they grow up like that? … Saying that mate, two of

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the other yains had hard times growing up. They never got in trouble [though]. What you thinking but, you cannot really expect anything else. It’s Govan man.—Choi

In Govan, any adversity met within the family was matched by equally adverse community experiences, including housing insecurity, substance use and abuse, bullying, and exposure to collective violence in socially disorganised schemes. Everyone had friends or relatives in the area who had served or were serving prison terms. Many young people from the schemes expected to go to jail at some point—it was a rite of passage and an integral part of life. And so, while largely descriptive, this chapter invites us to think about how toxic stress affects behaviour and how individual gang membership and offending have deep roots.

References Felitti, V. J., Anda, R. F., Nordenberg, D., Williamson, D. F., Spitz, A. M., Edwards, V., … Marks, J. S. (1998). Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to many of the leading causes of death in adults: The adverse childhood experiences (ACE) study. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 14, 245–258. Harding, S. (2014). The street casino. Bristol: Policy Press. McKay, R. (2017). The Lyons v the Daniels, the incredible inside story of Glasgow’s gang wars. Glasgow Live. Retrieved from https://www.glasgowlive. co.uk/news/glasgow-news/the-lyons-v-the-daniels-11346282. Miller, J. (2019). Passing on gang culture in the theatre of the streets: ‘They’ll grow out of it, then our age will grow into it and then we’ll grow out of it’. Journal of Youth Studies, online first. https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261. 2019.1655534. Van Hellemont, E., & Densley, J. (2019). Gang glocalization: How a global mediascape creates and shapes local gang realities. Crime, Media, Culture, 15, 169–189.

3 The School Years

Leo, Raph, Mikey, and Donnie were certainly aware of and exposed to gangs as children, but they did not fully engage directly with gang life until they became teenagers and entered secondary school. The years prior to secondary school simply introduced the respondents to the gang narrative and set them on the pathway to gang involvement by introducing them to certain gatekeepers into gangs and certain socialising patterns which would aid gang formation and criminal embeddedness in the future. The years during secondary school were when gang life became real. For our respondents, schools were a breeding ground for gangs and crime. This chapter looks at the life of a future gang member in secondary school and as a teenager.

With a Little Help from My Friends Protestant children who had attended non-denominational primary schools in Linthouse, Teucherhill, Drumoyne, Govan Centre, and Crossie typically attended Govan High School (GHS). Catholic children from the same areas attended a mix of schools, although most from © The Author(s) 2020 R. McLean and J. A. Densley, Scotland’s Gang Members, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47752-3_3

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Linthouse, Crossie and Govan centre attended Royaltown High school in Royaltown because it was closest and on the local bus route. Even after Leo moved out of Govan, he still attended Govan High School and his classmates and friends all lived in and around the area: Was weird really. We were traveling into school from places well far off. School was a pure laugh [so most] didn’t mind. We weren’t travelling to get grades [but to] hang out wi’ mates. 5th year was the best.—Leo

In the last school week before the summer holidays and prior to officially starting the first year of secondary school, children from Primary 7 attend ‘taster week’—an attempt to transition students to the new school environment. When prospective year one pupils first arrive at GHS for taster week, they invariably gravitate towards their classmates from primary school, even if they had not always been firm friends. Leo was no different. He didn’t have much time for the likes of Brady, who was arrogant and annoying, but because Brady was an adept fighter and he had older siblings at GHS, Leo didn’t mind socialising with him that day. As drips and drabs of pupils entered the scene and the time edged closer to 9 a.m., there was something very comforting about a familiar face. There was also strength and security in numbers. Fear of the unknown was eating away at all the Linthouse boys. Their older peers and siblings had warned them of humiliating pranks played on newbie students, including being locked in bathrooms, flushed head first down toilet pans, or being tied to poles. They also told them about getting a kicking from the boys from rival schemes. Yet there was some reassurance that some of the newbies already knew the older pupils in secondary through kinship ties or their time together in the schemes. Owing to their age and interests tied to their maturity, the Linthouse boys, like others from Glasgow’s schemes, tended to be somewhat naturally separated into generational friendship groups, approximately two or three years apart. Outside school, on the streets, Leo associated with boys who were older, plus his younger brother Raph and his cousin Anton.

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Inside school, however, Leo socialised more with boys his own age, who were a little less socially adept, like Mac-T and Choi. At this age, status was tied to one’s family reputation; athleticism and ability to play sports; ability to attract girls; fight well, and be funny or talkative. These were the “focal concerns”, as Walter Miller (1958) might say, of working-class youth in Govan. Leo had been good at sports, but was shy around the girls. He was not the largest or bravest person, and not a natural fighter. He was known for having a temper, and being fierce when really pushed. Leo understood he would have to express that side of himself more if he wanted to not only survive secondary school, but thrive and progress up the social ladder. In the meantime, Leo felt it best to stick with the crowd. At 9 a.m., the school bell rang. Leo and his peers entered school together, looked at their timetables, and some parted ways, off to the classes. Leo’s first class was Physical Education (P.E.) and he saw his friend Mac-T en route. “Alright mate, let’s see your timetable”, he said. “We basically have the same timetable mate, so stick together”. The boys vowed to have each other’s backs and quietly made efforts to suss out their new schoolmates as they walked to the sports hall. P.E. was taught by Mr. McCann. He was small, stocky, and looked quite stern. “Get changed lads” he shouted continually as the pupils entered the grimy dressing room. This would become a frequent call throughout the years, followed by a bellow of what the day’s sport was. “Football today” he called on this occasion. “Fucking yes”, thought Leo. Being good at sports, Leo saw this as an opportunity to immediately gain some respect. Some of the new kids forgot their sports kit and were directed towards a musty-smelling box filled with discarded or forgotten socks, tops, shoes, and towels. Anyone who took anything from the lost property box would live out the next four years, at least, at the lowest rung on the school status ladder. No one touched the stuff in the box. “There you go Abdul”, shouted one boy as he reached into the box, grabbed the scabbiest pair of shorts he could find, and flung them in the direction of the only Asian lad in the classroom. The name “Abdul” was intended to be racist, but,

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unbeknownst to the group at the time, the boy was in fact named Abdul. “And no looking at my knob either”, the racist boy added, as he began to change into his football wear. The cheek of the boy, along with his height, build, and the fact he had a deep facial scar, signalled to everyone that he was trouble. His name was CT. Leo was so intimated he dared not even laugh along. Even the “top boys” from Leo’s primary class in Linthouse who happened to be in the room—Brady, Chris, and Rab—said nothing, defying all expectations. The only response came from a lad, Steph, who was obviously familiar with CT. Steph joked that he wished the other boys would look at his manhood because he was a closet homosexual. Abdul said nothing. CT didn’t let up. He made a few more racist jokes at Abdul’s expense. Abdul eventually responded, informing CT that circumcision was not part of his religion. The Linthouse boys laughed in response, which permitted Leo and Mac-T to do the same. CT, obviously feeling that his position had been challenged, then threatened Abdul, warning him not to overstep. Everyone could see that CT was picking on Abdul in an effort to assert his dominance, not only over Abdul, but also the rest of the class. While Leo was fully aware of this public performance, he was still intimidated and made a mental note to avoid any possible confrontation with CT. Suddenly, a voice rose up from the back of the classroom. “Be careful. Abdul would take you”, it said. Standing there was a boy giant, who, like CT, was marked with a large, menacing scar along his face. The other boys around him gave the lad their attention. It was clear CT also knew the individual. He was a Crossie boy, called Wilson, and alongside him was his best friend, another feared individual, Blackie, also from Crossie. Leo later discovered that the pair had chased CT and his friends during a street gang fight just days earlier. Both had older siblings in the local Crossie Possie gang, and were well versed in gang fighting. CT said nothing. Chris then spoke up, “He might be smaller than you, but check the arms on the boy. He would take you”. Everyone could see what was going on. Most of the boys in the room where smaller than CT, but Chris was letting CT knew that size doesn’t always matter in a fight. Using Abdul as a pawn in the argument, Chris was issuing a warning

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to CT that people may be smaller (himself included) but they were no pushover. CT responded by walking across the room, past Chris, hand outstretched in a peace offering to Abdul. When Abdul leaned in to engage, CT swiftly pulled back, ducked underneath Abdul’s extended arm and grabbed him in a chokehold from behind. “Right, that’s enough of that” shouted Mr. McCann who had been standing at the door the whole time. CT let go and said he was only “having a laugh”. The teacher then sent the boys out to play football. After what Leo felt was a good showing on the football field, the boys returned, got changed, and moved on to their next class. At the first interval, though, the Linthouse boys gathered in their group, and discussed the incident with CT: [We were] saying CT pure struggled to put Abdul down. He was a snake, jumping him like that. Saying Abdul would give him a good fight if it came to it. [We weren’t saying] it [be]cause we thought Abdul could fight, [be]cause we thought Abdul couldn’t fight. Kind of that meant that CT couldn’t fight either. [We] were saying to [Chris that] he would batter him (CT). Think saying that made us feel safe know, [be]cause [Chris] was one of us. Was on our side, and have our back.—Leo

During the conversation, the top boys from Linty used certain derogatory terms to describe CT and other perceived rivals of similar status from different areas. This further solidified their top boy status, feeding a narrative that would be replicated among the group in order to assert and reassert the position and status of the Linty boys. The good news was it made Leo feel like he was backed by strong players. However, Donnie, who had also witnessed the showdown during P.E., recalls things differently. Having known Abdul from primary school, Donnie states: Remember a bit of it aye. The Linthouse guys were being pure dicks to Abdul. They were shitting it from CT and causing trouble between him and Abdul. Probably so CT didn’t start on them. He was a big cunt in school. Aggressive… they were sniggering and that after CT wrestled wi’ him.—Donnie

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Leo recalls the event as one in which the Linthouse boys were being intimidated by CT, who was seeking to subconsciously victimise them, thus they responded in a manner which reinforced their own standing. Donnie sees the event differently and one in which the Linthouse boys were in a group of “around six” and stirring trouble between CT and Abdul, saying little, but still laughing and sniggering to provoke things. Either way, CT’s public display of power via indirect challenges to weaker individuals in the presence of an audience was now embedded into Leo’s psyche. Leo would draw upon this experience in the immediate future, and in years to come, to cement his own position in gang and criminal networks. Another incident which would impact upon Leo occurred later that same day. At lunch break, Leo and Mac-T ventured out of the school grounds and into nearby Drumoyne to buy lunch. Seeing that the local chip shop was crowded, the duo, along with another Linthouse boy David, wandered further afield and ventured into what was, unknown to them, Teucherhill. Leo started to notice that they were being followed by two other, slightly older, youths. They were not in any school uniform1 and thought to be much older, arguably around 16 years old. “We’re being followed mate” said Leo. Mac-T, who had more knowledge of these things because his two elder brothers were involved in gangs and crime, responded, “they’re Teuch mate”. They decided to turn down the next available side street and run back in the direction they had come. “Run mate, just run” shouted Leo, and the trio sprinted away, losing their tail in the back streets. When they arrived back at school, Leo, Mac-T, and David immediately told the other Linthouse boys what had happened. Now in numbers of around ten, including some of the older Linthouse boys who were also on lunchbreak, they contemplated walking back to Teucherhill to find the followers and “teach them a lesson”. Although a minor incident compared to what would follow later, this was Leo’s first exposure to the immediate threat that lived outside the school gates, his first brush with gang territoriality outside of his “safe space” in Linty. It was an experience that Leo, at that moment, had no desire to relive, although he did 1 Pupils

at this time tended to wear tracksuits not school uniform, but some pupils did voluntarily wear school jumpers or T-Shirts over the top.

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enjoy the thrill of the chase, getting away, and being supported by his peers, who promised revenge on his behalf. True, Leo had suffered gang victimisation in the past, at the hand of The Donaldsons, but this was different. Far from home, the rules of the game were different—he did not yet know the people and places to avoid; the reasons one could be attacked; the punishments that awaited those who broke the rules. This experience of the unknown and the other was exhilarating but still utterly terrifying. Little did Leo know that it would soon become an addiction. The next week would go by with similar events to that of CT and Abdul, whereby youth would jostle for status and position among peers. In addition, Leo would also hear about some minor gang disputes with Teuch boys who showed up at school during lunch break and chased several youth from Crossie. The experiences from the first week in secondary school would ultimately serve to bring together the lads from Linthouse into a more cohesive group, and they socialised more together during the upcoming summer holiday than in previous years. They also socialised more with the older boys in the neighbourhood, who appeared more willing to accept them now they were making the transition to high school. Such is how gangs are continually fed with new blood—the Primary 7 boys replace the Secondary 5 and 6 boys who cease hanging out on the streets once they leave school and start work. The 16 and 17-year-olds pass the torch to the 11 and 12-year-olds, facilitating the intergenerational transmission of gang life (see also, Miller, 2019).

A School and Scheme Divided While street gangs in the West of Scotland tend to replicate the unofficial name of the territory from which they originate, as discussed, the schemes—and the gangs by extension—are far from unified outfits. It is common for groups, particularly larger ones, to split, sometimes into warring factions. Some break-ups are permanent, while others are temporary. As individuals’ age and change, their gangs may disband entirely or eventually get back together. The implication is that schemes may occasionally have more than one street gang, named after the territory they come from plus some sort of suffix or prefix, or a different name entirely,

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which better differentiates the group and/or distances them from their original set up. For example, when Grasstown split, the resulting gangs called themselves Yellow Team and Red Team. In the Gorbals, there was Young Gorbals Cumbie and Young Suicide Cumbie. And GITO from Gallowhill followed the lead of Garthamlock in using initials, thinking it sounded better than the standard Gallowhill Young Team. In the large expanding suburb of Grasstown, flush with youth originating from areas with embedded gang cultures, such as Glasgow and large neighbouring towns, divisions were always likely to occur. This was perhaps most evident in Raph’s age cohort. Leo and Raph lived in Sandstone, which was Yellow Team territory. Neighbouring Redbrick was Red Team’s turf. But Leo, a few years older than Raph, identified with Grasstown as a whole and socialised with peers from Yellow Team and Red Team both. During the day, for example, Leo would hang around with Red Team youth who were unemployed or playing truant from school. At night, he would hang around with Yellow Team, who were generally older, thus into more age-appropriate activities, such as frequenting clubs or pubs on the weekends. For years, the two gangs coexisted peacefully. But as more and more young people from the Glasgow conurbation moved into the area, and the two sides grew in size, labels started to matter more and territorial disputes intensified. By the time Leo was 16, Yellow Team and Red Team were enemies and Raph and the younger generation were on the frontlines, spearheading the conflict. Grasstown has only one secondary school, thus the vast majority of youth in the area attend the school of Sandstone, including any Catholic youth not attending Royaltown High in Royaltown. With most of the young population in Grasstown attending the same secondary school, and sectarian troubles more muted in the suburbs than in the city, there was hardly any trouble between Yellow Team and Red Team when Raph first started school. Started school and everyone just got on. We were all from Grasstown… [or like] myself [had just moved] into Grasstown. Wasn’t really much trouble in school in my year. No at first.—Raph

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Being good at sports, able to handle himself, and still talkative and funny, Raph got on well with almost everyone. He had some additional street capital because his elder brother was now well known for his gang exploits. For all intents and purposes, Raph was top boy at his primary school. However, Raph’s secondary school was fed by four other local primaries, each with their own top boys. Raph’s competition was Mountie, J-smith, and Bubsey, all from Redbrick. The three of them were all physically larger than Raph, therefore, he initially placed fourth in the school’s informal pecking order. Raph’s skin also broke out in bad acne when he hit puberty, which meant he became increasingly shy around females and self-conscious about his appearance. After being “slagged off ” about it by his peers, Raph began to adopt a more aggressive demeanour. Raph’s transition from Primary 7 to Secondary 1 was similar to Leo’s insomuch that he stayed close to his primary school classmates while people sized each other up and jostled for position, although things were arguably easier for him because Grasstown was not as territorial as Govan and youth from other primaries tended to know each other already from local sports clubs, teams, and events in the scheme. But as the first year progressed, things quickly changed. Owing to Redbrick’s size and layout, preponderance of social housing, and four-storey flats (the only ones still standing in town), youth from Redbrick had more numbers on the street. Now attending high school, the first years would also venture further than before to socialise with other secondary school youth on the streets of Grasstown. Redbrick youth would routinely cross over into bordering Sandstone to gather at key sites, simply because these sites were good meeting points for youth wishing to escape adult supervision, particularly at weekends, when drugs and alcohol were on the agenda. Sandstone was Yellow Team territory but Yellow Team’s main positions of stronghold bordered Quartz and were as far from Redbrick as they could possibly be. Eventually, largely out of convenience, a number of Sandstone youth pledged gang allegiance to Redbrick over Yellow Team. As Raph recalls: Because the way Grasstown is set out, most the young ones say they are from Redbrick, even if they aren’t. [Be]cause they hang out with Redbrick. I came from a pure Yellow Team strong hold. Plus my brother

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and his mates are all from Yellow Team. My brother never [got involved] but some of his mates were at that point always scrapping with Red Team boys. I was never going to say I was from Redbrick or shout “Young Redbrick”. Fuck that. But the guys in my year started to shout “Young Red Team” all the time, probably about half way into the year. Especially after Riddick slashed Cosh from Yellow Team (see Chapter 4).2 They started getting on my nerves. Was like a dig at me, my brother, every time they said it. Even if they didn’t mean it. No respect. I didn’t shout Yellow Team in front of them. Everyone started hanging out together. Mostly like at weekends. [Be]cause people started drinking [alcohol] in first year. But because my year was meeting up with older ones outside school at weekends, like in the year or two above me, and they were Redbrick, it meant the ones in my year started acting up in front of them saying fuck Yellow Team and shit. Mostly when steaming [drunk] at the weekends. Obviously that’s going to start fights. Especially if they are gloating over my brother’s mates [from Yellow Team] getting done in.

The politics on the ground meant that youth in Raphs’ school year gradually began antagonising anyone who remained independent of Redbrick’s influence. Most violence between young street gangs takes place in the summer holidays, largely because of drink and drugs, but also because youth tend to stay out late and with no school for several months, they have plenty of idle time on their hands. With the onset of puberty, fights over female attention also caused issues that summer after first year. During this period, clashes between the older generations of Yellow Team and Red Team (i.e. boys aged 15–17), continued to affect the lives of the younger generation, especially Raph who found himself caught between two worlds that were drifting further apart. To further complicate matters, several gang members from Glasgow and a criminal family from the notorious Fergulsie Park area in Paisley moved into Quartz and formed a new gang, Green Team, which put external pressure on Yellow Team and Red Team, respectively, intensifying both groups’ need for loyalty 2This was an incident in which one of the top boys from Red Team slashed one of the top boys from Yellow Team who was several years his elder. This made Riddick arguably the outright top boy in Red Team and while heightening tension between the sides, there was a feeling at the time that Redbrick were the more credible side of the two.

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and cohesion. Before long, what were once verbal disagreements turned into violent confrontations. Raph was still young at only 12 years old, and while there was support for Yellow Team independence among the older Secondary 4 boys, this was a minority opinion in Raph’s year, Secondary 1. Thus, around his immediate peers, Raph would continue to say he was from Yellow Team but press home the Grasstown dimension which covered both areas, and during the summer he spent more time in the areas where his brother and the other older secondary school boys hung out. Here he began to experiment with alcohol and occasionally drugs such as cannabis and MDMA, better known as ecstasy (colloquially, “eccies”). While intoxicated and egged on by the older boys, Raph and his peers began to engage in more extreme anti-social behaviour and delinquency, such as vandalism, attacking passing buses with bricks and bottles, and intra-group violence arising from petty disputes: [We] were always fighting wi’ each other… when steaming (drunk). … went head to head a good few times… every other weekend. Hung about… [but simply] didn’t get on when [we drank] … too much testosterone.… [One time, two older boys] phoned to meet at the shops and went at it wi’ hatchets and machetes. Fucked each other right up. I was like, “What the fuck?”—Raph

Raph quickly acquired a reputation as a “solid fighter” after several fights with peers of similar status, which he claims he won. Thus, when the summer holidays ended and Raph returned to school, it was more or less unanimous that he was now a serious threat to J-smith and Mountie. J-smith and Mountie wouldn’t accept this, so the undisputed top boy from the older year three, another Red Team youth, attacked Raph in school. Raph put up a good fight against the much larger Grazer, who was 15 years old and just a few inches shy of 7 ft tall, but resistance was futile and he lost. Raph had made every effort to stay out of the ongoing battle between Yellow Team and Red Team, but now he was truly involved. When Raph told his elder brother Leo what had happened, Leo chased Grazer into

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the school with a knife in hand,3 and Grazer publicly apologised to Raph, which cemented Raph’s status as one of the year’s top boys. Raph’s reputation was intimately tied to his brother’s, and Leo came to Raph’s rescue again after another older third year kicked Raph in the leg on the way to the local shops during lunch break. “Does he go to these shops every lunch time”, asked Leo. “I think so”, Raph replied. “Well, you make sure you skip class early and come to the shops tomorrow for lunch. Be there before him and say nothing to anyone”, Leo said. The following day, Raph did as his brother advised, reaching the shops before anyone else. Leo was already there, accompanied by around six or seven other Yellow Team members,4 and a number of other youth who were not widely known as Yellow Team members per se, but associated with the gang regularly, such as Macca, a younger lad from Grasstown who would “dog it” (play truant) from the Catholic school in Royaltown to hang out with Leo. “When this boy shows up, you waste him. Make sure everyone sees. We have your back so don’t worry. Keep your mates out of it but ”, Leo instructed Raph. Shortly after, school pupils descended upon the shops for lunch, many of whom the Yellow Team youths knew or were known by, and with such as large crowd, some armed, they could sense that something was about to go down. At that time, the object of everyone’s affections came down the stairs and passed the Yellow Team. Raph pointed him out, and the boy recognised something was up. He quickly entered the shop, and after some time was forced to come outside, while his friends remained inside. “What you saying now, eh? ”, barked Raph to the youth. “What the fuck you fucking saying, eh? ” Raph asked again. The youth, although much larger, was clearly in fear of the situation and froze.

3 While

Grazer fled on this occasion, Grazer still had a weapon of his own and would have undoubtedly used it if needed. There were numerous other confrontations between Leo and Grazer, which were always tit-for-tat. Despite this, Leo made a point of saying he still liked Grazer, and respected him as a fighter and for almost never backing down. 4 Although around sixteen year of age, most of the Yellow Team youth did not work, were still in school or attended college, thus large groups regularly congregated even during week days.

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“Fucking nut him” yelled Macca, prompting Raph to headbutt or ‘wrap the heed ’ into the enemy’s face several times before following up with a combination of left and right swinging hooks to the boy’s face and neck. The boy fell into the shop wall, but did not fall down, so Leo coaxed Raph to hit him some more, admiring his brother’s technique of keeping the boy close and generating punching power from his now planted legs. The attack only lasted a few seconds and ended with a dramatic verbal warning to anyone watching that any would-be attackers would face the same. Raph then walked over to the on-looking Yellow Team boys to be embraced by them and take his place among them. The victim picked himself up from a slouched position on the wall and was helped back to school by his friends. Pent-up anger can lead to sudden, angry outbursts and around this time, events at home were feeding some of Raph and Leo’s actions on the street. The year before Raph started secondary school, his grandfather passed away. Raph and Leo felt little remorse over his death since they learned he was a sex offender, but their mother, who had been victimised, struggled to process her emotions. Unable to sleep at night, she took a cocktail of drugs, which were all prescribed, to assist her in doing so, then would wander the house at all hours, crying hysterically. Leo and Raph’s stepdad worked nightshift and was rarely home to help, so it was on the children to comfort their mum and persuade her to try get some sleep. This affected Leo and Raph, witnessing the consequences of their grandfather’s abuse, but also learning, in graphic detail, that their mother had been further abused in her youth by a paedophile priest in the Hillington area of Glasgow. The boys were themselves getting little sleep but still had to attend school the next day. Reflecting back, they both struggled to cope: My grandad dying meant my mum was free from him. But now that freedom meant she had to face what had happened. She never did that before when he lived because the family were all so terrified of him. Think she couldn’t deal with the freedom [be]cause it meant facing it. She just had a complete breakdown. A lot of her brothers and sisters did at the same time as well. No one spoke about it though so none of the cousins

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knew until we speak now we are older. Everyone was going through it themselves.—Leo At the time, you just get on with it. Don’t think it affects you in any way. I didn’t start feeling ‘oh I can’t cope’. Notice it affected me but looking back. It was at that time my brother started always carrying knives and getting right into trouble. He hadn’t done stuff like that before. I also started carrying [knives]. We both started lifting weights as well. He went to boxing. Would come back and teach me. We always watched gangster stuff as well around then. Talked about fighting all the time. We might have done that anyways. But I think what was going on did change us. It got worse after she had a pure breakdown. My mum had a fall and it basically made her disabled, and she was having to take medication all the time now. Day and night, so it kind of meant the things she spoke about or did at night, she did all the time now when she had taken her medication.—Raph

The boys were already consuming a diet of violence, but now their mother’s mental breakdown and physical disability meant she could no longer work, and her prescription pain medication was feeding irrational family feuds and other volatile behaviour, such as smashing up the property. The household was in disarray, but the boys never spoke out about it. This was partly because young boys in Govan don’t talk about their problems, but also because there was still a lot of love in the household. Raph was adamant he lived in a happy family, even if it was, objectively speaking, pretty dysfunctional: I loved my childhood. Same wi’ Leo. My mum was loving. Everyone liked her. She might have been fucking mental but we knew that was because grandad. She was just trying to deal wi’ that shit. Now she couldn’t work. She was also disabled now as well. Wasn’t her fault. It’s a lot for anyone to deal wi’…. Nights were crazy (laughs) but we still love being around each other. Our fondest memories are in the house, as a family.—Raph

Leo agreed—the boys understood the external causes of their mother’s breakdown, thus “could deal with it”. However, any suppressed emotion at home was expressed out on the streets, and manifested in things like

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weapon carrying. At the time, young people could cheaply and easily acquire a vast array of weaponry, including samurai swords, knives, lockback switchblades, axes, machetes, crossbows, spears, knuckle dusters, nunchakus, etc. from shops like Victor Morris and unregulated stalls in the city’s Barrowlands. A machete cost only £10 and Raph was a frequent customer. Raph’s best friend in Grasstown was Ricky. Ricky and Raph had similar personalities and interests and the two have been “inseparable” through life: Raph: [We have always] done everything with each other. Got on. Ricky: Straight away. Raph: Right away… Both play football, both in centre midfield. Both of us like doing all sorts of sports. Ricky: We both got our first drink together on the streets as well. My dad let me drink in house. No like getting fucking blootered (very drunk) … [but in moderation]. Raph: Our first burds5 were best pals weren’t they? So basically, do everything [together]…. When I was getting into a bit of [criminality], like seriously, crime, I was, you know, not involving … No trying to be a snide bastard. I didn’t want [Ricky] getting into trouble… I had always been known as a wee rascal. I had said to his mum I wouldn’t get [Ricky] into [trouble].

Ricky’s family hailed from arguably the most infamous estate in Scotland, Easterhouse (see Bartie & Fraser, 2014). He had several elder brothers and his dad had a fearsome reputation as someone not to be messed with. Raph and Ricky were able footballers and would regularly play other youth from the area in games of two-v-two. On one occasion Raph and Ricky were issued a challenge to play against two boys their age who attended the secondary school in Royaltown. The boys socialised little with the Grasstown youth, but rather in Royaltown or the more well-off private estates in Grasstown.6 During the football game, tensions 5 Glasgow

slang for females. In nearby Inverclyde, only several miles from the city, the term refers to a male or female partner. 6 In addition to Sandstone and Redbrick, Greentown has a number of newer built more well off areas which although in Greentown, very much border the two original estates. These are

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ran high and, at one point, there was some disagreement about whether or not the ball had crossed the goal line. Raph settled the dispute by pulling a telescopic baton from his school bag and beating the larger boy of the two, Shaun, around the head and face. Shaun was severely injured in the attack and wound up in hospital. This resulted in social services being called on Raph’s family and although the investigation failed to pick up on his mother’s mental breakdown or his brother’s involvement in gangs, it did capture Raph’s aberrant and aggressive behaviour and, as a result, he was forced to attend a Children’s Hearing Panel.7 With his criminal credentials now well and truly established, by the time year two of secondary school ended and the summer holidays once again beckoned, Raph was firmly placed as either the top boy or at least number two in his year behind J-smith. Raph and his peers began socialising more and more with the older generation and began adopting gang slogans outright. There was now a firm Red Team/Yellow Team division among Leo’s age cohort, which had some spill-over for Raphs’ generation, even if they weren’t directly warring with Red Team. Yet. This changed only a few days into the summer holidays when Raph’s cousin—participant Mikey—was in town visiting Raph and was attacked by J-smith and friends. Mikey had been with Raph, J-smith, and about 30 other youths, hanging out and drinking on a Friday night. But when the police came to break up the party, the group dispersed and Mikey got separated from Raph, who wound up with J-smith, Bubsey, and a few other boys. J-smith told Mikey has was top boy with Raph a close second. Mikey disagreed, saying Raph was top boy and J-smith second. An argument ensued, culminating in J-smith and another youth, Kyle, attacking Mikey. Raph later received a mobile phone call from his cousin, telling him what happened:

much like gated communities in the United States, and with the odd exception youth from these areas tend to avoid gang fighting, serious delinquency, or criminality. Youth there rarely socialise with Yellow Team and Red Team youth. 7 Since 1971, Scotland has had its own juvenile justice system, based on the principle of the welfare of the child and supported by a lay tribunal, the Children’s Hearing, and an independent officer, the Children’s Reporter, who determines which cases appear at a hearing (Martin & Murray, 1982).

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I was raging mate. I called my brother’s mate [be]cause he was out. He came picked me up and my cousin. [We then went] looking for J-smith and found him behind the shops wi’ some of the mob. I bounced out and could see he knew I was wanting to fight. Kyle jumped in between us and said my cousin’s attacked them first. He might have, but tension had been a brewing wi’ us to be honest, so I just wiped out a hooked fishing blade and took it to his face and neck. I missed him wi’ the first swing. The second one caught the hood on his jacket. So I pushed him against the wall and put the blade up against his eye and just told him I was not to be fucked wi’. I was fucking top cunt. He better get in line and stop fucking taking the piss. Could see he was about to greet man. Came to my senses and never had any trouble from any them after that.—Raph

Having risen to the top of his own age group, Raph began to undertake criminal activities for others, which we will explore in greater detail in the next chapter. Some of this activity included receiving small sums of money or material goods for carrying out attacks. In other cases, it would be doing drop-offs or pickups of packages. In other cases, it would be stealing cars, or more frequently car parts. Before long, Raph began having a series of run-ins with the top boy in the year above him, called Iain. Iain and Grazer were best friends. Like Grazer, Iain was tall, although heavier, and also from Redbrick. He was also well-connected, and affiliated himself more with the older generation of Leo’s age. However, Leo and the older boys were already starting to age out of street life, attending pubs and clubs on the weekend. They were also leaving school, getting jobs, entering into more serious romantic relationships, and associating with friends outside of Sandstone, such as Donnie in Possil Park. This meant that the younger generation, like Raph and Iain, were spending more time together, “unsupervised”, on the street, and coming more to the fore. Both Raph and Iain were undisputed top boys of their respective year groups, thus people at school began discussing whether or not Raph was in fact more dangerous and a better fighter than Iain. Things escalated after the J-smith incident because an emboldened Raph actively encouraged his cousin Mikey, who now visited regularly, and his friends Ricky and Fen from Sandstone, to graffiti “Yellow Team” around the community, and chant “Yellow Team” in the presence of Red Team youth

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who hung out with them, like Iain. Thus, the tension between Iain and Raph was palpable: He hated me at that time. We actually both got on but I had already had a run in with Grazer and that’s his best mate. He never said nothing to me [be]cause my brother, him and Grazer were good mates but only like mates from hanging about. They never went in for each other really… [when Leo] stopped hanging about wi’ him he started changing. Fuck it to be honest so did I. People were asking if I thought I could batter him. Obviously I am going to say ‘aye’, I thought I could so said it. He was the top cunt in the year above me. No one even questioned it, so I don’t think Iain liked that. It was more people stirring it between us, we actually didn’t bother with it. We were always going to collide. On a path to collision know, destined for it. Then [Renton] happened didn’t it.—Raph

Not long after Raph begun the third year of high school, one event bought tensions to a boil. While out making errands for organised criminals that he had kinship ties to, Raph, along with Mikey and Fen, encountered a mate who told them he had been attacked by a Red Team boy called Renton. Moments later, Renton happened to walk past. Raph avenged his friend’s assault by punching Renton in the face, knocking him to the ground. The group then proceeded to stamp on Renton in a frenzied attack, fracturing his skull and breaking his rib, nose, and fingers. The broken rib in fact punctured Renton’s lung, forcing him to spend over a month in hospital. The group only halted their assault after some adult witnesses came out of their homes and confronted them. Later that week, the police arrested and charged the group with attempted murder. At the time Raph was charged, he was under 16 years old, but it was a complex case and took time to process, which meant that by the time it went to court, Raph had aged up and was sentenced to one year in prison. Mikey was also imprisoned, but Fen turned evidence for the prosecution and walked free. This “betrayal” would have a profound impact on Raph’s psyche and his willingness to trust others. Furthermore, unbeknownst to Raph, Leo was actually a friend of Renton because Renton had been an associate of the Redbrick

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boys and regularly hung out with some of their top boys. This meant the incident had greater repercussions than just prison: After that [incident], my mum went berserk. So did Leo. He spent months trying to sort it. The Red Team boys like Iain, Stephen, and Grazer pure hated me and were itching to get me but [be]cause my brother, they did nothing but could tell under the surface first chance they would do me in. But we only briefly bumped into each other and I was also with [criminal family] or my brother so nothing was said. Plus my mum grounded me literally for almost a year [be]cause we almost killed the boy. Then I got the jail so…. Aye jailed changed me. I didn’t think it at the time, but I’ve never been the same.—Raph

Concluding Remarks Gang membership, like criminal offending, is strongly age-graded and participation generally occurs after age 10 years (Pyrooz, 2014). Research shows that the rate of gang membership rapidly increases during the preteenage years, but most youth join gangs between ages 12 and 15 years (Pyrooz & Sweeten, 2014). It makes sense, therefore, that some of the exposure to gangs occurs in and around the place where youth spend most of their time—school. School transitions are predictive of gang joining largely because they change individual opportunities and preferences to do so (Carson, Melde, Wiley, & Esbensen, 2017). Traditional theories of crime position gang members outside of school networks (e.g. Hirschi, 1969), assuming they just drop out, but our research confirms schools are important staging areas for the performance of gang identities (e.g. Garot, 2010) and high-status gang members who remain strongly embedded within school networks are well-placed to influence others to engage in gangs (e.g. Gallupe & Gravel, 2018).

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References Bartie, A., & Fraser, A. (2014). The Easterhouse project: Youth gangs, social justice and the arts in Glasgow, 1968–1970. Scottish Justice Matters, 2, 38– 39. Carson, D., Melde, C., Wiley, S., & Esbensen, F.-A. (2017). School transitions as a turning point for gang status. Journal of Crime and Justice, 40, 396–416. Gallupe, O., & Gravel, J. (2018). Social network position of gang members in schools: Implications for recruitment and gang prevention. Justice Quarterly, 35, 505–525. Garot, R. (2010). Who you claim: Performing gang identity in school and on the streets. New York: New York University Press. Hirschi, T. (1969). Causes of delinquency. Berkeley: University of California Press. Martin, F., & Murray, K. (1982). The Scottish juvenile justice system. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press. Miller, J. (2019). Passing on gang culture in the theatre of the streets: ‘They’ll grow out of it, then our age will grow into it and then we’ll grow out of it’. Journal of Youth Studies, online first. https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261. 2019.1655534. Miller, W. B. (1958). Lower class culture as a generating milieu of gang delinquency. Journal of Social Issues, 14, 5–19. Pyrooz, D. C. (2014). “From your first cigarette to your last dyin’ day”: The patterning of gang membership in the life-course. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 30, 349–372. Pyrooz, D. C., & Sweeten, G. (2014). Gang membership between ages 5 and 17 years in the United States. Journal of Adolescent Health, 56, 414–419.

4 Breaking Through

This chapter fills in some of the gaps in Leo’s backstory from the previous chapter, namely what happened in the years between his first starting secondary school and Raph coming of age into gang life. As the words of Leo, Donnie, and others testify, the route to gangs is often more subtle and nuanced than both the linear statistical models presented in quantitative gang research, and the tales of poverty and predetermination promoted in media reports about gangs, might suggest. This chapter outlines, how, via kinship and friendship, young street gangs came into being, how they interacted with one another, and how the little things can make the biggest difference to the shape and trajectory of one’s life.

Moving on Up For much of their first and second years at Govan High School, Donnie and Leo were mid-low status. Neither were directly involved in gangs, but coming from Linthouse, an area more steeped in gang lore than Grasstown, gang culture inevitably penetrated their daily lives. Govan High School youth tended to originate from schemes in close physical © The Author(s) 2020 R. McLean and J. A. Densley, Scotland’s Gang Members, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47752-3_4

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proximity that operated in perfect isolation from each another. Even the local public park in Govan centre, which bordered the schemes of Crossie and Linthouse, was divided such that youth respected the boundaries and rarely interacted with outsiders. Suspicion of and segregation from outsiders carried over from primary into secondary school and the first few weeks and months of first year saw youth from the same schemes stick together, forming more cohesive groups. Over time, however, daily school and classroom routines introduced youth from rival areas to each other, helping them overcome divisions baked into the culture and psyche. This was especially true for young people who had not (yet) embraced gangs and/or who abstained from gang fighting altogether. In fact, even the most active gang youth would put aside their differences during classroom hours, said Choi: Cunts were fae this area or that area, but we had to get on in school so most the lads put aside the fighting during [the school hours]. The boys in first year involved in [territorial fighting] really just chased [one another] outside school.… In school you would talk about it, put differences aside, get on with the day. Then it would start again [at weekends mostly]. It gets serious as boys get older. In first and second year you’re what, twelve, thirteen, fourteen maybe?…. Most boys don’t properly fight, fight, [un]til they’re a tad older know. More bravado for the young yains… I was from Linthouse but I hung about wi’ boys from everywhere around Govan in school, but more Linty ones outside school. Couldn’t wander into some of the areas outside school hours, but in school aye it was fine. Sometimes spilled over, but most people keep on their best behaviour and you need to get on wi’ people in class, know.—Choi

Young people were living a strange, almost parallel existence, whereby in the school they could retain their own scheme identity and even engage in, at least minor, territorial fighting with neighbouring schemes after school hours without affecting the ability to attend school, or damage certain relationships with individuals from those areas. But this changed with age and by second or third year, it was not uncommon for street fights to carry over into school hours. At younger ages, gang narratives

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and identities were full of exaggeration and bravado, but there were definitely some people who had top boy status and this was organised by scheme: [You would have] like the main boy from Linty, from Crossie, know. Then the main cunt in the year would be from the main guys from this scheme and that scheme. Main Crossie boys in my year were Wilson and Blackie. Later on a few more from St. Gerards after it closed. Guys like Chresh and Mills. Fae Teuch, say Moon. Linty it was Chris, Brady, and Robson. Probably Shane for Drumoyne. And Donald. Wullie [as well]. Out of [all of ] them, who knows, probably Shane, Wilson, and Blackie, oh aye CT from Govan. Big Curls was probably a main yain as well but he spoke to everyone and didn’t scrap for no sides.—Cypher

Owing to embedded gang culture and scheme identity, plus other factors such as the design of the area and the location of its resources like playgrounds and recreation centres, even the general lack of activity to encourage cohesiveness in Govan, school politics were far more complex at GHS than in Grasstown. To further complicate matters, gangs would evolve and new gangs would emerge, which happened in Leo and Donnie’s fourth and fifth years after some more embedded gang members like those mentioned by Cypher left the school and went to work, creating a power vacuum, and new youth simultaneously moved to the school from the suburbs after the demolition of Glasgow. This, plus changes in the drugs economy, brought fundamental changes which forced youth to cross boundaries and form alliances. However, Donnie explains that back in the first and second years, before he and Leo became friendlier, things were different: I didn’t know Leo at first. We really only started speaking in third year after me, Cypher, and him all took a class together. Cypher knew Leo from Linthouse. They stayed across the backs from each other. I knew Cypher from primary school. He isn’t really Catholic or Protestant but went to my [Catholic] school. Linthouse and Drumoyne have kind of always been alright with each other [because] a lot of Catholics from Linthouse go to the primary school in Drumoyne [and] when Drumoyne was getting [demolished], most the people were

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moved into [Linthouse] kind of all at once…. We all sat [beside each other], none of us got involved in the [street] gang fighting [so] was sound. Got on.—Donnie

Leo adds to the statement in detailing the complex dynamics of blending scheme identity and gang culture into the secondary school environment. Primary school is easy. Everybody is from the area so people don’t fight over gang stuff. High school is different. Everyone just sticks to their own side [initially]. The guys that get into heavy [gang] fights don’t mix basically with others not from the scheme right through school. Might talk to people from other places but I wouldn’t say they hung out. Definitely not outside school. You can’t go into the other schemes. Even if everyone in [your secondary school, year] thought you were sound, the older guys don’t know you and will just batter you…. [for the boys] that don’t fight all the time, they have a bit more leeway and move about a bit more. Probably easier [be]cause they ain’t stabbing people, more just shouting “Gaucho”, going to watch the fights or hanging out wi’ the top boys in the scheme. No like heavy involved. I was quieter. I spoke to all the top ones, but I never went to the fights in the park. Never shouted scheme names or nothing. Better that way. In school you can hang about wi’ people more. Still hung shout wi’ Linty ones more but just [be]cause I grew up wi them, but boys like Donnie, wee Billy, Big Curls, James, Thompson, hung about wi’ us anol. They aren’t from Linthouse.—Leo

For Leo and Donnie not having pre-existing scheme barriers made socialising, at least inside school, easier. Socialising outside school may have been more difficult had Donnie and Leo continued to live in the schemes in Govan, but things got easier after they both relocated to the suburbs. At the end of second year, Leo lived in Grasstown and Donnie’s family moved to Springburn in the North of the city. Cypher’s family were relocated from Linthouse out to Royaltown and Choi’s family were relocated from Linthouse to the Southside of Glasgow. The fact that the boys now lived in very different areas of the Glasgow conurbation meant they were not really embedded into any existing local groups. Extended families eased the assimilation process, but Cypher and Donnie

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never made friends in the areas they moved to. Choi, like, Leo, was introduced to local youth by his younger brother, who attended school in the new community. Choi’s charismatic personality made him popular among his peers, including gang members, although he didn’t really get involved in gang fighting. Royaltown, Springburn, and the Southside all had deeply embedded street gang cultures, so they were not good places for the group to meet up. Grasstown, by contrast, being a newly formed town, was the perfect spot for everyone to get together, particularly because Choi had family ties in the area and Leo’s house had a spare bedroom for his friends to sleep over in—at least before his mother’s mental breakdown. Grasstown was larger and more sparsely populated than the traditional Glasgow schemes, so there was space to move about and physical separation from the two nearest gangs, which mitigated any risk that the boys would be absorbed into existing structures or singled-out and eradicated if they began to exhibit gang-like behaviours—a common outcome in Glasgow’s schemes. Free to socialise outside school in a comparably safe environment in Grasstown, a mutual meeting point free from any pre-existing gang influence, the friends created their own rules and roles—and eventually, their own gang. The third year at secondary school marked a change in the way the boys began to associate and interact with one another, as they would gradually begin to take on more gang-like behaviours. Third year in Scottish high schools is the year pupils select their own optional classes, which means youth formally self-segregate for the first time, some strategically picking classes to avoid some people or groups or to get closer to others. This created a level of consistency which built a greater bond and sense of identity, belonging, and protection among the boys. In the first and second year, Leo had engaged in boisterous behaviour in the classroom, but it was nothing gang-related or violent. Outside school, he had continued to socialise with the same youth as before, including some of the older boys who were in gangs, but he did not engage in gang fighting. He mostly played football instead. Moving to Grasstown changed this and after being introduced to youth in the area initially via his younger sibling, Raph, who went to school there, he began to embed himself in the area among existing

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Grasstown youth, and new youth who like him had also moved to the area. He explains: In Grasstown, I could go out and make pals. No one cared were I came from. Being from Govan actually gave me a wee bit of status already. Was good. I could play football good, [and there are] loads a fields about to play football in. All the boys in the area use to go to a field, [which] ironically we called ‘the field’ (laughs). Everyone round my age went there [to] play massive games of football for hours. Everyday. After school and on weekends. Weekend nights were different. I was about thirteen, maybe fourteen then [so] some of the boys and lassies would get carryout’s (alcohol). I didn’t bother drinking. Didn’t like it [but] still hung about while everyone else did. I drank sometimes but just felt I made an arse of myself so stopped. My group wasn’t like the gang when I moved up. Was older yains that called themselves Yellow Team. We still hung about wi’ them. People weren’t really fighting other gangs but still called themselves like the local young team. As I got older, [and got to] know all the boys from the area I became part of the gang. Wasn’t like a planned thing but subconsciously happened… when I first moved up my group was me, Davy, Mikey, Kevin, Matthew and Gary, Steven, Sean, Fraser and my mates [originally] from Govan, eh, Cypher, Choi, Donnie, Richie, Leo and Alan, and James. Matthew and Sean actually knew Choi [be]cause Matthew actually came from Linthouse years beforehand, and Sean was from Cardonald and Choi moved over that way from Linthouse.—Leo

As Leo notes, in Grasstown, friends young and old would gather together almost every weekend. They would socialise on the streets, and most of the time the youth who visited via Leo would stay overnight at his house. The youth were not yet a gang per se, but owing to the large crowd, the consumption of alcohol and occasionally drugs, and their ties to the older Yellow Team boys, they were starting to dabble in petty crime and antisocial behaviour. However, it was fighting that truly propelled the boys deeper into gang life. In third year, Leo had a fight with another individual in the year who had some degree of status. The youth was from Drumoyne but was new to the school, having been expelled from another local secondary school.

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Despite a number of Drumoyne lads having been relocated to Linthouse, this boy Scott cared little for the shared affiliations that he had with Leo. Sharing a number of classes on the timetable with Leo, Scott quickly began to slander him in front of the class, most likely due to the size difference and for Scott to establish himself in the classroom. After a few days of Scott’s bullying, Leo spoke the matter over with his parents who advised him that he must fight or it will only be a matter of time before others join in. Leo took on their advice and picked up a compass with the intent to stab Scott in the classroom or on the playground, but, thankfully, his mother said stabbing him was not the answer. Leo said Scott was much larger than him and had a reputation as a decent fighter, to which his mother mentioned the importance of picking the right time and place to give Leo the advantage. Leo thought that should he fight Scott early in the week, which would allow the situation to be monitored by his teachers in the days afterward. Leo also decided to attack Scott when he was least expecting it, in the middle of class, so if he started to lose the fight then teachers could easily intervene. Having a plan of attack and a preferred time, it was now a case of selecting the precise place. Leo would wait until maths class because Scott always sat at the very back of the classroom, out of the line of sight of other pupils. Thus, by the time the fight began, and others became aware of the situation, they would turn around to only witness it underway and would be unaware that Leo launched a surprise attack. Learning from the CT and Abdul situation in year one, Leo understood the value of an audience, but only if the audience saw what Leo wanted them to see. Thus, Leo picked the time and place unbeknown to his rival. In maths, Leo approached where Scott sat. Holding a maths book in his hand, Leo acted as though he was about to place the book in the book rack at the back of the room, directly behind Scott; who was sitting at the single wooden table. “Scott can you please stop saying…” whispered Leo, but before he could finish his sentence, he launched a barrage of punches to the side of Scott’s face and then to the back of his head as he tilted over to protect himself. Leo then grabbed him by the hair before rattling his head off the wooden table several times. Scott was trapped in his seat, which was attached to his desk, but managed to wriggle free and stand up, despite being

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viciously attacked. Scott grabbed hold of Leo by the neck of his jumper then flung two heavy handed right punches into the left-hand side of Leo’s face. Adrenaline-pumping, Leo barely felt the blows and used his two free hands to continue to strike Scott on either side of his face and neck until the teacher finally intervened. Leo stated that Scott had been bullying him and he had had enough. The teachers were well aware of Scott’s behaviour and quickly sided with Leo. Scott was suspended from school for several days. Leo had scored a significant victory, which resulted in him gaining a greater degree of status among peers, who had watched the drama unfold. In the coming weeks, however, Leo realised that others sought to challenge him to gain status for themselves. One individual in particular, Shane, was a wellknown street fighter with several years’ boxing experience under his belt. Shane had a much sturdier build than Leo and was regarded as an unrelenting opponent. Leo had known of him from a brief spell he had with him in primary school, before Shane moved again: as his mother frequently moved around the Govan area, meaning that Shane attended a number of primary schools in the process. If Leo was to win this fight, he needed a different strategy. Leo’s stepdad was friends with Shane’s mother so Leo asked his family to intervene. Shane’s mother personally attended the school during the lunch break the next day and assured Leo that there would be no further trouble from her son. Leo had learned a valuable lesson—to survive in school and climb the social ladder, brains were just as important as brawn. Further, to win a fight, size and strength alone were not enough. Sometimes, sheer aggression, laying plans, or the element of surprise could level the playing field. These were life lessons that Leo carried with him into his offending days. Still, this did not stop Leo from investing in a heavy-duty punchbag and his uncle’s old weight set, which he began using regularly. Leo became increasingly aware of the importance of reputation management. These two events had afforded Leo a lot of status in school, which fed into popular narratives outside of school that Leo was now a top fighter. Around the same time, Cypher won a fight against Donald, a top boy from Drumoyne, in part because he fought him between a set of cars, which hindered Donald’s movement. This also elevated Cypher’s

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status, giving their peer group of 10–20 people the sense that they were becoming more reputable figures in the school hierarchy.

Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting Around the age of 15, Leo, Donnie, and others, began attending The Dancing, a catch-all term for nightclubs where young men and women would go both to socialise with friends and romantically hook up with each other (in Glasgow, adult nightclubs held under-18s dances during the daytime and evening hours before the adults showed up). Choi was the first to attend one of these dances with his friends from the Southside and his schoolmate Sean, who knew the group from his days playing youth football prior to moving to Grasstown. Choi and Sean eventually convinced the entire group to attend the underage dancing in Glasgow. Every Saturday afternoon, the boys would meet in town, consume alcohol, then hit the clubs. Lots of other boys from the Glasgow conurbation did the same, so before long The Dancing became a site and space for regular bust-ups between groups. Fights often started when groups congregated on the grimy dance floor, chanting their scheme names. This ritual of group solidarity was intended both to provoke and intimidate other youth groups. The acoustic communication in particular was used to express dominance over the dance floor and issue a challenge to onlookers (which was deemed accepted if another group yelled their gang slogan or scheme name in response). The intoxicating mix of alcohol, loud music, strobe lights, friendship, and young women, stimulated the senses, encouraging the Grasstown youth to attend regularly, despite its inherent dangers. But this only plunged them deeper into gang-like behaviours: We had a heavy team. Boys from Govan and boys from Grasstown. Was probably most time about ten or fifteen of us, sometimes more. We would get tanked up and go in and would just go around asking burds if they wanted to winch you. Most the people said, ‘Want to kiss my pal?’, but I asked them myself. You put the burd under pressure and were more likely to get an ‘aye’ (laughs). A few of my mates did this. Me and Donnie

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were always together in the club and played this game we made up ‘The Thirty Second Game’. Basically you have thirty seconds to point out a burd for your pal to ask her to kiss you. If she says aye then you kiss her for a minute and then get on wi’ the game. She says no then ‘fair doos’. Then it’s your mates turn. If you run over the thirty seconds your mate gets to ask any one he want to kiss you and you need to do it, even if she pure minging (laughs)…. The first club we all went to was The Apartment’. The main club was Archaos but was heavy notorious for gang fights and stabbings so we avoided it. Were there for burds, no fights. In The Apartments, the Govanhill boys always ruled it, then one night we must have took about fifty people up wi’ us and me, Black, Gary, Matthew and all them were like “fuck these cunts from Govanhill”. They were always flinging their weight about. This time was revenge. They might have been a proper Young Team from the Southside but we had double them and loads a cunts from Govan. They got battered and left. Thing is we we’re all shouting ‘Grasstown Young Team’, even though half the boys this time came from Govan. Was just a kind of united front. Plus Govan was a few different schemes so think Grasstown was just a united thing, everyone could agree wi’. We always started shouting ‘GYT’ and ‘Grasstown Young Team’ after that.—Leo

Slowly but surely, the boys united under the single banner of Grasstown and began to self-nominate as members of the newly formed gang. They extended the banner to any member of Yellow Team and Red Team, as both groups originated from the same town. Yellow Team and Red Team youth embraced this partnership and began to graffiti “Grasstown Young Team” around the town and Glasgow centre. In addition, Choi, who was big into rave and dance music, would give “shout outs” to Grasstown Young Team on local pirate radio stations. Leo, Donnie, Matthew, and others would also phone-in to these stations and give their own shout outs. In response, youth from other areas would dialin to issue challenges to Grasstown over the airways. In the days before YouTube and social media, this was an early example of gangs using music and technology to promote their brand (e.g. Storrod & Densley, 2017). Interestingly, techno, not rap or rock, was the genre. Physical space has always facilitated gang life, allowing for face-toface interaction, milling, and collective movement and action (Thrasher,

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1927). Grasstown was the “group’s life space” (Klein, 1995, p. 79). It afforded them room to flourish, move, gather in numbers, socialise, and engage in delinquency such as posting gang graffiti. Then, at weekends, when the group travelled outside of their “set space” (Tita, Cohen, & Engberg, 2005) to attend Glasgow’s underage nightclubs, the group combined with other groups from the Govan district to become a unified fighting outfit. They now perceived themselves as a gang and others starting perceiving them that way too. One nightclub, The Apartments, eventually closed down, leaving Archaos as the only other nightclub in the area. The net result was that gangs once dispersed between two sites suddenly found themselves living under one roof, which accelerated both inter-group conflict and intra-group cohesion. As Leo and Donnie explained: Apartments closed. We could have went to sub-club unders. Was a few other places but they are spread away from the [St. George’s] Square. They ain’t as good as Apartments. Archaos is where everyone goes and we wanted to go. Kind of shat it the first time we all went round. We went to Apartments, it was closed. Archaos is right round the corner so we went there. Choi had been before and said moan round. [Donnie] had went before as well, I think. We didn’t have to go to the queue [because] lassies were giving out flyers and free passes to Archaos at [Apartments’] door. People were going round so we went and all got in….is crazy in there. Anyone I’ve ever spoke to who has been loves it. It is like three floors high, and different music at each floor. The bottom floor is dance. Middle floor is called the Roundroom [be]cause the shape of it. It’s like heavy rave music. Top floor is RnB.—Leo Archaos is full of NEDs. All the [Young Teams] from the schemes go there. Betty’s (the club’s bottom level) and the Roundroom is where most hang about inside. Roundroom mostly. Betty’s is for getting burds. Roundroom for fighting. Everyone stands round it in a circle shape and the Young Teams that run the place go in the middle. The ones that hold the middle really are the ones up for fighting. Trouble makers always in the middle. Everyone jumps about into each other. You can hardly move it [is that] packed. Hunner’s a people. Fights always break out all the time. The gangs stand together in their crowds, from five [up to] thirty

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people, just depend who goes up from the scheme and who gets in. Loads of people get KB’d (knocked back) at the doors and hang about outside fighting, waiting on their mates coming out after it shuts. When we use to go loads of the gangs dressed the same, [or quite] similar. Like Ruchaize boys wore the McKenzie strips for a bit. Pollok always wore the white Nike Athletic Hoodies. So you had an idea who was wi’ who. [Be]cause they stand in their groups as well shouting gang names.—Donnie

Entering this arena, the Grasstown youth started mimicking the other gang boys. First they started wearing gang clothing, such as white Nike athletic hoodies and navy blue Gap hoodies. Then they started frequenting the Roundroom, shouting gang slogans such as “Grasstown Young Team”. Eventually they tried to occupy the centre of the room, which was reserved for only the top gangs. Leo states “I probably got a punch or punched someone every week in the Roundroom”. The boys enjoyed the nightclub scene so much that it spilled over into their weekday lives. They began dogging school and drinking in a friend’s house and calling the place “Gazchaos”, a hybrid of the friend’s name and the club. They would also date young women they met in the club, which meant travelling to other locations around the city in numbers—something that inevitably drew them into conflict with rival gangs: I met a burd Chelsea and I would go through to Clarkston to meet her. Ended up going out for about a year. She had loads a mates so I would bring the Grasstown boys. I was there to see her, but my mates would terrorise the place and scrap wi’ the Young Team from there. We did that stuff all the time then, just meeting burds in Archaos and then going to their schemes to see them.—Leo

In addition, as the youth begun to dress in gang attire, they became more susceptible to getting knocked back from the club because it had a dress code prohibiting gang clothing. When this happened initially, the boys would just venture to other underage nightclubs, but they later determined it was better to wait outside and engage in street fights with youth from other gangs who had also been knocked back:

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It was common to always see fights up there. Especially after [the club shut at closing hours]. I seen guys getting battered wi’ belts, bottles and a few times people getting stabbed. It was mental. I joined in on this sort of stuff sometimes after a bit. Some teams but would bring up like full squads of fifty, sixty strong just to fight. This was mostly Pollok Young Team and Gorbals Cumbie. They had a heavy battle going on for years. We didn’t fight them… we always had run in’s but.—Leo

As Leo notes, Pollok Young Team and Gorbals Cumbie, two wellestablished street gangs, had considerable numbers and lots of fighting experience, thus outside the club, the Grasstown youth avoided fighting them. However, relations were far from friendly. Being so prominent in the area, everyone eventually had run-ins with Pollok Young Team and Gorbals Cumbie. Leo remembered one episode when he was robbed by Gorbals, and another when inside the club he had to fight them: We were inside and wee Davy came out the Roundroom and said to me the Gorbals were wanting to fight him. My adrenaline was pumping [be]cause the music and that and to be honest I was starting to think I was a pure gangster. I went in and like jumped forward towards them, say about twenty of them and they jumped back. I had about five of the boys with me but then I turned around and they had bailed to get the rest of our mob. I turned back round and a guy Dips hooked me in the gub. I went into a rage and [jump] into them. Think it caught them by surprise because they moved back. I grabbed that Dips and punched his cunt right in. All their mob started booting into me as I leaned over him, but its heavy crowded in the Roundroom so can’t get like full swings. Lucky for me. I stood back up and just hooked three of them back to back. Sparkled two, one was a lassie (laughs), but I didn’t mean it. Then no joke, the music cut out and everyone stopped fighting. My pal Matthew enters the Roundroom at the top of the stairs and does this thing where he like flexes his flabby muscles and shouts ‘boo ya’ (laughs), fuck knows why. He bolts down the stairs in the crowd, they shat it [be]cause someone is getting lamped. He runs past a big guy Frago, past me, past Dips on the floor, and right up to this big fat burd Kerry-Ann, and she is in the middle of it shouting, ‘Gorbals Cumbiiii’. ‘Fuck you’, he hooks her right in the gub. Starts scrapping wi’ her. Everyone turns round and starts fighting again before the bouncers come and fling me and Matthew out.

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I said to him, ‘What the fuck was that about?’ and he just says, ‘Every week mate, every fucking week, that fat cow shouts “Gorbals Cumbie” and starts elbowing me in the ribs. I thought, “Fuck it this is my opportunity and am taking it’” (laughs).—Leo

Leo and his friends were now aged between 15 and 17. Similar aged youth in the area, such as members of Green Team, also started attending Archaos, which brought the two groups into conflict and left many local youth “chibbed” between the two sides. This ultimately had the effect of bringing Leo’s group into closer alignment with Yellow Team. Leo, Donnie, and their friends Matthew and Gary, joined Yellow Team for regularly scheduled fights with Green Team, but things were starting to get more serious. A personal vendetta between Yellow Team member Black and Quartz top boy Max, for example, saw Max attacked several times and Black hit with a golf club and knifed in the face. At the same time, Blue Team started encroaching into Grasstown at weekends to ambush youth—retaliatation for vandalism of Blue Team territory, and insults posted online on social media and spoken over the airways on pirate radio. Yellow Team and Red Team responded to this perceived escalation by joining forces to fight Blue Team, but any alliance was short lived owing to a personal dispute between Ernest and Cosh from Yellow Team and Riddick, the top boy from Red Team. Now sandwiched between Green Team in Quartz, Blue Team in Royaltown, and Red Team in Redbrick, Yellow Team felt increasingly under attack at this period, even if the external pressure helped strengthen the group’s resilience and coherence. Riddick had had several fist fights with Yellow Team boys, but things escalated one night when Riddick and his friend trespassed upon Yellow Team turf and bumped into Cosh, one of the group’s older members. Riddick pulled a 12-inch breadknife and ran it along Cosh’s face, which scarred him for life. Cosh and Ernest later got revenge, assaulting Riddick and several of his friends with dumbbell poles and ninja stars. Riddick then retaliated by breaking into Ernest’s house and vandalising his property. Several Red Team members also chased down Ernest and nearly beat

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him to death, which forced him to relocate back to a scheme in the south of Glasgow to get away from trouble. Riddick was eventually jailed for stabbing another man in the Sandstone area. This classic illustration of the cycle of gang violence (Decker, 1996) gradually drew in most of the youth on either side. With two of the main instigators, Riddick and Ernest, out of the picture, tit-for-tat violence declined but tensions remained high. Leo avoided the feud because despite his Yellow Team connections, he was friendly with a number of Red Team youth who had previously lived in Glasgow and had relocated to Grasstown, namely Hugh, Kevin, Iain, Grazer and two youth from the Northern schemes of Glasgow, Irwin and Stephen. Stephen actually rose to top boy in Red Team while Riddick was incarcerated, in part because he came from a crime family in the northern schemes of Glasgow, but also because he was a heavy-set youth with a short temper. Still, some Yellow Team members were becoming fatigued with all the violence. Donnie, for example, started to retreat from the street gang fights between Yellow Team, Red Team, Green Team, and Blue Team. He now only meets the Grasstown youth to go clubbing: Leo, Matthew, Gary and that lot were getting into trouble a good bit in Grasstown. I stopped hanging around. It is okay getting up to shit at weekends but they had stopped just scrapping at the dancing and [at weekends and were instead] getting into fights in their local area. Means they’re always having to watch their backs, [the violence was no longer a laugh]. I moved to my dad’s at the time and stayed miles away. Seen Leo, Cypher, Choi loads. No so much the other boys from Grasstown and Govan.—Donnie

Donnie was the first to turn 17 and aged out of the underage clubs and began attending pubs and adult nightclubs instead. Leo, Cypher, and Choi followed suit once they got older but until then Donnie only saw Leo, Cypher, and Choi during school where he stayed until the end of fifth year. The trio also visited and stayed overnight with Donnie at his dad’s house in Possil Park on Friday nights or those Saturdays when they did not attend the underage nightclub or were KB’d.

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Donnie moved in with his biological dad in Possil during the fourth year at school, following a fight with his stepdad, KC. KC was an avid Celtic fan (although he had grown up supporting Rangers—something which Donnie could not forgive), and had spent one boozy Sunday afternoon watching the game at a local pub. When he returned home, he badmouthed one of Donnie’s friends and when Donnie stuck up for him, KC lashed out. In self-defence, Donnie punched KC in the face, knocking out his bottom tooth and rendering him unconscious. After KC woke up, humiliated, he asked Donnie to leave the family home. Donnie’s older brothers had already vacated their biological dad’s home to start their own lives and Donnie’s dad was now living with a women in the north of the city, so his house was empty most of time. Donnie left school, got a job, and moved in and by 17, he took on ownership of the property altogether.

Concluding Remarks Frederick Thrasher (1927, p. 57) famously defined a gang for the first time as: an interstitial group originally formed spontaneously and then integrated through conflict. It is characterized by the following types of behavior: meeting face to face, milling, movement through space as a unit, conflict and planning. The result of this collective behavior is the development of tradition, unreflective internal structure, esprit de corps, solidarity, morale, group awareness, and attachment to a local territory.

Thrasher (1927, p. 26) found that living in the same neighbourhood afforded young people a collective identity. Street gangs evolved from informal youth “playgroups” in the community, but the gang was “integrated through conflict” (Thrasher, 1927, p. 57). Decker (1996; Decker, Melde, & Pyrooz, 2013) clarifies that gangs become more cohesive when they experience an external threat, so that they are prepared to deal with a conflict if it actually occurs. A hostile interaction can become a precipitating event that confirms the existence of a threat and prepares members

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of the gang to respond aggressively. The gang may respond with either a threatening act or an act of violence, which, in turn, becomes a precipitating event for the rival gang and so on. In the end, “The structure and behavior of a gang is molded in part through its accommodation to its life conditions” (Thrasher, 1927, p. 144). This chapter shows why, nearly 100 years on, Thrasher’s work is important. Leo’s gang emerged practically by the book, starting life as a playgroup that was integrated through conflict. However, not everyone shared Leo’s individual trajectory into gang life. Each pathway was personal. For example, by the time Leo’s brother Raph and his cousin Mikey joined the gang, a few years later, the group was well established and the price of admission was kinship. The next chapter continues this line of inquiry and examines what happens to the individual gang member when the gang continues its evolution towards more serious, adult, criminal pursuits. Prior research argues that violence is the currency of the gang (Densley, 2013). The next chapter explores the lived experience of routine gang violence and victimisation, highlighting, in graphic detail, how Leo, Raph, and Mikey transitioned from juvenile street fights to serious violent offending—the type of offending that either puts people in hospital or prison.

References Decker, S. H. (1996). Collective and normative features of gang violence. Justice Quarterly, 13, 243–264. Decker, S. H., Melde, C., & Pyrooz, D. C. (2013). What do we know about gangs and gang members and where do we go from here? Justice Quarterly, 30, 369–402. Densley, J. (2013). How gangs work: An ethnography of youth violence. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Klein, M. W. (1995). The American street gang. New York: Oxford University Press. Storrod, M., & Densley, J. (2017). ‘Going viral’ and ‘Going country’: The expressive and instrumental activities of street gangs on social media. Journal of Youth Studies, 20, 677–696.

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Thrasher, F. M. (1927). The gang. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Tita, G., Cohen, J., & Engberg, J. (2005). An ecological study of the location of gang ‘set space’. Social Problems, 52, 272–299.

5 Things Get Serious

Leo was a bomb, primed to explode. His friends could see that he was reaching a point of no return, falling deeper into gang life. In the words of his close friend: His behaviour was getting more out there, more dangerous. Well not so much dangerous but more erratic and in front of people. It was a matter of time really before he would end up having the police at his door.—Graham

As Graham mentions, Leo’s delinquency was becoming more brazen to the extent he was now fighting out in the open, in full view of the public, not just in nightclubs at the weekends. Several events between the ages of 17 and 18 put Leo in police crosshairs until finally, aged 19, he was charged with a range of offences and given a criminal record: I was feeling like I was going off the rails. Shit would be like happening in the house wi’ my mum, was getting worse as I got older… I couldn’t hold a steady job either, just felt my head was everywhere… Too full of nonsense if am to the point. Had loads a shit jobs, had no long split from my girlfriend and had nothing to do. Hung about with Red Team during © The Author(s) 2020 R. McLean and J. A. Densley, Scotland’s Gang Members, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47752-3_5

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the day [be]cause most my mates from [Sandstone] are a year older, some two, so they were working. No all them but so at first when I was around seventeen I was hanging about during the day wi’ them, working parttime, whatever… then later when they started working I hung around in Red Team, wi’ Stephen and Yonah mostly. They were sixteen, I was a year older. We were always getting into trouble… Would usually go to the school (Sandstone) and try and catch cunts we didn’t like or had run in’s wi’. Usually boys from [Green Team]. Plus a lot of our mates stayed on in school like Graham, Grant who was my age, few others, so would hang out wi them. My brother Raph was also in school as well so was good to see him at break and that. Think he was about second year.—Leo

Leo got a job in construction part-time, but all this socialising usually involved drinking during the day and because alcohol lowers people’s inhibitions, he continued to get into trouble.

In Too Deep One day, Raph was assaulted at the shops after school—someone punched him in the face several times before running away. Leo was called into action and he told his brother, “I will walk you to school tomorrow, so wake me early before you go”. He wanted to make an example out of his brother’s assailant. Leo was increasingly carrying weapons in public, knives especially, and this time he put a brick in a spare black sports sock (Leo was inspired by a scene from the 1979 film Scum, where Ray Winston’s character uses a snooker ball in a sock as a weapon inside a violent British Borstal Reformatory). Homemade weapons such as this were preferable to knives, Leo explained, because they were cheaper and also easier to dispose of if the police came by. Possession of a knife comes with a maximum sentence of five years in prison under the 1995 Criminal Law (Consolidation) (Scotland) Act. This seems like a good point to introduce Glasgow’s police. Policing in Scotland has changed dramatically in recent years—the 2012 Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act merged eight “relatively autonomous” regional police forces into one new national single police force, for example. Still, in Scotland, police have statutory powers to stop, search, and detain

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individuals without arrest, charge, or formal caution if there are “reasonable grounds to suspect” they are in possession of offensive weapons like knives (Criminal Justice Scotland Act 1980 consolidated by the Criminal Justice Procedure Act 1995 ), or illegal drugs (Misuse of Drugs Act 1971), or that an offence has been, or is about to be, committed (McAra & McVie, 2005, p. 10). Until recently, and during the time when the action in this book takes places, Scottish police could also stop and search people on a non-statutory basis, commonly known as a “voluntary” or “consensual” search. Consensual stop and searching was based on “verbal consent”, and there was a widespread perception that it did not require “reasonable suspicion” (Murray, 2014, p. 9). In fact, reasonable suspicion was always required, but because officers were generally not obliged to justify consensual searches legally, this requirement was frequently overlooked. Stop and search is a “normalized and institutionalized” police practice in Glasgow (Deuchar, Miller, & Densley, 2019, p. 432), yet it is a contentious issue in Scotland (Fyfe, 2016). Murray (2014) found that in 2010, the rate of stop and search in Scotland was four times greater than that of England and Wales and that 84% of all searches occurred in the legacy area of Strathclyde (covering Glasgow and West Scotland), 74% of which were “consensual”. Murray’s (2014) report further highlighted a disproportionate use of stop and search on children and young people, justified on the basis of probability of offending but regardless of evidence that suggested lower detection rates for this group. Indeed, other research has found that police unfairly target certain categories of young people, such as those living in notorious housing schemes or already known to officers because of their own or other family members’ previous convictions (Deuchar et al., 2019; McAra & McVie, 2005). Back to the story. The next morning, Raph woke Leo to walk him to school in the hopes of seeing the individual who previously attacked him, who himself was a school pupil. It didn’t take long to find him. “What’s your name? ” Leo asked the boy. “Chris. Who’s asking ”, replied Chris. “Did you hit my brother yesterday? ” asked Leo. Chris was silent. “Do it again, and you’ll see what happens”, Leo warned. “Whit ”. Chris cheekily answered back, in a challenging manner, much to Leo’s amazement. He did not expect such a brazen response.

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“Whit?! ” screamed Leo. He pulled out the weapon from his left jacket pocket. Swing and a miss. Leo used his weaker left hand and failed to connect. Chris turned and took to his heels, shouting for help from early morning shoppers and onlooking school pupils. Leo gave chase behind him, swinging wildly at the back of Chris’ head. Chris darted into the same shop where a few hours earlier he had beaten up Raph. He dashed for the shop counter, but slowed to lift the wooden bench that separated the shop keeper’s section from the customer floor. And at that moment—Whack. The sickening sound of the brick crashing down on the back of Chris’ skull. Chris shrieked then flopped to the ground like a bag of wet cement. Somehow he managed to drag himself into the storeroom behind the counter and lock himself inside. Leo turned and walked out of the shop, dismantling the weapon in the process. Opening the sock, fragments of the brick fell out onto the ground. Leo then warned all in presence that anyone who either grassed or threatened him or his brother again would receive similar treatment. Raph did likewise before heading off to school, and Leo back home to bed. Leo later found out Chris was rushed to hospital to have his head stitched back together. This incident became the narrative around which Leo cemented his reputation for years to come, but simultaneously came back to haunt him because it landed Leo his first criminal conviction— more on this later. Leo’s reckless behaviour continued. A few weeks later, Leo threatened someone with an axe. His friend Graham had been assaulted by a Red Team member known as Beast, so Leo once again played avenger. Beast had attacked Graham in an attempt to regain some of his own “violence capital” (Gambetta, 2009, Chapter 4), which took a hit after he was “put in his place” by Yonah, a smaller lad who Beast tried to bully. Leo then put him in his place again. Several months after that, Leo, now 18, sold a car in his possession for £500 to a workmate, Parker. Parker was an imposing man in his 30s who lived in Grasstown. The car was old and in need of some repair so Parker agreed to pay Leo in instalments, £100 per week. After three weeks, however, Parker got laid off so he stopped paying.

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Leo wanted to settle the debt, but conventional violence and intimidation wouldn’t work because Parker was 6 ft 5 in, 20 stone, and allegedly had been a bareknuckle boxer as a youth in Aberdeenshire. Instead, Leo planted a mallet and a samurai sword in some bushes outside the pub Parker frequented, then called his friends to meet him there, including Yellow Team’s top boy, Jambo, a short but powerful 19 year old with a background in Judo. Jambo had just been released from prison following an incident in which he cut off a neighbour’s ear over a dispute about loud music. Jambo regularly carried knives and told Leo he was armed that night and ready to back him. High off his demolition of Chris and backed up by this friends, Leo entered the pub, approached Parker, and asked for his money. Parker replied, “You will get your money outside ”. Leo knew this was a notso-subtle initiation for a fight. Leo accepted the challenge and walked outside. By the time Parker stepped out to join him in the night air, Leo was already brandishing the weapons he’d stashed in the bushes. “You not fight with your hand? ” spat Parker, angry that weapons were present. I am a wee guy compared to you, what chance have it got. Leo replied, moving forward. Jambo suddenly came up from behind Parker, hitting him with a straight right to the chin. Dazed and confused, Parker turned to Jambo, but his legs gave way from the hit. After a delayed reaction, he crumpled to the ground, which invited Leo and Jambo to launch a vicious attack in full view of the pub. “Fuck you’s doing? ” stated one of the pub’s bouncers. “Step closer and you’ll fucking get the same”, threatened Leo, aiming the mallet towards the bouncer. The bouncer stood back inside the pub and closed the doors. Despite being pummelled, Parker started to stumble to his feet. Jambo pulled out a lock-back fishing blade and tried to run it across Parker’s face. Parker put up his hand in self-defence, which took the brunt of the force, but the blade still slashed him above the eye. Leo then took the blade and laid four or five thrusts into Parker’s chest. Parker’s thick winter jacket and woolly jumper arguably saved his life,

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preventing the blade from fully penetrating. The boys then made haste before the police arrived. Dashing home, Leo and Jambo corroborated their alibies before parting ways. Leo further arranged an alibi with his stepdad and brother before getting changed into clean clothes and jumping into bed. His stepdad had never encouraged criminality, but he did endorse masculine practices, which at times meant violence and agreed to the story because he would support his sons in whatever they did. The police, as expected, turned up, and questioned him. They appeared at first to believe the story, in part because the distance between the pub and the house was considerable (in truth Leo was just fast and knew the shortcuts). But they collected evidence such as Leo’s trainers and clothing from the house and eventually Leo was arrested and charged with the assault on Parker—and the earlier assault on Chris. Tannenbaum (1938, pp. 19–20) famously argued that state intervention and the application of labels led to the “dramatisation of evil”, a social process by which “the person becomes the thing he is described all as being”. Such was the foundation of labelling theory, which states that official responses to deviant behaviour tend to increase the likelihood of future criminal involvement (Lemert, 1951). After state contact, an individual’s opportunities and preferences certainly change. First, there are structural impediments to conventional life that are the direct result of the label (i.e. a criminal record can restrict access to housing or employment). Second, if one internalises the criminal label, it can become its own self-fulfilling prophecy (Merton, 1948), changing the very nature of the offender (Becker, 1968; Matsueda, 1992). In this tradition, Leo argued his criminal record was both a blessing and a curse, and he very soon started living up to his new name: Being at court didn’t stop me getting into trouble. I probably thought “fuck it, I’ve a record already”. I acted up to it and got in more trouble really. Well, it was a status symbol so a lot of people heard of the crimes and I didn’t need to fight as much. People would back down more. Well no everyone, some ones actually sought you out [be]cause it. When Riddick came out of jail I had a bit of trouble wi’ him, he hooked me. We sorted it out but. I went round wi’ the Red Team ones like Stephen

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and that was Riddick’s best mate so am not going to start fighting wi’ him. He attacked me, Iain, Grazer, Hugh, and others [on different occasions]. Think he was wanting to be top guy again. My record brought that trouble. I was going out. Seeing my burd Kel. Driving. Got a house in Paisley. I was done wi’ [street gang] fighting. Had got into way too much shit. Had had enough.—Leo

Leo was 19 by the time the case got to court. He conceded that being at court was not a nice experience. Being unfamiliar with the criminal justice system, he admitted, more or less, to the offences he was charged with during the interview process. For the attack on Chris, Leo was charged with serious assault with a deadly weapon, later reduced to serious assault. Both Chris and the shopkeeper testified. For the attack on Parker, both the pub bouncer and one of Parker’s friends identified Leo as the assailant. Leo was charged with serious assault with a deadly weapon and got community service thanks to a lenient Sheriff and a positive background report. Still, Leo felt the effect of the criminal record in the coming years. It prevented him accepting a post with the fire service and pursuing a career in social work later in life. It also did little to keep Leo from offending—only a few weeks later, he threatened law enforcement with a broken bottle after they made him pour out his alcoholic drink outside a nightclub. Still, Leo did gradually cease identifying as a street gang member because he felt he had outgrown the need to chant territorial labels or engage in crime that was not profit-driven. His last fight for Yellow Team was against some Blue Team boys who had attacked Raph and his friends in Grasstown. Leo, Graham, David, and G-man jumped in Gordon’s1 car and went searching for the Blue Team crew. They found them getting on a bus back to Royaltown. Gordon pulled over and the others jumped out to attack. Leo ran onto the bus first, swinging his blade wildly, hitting two individuals. The fight ended quickly as Gordon beeped the car horn indicating police presence. Soon after, Leo met a girl and ceased socialising on the streets, although retained, and operated in, the same networks. He also moved to The Street in the larger neighbouring town. 1 Gordon

was Leo’s childhood friend and had recently relocated to Grasstown. Here, Gordon and Leo took up their friendship again.

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Blood on the Streets Mikey had little to do with street gangs growing up. He always had a problematic relationship with his mother but rarely acted up on the streets. Mikey was a quiet lad in first, second, and third year of secondary school and socialised with non-delinquent youths from the Ashcroft estate of Botown, although he knew those from The Scheme due to having lived there when he originally moved into the town. Mikey attended the Catholic high school in the town where he was introduced to some youth from Ashcroft. Ashcroft youth either kept to themselves or aligned themselves completely with The Scheme youth in Botown. The youth from the two estates in Botown generally got on and would team up to become Botown Young Team or BYT, and fight the youth from schemes and teams in south Glasgow. Such clashes not only took place in local communities, but in the city centre outside Archaos nightclub. Thanks to his Ashcroft connections, Mikey started engaging in antisocial behaviour and delinquency, vandalising property, tipping over cars, and kicking down garden walls. At age 15, some older boys from Ashcroft robbed Mikey at knife point so to keep him out of trouble he was sent away to live with his extended family during the summer holidays, specifically his cousins’ Leo and Raph in Grasstown. The first time the brothers met Mikey was when he moved in with them, but they became firm friends fast. Leo and Raph took Mikey under their wing, allowing him to flourish as a newcomer in the town and to somewhat reinvent himself. Mikey and Leo were closer in age but because Leo was such a prolific offender and was often out visiting his girlfriend that Mikey preferred to socialise with Raph. Still, Mikey drew upon the influence and status of both brothers and over the next two summers and the occasional weekend visit, he gradually fell deeper and deeper into delinquency in Grasstown, graduating from vandalism to violence and substance use. Mikey would back up Raph and Leo in fights, although he rarely threw a punch or chanted gang slogans. That was until one incident when he and Raph almost battered someone to death:

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My mum couldn’t handle me and I went to live wi’ relatives. I ended up staying in Grasstown with Raph’s family. Crazy just moving in wi’ a family thinking about it… [but we] got on brilliant. I loved it, was like being a new person in Grasstown, know what I mean. Aye I probably went around more wi’ Raph. Leo had a girlfriend and never seen him much. He was always up to shit as well. I went back there the next summer… we were out one night and some boy, Raph knew of him, he had been battered by some guy Johnson. His mate came by actually at the time we were speaking. I ran up and cracked the cunt and he decked it. Raph was arguing wi’ him [but I] was like no questions asked, whack. Raph went mental after that and we all battered him. These burly guys came out and chased us. If they didn’t we would have killed him.—Mikey

Raph and Mikey were both arrested and charged with attempted murder for this attack. Mikey initially tried to keep it a secret from his parents: I hadn’t told my mum and dad. How could I? ‘Alright mum how’s it going, Grasstown was good, by the way I am getting done wi’ attempted murder’. I had to tell once charged but. No choice. They were raging obviously. I pure let them down, but at the time I was just going right off the rails. I didn’t care.—Mikey

Mikey is not quite sure why he went “off the rails” but it was clear that his family’s decision to send him away from home to protect him from bad influences had backfired. Having left school at 16, Mikey now had nothing left to lose. Making the most of his last days of freedom before sentencing, Mikey lived a rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle under the influence of drugs and alcohol: After I got charged, I went wild man. I thought I would beat the wrap but you know really don’t ya, that you are getting jailed… I was back [living] with my mum and dad in Botown but was hanging about wi’ Sean and Ashley (partners). I knew Ashley from Ashcroft, and met Sean through her. He lived in [greater] Pollok but had been from the scheme…. The three of us were getting pure wasted all the time. Doing like eccies, getting drunk. I didn’t go to Grasstown [as] much but Leo had got a [council] house [in The Street]. I’d see Ashely and Sean through the week, but would go to The Street most of the weekends. We would get full of

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the gear, no cocaine but [ecstasy and] paste. Leo never really touched fuck all but his mates did… [at] first there was Me, Leo, Lala, Poe [and] Tinky. They lived there. Cypher, Earwig, Tank, Mouse…. All came over [to The Street]. Weekends would be more folk, people Leo and Lala knew from Grasstown would come round after the dancing, sometimes before to get full of it. Was wild, people coming and going. Everyone got fucked up every weekend [on] eccies [and would be] causing havoc. I got real close with Lala and more so wi’ Cypher, we got close. Were always running about together. People mostly hung out in Lala’s house. Kind of disrespected it I think, more [because he was] younger, about seventeen, eighteen… Leo would be there with us in the house, sometimes him and his misses would come to the dancing, but always go to his house while we hung out in Lala’s getting wasted.—Mikey

As Mikey notes, socialising around The Street in the largest town in the county (LTC) was the beginning of a new gang formation, although a largely subconscious one at first. Unsupervised socialising, taking drugs, and “causing havoc” were all classic gang behaviours. Yet initially, the group did not name themselves with territorial labels, particularly because they came from a variety of different areas to congregate. The group was organised less around territoriality and more around social time and ties, although it was the territorial links made in prior years which had sowed these seeds in the first place. Awaiting his sentencing hearing, Mikey distanced himself from Grasstown and spent more time with his new friends in The Street. His partner in crime, Raph, however, was grounded by his parents and could only leave the house to attend school. Eventually, he was allowed out but under a curfew that instructed him to stay out of Redbrick and to restrict his movements to Sandstone where his closest family and friends lived. Absent his brother Leo, who had just moved out, Raph, now 15 years old, was in a vulnerable spot in life. Raph’s mother encouraged her son to take up employment doing a milk-run before school hours, which he duly did. She had read the advertisement for the job in the local free newspaper. This new job introduced Raph to Ringo, a lad from one of Grasstown’s “posher” estates on the outskirts of Sandstone. Being Catholic, Ringo attended Royaltown High School where he was friends with another boy, Lee,

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who hailed from a notorious scheme in Royaltown, but had recently moved to the top of Quartz, just yards from Raph’s house in Sandstone. Lee was the top boy in his secondary year but had fallen out with most of the youth in Royaltown owing to his highly violate nature. Raph, Lee, and Ringo became fast friends, bonding over their outcast status and hatred for Redbrick. They spent time together after school hours and at weekends either in the patch of ground which separated the schemes of Quartz and Sandstone, or in one another’s family homes, out of reach of Redbrick. At weekends, Lee’s cousin Jay from Govan would join the group to hang out. Jay had ties to Linthouse and like Lee, he had a criminal reputation. Jay’s mother and father were drug addicts, thus Jay was well acquainted with drug networks, both suppliers and users, from a very young age. These networks afforded Jay some freedom to roam in the community, but his readiness to use a knife meant that Jay had some enemies in Linthouse. Other friends from Lee and Ringo’ school spent time in Grasstown at the weekends and when Lee’s mother was out, everyone would congregate in his house to drink or invite girls round. Nicky, a LTC youth who was popular with women, would attend these parties on occasion, and it was Nicky who introduced Raph to his first real girlfriend. Nicky and his female friends acted as a bridge between youth from a scheme in LTC, which we shall call Hillland, and Raph’s group in Sandstone at a time when many Hillland youths were looking to break free from the constraints placed upon them by clashes with the intergenerational Hillland Young Team or HYT, and other LTC street gangs. Raph and colleagues remained above the fray in the ongoing war between Green Team and Yellow Team, not least because at this time, members of Green Team were warring among themselves and without Leo and the older generation’s leadership, Yellow Team was losing coherence and cohesion. But when the time was right, Raph’s new hybrid gang stepped in to fill the power vacuum, becoming the new Yellow Team and picking up a few new members along the way. They adopted the Yellow Team brand and slowly began to encroach further into Grasstown until they inevitably collided with Red Team youth, who hated Lee for being from Royaltown, Ringo because he was a “posh boy”, and Raph for his

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past offences. What made this iteration of Yellow Team different from the first, however, was the fact that none of the group (except Raph, but he was on his way to prison) lived in Sandstone or attended secondary school in Grasstown—they all came from Royaltown, Govan or LTC. This physical distance meant that a lot of the conflict between the two gangs played out over the internet and social media. Red Team would taunt Yellow Team, Yellow Team would taunt Red Team, until eventually the videos and false claims posted in the virtual world provoked retaliation in the real world. The conflict between the new Yellow Team and Red Team gangs stemmed largely from the fact that Raph had a long history of assaulting Red Team youth and Lee had previously fought for Royaltown and during that time had assaulted several of the young Red Team members who had attended Royaltown High School. Red Team was the larger group, around 30 or 40 strong, headed by Grazer and Iain, although they tended to hang about more with boys Leo’s age and had effectively retired from gang fighting. The de facto leader, therefore, was Beast, who although a tad older, hung out with the younger generation of Red Team members, Fatboy and his brother Gerald, Mac-D, and an up-and-coming boxer Ali. The Yellow Team were fewer in number, but formidable opponents, so the rivalry between the two gangs got ugly fast. When the Red Team paid Iain a visit at home one weekend, chapping the door and issuing threats, for example, they didn’t realise Lee was inside with approximately ten Yellow Team members. Lee leaned out and grabbing hold of Fatboy, he pulled him inside the house at which point the Yellow Team set upon him. Jay then grabbed a kitchen knife, and running out of the house, proceeded to assault several of the youth with the weapon, causing largely superficial injuries. The rest of the Yellow Team then vacated the property and a large scale ‘barney’ took place, in which ten Yellow Team fought around twenty Red Team. Yet the Red Team lacked knife carriers and users, whereas both Lee and Jay in particular had fearsome reputations for knife crime. After leaving several individuals needing medical treatment, the Yellow Team chased the Red Team back to their own area. This was a decisive victory which gave Yellow Team an edge which Red Team would not recover from.

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A few weeks later, while shopping in Glasgow centre on a Saturday afternoon, Ringo, Nicky and a couple of other Yellow Team bumped into around ten Red Team members, including Fatboy and Ali. The Red Team members issued threats and the Yellow Team members noticed that they had been caught off guard and were in danger of a serious hiding. That was until Jay, who was in the city shopping with his new girlfriend, happened to stumble upon the action. “Fuck yous doing? ” shouted Jay when he noticed the commotion. “Some cunts’ getting plugged ”. The Red Team feared Jay with good reason. Jay drew out a large kitchen devil knife and ran into the crowd. As the Red Team fled, Ali ended up cornered, at which point Jay handed out several weapons to his peers. One Yellow Team youth took a set of knuckledusters, put them on and hooked Ali in the mouth so hard that he not only broke Ali’s jaw but also his own hand. That same hand was lacerated from colliding with Ali’s teeth, which were knocked out. This victory for Yellow Team was significant. Now brimming with confidence, the gang would actively go out in pursuit of Red Team in their own territory. On one occasion, a major fight ensued with around ten lads on each side. Ricky dropkicked one Red Team member in the back and Jay picked him up and bit off his ear with everyone watching. This traumatising and savage attack became the defining moment in the conflict, fully deflating Red Team’s morale. But the fighting didn’t stop. Red Team retaliated soon after by battering Ricky, who was walking home alone one night, with baseball bats. Red Team likewise also managed to attack Ringo on a number of occasions, and gave Lee a gang beating when around 15–20 boys kicked him unconscious.

Prison Time While the streets were awash with Yellow Team and Red Team blood, Mikey and Raph were mostly serving out their one year sentence at HM Young Offenders Institution Polmont, the largest juvenile prison in Scotland:

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The boys gave me a send-off the Saturday night before I went back up for sentencing. I had been up for sentencing before, but every time it got delayed, cancelled, fuck knows. Leo, and Cypher, and Tinky, and Lala all came to see me and Raph getting sentenced. Few of Raph’s mates were there I think. His misses [as well]. Judge said he had no option but to send us to jail. Remember Leo kicking up fuck in the court. Thought he would end up coming wi’ us (laughs). The police said to him to calm the fuck down. We got taken downstairs into the holding cells to wait to get moved. We went to Greenock [prison initially]… and met a few boys in there from Botown. They were schemers (individuals from the scheme) like Knuckles and his brother, few older ones. Said they would back me if I got in trouble. Put my mind at ease. Raph and [I] were together. We were only there a wee bit, was no bad being frank. Arrived at Polmont on the Monday. Think it was the Monday. I was shitting myself, [be]cause you always hear the young jail is full of mental cunts trying to prove themselves. Raph was younger. He was only sixteen, only turned sixteen. He went to the younger hall and I ended up getting put in the older hall, in Iona Hall. Think I shared a cell and got a job out in the garden after a bit.—Mikey

After the initial shock of incarceration, Mikey settled into prison life relatively easily and by suppressing his overt gang identity, he made a number of friends, or “associates” as he preferred to term his contacts inside: The lads in Iona are quite [territorial], but don’t shout I’m from this gang or that gang, more just say I am from this scheme or whatever. The Glasgow boys hang about more wi’ each other, probably just get on better [be]cause of like the culture and shit. Know people that know people who[m] you know. That sort of stuff. The ones from everywhere outside [the West of Scotland] get on better. But people still talk to each other.—Mikey

The daily prison routine helped Mikey refocus on his day-to-day activities, and while drugs were readily available inside prison, Mikey largely managed to stay clear of them. Although, he notes, his only fight in prison was over drugs:

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Fights always happened but more about shit that went on outside the prison before they were sentenced. Few people fight about drugs and stuff. You’re in wi’ violent guys so they can fight for fuck all as well (laughs). I got into only one fight. A big boy from Edinburgh asked me to get something for him that a guy he knows on the outside was flinging over [the prison] fence. I did the gardening so made sense to ask me I suppose. I said aye long as I was getting a cut. He said aye, that was that, bla bla bla. Next day I get it, give him it, he gives me a cut for carrying this in my arse. Then he comes back and asks me if I can skip my cut until next time and give my cut to another guy. I said “get to fuck”. Next day am in my peta (cell) and he comes in a hooks me in the eye while am playing the computer wi’ a mate. I just bounced up and socked the cunt across the sink, told him to “get to fuck or else”. That was the end of that.—Mikey

The distribution and consumption of drugs would become a defining feature of Mikey’s life after release, but in prison Mikey focused on building strong family ties again and wrote a number of letters to his extended family and made regular phone calls and also arranged regular visits. Mikey did not have a girlfriend before being imprisoned, thus the transition was slightly easier than Raph’s in this respect. Raph was sent to Argyle Hall for offenders under eighteen years of age. While Raph settled in relatively well, he struggled to maintain his newly formed relationship with his then partner. She could only visit once a week and needed a ride from Raph’s parents or brother, who had purchased a car around this time. Beyond his deprivation of a heterosexual relationship, Raph experienced an acute deprivation of his liberty, another classic “pain of imprisonment” (Sykes, 1958). Raph struggled seeing his mother gradually deteriorate physically during his time inside. He would see her once a week and her disability meant that by the end of his sentence, she required assistance and a walking stick on visiting days. This would play on Raph’s mind and is something which he struggles with still today: Was difficult [be]cause I wasn’t there. I could do nothing for her being inside the jail. She struggled seeing me inside. I struggled seeing her come up and just getting worse each time. I had met a lassie just before I got the jail, and really liked her. Was hard keeping it going and if it didn’t

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get cut short from a year to six months don’t know if it would have survived.—Raph

To make matters worse, prisons are notoriously violence places (Gambetta, 2009) and Raph had to quickly learn to negotiate his way around a deprivation of security (Sykes, 1958). His prolonged intimacy with violent and aggressive young men meant fights were inevitable: Some boys in the jail just fight every time they see each other. Regardless, they just scrap. Most the fights in Argyle are about gang stuff, like someone had a run in wi’ someone outside the jail and then they get put in here together. Becomes like a personal hatred between the cunts. Everyone inside just talks about getting mad wi’ it or fighting. [Be]cause the age I think. All the Glasgow ones hang about together, except some boys don’t get on if their schemes scrapped on the outside, but on most part the differences are set aside for the time being. The Greenock mob all hang about, like everyone from Inverclyde. They have a heavy squad. Probably second behind Glasgow. The LTC boys get on but hang about wi’ Glasgow, same wi’ like Motherwell and out that way. Then everyone else hangs out, all the teuchters from Edinburgh, Dumfries, Inverness, wherever. The boys from Ayrshire hang about wi’ Glasgow as well in fact, even though it’s a wee bit away the boys are all basically the same. Have ties to Glasgow, support Rangers, Loyalists. I hung about wi’ the teuchters but that caused a wee bit of trouble for me. I just could be arsed wi’ the weegies, always talking bullshit about how hard they were. The teuchters, fair enough are mostly stupid cunts but they are usually alright. Thing is the two best like fist fighters on the wing were teuchters. A big boy, Welshy from Edinburgh. His family had like heavy ties to Glasgow gangsters. And a big massive cunt, Danny from some wee village. He just lifted weights all the time and was no joke about 7ft and 20 stone. He loved fighting as well. Always seemed to get battered but, which is strange. Just didn’t know when to pick a fight, and he wouldn’t use a weapon. I battered him [be]cause he was given me the evil eyes in the dining hall, so I walked behind him and smacked him with the dining tray and then hooked fuck out his face while he was sitting down. It got split and everyone said I won. He said about a rematch but then just became a mate. He was to fight the Greenock ones and they all walked in his cell and stabbed fuck out him wi shanks. Then he fought a weegie

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Ryan or some shit. They were scrapping and Ryan just thought “fuck this, the cunts’ too strong” so picked up the TV and planked it over his head and knocked him out (laughs).—Raph

The importation model posits that inmate behaviour is largely an extension of behaviours developed in the community, and the importation of gang ties in prison is very much a part of this (Pyrooz & Decker, 2019). As Raph notes, territoriality is clearly embedded into the psyche of Scotland’s young offenders. This determines the relationships and behaviours that the youth display inside. Yet more narrow definitions of territoriality, which occur in say Govan, are set aside in the UK-wide system of prisons, and the youth congregate around larger boundaries related to region. West Scotland youth very much view prison through this lens. Befriending youth from further afield resulted in Raph becoming involved in a few scraps. The fight with Danny was completely unrelated to anything other than the interpretation of the wrong eye contact. Yet, prison overcrowding saw youth 18 years and older being placed in Argyle Hall, including one of Leo’s old friends from Linthouse, Alan, who Raph knew well. Thus Raph was making friends from near and far, silently building a network that in years to come would facilitate the establishment of a city-wide criminal network. For example, Sampson was from the North of the city and his dad and uncles had strong kinship ties to one of the most powerful organised criminal groups in Scotland. He and Raph became good friends after they were granted work allocation together. Mikey and Raph both served six months in prison and were released early on good behaviour. Raph returned to the family house in Grasstown and Mikey went back to his family in Botown, but both lads found re-entry difficult—a prison record was a major impediment to employment. Raph found work in construction via a family friend, for example, but after he was assigned to work on building a new school for children, a disclosure check was done revealing his criminal record and Raph was fired after only a fortnight on the job. He got another job with a local business, but again was “let go” after they discovered he had

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been in prison. His prison record also cost him his application for an apprenticeship. So Raph went back to what he knew. During his stay in prison, Raph frequently wrote to his Yellow Team friends and would be visited by them. Raph’s release from prison would ultimately result in the Yellow Team proving too strong for the Red Team, given his fighting ability and readiness to use weapons. Around this period, another youth from Quartz called Aaron had been released from prison for stabbing a taxi driver, along with Yonah from Redbrick. The pair did not usually socialise but on this occasion did after bumping into each other intoxicated. The pair were incarcerated around the same period as Raph. Aaron received a lighter sentence than Yonah and once released took up friendship with the Red Team. In a somewhat final large scale battle, a fight was arranged over the internet. Red Team showed up with all 40 members, bar Grazer and Iain, Yellow Team with around ten, now including Raph following his release. During the standoff, both sides were chanting back and forth until Aaron stepped forward and took out a lock-back knife. Raph, Jay, Lee, and Ricky responded by withdrawing two samurai swords, two machetes and a set of nunchakus—weapons they had borrowed from Leo. The Yellow Team then charged the crowd and the Red Team ran away. That was the last major standoff between the two sides and it left Yellow Team undisputed in the area—a status, which would later help their entry into the drugs trade.2 Raph only lived in Grasstown for a few months before being offered a house between Leo and Lala in The Street. Although he was young, his parents thought it best that Raph leave Grasstown to start fresh. Prison had also changed Raph to the extent that while he still enjoyed spending time socialising in large crowds, he wanted a quieter life. And so, he accepted the property he had been offered and moved to The Street.

2 Note,

while this was the last stand off, other minor skirmishes continued, and some still do to this day owing to personal vendettas that remain unresolved from this era. In addition, another large scale battle had been arranged at which Yellow Team, aligned with Leo and his friends from The Street, went looking for Red Team armed with knives, swords, a crossbow, and shovels (somewhat jokingly, they said, in case bodies had to be buried following the brawl). Red Team never showed up.

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Concluding Remarks This chapter has examined Leo, Mikey and Raph’s descent into crime and serious violence and the impact of formal and informal social controls on their criminal activities. This chapter showed how official sanctions had little long term deterrent effect on Leo, Mikey and Raph’s behaviour, but the risk of being stopped by police did change some of their offending tactics, namely what weapons they carried and where they stored them. This chapter further highlighted the associated pains of labelling and imprisonment, which lay the foundation for an even deeper embeddedness in gangs and criminal offending. As outlined in the next two chapters, The Street wound up becoming the epicentre of gang activity. The next chapter demonstrates how The Street Boys gang came into being and how its members progressed from street crime to more serious, entrepreneurial, forms of (dis)organised crime, before drifting in and out of crime and, in some cases, ceasing offending altogether.

References Becker, G. S. (1968). Crime and punishment: An economic approach. Journal of Political Economy, 76, 169–217. Deuchar, R., Miller, J., & Densley, J. (2019). The lived experience of stop and search in Scotland: There are two sides to every story. Police Quarterly, 22, 416–451. Fyfe, N. R. (2016). Policing Scotland post reform: Towards a shifting ‘culture of control’ and a new politics of policing? In H. Croall, G. Mooney, & M. Munro (Eds.), Crime, justice and society in Scotland (pp. 167–181). London, UK: Routledge. Gambetta, D. (2009). Codes of the underworld: How criminals communicate. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Lemert, E. M. (1951). Social pathology: A systematic approach to the theory of sociopathic behavior. New York: McGraw-Hill. Matsueda, R. L. (1992). Reflected appraisals, parental labeling, and delinquency: Specifying a symbolic interactionist theory. American Journal of Sociology, 97, 1577–1611.

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McAra, L., & McVie, S. (2005). The usual suspects? Street-life, young people and the police. Criminal Justice, 5, 5–36. Merton, R. K. (1948). The self-fulfilling prophecy. The Antioch Review, 8, 193– 210. Murray, K. (2014). Stop and search in Scotland: An evaluation of police practice (SCCJR Report 01/2014). Edinburgh, Scotland: SCCJR. Pyrooz, D. C., & Decker, S. H. (2019). Competing for control: Gangs and the social order of prisons. New York: Cambridge University Press. Sykes, G. (1958). The society of captives: A study of a maximum security prison. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Tannenbaum, F. (1938). Crime and the community. Boston: Ginn.

6 Nightmare on The Street

I got offered a house on The Street. It was nice. Looked quiet. Well-kept maisonettes, a public park, mostly old people. Was good. I moved in when I was nineteen. I moved into the second last block on the street. When I got the house, my door went and it was my pal Lala wi’ some other older guy Poe. I knew Lala from Grasstown. He had lived everywhere but went off the scene in Grasstown after his mum kicked him out. I hadn’t heard from him [but he said] he had been homeless, living in a few homeless units over Glasgow and then in LTC. He got offered a fast track house in the same block as me. We literally stayed only one door apart. He had been there three months. Poe was his upstairs neighbour. Lived right above Lala. He was cool.—Leo

When they first moved to The Street, Leo, Poe, and Lala were arguably the youngest residents in the street and they all lived in the same block. A week later, another youngster, Tinky, moved into the same block above Leo. Tinky was from a scheme we shall call Gangland. Tinky also had strong ties to Govan via a friend, Colin, who later moved in with Tinky, albeit unofficially. The five lads immediately become friends given their proximity and the fact the housing association allocated them the same days to do their washing at the laundrette. Leo later discovered the © The Author(s) 2020 R. McLean and J. A. Densley, Scotland’s Gang Members, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47752-3_6

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housing association had changed its housing policy, which explained the influx of single young men, many with substance use issues, into the street. Leo’s block was the first subject to this policy change. The fact that Leo, Gav, Poe, and Tinky all had their own properties as young men invited a number of transient youths they knew to move in with them periodically, or unofficially. Colin moved in with Tinky. Mikey stayed with Leo for short spells. Mr. Bigs, whose family was central to the Paisley Drug Wars during the 1990s (see McLean, Robinson, & Densley, 2020, pp. 41–44),1 moved in with Lala. Dan, a known drug runner with extensive networks throughout the UK, moved in with Poe. At the same time, Jambo, the brothers, and another individual, all former Yellow Team members or associates from Grasstown moved onto streets adjacent to The Street.

The New Frontier The Street was the place where nightclub goers would attend afterhours parties to drink, do drugs, and socialise. Lala hosted many of these ongoing parties in exchange for alcohol, drugs, and sex, expanding his network of criminal contacts in the process. His home effectively became the base for gang evolution, particularly because the people who attended these parties were old friends and acquaintances of Lala’s and Leo’s from Grasstown, and other individuals from the same area were moving in to nearby houses. At the same time, via Bebo social media, which launched in 2005, and by frequenting the local nightclubs, Leo began reconnecting with old contacts from Linthouse who had moved to LTC after much of Linthouse was demolished years earlier. Further solidifying these ties, Cypher moved from Royaltown back to Linthouse to date and live with a girl he knew from school—whose older sibling also happened to be a top boy in the scheme—and then into his aunt’s buy-to-let property near 1A

decade after the first drug pushers took to the streets of Paisley in the 1980s, the supply of drugs was controlled by three factions, with members of two local families at the forefront. In the mid-1990s, the two families engaged in a territorial “war” that escalated to deadly shootings as dealers’ profits grew.

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The Street. As a result, The Street and the surrounding community was stacked with young men who at one time or another had associated with either Yellow Team in Grasstown or Goucho in Govan, while people like Mikey, Poe, and Tinky could extend the network further into Botown, Notorious scheme, and Gangland: Was crazy the way it all fell into place. Leo moved to LTC to get away from everything in Grasstown and ended up [socialising more] wi’ Grasstown [individuals] and old mates from Linthouse. They all ended up living beside, next to each other.—Mikey

Perhaps it was fate or chance. Housing association policy certainly played some role in housing individuals who had strong existing ties next to one another. Whatever the reason, The Street became ground zero for the next evolution of the gang. After Raph was released from juvenile detention, he also moved to The Street. His struggle to find steady work continued, so he was forced to ‘sign on’ and claim welfare benefit. This would include a housing benefit payment to cover the costs of his rent, along with a reduction in council tax fees: I couldn’t get a full time job that would last. I had two straight away in the first few weeks I was out, [but I was] let go after the found out about me being in prison. When I took the house [in The Street] I had to sign on for the Giro. Wasn’t ideal but needed money.—Raph

Raph decorated his new home with the help of his brother and stepdad. He was entitled to a local grant to pay for supplies and purchase white goods from a local charity shop: Aye I was a bit young [but I] loved staying there. My misses only stayed down the road, and so did Nicky and that. Was good. I wanted to just keep myself to myself there. Good having my brother close by. He had his misses [also, named Kel]. His mates Lala and Poe and Tinky were a bit mental. First time I took Lee into Tinky’s, he starts bringing out all these blades and showing Lee “this one is for this guy”, “this one I used on this guy” (laughing). Was mental. Iain was like “alright then”… My

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pals started coming round and mixing wi’ Leo’s mates. They were a wee bit older [so we] were still like separate kind off [and] didn’t all hang out all the time. They hung out in Lala’s mostly. My mates and me just sat in mine. But we all got on still. Had the house for a month and a bit, only lived actually in it for two or three weeks then had to move out again.—Raph

Unbeknownst to Raph, during the time he was incarcerated, Leo and his friends had become involved in a growing confrontation with what was at that time the most formidable street gang in LTC. They hailed from the scheme that ran adjacent to The Street, but because the scheme was being demolished, many of the young men moved into the block of flats opposite Leo’s: We stayed [in a] maisonette …. Four high, 20 houses a block… [across the street] was a single [maisonette], longer than our block… three [high]….They were [Boardland] … basically [Boardland] scheme was getting pulled down so loads of their boys got put into that block [by the housing association]… Don’t know if it was like just pure luck or the housing meant it.—Leo On one side was us and across the road was them. Boardlands had always had a heavy young team. It’s a pure scheme. In Grasstown the Young Team is fourteen, fifteen, eighteen years olds at most. In Boardlands there are guys that are in their early twenties jumping about wi’ wee guys at fourteen, and that, chanting “Boardlands Young Team”. No kidding, their Young Team is like grown men that have just never grew up. We were always going to clash wi’ them obv. They moved in and started saying [The Street] was Boardlands [and was part of Boardland territory]. Either we pipe down, side wi’ them faggots, or stop hanging around. Fucking idiots. We weren’t claiming to be a young team, just mates.—Tank

As Leo and Tank note, being a powerhouse in LTC, in addition to having ties with the area to local organised crime, the Boardlands Young Team were inevitably going to clash with any other group active in the area. The very public nature of Leo’s group—the parties, delinquency in the street, people coming and going, etc.—would always bring attention.

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At the same time, Boardlands members, young and old, were regularly hanging out in The Street attending their own parties and drinking sessions, as well as using homes to store drugs. It was a tense situation, not helped by the fact that there was history between people in Leo’s group and people in Boardlands: The local [nightclubs] are in LTC. Older guys go to Glasgow as it’s harder to get into places, [but when] you’re under 20 and from [around the county], people basically go to LTC. It’s easy to get in and close, so heavy squads go. Grasstown could muster a heavy squad and all the boys from Red Team and Yellow Team would team up and go. Basically able to get on [be]cause the [main antagonists] from [either side] didn’t go. But Paka boys, [Botown] team, Blue Team, would have massive teams. [Be]cause they are towns isn’t it. Some places in LTC like Boardlands and Gangaland would take a lot of people as well. Big groups like that coming together always brings trouble. It wasn’t really young teams as it’s the overs (overage nightclub) but people still hold grudges from people they would fight with as wee guys. We had always had wee run in’s. Then moving to The Street, we would all go and meet the Grasstown mob that I knew. The boys from The Street had a few run in’s in the dancing beforehand over lassies and whatever.—Leo [Gangland based friends] had started buying a few eccies from a guy in Boardlands, Bert. They had dished them out at the house party [in Lala’s house]. They were hefty duds and did fuck all. Lala, Me, Cypher went wi’ Tinky and asked for the money back. Cypher turns round and fucks the cunt in the face wi’ a brick, we just laid fuck out of him. One of their boys ran over and stuck a bottle over my nut (head). Fucking burst it open. We ran into the boy all the time after that, never fucking before, but mostly just heavy starred each other out.—Poe [We] had no long started a footy team playing 5-a-sides on the Wednesday night. It was Me, Leo, Lala, Raph, Fluff, Beanman, Graham, sometimes Poe. Boardlands played in the league and were the best team. Had been for years, then we started. Other than the first game when they battered us, games were tight. Battles would go on and spill into fist fights. Everyone was scared of Boardlands, fuck knows why. Second time we played them, we brought a crowd so did they. Third time there was

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teams at the side of the park. Wee Lala had a bag of blades. In like a bowling bag. Think it was a few hammers also. Whenever a bad tackle went in, he would run on wi’ the bag of blades. Leo would be like “no now, no now, wait and see what happens”. I was in goals and would just walk over and lock the door. They knew we had it in for them after that and it started turning into shit [off the park on the street].—Tank

After a series of violent confrontations in the nightclub and at football games, the two groups were at loggerheads. The Boardlands Young Team comprised of a large group of youth, as well as older individuals, who would spend time drinking and taking drugs. They had ties to organised crime and several of their members such as El, Bert, and Alexis, had strong links with the main organised crime group (OCG) in Boardlands. They sold drugs on the group’s behalf and orchestrated the flow of money from the retail level user-dealers in the Young Team to the wholesaler drug distributors in the OCG. This meant that the Young Team had significant resources and backup to call upon. In an effort to broker peace, Lala invited Kamal, the owner of one of the Boardlands houses on The Street, over for a drinking session with friends. Kamal was in his 20s, but looked and dressed younger. He accepted Lala’s invitation and brought a friend with him, known as Half-a-Head, to Lala’s house to drink with Lala, Tank, Tinky, and several other associates. Tried being alright mate. They just pure talked about how [tough] Boardlands were and that we needed to quieten down. Them two are saying this to about ten of us. Agent Smith came in later that night. You know Agent Smith. Doesn’t take bullshit. He told them two tae get tae fuck. They were being pure cheeky. Everyone was trying to be sound.—Lala

What was meant to ease tensions, therefore, only made matters worse because later that night Lala and Agent Smith broke into Kamal’s house with the intent to assault him. The house was empty, however, so instead they proceeded to “ransack” the place, stealing his CD player, CD collection, his TV, and “for a laugh”, his grocery shopping. When Kamal returned home the next day to find it broken into, he paid Lala a visit. At first Kamal just wanted to know if Lala had any

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information about the crime, but when one of Lala’s friends, who knew nothing of the situation, let him in, Kamal quickly noticed that Lala had set up his TV and CD player in the living room. An argument ensued, and Lala returned the stolen goods—minus the shopping, which he’d already eaten. But that wasn’t the end of it. That weekend, Kamal and Half-a-Head entered Lala’s block of flats and chapped Lala’s door looking for trouble: I had been sitting in Lala’s and had no long dropped Kel off. Thought I would have a quiet night in wi’ Lala. Fucking door goes and Lala comes into the living room telling me that Kamal and Half-a-Head are at the door wi’ blades. Fucking cunt had literally just been telling me he had robbed his house the day beforehand. I was like “ignore it”, “they will fuck off ”. Cunts then started smashing the windows. I said to Lala “fuck this” get tools. We waited until they got fed up panning the windows and could hear them talking from behind the door. Lala counted to three and we just bolted out. Obviously caught them unaware [be]cause they shat it and bolted down the stairs. We caught Half-a-Head and battered him about the head wi’ machetes. I grabbed the screwdriver out his hand and flung it to fuck. Kamal ran back up the close stairs to help his mate, Lala just fucking smacked him across the face wi’ the machete. Think it actually hit his shoulder. The cunt legged it anyway. We chased him, and Lala caught him by the jumper and pulled it over his head. I was feeling shit for him really [be]cause he is getting leathered about. I turned the machete on its flat side and started whacking him on the bare back. Lala is still battering him around the head though. We just left him and went back upstairs. The police turned up and said they had a report there was a disturbance. Lala was like “I think there is a body outside mate”, police looked over the balcony, shouting “there’s a body down there”, fuck knows were half-a-dome had went. Kamal was alright, just kind of fucked up you know. Police couldn’t charge us and to be fair Boardlands ones never grassed.—Leo

This incident escalated the conflict between The Street Boys and the Boardlands team. The Street would regularly receive taunts and give taunts back and forth to the Boardlands team, who was now socialising in the block of flats only around 30–50 feet from their own. Fights ensued,

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one of which resulted in Lala being remanded in custody, until one night, the fight to end all fights broke out: [Raph] had only been in the house a few weeks since it had been like fully done, done. [One night] I was meant to get Cypher and we were going to go into LTC centre for a few drinks. Thought I would go upstairs to the top [landing] and see my brother until Cypher texted. His mates Lee, Nicky, Ringo and Danny and Big Swig were all in [at Raphs]. No sure if Dosh and Jazza were there as well. No sure. Don’t know where Ricky was [be]cause he was always with Raph. [Boardlands] came to my brother’s house [in our block]. Trapped us inside the house. Pure shouting, we were getting ‘done in’ (assaulted). I said to my bro[ther] and his mates, ‘grab blades, let’s charge these fannies’. We tooled ourselves up, opened the door and chased them downstairs. [People] were getting skelped with bottles on the stairs. We had no choice really… [The fight] ended up spilling outside on the street. Lee and this other guy Bert were pure trying to stab each other in the fucking neck, crazy bastards… [so] I just fucking ladled Bert on the head with the machete. I [then] ran across the road chasing him. I think I actually hit him twice as he ran. He bolted into the building, so I just started scalping cunts while running past them and chased their lot to their block swinging [the machete]. A few of the younger ones about my brother’s age were outside the building [so I] started grabbing them, putting the machete to their faces, saying if they were wanting to fucking go. Cunts shat it. I clocked a few of their boys then making a run up the street so chased them. I [then] clocked the cunt that started it, was an older guy know. Found out years later he was from Hunthill, a pure fud called McD. I just chased him and he was backing up saying ‘drop the machete, drop the machete’, I was saying ‘drop your blade, drop it’. Was a pure standoff, first to drop it was getting done. Big Swig then comes up from the side and fucking slide tackles him on the pure solid concrete. He fell so me and Big Swig then smacked fucked out him with machetes… One of their mob came out with a fucking samurai faker (replica) but and smacked Danny in the face but my bro[ther] stuck a screwdriver in his head, know…. [While this is occurring] one of their mob fucking tries to set Lala’s house on fire wi’ a bottle of vodka that had a rag in it … [Lala] was is in the jail and not even there … police came, [we] scattered.

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After all that mayhem, Leo laughs at the consequences, an indictment of just how normalised youth violence had become: I got caught. Charged with carrying a knife they found on the street. Same as one of [Boardlands’] boys. Said at court what happened. [My] lawyer is good. [He] argue[d] the case [and I received] 100 hours community [service]… Two machete attacks, samurai fighting, a fucking house [got] petrol bombed, and a few cunts slashed (laughs) and that is all that any of us got. Think police just grew used to that shit, probably seen it every weekend. Knew they wouldn’t get a conviction, [be]cause fair enough no one grassed, no[t] even Boardlands. We fought them all the time and no cunt grassed. Fair play… [but police] had to charge someone with something…. [the incident] made page 7 of the local paper. About 10 sentences or that for a full scale riot (laughs)’.—Leo

Still, this was, in many ways, the final battle between the two groups. Boardlands had always talked up fighting when at full strength to determine who was the toughest. Here Boardlands had full strength team while The Street Boys were understrength but still more than held their own. This was a blow to Boardlands’ reputation, but the next time the group went looking for trouble, about 50 youth and adults saw a female in the crowd kick a glass panel, which shattered, then slide down her ankle like a guillotine, severing her leg. Watching the first responders resuscitate the girl as she nearly bled out on the floor was a turning point for the gangs. Leo and Raph were absent that night (they were back home with their parents), but both sides agreed to call an uneasy truce in its aftermath, bartered by older residents who called for the public knife fights to end. Soon afterward, Kamal committed suicide following a separation from his long-term partner. This, and the fact that Boardlands used Kamal’s house primarily to store drugs, meant that they became less prominent on The Street. Fatigued from the violence and repeated interactions with the police, many of the peripheral members of The Street Boys took this as an opportunity to drift out of the gang. At the same time, Leo and Raph both took up offers to move away from The Street and live elsewhere. Lala was in remand and Poe moved back in with his parents in an effort to stay out of trouble. Still, The Street Boys had built a reputation with a fair degree of “criminal capital” (Densley, 2012; Densley, McLean,

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Deuchar, & Harding, 2019; Loughran, Nguyen, Piquero, & Faganv, 2013) and were now a leaner, more cohesive and close-knit group due to their experiences: Most the boys I bring to The Street from Grasstown didn’t want to get caught up in all the shit with Boardlands. [They stopped] going to Lala’s for a smoke. Leo and Raph moved away. They got another house in Royaltown out the way…. Poe went to his parents but he had in fact been drifting before, never seen him as much. He was more or less moving in wi’ his burd. Everyone still hung about Lala’s house, [but] no one wanted to stay [in the street] (laughs). Folk’s pals, pals of pals, [associates], stopped coming around. Was too mental, fuck sake. Was a real chance that you’d come by after the dancing to get mad wi it, snort some coke, [and you] get fucking stabbed over something you’ve fuck all to do wi. Get me?—Tank I wasn’t going to stop hanging about. I noticed after the [Boardland fights] a lot of stragglers stopped hanging around Lala’s house. Was really [the criminal core] that still hung about. Raph didn’t go to The Street as much wi’ me, just [be]cause he had his own mates elsewhere. They bought eccies off Lala and Tinky for a while.—Leo

The fighting with Boardlands had culled the group to the point that only those for whom crime and violence was integral to their identity kept showing up. The Street was now widely regarded as arguably the most dangerous area in LTC: Everyone was saying The Street was the new [X] Street (a notorious community). We had a bit of a squad. Leo and his brother had been in a heavy war with [Boardlands] when I was inside for battering some daftie. The fucking pricks tried to petrol bomb my house anol…. Agent Smith and Poe still came round. I think I got closer to Tinky [be]cause Leo moved away. Tank was always round. Cypher as well, and his wife. We never seen Mikey as much after he got out. Still came by but no much. Probably keeping his head down.—Lala

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(Dis)Organising for Crime It wasn’t long before the boys put their criminal capital to work. The Street’s reputation meant that criminal opportunity came their way. One of Agent Smith’s associates ran an insurance scam whereby claims were made on staged robberies, vandalism, and theft. Lala, Tank, and Leo were invited to take part in the scam. Lala agreed, but the latter duo declined in fear that such robberies were in fact real and merely being sold to the boys as fake so that Agent Smith could profit from them without getting his own hands dirty. Lala engaged in two such robberies: Agent Smith came to me and said if I wanted in on something. I needed the money so was like ‘aye fucking aye’. His mate was an older dude. I don’t know him but knew of him. He is well connected to some top outfits aye. He arranged for shops to be robbed, said he needed a few game lads who were up for it and could handle shit. I was to do it wi’ Tank and Leo but they crapped it, said no. I said to Tinky to get in on it. Agent Smith gave us the time and place. Said make it look real. The first one was down as [Area X]. Me and Tinky waited outside for the shop to shut, over at the park. We sat outside the motor. Didn’t worry as the [number] platers were fakers. Tinky could get that done easy. I don’t think they matched any motor but, just pure false…. Wee shop keepers came out to shut up, [so we] pulled these masks over. Don’t know were they came from, Agent Smith had gave us them. I was a clown. Tinky was like Tony Blair or someone, was pure scrappy aye. Tinky grabbed him and put a bottle over his head. Was an old milk bottle so no heavy but good for a loud noise. I made him take us inside and hand over the money, fags (cigarettes), Tinky grabbed drink from behind the counter. Ran away and drove to fuck. Fact we took the plates off round at the Breas before we went home. Put the others on from the boot…. [I was paid] £250. Same wi’ Tinky. I never seen insurance money from that. The second shop… I was given £1,000 after it. That includes the money from the shop mind you. Only did the two, [be]cause I got jailed for carrying a blade in the town.—Lala

Lala and Tinky fell out over money and ended their robbery partnership. They were always fighting anyway, but this time the dispute got so bad that Tinky and his friend Apoc broke into Lala’s house to assault him

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with knives. Lala heard the commotion and woke up to find Tinky trying to wedge his body into the house through the kitchen window. Lala hit Tinky across the knee cap with a machete, then chased Apoc back into Tinky’s house. Tinky dragged himself home and Apoc called the police. They came and arrested Lala for possession of a knife and assault, but Tinky eventually dropped the charges. Owing to court orders and the accumulation of criminal charges, Tinky eventually was evicted and moved to a new house elsewhere in LTC, yet he continued to socialise in The Street. After Tinky moved out, Sandy moved into the vacant property. Sandy had been part of Green Team and was also from Grasstown. He had prior friendship with Lala and Tank and quickly struck up friendship with Leo also—the pair putting aside their territorial differences from younger years. An older male, Neo, a heroin addict from Linthouse, moved to The Street around the same time and into Raphs’s vacant property, but because his work involved short-term contracts abroad, Mikey ended up looking after the property intermittently. Dipsey moved next door to Neo, thus was situated between him and Sandy. And a young woman named Mel, also from Linthouse, moved into Leo’s old home. Suddenly, The Street gang were reinvigorated with ‘new blood’. Sandy was a well-known fighter and body builder who at 6ft 2in and 18 stone, added muscle to the group. Dipsey had extensive criminal connections throughout the Johnstone area, and Neo had connections throughout Govan and LTC thanks to his drug addiction. In fact, one of Neo’s main suppliers was related to Raph’s friend Jay, one of those “small world” coincidences that help forge a deeper bond between The Street group and Raph’s old gang. The Street itself attracted a lot of transient but networked people, many of whom congregated at Lala’s house, which slowly became a hub for drink and drugs. The Street group, in turn, became de facto drug dealers engaged in “social supply” (Taylor & Potter, 2013) of drugs to people who came back to the block for weekend parties after the nightclubs closed. But the reality was The Street residents were user-dealers and growing more and more dependent on the drugs they consumed—cannabis just because, party drugs like ecstasy and cocaine to enhance the dancing on the weekends, and speed for the

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energy boost to get through the week and manage the hangovers and come downs: [Leo’s friends] were coming back every fucking weekend and getting out their tree (intoxicated) for days. [Easy access to drugs meant] a few of the boys ending up addicted, know. [Party goers] usually brought [drugs and alcohol] back wi’ them, [or were sold] weed and eccies by Lala and Poe… [They] were really just wasted 24/7.—Mikey

Long periods of heavy intoxication increased Lala, Tinky, and Poe’s tolerance for and dependency on drugs, which meant the boys needed money to feed their habit. The boys turned to their contacts for help. Mr Big’s family included reputable and well-connected criminals in the drugs trade, so he arranged for Lala to be sold drugs in small quantities for personal use at a discounted price, in exchange for being allowed to live at his accommodation. He likewise introduced Poe to new suppliers, but this created a vicious cycle, whereby Poe sold drugs in order to buy drugs, a scenario that plunged him into debt. The solution to this problem was to trade on The Street’s reputation and work odd jobs as ‘hired muscle’ for organised criminals: Obi took me aside and said if me and Lala wanted to make £500 each to [assault] a guy I knew. The guys owed Obi £500 but had been just mugging him off. Obi isn’t a fighter. He was being shown up but I guess. Suppose that’s why he was offering us extra to get the money from him and do him in. We always seen him about [be]cause he would come back to Lala’s after the dancing to get some eccies or coke if Poe was around. I pulled him up on the debt. It wasn’t really anything to do wi’ me so I felt like a knob but just said I was being paid to do him in. He offered us £300 each to not do him in. I know it’s a cut but he was still a mate know so I wasn’t really wanting to start plugging him for nothing. Just took the £300, said to Obi we weren’t doing it. Fucked up I know.—Leo

The group also engaged in targeted, low-level vandalism for money. They were offered steady monthly payments by a politically motivated organised criminal group in exchange for their services:

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Not all [OCG’s] are into drugs. Loads a [OCG’s] and [individual members] have their own things going on. [This one OCG] were more like trying to be vigilantes and make sure that justice was done. Like if guys were robbing grannies and getting away with it, [the OCG] might want they guys to get their comeuppance. We were well into that. I hate they bastards doing shite stuff to people like that. We got a fee and would get told “here’s the address”, do this one. Do that one. It was only now and then. We never go and attacked them. Would smash their windows. Blow up their car. Vandalise their [property and goods]. Just continuously, [so if ] they fixed the window, we would smash it again and again and again. Get me mate. Really so they fucked off out the area.—Cypher

As Cypher states, the OCG were not financially motivated, but the boys from The Street were in their decision to perform the task in hand—even if they could “neutralise” or justify it morally (Sykes & Matza, 1957). Occasionally, however, some jobs would ‘go too far’, namely robberies which involved breaking into the homes of targeted individuals to collect debts: See to be honest people usually pay if we turned up and said ‘get this paid’. No [be]cause we were like super hard or fuck all. Just because we were game and they didn’t know us but we knew them. No so easy to start saying stuff when people know you. It always becomes tit-for-tat…. [Individuals] started asking us to break into certain houses and rob their drugs and money from them. Two of our group were always doing that. I took fuck all to do wi’ it. That wasn’t my scene. They would break in and tie the guy up in the house and take his gear. They started doing it [while intoxicated however]. When they were like that they might lop the cunts finger off or smack him about so he was pure fucked up. Even if they had been given what they were after. Nah man, that’s fucked up. I didn’t agree with that, no. Taking liberties.—Leo

Leo began to distance himself from debt collection after the professionalism of his colleagues declined, but he still carried out robberies provided they didn’t involve breaking into homes and interrogating or torturing people. Leo preferred more opportunistic robberies or acting on information from his criminal contacts to steal unguarded goods:

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Aye, I didn’t mind going out on the rob wi them if it was just out and grabbing people off the street and taking their shit. Even then but there no much in that. It is [easier when information] was given to us about [the storing of goods], and we just broke in and took it. Taking our cut.—Leo

Tank also took a step back from debt collection after things went too far: Tank: Only in [area X]. I chapped Lala’s door and went in. Here is a fucking guy sitting in the middle of the room tied up wi [name] and Lala watching TV. I never thought anything of it. Was strange but didn’t want to act like a heavy shite bag and make a big deal of it. [Poe] is like “Tank this is [victim A]”, hooks the cunt on the jaw, “he owes me money”. I don’t think he even did. “Say alright to my mate”, hook. Lala is swinging a blade about his face. They are like, “you ever stabbed someone before?” “Naw mate”. Fuck sake. [Poe] was like, “you want to break your cherry, stab this guy”. I was like, “It’s alright, you’s go ahead”. Interviewer: Fuck sake. What did you do? Tank: Smoked [cannabis] wi’ the three of them2 and left. “Catch yous”. Got out of there. Cunt must have been heavy traumatised. I knew they were always getting up to that, but was first time I seen it. Kind of backed up from them a bit.

As Tank notes, after witnessing first-hand the type of sadistic violence that his friends were now into, he made a conscious decision to pull away from the group outside of sporting activities such as 5-a-side and 11-a-side football. He decided instead to expand his own drug dealing business, supported by steady income from a mobile phone venture which had been set up and facilitated by someone in Leo and Raphs’ extended family: Got the set up online … to purchase for us from [legitimate plant growing shop] in Glasgow. Boy that [OCG] knew, came over and showed us the ropes. Fucking even gave us a handbook as well. Think it was called

2This included the victim. Tank also stated that the victim also taunted him as a ‘shite bag’ when he refused to stab him. This bewildered Tank.

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the ‘Cannabis Bible’ or something along them. Can buy this anywhere now.—Tank

The Street Boys all claimed welfare benefit, thus had their rent paid for them by the local council. In theory, therefore, they should have been flush with cash from all the drug deals, armed robberies, and tip offs for theft and debt recovery; but the reality was that they were broke because the money was quickly squandered on wild living and drugs, as well as conspicuous consumption of clothing and cars: Sell the ecstasy at the dancing. Can sell at festivals like Coloursfest. … ecstasy is more kind of sustaining the lifestyle. … make a bomb from selling it at [the dancing and festivals, yet] spend the lot cause its pure expensive at [the dancing and festivals].—Leo

To live the lives they wanted, the group realised they needed to truly cash in on their reputation and their growing exposure to and experience of more serious crime. With Boardlands out of the picture, the group had carved out a patch of turf where they could store and sell drugs in a more organised fashion, without being ‘bullied’ by other more established groups. Yet several things had to be taken into consideration first: [We were] probably well known around for being able to handle ourselves. After all the shit with [Boardlands] we didn’t really get much bother. They kept themselves to themselves. We did the same really. Poe was storing drugs for [a guy] in his house. He never stayed there and was just letting it out. Was being used for storage really. Everyone knew but no one would attempt to break in and take it… me and Poe had spoken about getting more serious wi’ selling [drugs] but it can bring a lot of hassle. It’s no selling but you need to make sure the money comes in and people are actually going to pay, on time. Then we got to chase people up [but] we have two psychos that are torturing cunts. Can’t exactly send them to doors… [in addition] being honest, the boys were more likely to take the gear they were meant to sell.—Leo

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While pondering whether such a venture would be profitable or not, the boys were rocked by the death of Tinky. Tinky had been alcohol dependant from his late teenage years. This dependency had remained throughout his stay at The Street, where he also developed a drug habit, consuming Valium and ecstasy with increasing regularity. When he moved away from The Street he got a new girlfriend, but before their first child was born, he passed away: I seen him the day he died. He was with his girlfriend and another guy he had started to kick about with. Can’t remember his name, but he got slashed in the jail for being a grass. Don’t know if he is or isn’t but he ended up with a heavy slash across the face. Was another guy we hung around with [in The Street] that did it. Could be to do with anything really mate… Tinky said he was going to decorate his room. I think he, well him and his girlfriend, were having a baby. Didn’t think it was born yet. That other boy was helping him. Gave him Val[ium]s and he died that night on them. I miss him. He had it hard mate. Never really had a chance. His brother got run over and died in his arms when he was a wee guy. Think it played on him. He mentioned it a few times. Was usually upset about it. I loved him. He was a mate. Still is even though he is gone. Did loads a fucked up shit but was a good guy, wi’ a lot of problems.—Leo

The group took a time out. Tinky’s death hit Poe hard and he fell into depression. Lala drank heavily to cope with the loss. Leo got a part-time job and went straight for a while, turning down opportunities to make money illegally. For a time it looked like The Street Boys were finished. But in reality, they were only just beginning.

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References Densley, J. (2012). Street gang recruitment: Signaling, screening and selection. Social Problems, 59, 301–321. Densley, J., McLean, R., Deuchar, R., & Harding, S. (2019). Progression from cafeteria to à la carte offending: Scottish organised crime narratives. The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice, 58, 161–179. Loughran, T. A., Nguyen, H., Piquero, A., & Fagan, J. (2013). The returns to criminal capital. American Sociological Review, 78, 925–948. McLean, R., Robinson, G., & Densley, J. (2020). County lines: Criminal networks and evolving drug markets in Britain. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Sykes, G., & Matza, D. (1957). Techniques of neutralization: A theory of delinquency. American Sociological Review, 22, 664–670. Taylor, M., & Potter, G. (2013). From ‘social supply’ to ‘real dealing’: Drift, friendship, and trust in drug dealing careers. Journal of Drug Issues, 43, 392– 406.

7 Show Me the Money

In the 1980s, a new supply route linking Afghanistan to Iran made Pakistani heroin that flowed through Europe more available, and affordable, than ever. This sudden supply glut saw heroin prices plummet in Scotland at a time when prices of alcohol and tobacco were soaring thanks to a tanking economy. Cheap, high potency, brown, smokable heroin, often combined with prescription sedatives, thus became a dangerous adaptation to poverty and deprivation, spawning an entire “Trainspotting generation” of drug addicts (Daly, 2017). Fast forward two decades and “levels of problematic drug use. … and drugs crime [in Scotland] are among the highest in the world” (McCarron, 2014, p. 17). There are approximately 50,000 heroin users in Scotland (Casey, Hay, Godfrey, & Parrot, 2009) and drug addiction has become both a way of life and a leading cause of Scotland’s high mortality (Walsh, McCartney, Collins, Taulbut, & Batty, 2017). Young people grow up with parents, aunts, and uncles who are addicts. Some families will have an alcoholic grandfather, a son who’s been an alcoholic and heroin addict, and a grandson who’s a heroin addict. It doesn’t matter that heroin and other drugs are illegal—if there is demand there will be supply. Hence why Raph was involved in the social © The Author(s) 2020 R. McLean and J. A. Densley, Scotland’s Gang Members, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47752-3_7

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supply of drugs as well as gang fighting prior to his incarceration. Raph was supplied by his brothers’ friends in the Yellow Team, although he went to great lengths to conceal transactions from Leo, who didn’t want his brother dealing so young. Raph purchased with his pocket money and on ‘tick’ (credit), repaying the debt the following week, before ticking again, and repeating the cycle. He also paid in goods, such as alcohol, clothing, even a gas gun, and in favours, errands, and acts of violence commissioned by the dealers. At the same time, Raph was connected to several OCGs through extended kinship and would vandalise properties for money on their behalf (Leo did the same, albeit later on) and, eventually, cash in on his “violence capital” (Gambetta, 2009) to conduct targeted hits for money. More often than not, Raph performed these tasks to curry favour with the older, organised criminals, building trust and alliances in the process: … aye, we just hung out in [southside area]. My mates’ mate, said some guy fucked his auld man over … [I suggested that we go] to [the guy’s] house. My mate chapped his door, the maw came out so I fuckin’ gubbed (punched) her right in the mouth. The da[d] came charging and scooped Ricky here. Everybody was scrapping outside the boy’s house (laughs)…. [afterwards] I glanced a missed call … [returning the call, a voice] answered, [it was my mate’s dad], said ‘Cheers, stick up for him’ … Asked us round … [after several meetings] we were [at my mate’s] drinking [and his dad] asked to speak to me… said, ‘You want a wee job eh, lad?’. Always called me lad. Course, I’m fucking steaming, said ‘Aye, what’s it doing?’ … [He asked me] to do some guy in round on [street name] … gave me the address on a bit of paper, said, ‘Tell no cunt lad. Destroy that’ (the paper) … [I] stake the place out a bit. Knowing his routine, that, you know.… [One night he] was coming back from [the pub and there was], only two ways back to his …. I had been waiting in the bushes. They (the bushes) run up the side of the wall … no chance [would] get clocked. The street light shines across the building so its pitch dark. [the victim always] used the side door whenever going back from work. I assumed he would do the same … I came up behind him before he put key in the door, just torn the knife along his face like that (gesturing horizontal motion). He was fuckin’ wrecked, didn’t scream,

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nothing … So, I plugged him in the back and bailed … [I received] £750. Was paid about a month, five weeks later.—Raph

Six months later, his friend’s dad approached Raph and asked him to go for “a drive”: Was just crusin’. I didn’t think nothing other than he was wanting to talk shit … he smacks the breaks, shouts, “That’s the cunts”, pulls the car on the other side of the road and hands me a massive KD (Kitchen Devil knife). … [I] ran up behind the guy [and] grabbed his jacket collar … stabbed him rapid as fuck all over the body … mainly the back … must have been about 20 times … don’t know how many stabs went through the jacket, no’ that sure … fucking bailed …. I didn’t even ask for anything. Crazy man, I knew nothing. Out driving, next thing fucking GBH on some dude I’ve never clocked before. … [My mate’s dad] did that (motions with his hand), put about £340, no £45 (£345) up my sleeve.

With his friends Lee, Ringo, and Ricky, Raph graduated to motor vehicle theft. Initially done for the thrill of joy riding, thanks to a kinship connection to an OCG which dealt in stolen cars, parts, and “stolers” for criminals, the group learned the value of removing the parts before either ditching the car or burning it out: [We would] steal the cars and [race] them about the place. Grasstown is quiet, loads [of ] country lanes around to do it. It’s addictive…. Lee’s uncle found out. [I] and Lee were in his bedroom when his uncle found out and came in and asked us. I was shitting it. [Don’t know] how he found out. I thought he was going to go through us, [but he] said “next time get me some parts and I will see what I can give [you both] in [exchange]”. [We would initially] phone him, saying what he had and what he might want from it, wasn’t too good [as it was] hit or miss. He started telling us what he needed. Now and then even tell us where [certain makes and models] were parked up. Lee dealt with the money. Was more a buzz for me.—Ringo

This business brought in small amounts of money for the four, which was more or less used to purchase clothing or pay for nights out. Still

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not legally old enough to drive, as a hobby, the boys began assembling and upgrading their own cars with the money and stolen parts. This was something which continued and evolved while Raph was incarcerated but ended before his release because Lee’s uncle wound up in prison. After prison, when Raph was unemployed and living in The Street, he needed cash in hand to avoid the trap of earning less in a low paid job than he could claim in benefits. So, he turned to his brothers’ friends in the building and began purchasing drugs from them, mainly ecstasy, the drug of choice in the electronic dance music scene, to sell on to his own peers and extended networks. This practice put money in Raph’s pocket, but more importantly it gave him the connections and experience necessary to advance in the drugs game: I would buy from my brother’s mate Poe. Sometimes Lala. Would sell them to my mates. Sometimes to their mates. We started hanging about wi’ a guy, Terminator from Royaltown that Lee knew. He was a bit older and drove his mum’s car. We liked him aye, but started hanging about wi’ him more [be]cause he had a car. He was quiet. He might have been Lee’s relative coming to think of it. Fuck knows how we got in touch. Was defo through Lee. [He would] pick us up. Would be me and Lee and Ringo and Ricky. Would text people and ask if they wanted eccies. My brother’s mate always did. We would go to the centre and I just asked them [nightclub goers] if they wanted any. They knew of me [be]cause Leo. Some did. I would text Ringo and he would bring up [from the car] what they needed.—Raph

This experience gave Raph and his friends an identity as drug dealers and they soon became known as go to people for recreational drugs in LTC at the weekend, at least among people they had some prior connection to. The weekend trade gave the boys insight into how to deal drugs properly, as there is more to the business than simply acquiring the product and selling it on: No[t] anyone can just be a drug dealer. Anyone can sell drugs aye, but it’s a bit more than that. Need to get the connections, keep them. Build up contacts. Make sure the money keeps exchanging hands. We use to sell to people we would try and get them, rope them in. Like if I met a few

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[boys] I knew I would maybe give them a line for free to get them going, you know they are then all going to start buzzing and buying. I would sell a gram, but let them know shops open all night. They would call back later, I would offer them a deal. They are mad with it so no thinking right. They take the deal and it is debt basically that they have to pay off. Next weekend they are paying off that debt and I offer another line, a wee gram for free. Gets the whole thing going again. Same principles just apply, no matter the quantity. Most people selling it are taking it as well.—Raph

After the fight with Boardlands, Raph moved back in with his parents and his brother moved to a new house in Royaltown. Raph’s name was on the initial application for the two bedroom property in Royaltown, but he decided to live at home in order to distance himself from all the chaos on The Street. Raph was claiming welfare, so his half of the rent was covered, but he desired more and having sold drugs with Lee, Ringo and Terminator to Grasstown and Royaltown connections at weekends in LTC, he decided to try and do this on a more full-time basis: I had been selling eccies to guys we know from Grasstown at the weekend when they were out at the dancing in LTC. Would sell to their mates or lassies they had met while out. Brought in a few hundred quid but that’s getting split between us. I had been selling some eccies to my brother’s mates as well but they were selling to us so they were really just buying back some stuff. Wasn’t much I got from them. Jay had heavy connections but. We had got close [be]cause when I was in jail he would be writing to me. Plus we had been hanging out in Grasstown through Lee, and at The Street when I had my house. He knew the Linthouse boys I knew. They had fallen out wi’ him but so he was avoiding the place. He got a burd that stayed in Hillland and was always through this way. I was unemployed and so was he. Lee did some work and Ringo was still in school. Ricky and the others all had jobs. Big Swig and Nicky were in uni[versity], so was really just me and Jay kicking about. We could go to Govan to see big Mark or his brother [be]cause they were just at Linthouse and the [criminal family] were wanting to kill Jay. Hung about at his burds house or he would come to Grasstown. We were heavy strapped for cash so decided to just punt gear. Jay had connections in Govan and me out here.—Raph

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The duo would draw upon their connections in The Street to purchase greater quantities of ecstasy, as well as speed, and would use Jay’s family connections in Govan, to purchase cocaine. Jay was already selling drugs such as cocaine and occasionally heroin. His parents were addicts so Jay could get drugs easily. He sold within his parents’ social network, which included many older cocaine users, but also directly to heroin and cocaine users in Govan, under the guidance of a key player in the local drugs trade. Govan was a constrained and competitive marketplace and Jay wanted to branch out on his own. Raph had a reliable supply of ecstasy through his brother’s friends in The Street, but not cocaine, which was increasingly becoming the drug of choice among the weekend party goers. Jay could access coke, but he had reached his market cap in his existing sales network. Raph, by contrast, had an expanding clientele of recreational party goers, primarily from Grasstown, who travelled to the town for weekends out. They were older, thus had more disposable income. It was a perfect compromise: Made sense for Jay and Raph to get together. Both bums (unemployed) aren’t they. Raph got eccies [and] knew everyone [in Royaltownshire] through his brother and his mates. Jay was a mad scheme hopper jumping about Govan punting brown (heroin) to manky bastarding zombies (heroin addicts). [Jay could] get coke. Everyone in Grasstown was wanting gear (cocaine). No one wanted sweeties (ecstasy) now except mad punters at the Arches, what have you, Sub Club1 —Ricky

As Ricky notes, while the partnership was formed through friendship and gang association, the business strategy was mutually beneficial. Jay was looking to expand and Raph was looking to switch product. The duo quickly got to work and approached Jay’s contact in Govan about purchasing on credit an ounce of cocaine in exchange for guaranteed future purchases, paying by the following weekend, and not distributing 1 Nightclubs

like Arches and Sub Club were raves or dance clubs which had become synonymous with ecstasy use over the decades and took a highly lenient approach to users, thus attracting a certain kind of clientele. Other nightclubs were not so tolerant and thus cocaine was favoured by recreational attendees.

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in Govan. These terms were agreed to and Jay took the drugs to his then girlfriend’s house. He taught Raph how to cut the product, reducing its potency but increasing its quantity by several grams: Was in two minds to mix but we had to think about who was buying it. Was mostly cunts that were fleeing so they wouldn’t know anyway. Fuck it…. Needed the extra money to buy scales and bags and all the extra shit. Didn’t want that eating the profit.—Jay

Jay decided to prestige quantity over quality based on his assessment of the marketplace and his targeted customers. LTC’s weekend party goers were highly likely to be intoxicated when buying coke, thus wouldn’t notice a reduced “dunt”. Raph collected his regular supply of ecstasy and before the weekend sent out text messages to his contacts, letting them know that he now had cocaine available. That weekend, Terminator drove Jay and Raph to LTC to sell drugs. The duo sold out. So they went back to their supplier on Sunday night and bought double. This trend continued with bulk buys doubling for several weeks. Raph even began selling to peers his own age in Grasstown, who quickly developed habits, creating a constant flow of income. However, Jay began running up debts by siting with some users and consuming the drugs he was meant to sell. Jay even began overcharging people to cover his own costs, but when clients complained, Jay threatened them, assaulted them, and on one occasion, stabbed them. Jay was becoming a liability for Raph. To make matters worse, Jay had split from his girlfriend so he could no longer store or cut drugs in her house. Jay was also on bad terms with the supplier in Govan because he was short on his last payment. To best preserve their friendship, the lads decided it best to part business company: Jay just didn’t want to pay anyone. He’s a mate and I didn’t want to fall out, so said we should stop punting together. I would still get coke from him, just not sell it with him, but that quickly stopped [be]cause he wasn’t paying [supplier]. He ended up wanting to shoot Jay but didn’t go after him [be]cause another boy from the scheme got out of jail and started punting heroin about. Them two were fighting, and the guy shot him.

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Was luck for Jay but [be]cause it took his attention away from him.— Raph

Ricky took Jay’s place in the partnership in part because he has recently passed his driving test, but also because he expressed the most interest: Good man. Driving about, selling gear. Feel like the big man when your wee. Plus good for getting good deals on coke. I snort a power, suits me.—Ricky

Still, Ricky had his own drug habit and Raph was forced to cut back operations while he went looking for a new cocaine supplier. A chance meeting on a bus with one of his brother’s friends was the breakthrough Raph was looking for. Ernest had been a core member of Yellow Team (see Chapter 4) and had moved to a scheme in Glasgow South with Jambo because they both had kinship ties there. But they had recently been chased out of town by the local young team for selling them poor quality ecstasy tablets. Ernest and Jambo then had a bust up over a woman, which resulted in Ernest and two pals, Blue Team lads who harboured a grudge, turning on Jambo after a night of drinking together. They beat him with poles and an iron in his own home and put him in hospital. Hence Ernest had moved to LTC’s West End, and was now living with one of the Blue Team boys, Runt, in a halfway house. The two of them were involved in a number of scams, many involving stolen mobile phones. They were supplied by a family contact inside a popular mobile phone company: The phones were a good earner then. [Ernest] went about wi’ [Runt]. Their [relative] was bumping mobiles off the back of the vans. Fuck knows how it went. They were arranging it through dodgy folk in the workplace… Don’t care to be honest… We had to move the phones on. [We all] played for a couple of different football teams [so reaching clientele] was easy… [would also] go round the [local independent phone dealers] to ask if they wanted to buy regular supplies.—Raph

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Raph and his friends were popular and had a wide range of contacts at an age group keen to purchase the latest mobile phones, thus could facilitate their movement for a cut of the profits. But of particular interest to Raph, Ernest and Runt was selling cocaine and ecstasy sourced from Ernest’s family in two south Glasgow schemes. Raph seized his chance— he explained he was looking for a new cocaine supplier and a deal was struck. The only caveat was Raph had to stop buying ecstasy from The Street, which was fine because his contacts there were increasingly preoccupied with fights and feuds and short periods of incarceration: Ernest was selling coke, speed, eccies, Val[ium]s. Said he was getting them from [scheme in south Glasgow]. He lived there when he was younger. His dad was from [West Glasgow scheme] but think his family is from [scheme in south Glasgow]. I said I would buy half ounce of coke and would take a hundred eccies on tick. Try them out, see if they were good. First time I went to his I went into the house myself wi’ wee Ringo. Ernest was there, so was a guy, Ricktoe and Runt from Royaltown. Think another guy that was there was that guy that murdered the boy in Gangland recently. The house was on [anonymised] street. It was a heavy dump. I think it was Runt’s homeless house. Runt, Ernest, and Ricktoe2 are all heavy dodgy guys, but to be fair they were always good wi’ me. I started buying off them three, four times a week. It was always on tick. So I was always a payment behind, know. Each time I would tick 100 eccies, and quarter on coke, which is 14 gram. Well you get more [be]cause a gram is 0.7 really when your wrapping it. I was selling it in a week but had to bring in a few boys to help out. Too much to do myself, [be]cause I was always selling to the user or maybe a guy who would deal with wi’ mates. Eccies at that time were about £2 per eccies, but gave deals also. Coke was £30 per gram. Was all street stuff. No [wholesaling], didn’t have the resources in place for that. Was still only 17… I brought in Ricky. Ringo would help out but he bought his own stuff from Ernest, he just went with me to do it. So we sold our own stuff but together. Not all the time but [be]cause we hung out. I wouldn’t undercut him. Ernest and that would sometimes ask us to get involved in other stuff, like doing

2 Core

member of Hillland Young Team. His uncle had been notorious firearms dealer during a notorious drug feud in LTC.

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people in for them, rob places. I could have went elsewhere if I was into that. Said no, [be]cause they would never have paid.—Raph We would selling more, maybe double on the Friday. So would sometimes go back, get more the same night, say 500 eccies, sometimes a 1,000 eccies. Maybe an ounce of coke if sales were good. Ernest and that would always be taking gear and sometimes would dial us asking if we could sell him gear. We had just bought from him. But don’t think the guy he got from was someone you could go back and forth to all night buying bits.—Ricky

The downside to working with friends is that it can be too fun. Ricky and Raph started getting high on their own supply, eating into profits to feed their own drug habit. Worse, they started getting sloppy. Following a drug deal in which Runt phoned home while he was out socialising in LTC, Raph informed Runt he had no drugs but he was with Ringo who did have drugs. The duo travelled to LTC, however it was during the day as opposed to night time. Raph took with him a knife in case of any trouble. Dealing in LTC, when from a vehicle, usually took place behind the nightclub or on The Street or close by, however, neither Raph nor Ringo had a car that day so they travelled in by bus. Ringo decided to make the deal in the town centre and the police arrived after watching them on CCTV. Raph made a run for it and was apprehended in The Street, making his way to one of his brother’s friend’s houses. Flinging the knife away while running, he thought he had avoided being caught with the weapon, however a dog walker saw him and took the knife to the police. Raph was arrested and sentenced to eight months in jail. He was released on good behaviour after serving half his sentence and spent the rest of the time at home on electronic tag. In prison, Raph saw many of the same faces from Polomnt who were likewise in for repeat offences. However, he made some new contacts, specifically with a few boys who lived out in the northern schemes of Glasgow, who advised Raph to “get in touch” once out in order to set

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up some drug dealing partnerships. Upon release, however, Raph tried to keep his head down. He moved into the Royaltown house with his brother and begin playing 11-aside amateur football to keep his mind occupied, off drugs and crime. Although Raph had, like Leo, previously fought against Blue Team, he experienced no problems in Royaltown owing to his solid criminal credentials and the fact he kept himself to himself. It may have been different if he had engaged in criminality or caused friction. During this time, Jay began affiliating with another OCG that was at war with the one he used to purchase drugs from. Jay was a childhood friend with one of the leaders of the rival OCG and after his original supplier was imprisoned, Jay switched sides and quickly climbed the ladder to sell drugs independently as a high end wholesaler. Coincidently, Jay’s turf was in the county where LTC was situated. He leveraged his relationship with Raph to expand his network. Jay began making some strong connections through the drugs trade and soon was selling at wholesale level to smaller wholesale and retail level dealers in the South Glasgow area. Jay’s business grew so fast that he needed help managing it. He turned to the only person he really trusted—Raph: Some geezers will sell whatever themselves, but more need people around you. It’s hard doing it all [independently]. Needs boots on the ground, need people you can trust around you, give you back up. … I was swamped with shite mate. Cunts phoning me constant. You did this, got this, got that, done that. Shit in that ear, shit in that ear. Its pure stressful. [Be]cause I was punting out that way (LTC and surroundings) I asked [Raph] to help out. Need a boy that can handle himself. That’s well known. Can trust.—Jay

Jay was using his connections to collect as much as £50,000 worth of cocaine to be sold over two weeks. Much of this was on credit, and Jay would always work a fortnight in debt. Any outstanding debt that was not cleared in two weeks was added to the next bill, plus interest. This put huge pressure on Jay to deliver, consistently, because part of the terms of such a high “tick bill” was the next shipment of drugs would arrive in

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the next fortnight regardless of whether the previous amount had been sold or not: It isn’t like all money in my pocket, a lot goes on paying people working for you, paying debts, putting stuff in place. It is stressful.—Jay

Dealing in such large weight meant Jay had to focus exclusively on cocaine—other drugs would only side-track his efforts. Only occasionally would he deal in other drugs, as favours, or to pay off interest, or some debt should repayments fall short at any point. Raph was essentially asked to work for Jay who would pay him for his services in return. The partnership was never hierarchical even though Jay would give orders to collect and drop stuff off: Raph: It is like helping a mate. He asked for help, I said aye, and he said he would pay me for it. That’s sound wi’ me but would have helped anyway. I said I would bring Ricky and Terminator in to give me a hand. Terminator to drive, [be]cause I needed Ricky to back me up on drops in case anything happened. We really just picked up coke, benzo. We didn’t do any mixing, know nothing about it really. We just picked up stuff and dropped stuff. Interviewer: What was that like? Could you give me an example? Raph: Example?, Aye, sure. Would get a call from Jay, phoning and said can you pick up benzo or cocaine, but most times we didn’t ask. He just said go here, call me back once there. Jay would call me, usually in advance, sometimes short notice. I would call Terminator, he was only staying round the corner anyway. I would say to Terminator call me when outside. He would call me, I would go down. I was usually wi’ Ricky most times, almost every night so we would usually go down. Would call Jay and he would give us the place. [We would] get there and I would call Jay, and he would call his guy. After that he might call back and say go to door. I would tell Terminator to wait in car, and I would go to the door. Ricky would usually wait in the car, or stand outside it. He would carry as well. Only one of us would go to the door, but I would say if I was going to the door, “If am not back in ten mins phone the police. Don’t let no one get out the place”. One I went to the door [be]cause the people inside might be paranoid. I was paranoid, so just to ease the tension I would go myself. Make everyone

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feel less tense, know. I would usually wait outside or just go into the hall in the house. Never any the rooms. The drugs were brought out and given to me. They might be in a bag or that. I never carried the cash. Jay handled the money. We only moved the product. Jay arranged the transactions. Took to do with cash. I would go down and we would get into the car and call Jay. He would then give us an address and we took it there. When we got there, usually the person would come out and collect. We always spoke to make it smooth, but never more than five or ten mins. Light conversation mate. Sometimes it would be heavier tings in the bags, guns I guess. Never looked inside. I think we dropped brown (heroin) once, but I had a feeling it was that and said to Jay never do that again. The people we usually dropped to look normal, but the ones we would pick up from were mostly junkies. If it was ‘pros’ (experienced older dealers buying large), it was always a junkies to a junkie or a lassies. [Be]cause junkies, they get paid to hold shit, but the people we drop to are usually the ones selling it or mixing it. If we are dropping to older guys its usually in houses. If younger guys they always want to meet in carparks.

While the group usually did the collections and drops for Jay, occasionally Jay would go with them. When Jay went along, he often picked up, collected, or distributed other products or commodities for favours. This was mostly when the drops were around the Govan area, where Jay was well known. Jay was comfortable in the area and familiar with the regular clientele, whereas he knew little of LTC and the surrounding towns and villages, thus Raph was better in this arena owing to his local knowledge and connections. The more he worked for Jay, moreover, the more exposure Raph got to serious criminals, who, in turn, began requesting Raph to do work for them too. The boys were paid either in cash, typically several hundred pounds a go, or more frequently in drugs, which the boys would split between them. Jay was 20, Raph 18, and Ricky 19 at the time (approximately).

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Go Big or Go Home Work with Jay lasted about nine months. Raph and Ricky began debt collecting and acting as muscle for Jay, using the proceeds of crime— typically drugs—to fund their own activities and sell to users and retail level dealers that they knew. Then, suddenly, Jay went to prison. One night, in a jealous rage, Jay attacked a male who was seeing his expartner. He stabbed him 15 times in her kitchen then stabbed a friend, before assaulting his ex-partner and her friends. Jay went on the run but was eventually apprehended when someone who owed him drug money turned him in. Raph had lost his supplier. But during one of Raph’s last drops for Jay, the person picking up recognised Raph from jail. He was affiliated with a serious OCG in a northern scheme in Glasgow. The pair arranged to catch up over drinks and spent several nights out, two of which resulted in drunken brawls with rival gangs. Impressed by how Raph handled himself, the man from the northern Glasgow scheme invited Raph to come work for him instead. Raph took along Ricky, who had also been on the nights out socialising. The northern scheme OCG was supplied by a much larger OCG that was importing heroin directly from Asia and sourcing cocaine in large quantities from other OCGs and independent wholesalers in Scotland. The group was far more sophisticated than Raph’s previous set up and had a bunch of stash houses, which they either rented out to addicts or took over from indebted individuals. These homes tended to be grouped together and ran along the same street so they were easy to keep an eye on. They also tended to have constructed doorways or hatches via the loft that led into adjacent properties, making it easy to transfer drugs and other illicit goods if the police raided or rivals broke in to rob them. Every home had a stockpile of weapons, including knifes, swords, samurai swords, and machetes. A number of firearms were also planted throughout the area—pirate guns, rifles, shotguns, and a Beretta handgun. Older rifles and shotguns were stored in the ground at buried locations, wrapped in bags and inside a sealed box. If not inside the home, more sophisticated firearms were stored in dry and isolated facilities like garages, typically in secret compartments, dismantled. Raph’s

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group even claimed they even had access to a semi-automatic machine gun: [The OCG] had heavy connections. Heavy players. Deal mostly in brown. They sold [other drug types as well] but no to the same [extent]. Coke, or prescription drugs in heavy quantity mostly. The have a lot of enemies. Having your hands on [firearms] sends a message. Don’t fuck about or else. Most serious players will have guns or can get their hands on one [be]cause not everyone wants a gun lying about in their house, if you know what am saying. They don’t ever get used really.—Raph Seen serious guns mate. Dafties on the street aren’t running about wi’ them … well they might be dafties but are serious dafties (laughs). You would not want to fuck about it, heavy reps.—Ricky

Young Teams rarely if ever use guns to carry out their violence. Even among the groups that do use guns, not all guns are created equal. What separates serious criminals from regular street offenders is not the firearms per se, but their quality: Nah, [firearms on the street are] mostly shit. If the street dealer is getting a gun, it’s probably no[t] even real. He might have been given like a gas gun, one of them air rifle, know. They are powerful mind you, aye, no going to do much damage from afar, but up close aye could do damage. You need to be right up close to do serious shit…. [They may] even have been sold a replica for a few hunner… if they are buying outright…. and doesn’t know it yet till they use it. He won’t know, he will never have handled a gun. You don’t go about firing them for practice either so how would they know? … No[t] going to be trying to then take it back to a gun runner. Stupid. Most people don’t know. … Likely going to be a snider (rubbish). Know. Seen a lot of people wi’ guns, like old pirate things. They are fucking heavy inaccurate but. If they get a decent one, know, say its likely be a shotgun. Double barrel maybe. They are scary as fuck. I like them mind you. They are old aye. Most you see are way old and need repaired…. Cause they are always getting buried in fields… Put it this way, you don’t want to be trying it out unless you need to (laughs).—Raph

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[Anyone] could get a gun if they really pure tried. Would likely be of poor quality [or] more likely lack the proper ammunition [however]. Serious guns are only really used by connected criminals in the game. I have seen a growth of people asking for shooters, more so wi’ guys that are serious in drug dealing. But even then most these guy can’t get heavy firearms. Most [firearms used aren’t] like gun, guns [they are typically] replicas, high powered air rifles, modified pieces [such as revolvers no longer in service] with reactivated firing pins, antique guns. Trouble is how people that supply guns get them.—Matt

Sourcing real guns was difficult, but some people specialised in firearms dealing: [Most people] who sell guns aren’t like gun dealers known. They have probably got one passed own to them. Maybe bought one for protection. [People buy them] to act like they are cool. Thinking it makes them tough … [after a while] they realise, “Fuck sake man, I have a gun in my house” and want it gone so sell it. … [But], aye, there are some people who you would go to if you needed a gun. They can get them. … Aye, serous gangs have guns. … If you are in a gang, you might just say to a mate, “Going to gees a loan of that gun?” Or ask the guy that knows, “Gonna put me in touch wi’ the guy you know?”—Raph If you want a gun, you go to the [person] that does it. [People] like that but aren’t usually jumping about making their business known.—Ricky Guns are picked up by army guys out in the field (such as Afghanistan). They don’t report the gun [they pick up], and bring it back to the barracks then home. [They] sell to a single guy, who has known them for years. He will usually be army, more likely ex-army [but will] have connections to [criminals outside in the area he] comes from. Pals, or probably family. [For example] say, wee Sean, is on tour in Afghan, and he knows his cousin back in Glasgow is looking to buy guns. Sean is then going to pick up anything he finds and take it back when he is off on home leave. [Sean will then] take it to his cousin, [who] pays him. [His cousin will have] a few guys doing this for him. [His cousin then] puts the word out to his contacts that he has this or that piece for sale, know. It’s that simple. [The OCG] buys it and that’s that. The serious pieces but, well, he will

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probably keep these and either sell to particular high level gangsters wi’ serious money and that are after this stuff, or just hired them out for use. So one gun might move about the place, or even if it gets bought and used, the guy that uses it never wants to bin it and just sells it on, fuck knows why. That is daft.—Matt

The people involved in gun dealing, moreover, typically were connected to drug dealing as well: Interviewer: Are gun suppliers nowadays always involved in drug distribution, you think? Raph: Yeah, I would say so yeah. Saying that I could be saying that cause of the line of work I was in. As well to think of it, they probably hang about drug gangs cause they know they will be their biggest buyers…. Doesn’t meant they are necessarily involved in the trade suppose. … Most of the serious guys involved in selling drugs have guns or can get guns defo. … well no like the usual punter selling weed to his mates. None of that shit. Your guy on the street, probably doesn’t, no, probably not. Proper dealers, know, like you know the kind of guy selling from his house like it’s his job, them. He won’t have any guns, no like in his hand. Don’t mean he can’t get them but. Interviewer: How do they? Raph: They would just ask the guy they buy from. Or they guys they buy from asks his guy.

However, firearm ammunition was even harder to come by and was often limited to cut ammunition from an individual bullet maker that was stored separately from the guns themselves: You might have a gun but don’t mean you have the ammo though.— Raph Getting the gun is easy. Bullets mate, that’s defo different story. If you pick up a gun in the field it isn’t usually got any more than the clip wi’ it. The gun won’t usually match the army guns neither, so bullets don’t match. Bullets you get about are usually cut to fit. Some boys will bring bullets back if they find them. Need the knowhow to get guns with the proper ammunition. [Ammunition] is overlooked by the run of the mill

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guy. Need to know how to use a gun as well. See wi’ handguns you can stand there, me here, pure unloading clips on each other [and] hit everything in the room but each other. When I [left the army] I had connections. [I was] approached from time to time [asked] what could I get my hands on. Punters can be flipped off wi’ a pirate. They just want to look flash [to say] “I have a gun, back up”. I knew [when someone was a] serious geezer, [I usually] knew, or knew of, the boys that [approached me] on behalf [of OCGs].—Matt

For these reasons, interviewees had mixed feelings about the utility of firearms in Glasgow: [Criminals are more] likely to use blades. Blades are reliable if you want the job done. Easy to get and easy to ditch. [Gun are used] occasionally. Only when needed really aye, they draw attention. Mostly [used] when someone is either sending a final threat, so [the person would] shoot up the guys house or his pub, or even his local when he is in it, in a drive by. Its fast, get an unmarked car, stolen or has false plates from a guy. The person the car comes from has fuck all most times to do wi’ the person the guns are from, so you need the sources. Get the brief, and the gun and do a drive by at speed and blow the place. Shotguns are best for this. Or even better, if you’re planning to get out and go into the place and shooting it up. It scatters the bullets so wrecks the joint and people shite it when the see it, hear it. Puts the fear into them. It’s more for show. Other time a gun actually gets used is when it’s to kill someone. Most shootings don’t end in a kill, the bullets aren’t that good. [If cut] they don’t follow the barrel, its marked inside to make the thing fire straight. If its not the proper bullet it don’t fit right, it won’t always fire the right way. When people are killed in actual hits, like targeted by people that want them done in, it is probably a proper gun. Berettas are popular for it. No too hard to get. Guy we knew from England would sell us gear and just say you want a piece. Said £500 to hire it, more to own it. Was good because he could get the proper bullets. Said he could get more if needed. [Afterwards] it went back to him, and he just replaced it. Obv[iously] for a price.—Stephen P.

Raph was now in the big leagues but acting as muscle for the OCG and doing dangerous pickups took a significant psychological toll on him.

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Raph self-medicated with cocaine, but found it more and more difficult to explain his disappearing at unusual hours with excuses like “something came up”, or he was going to “meet his girlfriend”, or later after they split, he was going to “meet a girl”. He needed an exit strategy, a reason to move away from the frontlines and into the back office. Thus, he approached his brother with the proposition of getting the old gang back together.

The Meeting (Getting the Gang Back Together) Raph pitched to Leo recruiting The Street Boys and all their old friends from Govan and Grasstown as drug sellers. Raph was well connected on the supply side, but Leo was closer to the end users of drugs on the demand side. Raph would purchase cocaine from the OCG in the northern Glasgow scheme, and firearms from the source which they used. Leo would then distribute these goods through their extended networks. The boys in The Street still regularly engaged in a wide range of other crimes, fighting and anti-social behaviour more generally, thus represented a sizable group, with different skills, able to carve out space for themselves in the illegal drugs market. Leo suggested they also diversity and distribute cannabis, given the wide use of the drug and that it would act as a backup should the cocaine supply ever dry up. The goal was to become their very own OCG. A meeting took place in The Street. Everyone attended, except Sandy who had recently died from a heart defect: We decided to set a meeting and I said to the boy in the Street. The meeting as at Lala’s. I asked my cousin Roscoe over [be]cause he worked wi’ a company that had construction contracts and he had to go to sites about the place to check out if they could be built on or not. So he knew places that we could do [cannabis] grows. I asked over Tank as well [be]cause he was staying wi’ his misses but still had his old flat. Could do a grow and put up false walls. He could also be used as a fall guy and take out another property in his name on the private housing market. He would get paid of course, don’t do that for free. Greg was there [be]cause

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he use to do grows but had gave it up when the two boys he worked wi’ before got jailed. Greg also had a bit of a drink problem but was well knowledgeable. Lala and Cypher were there [be]cause they are fucking mental and you want these cunts backing you up. Invited Donnie as well. His brothers were popular cunts and Donnie was going to use them to source out weed and coke. Me and [Raph] were there. Lala wanted to ask Dipsey, but I said no [be]cause he was now dabbling in smack and just unreliable. Mikey came over anol. Lala wanted him in.—Leo Aye [Leo] set it up. I picked up Greg [be]cause we had got to know each other through [the 11-aside amateur football team] I was playing for, he was more my pal. He had been selling weed to [Ricky], so know he was sound. He use to buy coke from us as well. Swings and roundabouts mate. Good cunt but. Leo asked his mates round to his pal Lala’s house. Big Cypher, Mikey and our cousin Roscoe were there when I got in the house. Roscoe wasn’t really a bad yain or that. He was skint but and needed the cash. Leo’s mate Tank was there as well.—Raph Me and big Cypher just rolled up to Leo’s. I didn’t know much that had been going on, but big Cypher had said that Raph and Leo were wanting to set up some things, know. Aye, me, Cypher, Leo, Raph and Tank were in the house. Their mate Donnie from the old Govan High school days was there. I didn’t know him but. Went a few nights out together [be]cause he was Cypher’s pal.—Micky

While all can recall meeting at the house to discuss the possibility of forming their own OCG, everyone had their own agenda and reasons for attending: I had just been struggling to get by mate [be]cause the wains (children) and the bills, know. I was doing a 50 plus hour week easy every week. I had been selling weed that Cypher was selling to me for a wee bit to get money together for holiday for the kids. That only goes so far but. My brothers are better involved into what have you than me. Leo asked me if I would ask them to move green and white to them for him. I would get steady money. Said aye, I needed it aye.—Donnie

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I had been jumping about the place, just fucked up mate. No doing much, telling the truth. Just getting full of it. Cypher was still in contact wi me. We partied wi’ each other know, got fucked up a few times a month. Cypher said Leo wanted to get him into a set up. I got Cypher told, fucking get me in. I need the cash. More needed something to do I think.—Mikey

For Donnie, the pressures of providing for a long-term partner and several children who were increasingly demanding goods, holidays, and other commodities put him in a situation where his income did not match his needs, thus money was his motivation. For Mikey however, who had been moving around for a period of time with no fixed abode and simply consuming drugs, the chance to get involved in something which gave him direction and focus was the main motivation. For the others, the motivations differed, yet economics was undoubtedly a driving factor to various degrees behind all. Leo was the main connecting point and thus acted much like the head of the group: I got Lala to make the tea, well coffee actually. It was his house, so you know, and he did the best coffee as well. Got out the paper and pens and just said to the boys, “Look, we are going to set up a million pound operation”. This was the annual [turnover] and should be the turnover before net profit. Set the objectives, know. Like the money as the main one and then set the operational and tactical level. I had been doing a wee online business course so know this stuff. Said to the boys that I needed them. We all had a place to play. I was going to organise it, and would put up the initial funds in hard cash [be]cause I had been saving for a bit and had a few grand. I would oversee the thing, both the grows and the buying white (cocaine) in. Raph was going to be in charge of the cocaine distribution and would have Cypher for muscle. He could get in Ricky to do his driving. For the weed, I didn’t know much about the grows other than what I read on the [inter]net. So Greg would run this. Roscoe would find him a place to set up. He was looking at a few places and showed us them in a wee folder he brought. Tank was going to take out properties in his name and use his other house to get us up an’ running ASAP but. He was the fall guy as well. Had a clean record and said he would take the fall for low level stuff. We pay him his dues. He was cool with it. Donnie was going to outsource to the other side of

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the city. Didn’t want just one site in [the county], case it was too much. A knew a guy from school that was going to do the IT and accounts for us. Lala would be Greg’s hard man to deal wi’ shite, as well. I didn’t really want Mikey there. Cypher wanted him. Said he was a good one, could be useful.—Leo Was clear from the start that it was well thought out. Two products. Two sites. Two teams, under one guy. Meant they were all unconnected. The green (cannabis) was fuck all to do wi me. Was Greg and Lala doing that. They had most the support. It isn’t the same selling that. Coke is different, just different. Different clientele know, different way of getting the stuff and moving it. I was more familiar wi’ that. Suited me.—Raph Mate, I wasn’t that into it. Sounded like I was getting a pretty shite deal. The short straw mate. I was to let out my house and take out another one, fuck come on. I was told I was to take the derry if it all went tits up (laughs). Said yeah, but wasn’t that into it fella. Need the money but. I was bad on the gambling and had fuck all. Way I seen it was the jail would get me off the games. Was heavy bad. It is more under control now.—Tank I was well into it. Getting my hand on a fair amount. I was going to [North Coast Town] wi a burd I was going way. Leo hadn’t said what I was to do. I just vouched to get gear to me when I was in [North Coast Town] and I would get it sold. My [girlfriend’s] brother was already selling gear for another boy up there that was fucking top dog. He was jailed for getting caught bringing drugs in on a dingy boat. Was a big shipment so got a hefty sentence. No one was getting fuck all [be]cause he was in. I would take over.—Mikey

Following Mikey’s proposal it was agreed that in addition to Donnie, Mikey would be used as an outsource once he moved to the North Coast Town. Raph was well connected and able to back up Mikey’s claims, and Leo verified the incarceration via media outlets as Mikey had a reputation for “talking balls”. It was then agreed that Raph would gain access to firearms should they be needed for Mikey to carve out a patch for himself but would not be used as muscle as he was now in the position of being in charge of the operation and could not afford to be jailed. Instead, Mikey

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would be supplied with Cypher periodically when needed, but advised to make connections via the girlfriend’s brother when in North Coast Town and purchase local muscle with reputation. A younger individual or two though as they would be less established in terms of experience to take over operations, and more willing to carryout extreme actions if required and for less pay. It was agreed that regardless of whether or not an individual was incarcerated, they would still receive their share of pay. Following the meeting, the group got to work. Overseeing coordination of the project, Leo would let Raph deal with his own group and set up what was effectively a splinter cell to purchase and distribute cocaine from the sources as discussed. Cypher was muscle and would deal with debts and collections, Ricky the driver and dealt with logistics. Much of the product would eventually be outsourced via four main streams. These were ongoing contacts that Raph had established himself,3 contacts that Leo had put him in touch with, through Donnie into the North side of the city and surrounding suburbs, and via Mikey into the Northern regions of the country, most predominantly Town A. Leo had little to do with this branch, other than handling the money that came back to him and dividing it up among members, who were paid primarily cashin-hand, with the exception of Raph, Mikey, Cypher, and occasionally Lala. The money itself was laundered through a range of contacts, including the likes of Agent Smith who assisted for a fee. Money laundering was not overly sophisticated, but deferred to local businesses owners who would account for the money in exchange for small financial rewards, notwithstanding extra tax, etc. on declared income, and more often than not, half price or “buy two get one free” deals on drugs because many local business owners were also customers of the group. The shops tended to be small beauty salons, ice-cream parlours, and muscle shops. Another method of laundering was through hiring work squads to undertake construction work. Leo would set up a fake business, then either bid on or create local construction contracts that the work squad could

3 Income

from this source was not distributed to the group as a whole but rather Raph and Ricky kept it for themselves.

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complete. Leo would employ youth with relevant construction experience as cheap labour, overseen by Cypher who had a background in construction and was a good worker with inside knowledge. Once a job was complete, the unwitting customer would pay for their services. The money generated from the job itself would be inflated and registered to make the money clean, while the workers would be paid in drug money. Some lads took on more managerial tasks than others, assigned on ability, competency, and knowledge in the relevant area. Leo was not the leader of the group per se, but certainly the overseer. His primarily role was logistics, which included coordinating work efforts, delegating tasks, and ensuring that the money the group was making was made clean. As mentioned, he had little to do with Raph’s cocaine cell, which was self-governed. Leo did however, at least initially, take an active role with the cannabis cell, which was headed by Greg. This was for two reasons. One was that Greg was more of an associate of Raph’s than anyone else, and thus trust had not been firmly cemented.4 Secondly, while Leo knew that Greg had the ambition to set up a profitable cannabis factory, Greg lacked the funds, drank heavily, and was not as well networked as Raph and Ricky. Thus, Leo had to be involved in the initial set up. This included visiting hydroponic outlets in the city to purchase the necessary tools and equipment to grow cannabis. Shop owners are fearful of undercover police, so Leo helped translate the coded language of the shop owners (e.g. indoor tomatoes instead of cannabis) for Greg. Leo also visited potential grow sites with Greg and Roscoe, vetting specific areas and homes. He also fronted the money for equipment such as lights and generators. He then liaised with Cypher on necessary construction projects. Eventually Leo took a backseat and Greg took over. Leo’s hard work paid off. Over the course of almost a year, the group made a lot of money, enough that people could place a deposit on a 4The trust afforded to Greg by the group was based largely upon his friendship with Raph and in terms of criminal activities. Several group members had fought side by side with Greg when football games got out of hand and mass brawls started and during these brawls, Greg showed that he was “game” and an ample fighter who would not “grass” if questioned by authorities and police. But until now there had been little opportunity to test this trust through criminal enterprise.

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house, buy a car, take a nice holiday, and purchase all the high end goods and clothing they wanted. That is, unless they squandered the money on drugs and gambling, which were common vices among the boys. Indeed, to paraphrase the immortal words of the rapper The Notorious B.I.G., “more money, more problems”.

Concluding Remarks As Pitts (2008, p. 70) observes: …the drugs business is a business, requiring a relatively elaborate division of labour within a large workforce, which must maintain and protect the supply chain: market, package and distribute the product, protect the key players, silence would-be whistle-blowers, collect debts and ensure contract compliance.

There was huge demand for drugs in Glasgow that The Street Boys could supply, thus the drugs business presented an opportunity for Raph and Leo. However, it also required them to transform their existing recreational and criminal networks into something more entrepreneurial, purposeful, and goal-oriented, namely the commission of “market-based crimes” and the provision of illegal goods and services for profit (Von Lampe, 2016, p. 74). As a result, The Street Boys embraced greater levels of organisation, including hierarchy and leadership, roles, and rules. The Street Boys thus became a case study in the process of gang evolution first observed by Densley (2014) in London, and later documented by McLean (2018) in Glasgow. The data in this chapter demonstrate how “informal-diffuse” street gangs become “instrumental-rational” organised crime groups through a long process of evolution (Decker, Bynum, & Weisel, 1998; Decker, Katz, & Webb, 2008), lending further credence to the notion that gangs and organised crime groups exist along a spectrum of activity and organisation (Decker & Pyrooz, 2013; Klein & Maxson, 2006). Other studies have found a connection between the organisational structure of the gang and the level of organisation in offending, particularly violent and drug

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crime (Bouchard & Spindler, 2010; Decker et al., 1998; Sheley, Zhang, Brody, & Wright, 1995). Decker et al. (2008, p. 169) found, “The more organized the gang, even at low levels of organization, the more likely it is that members will be involved in violent offences, drug sales, and violent victimizations”. Our data concur.

References Bouchard, M., & Spindler, A. (2010). Gangs, groups, and delinquency: Does organization matter? Journal of Criminal Justice, 38, 921–933. Casey, J., Hay, G., Godfrey, C., & Parrot, S. (2009). Assessing the scale and impact of illicit drug markets in Scotland . Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Daly, M. (2017). What happened to the ‘Trainspotting’ generation of heroin users? Vice. Retrieved from https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8qqa94/thisis-what-happened-to-the-trainspotting-generation-of-heroin-users. Decker, S. H., Bynum, T. S., & Weisel, D. L. (1998). A tale of two cities: Gangs as organized crime groups. Justice Quarterly, 15, 395–425. Decker, S. H., Katz, C., & Webb, V. (2008). Understanding the black box of gang organization. Crime & Delinquency, 54, 153–172. Decker, S. H., & Pyrooz, D. C. (2013). Gangs: Another form of organized crime? In L. Paoli (Ed.), Oxford handbook of organized crime. New York: Oxford University Press. Densley, J. (2014). It’s gang life, but not as we know it: The evolution of gang business. Crime & Delinquency, 60, 517–546. Gambetta, D. (2009). Codes of the underworld: How criminals communicate. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Klein, M. W., & Maxson, C. L. (2006). Street gang patterns and policies. New York: Oxford University Press. McCarron, M. (2014). It is in the interests of justice and health to decriminalise drug users. Scottish Justice Matters, 2, 17–18. McLean, R. (2018). An evolving gang model in contemporary Scotland. Deviant Behavior, 39, 309–321. Pitts, J. (2008). Reluctant gangsters: The changing face of youth crime. Devon, UK: Willan.

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Sheley, J., Zhang, J., Brody, C., & Wright, J. (1995). Gang organization, gang criminal activity, and individual gang members’ criminal behavior. Social Science Quarterly, 76, 53–68. Von Lampe, K. (2016). Organized crime. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Walsh, D., McCartney, G., Collins, C., Taulbut, M., & Batty, G. D. (2017). History, politics and vulnerability: Explaining excess mortality in Scotland and Glasgow. Public Health, 151, 1–12.

8 All Things Must Pass

All things come to an end. After a year of operation, the gang collapsed almost as quickly as it had come back together that day in The Street. First, the North Coast Town cell proved far less lucrative than anticipated. Transporting drugs and money over such long distances was difficult, and at times shipments would not always reach their final destination(s). Mikey was acting alone in North Coast Town without the much needed support and direction of more stable heads in the group. He struggled to recruit trustworthy individuals indigenous to the community. The people he eventually partnered with began infighting and undercutting those back in the West Coast by not declaring full amounts made from drug sales. They also started consuming drugs themselves and selling drugs independently at street level.1 On three occasions, Cypher was forced to visit North Coast Town, alongside Lala on one occasion, to investigate missing product and short payments.

1 Leo

was very conscious that mid-level dealers should avoid at all costs street-level retail directly as it can lead back to the source of the product. Members were advised to sell whenever possible at wholesale level or to retail-level dealers who could sell to end users themselves. This would put a clear buffer between those sellers at the top and those users consuming the product.

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To make matters worse, Mikey was unable to establish supremacy over existing rival drug dealers in North Coast Town. This resulted in a series of minor turf wars. At first, Cypher, Lala, and even Raph intervened on Mikey’s behalf, but eventually the group cut ties out of concern that the violence would draw unnecessary police attention to their more lucrative activities. In the end, Mikey gave up any aspirations of illegal governance of North Coast Town and settled for a role as independent supplier to local dealers, gangs, and groups. This suited Mikey, who at the time was also having to address other, more personal, issues in life, namely the breakdown of a relationship and an expensive cocaine habit. Next, Greg was incarcerated on a charge of assault, alongside Lala, who was involved in the same incident. Owing to other charges, ranging from anti-social behaviour to theft to drug possession, and a string of driving offences, Lala never made bail and was remanded. Tank, who was also present at the assault but not charged, then relocated to Australia on a working visa. The loss of the three key members of the group was devastating to its cannabis operations. Running the grows wasn’t easy. If the group was unable to shift product at full retail value, for instance, then they needed to sell at reduced prices to avoid having too much inventory on hand. Storage was an issue, so the group had to contract with two local associates who would store drugs in exchange for having their rents paid. Bribes and payoffs further increased the overhead. The group needed everyday people both to keep their mouths shut and to check on the grows to make sure ‘everything was okay’ (the group’s greatest fear was not the police but rather other opportunistic criminals stealing from them). Crop failure was also common owing to the less than optimal growing conditions in rented accommodations. Without Greg, Lala, and Tank around to manage all this, the cannabis business was dead. The group concentrated its efforts on dealing cocaine. Yet the drug habits developed by Raph and Ricky proved unsustainable. Raph had a full-scale mental breakdown and Ricky cycled in and out cocaine use until he moved south of the border to take a lucrative job offer and start over. Cypher’s drug addiction also worsened and he would regularly “miss work”, or “get sloppy”. The final nail in the coffin came about six months later when the group’s main supplier of cocaine was arrested in Glasgow

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on his way to commit an act of violence upon someone who had attacked several of his family members over an ongoing personal vendetta. The individual was allegedly caught on his way to the soon-to-be crime scene with drugs, weaponry, duct tape, petrol, and scuba diving gear in his car. He went to prison and his OCG became increasingly difficult to work with thereafter, with Raph feeling they were “untrustworthy” and that the group should cease to purchase from them or even have anything to do with them. The Street Boys were finished. Upon reflection, Leo states: It was good while it lasted. Was never going to last, last. We had too many hot heads among us all. Lala and Greg ended up getting sent to jail for battering some guy at the dancing over fucking nothing. I always said, “keep quiet,” but nah. Fuck sake. Stupid man…. Lala always got into trouble. He got a heavy stretch…. Raph, Ricky and Cypher took more gear than we sold. Was bad news putting them altogether. I would have broken them up if we had another chance to do it again…. Don’t get me wrong, a few of us still came out of it wi’ good sums a cash in the bank. Could get a house. Could buy nice cars. Go on holidays and not worry about money for a change. Didn’t want for stuff, like material things, know…. [But] you [do] pay for it all. Takes a heavy toll on your mental wellbeing know. Stressful. Watching your back anol. Look at Raph, wi’ the drugs. Too much. And gambling as well. That’s right bad. Him and Lala were really bad wi’ it.—Leo

Disengagement and Desistance Gang disengagement encompasses both the formative event of deidentifying as a gang member and the summative process of disengaging from gangs (Bubolz & Simi, 2015; Sweeten, Pyrooz, & Piquero, 2013). In the end, deleterious life experiences, whether drug addiction or violence or incarceration fed a general disillusionment that pushed out members of The Street Boys. Familial influences, religion, recovery, and, eventually, legitimate opportunities then pulled them out (Pyrooz & Decker, 2011). For example:

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Aye, a bit gutted. Losing a mate… probably not possible to upkeep the kind of [operation we] had going there. My mates are all settled now, doing their own thing. I have a kid as well. She is [growing up], you want to set a good example know. I can’t be going on and on doing this same shit. I have a bit of money aside and am going to try and finish getting my papers (qualifications). I was only the final test of it. It is good money. I know I would pass.—Gordon

Leo’s childhood friend, Gordon had once worked in the building trade and he very nearly completed his apprenticeship before his life went a different direction. Having put some money aside, he now plans to invest it into completing this training and working legitimately. In addition, he also has funds to put down a deposit on a house. The catalyst for this change in mindset was the loss of a friend, which prompted him to get in touch with his estranged daughter. He wants her to see her father as a positive role model. The maturational reform, fatigue, and cognitive shifts in thinking that our interviewees experienced when deciding to leave the gang are well documented in the literature (Decker & Lauritsen, 2002; Giordano, Cernkovich, Rudolph, 2002). So too are the benefits of religious and other re-entry programming in gang recovery (Bushway & Apel, 2012; Deuchar, 2018; Flores, 2013). For example, Raph didn’t even realise that his sleepless nights and flashbacks were symptoms of a posttraumatic stress disorder until he met with a counsellor and accepted his violent past was the cause of his rising anxiety, depression, and sporadic episodes of intense anger. Raph experienced what he describes as a “mental breakdown” and that, eventually, brought him closer to God: I broke down. Just broke. I was shattered inside. Everything, everything had taken its toll. Came back on me like.—Raph

Raph started attending several religious services at his local church and that was his “turning point” (Sampson & Laub, 1993). Prior research has shown how religion works as both a desistance “signal” (Johnson & Densely, 2018) and “hook for change” (Giordano et al., 2002) because it is a form of social capital that teaches and encourages pro-social

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behaviour, serves as resources for emotional coping, and provides opportunities to build pro-social relationships (e.g. Deuchar, 2018; Veysey, Martinez, & Christian, 2013). But, Raph argues, there was something more to it. “Born again”, religiously committed ex-gang members understand aspects of faith-like hope, transformation, faith, forgiveness, and grace in a way that their co-religionists cannot. Hence why Raph has now adopted the strengths-based role of the “wounded healer” (Lebel, Richie, & Maruna, 2015; Maruna, 2001) or “professional ex-” (Brown, 1991), drawing on his experiences, which he is relatively open about, to help other offenders in their disengagement and desistance process: I am no perfect. I am right at the other end of the scale. I like helping the guys. Feels like I am giving something back, if that makes sense, know what I mean? Aye man, I can get a decent connection going. Because I have been through it, people like that. Respect what you’re saying cause they know you can relate.—Raph

Raph’s ability to “relate” having “been through it” is key to his success, but so too is his faith. Raph says that he does not preach religion, only “love”, which unites the recovering and recovered gang member in their struggle: I ain’t trying to convert people. I wouldn’t do that. I try and show love. If they see God in that, that’s great. Hopefully they get something from talking with me.—Raph

Raph wasn’t the only person to talk about deep wounds, the kinds that do not heal on their own. The challenges of signalling disengagement to others and staying disengaged when ties to the gang life remain in the form of family, friends, and neighbourhood affiliations (Densley & Pyrooz, 2019; Pyrooz, Decker, & Webb, 2014). Many of our interviewees continue to drift in and drift out of delinquency (Matza, 1964). As the summary below demonstrates, therefore, there are common threads, consistent with prior research, but every story of gang

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disengagement and criminal desistance remains different, and even when people are successful in going straight, their lives can still end in tragedy.

Where Are They Now? • Following the demise of The Street Boys, Leo found Christianity and turned his back on crime. He invested his money into several properties, which he now owns and rents out to generate income. • Raph worked hard to desist from crime and address his addictions. He is now a born again Christian and lives a quiet life with his family. Although he still engages in the occasional fight when his past catches up with him. • After a spell in North Coast Town, Mikey felt that he had too much of a freehand and due to his impulsive and quite addictive nature, he went on a “rampage” of drug and gambling abuse, and gang-related violence. He would eventually settle down and move back to the Glasgow conurbation in order to raise children with his long-term partner who has since helped to keep him on the right track. • Donnie, although involved in young street gangs, was only ever on the cusp of criminality and always acted more mature than his age, or looks, would suggest. He acted more as a source of illegal networking for other would-be criminals and associates. He has had no problems drifting back and forth from the legal to illegal economy and still occasionally does so. He is settled with a long-term partner, has children, and works long hours. • Greg started a successful construction business upon his release from prison. He purchased a home in the Glasgow conurbation, where he lives with his wife and children. He is no longer involved in crime. • Ricky desisted from crime and for a while worked with Raph to help others disengage from gang life. He tragically died in the time it took to write up this book. • Cypher remains active in serious and organised crime, but structural changes in Scotland’s drug economy and shifting consumer demands (for a discussion, see Densley, McLean, Deuchar, & Harding, 2018) are putting pressure on his OCG. Cypher either needs to adapt to

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keep up, or step aside to make way for younger actors; many of whom work beneath him already. As Cypher says, it’s “a struggle to stay on top of them”. They’re more tech savvy and in tune with the wants and needs of the current drug-using population. Cypher is still in close contact with Tank, who for a period was struggling with gambling and other non-drug-related addictions and is now awaiting criminal trial on drug-related charges. Lala has spent the past few years in and out of prison and is battling drug addiction. Roscoe lives a successful life in the outskirts of Glasgow. He has invested money into real estate and business ventures. Jay was released from prison but still is involved in crime.

References Brown, J. D. (1991). The professional ex-: An alternative for exiting the deviant career. The Sociological Quarterly, 32, 219–230. Bubolz, B. F., & Simi, P. (2015). Disillusionment and change: A cognitiveemotional theory of gang exit. Deviant Behavior, 36, 330–345. Bushway, S., & Apel, R. (2012). A signaling perspective on employment-based re-entry programming. Criminology & Public Policy, 11, 21–50. Decker, S., & Lauritsen, J. (2002). Leaving the gang. In C. R. Huff (Ed.), Gangs in America (3rd ed., pp. 51–68). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Densley, J., McLean, R., Deuchar, R., & Harding, S. (2018). An altered state? Emergent changes to illicit drug markets and distribution networks in Scotland. International Journal of Drug Policy, 58, 113–120. Densley, J., & Pyrooz, D. (2019). A signaling perspective on disengagement from gangs. Justice Quarterly, 36, 31–58. Deuchar, R. (2018). Gangs and spirituality: Global perspectives. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. Flores, E. O. (2013). God’s gangs. New York, NY: New York University Press. Giordano, P., Cernkovich, S., & Rudolph, J. (2002). Gender, crime, and desistance: Toward a theory of cognitive transformation. American Journal of Sociology, 107, 990–1064.

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Johnson, A., & Densley, J. (2018). Rio’s new social order: How religion signals disengagement from prison gangs. Qualitative Sociology, 41, 243–262. Lebel, T. P., Richie, M., & Maruna, S. (2015). Helping others as a response to reconcile a criminal past: The role of the wounded healer in prisoner reentry programs. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 42, 108–120. Maruna, S. (2001). Making good . Washington DC: APA Books. Matza, D. (1964). Delinquency and drift. New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons. Pyrooz, D., & Decker, S. (2011). Motives and methods for leaving the gang: Understanding the process of gang desistance. Journal of Criminal Justice, 39, 417–425. Pyrooz, D., Decker, S., & Webb, V. (2014). The ties that bind: Desistance from gangs. Crime and Delinquency, 60, 491–516. Sampson, R. J., & Laub, J. H. (1993). Crime in the making: Pathways and turning points through life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Sweeten, G., Pyrooz, D., & Piquero, A. (2013). Disengaging from gangs and desistance from crime. Justice Quarterly, 30, 469–500. Veysey, B., Martinez, D., & Christian, J. (2013). ‘Getting out’: A summary of qualitative research on desistance across the life course. In C. Gibson & M. Krohn (Eds.), Handbook of life course criminology: Emerging trends for future research (pp. 233–260). New York: Springer.

9 Back to the Future

Organised crime is part of everyday life in many of Scotland’s communities (Fraser et al., 2018), but Glasgow’s criminal landscape has changed considerably in the decade or so since The Street Boys were ascendant. This is not surprising—the landscape has been evolving ever since the early razor gangs of the 1930s ruled the streets (Davies, 2013). For example, territoriality originally played no part in Glasgow gangs beyond being shorthand for whether a population was Catholic or Protestant. Still, the razor gangs were highly localised outfits. While they engaged in religion-fuelled gang fights, they also engaged in organised crime. To help assist in gang battles they developed junior outfits, like the little Bridgeton Derry, which were essentially fighting outfits of teenagers and young men who aspired to razor gang membership. The demise of the razor gangs coincided with the rise of post-war estates on the outer areas of Glasgow and it was here where the junior outfits became embedded in the fabric of the city. They did not bother so much with religious divisions given that Catholics and Protestants both fought side-by-side during World War II and the staunchly religious slums were pulled down and reintegrated into the housing estates

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of Easterhouse, Drumchapel, Pollok, and Castlemilk, as well as newer extensions like Maryhill and Springburn. The junior outfits had absorbed much of the razor gang rhetoric of community control of neighbourhoods, and in retaining the same or derivative names, such as Shamrock, Gito, Posse, Crew, and Derry, they became the Young Teams of the 1960s and 1970s. At this time, young groups of men from territorially divided areas would battle it out for no other purpose than to display and gain masculine distinction (Patrick, 1973). Organised Crime Groups (OCG) on the other hand were already pivoting to focus on monetary gains. New schemes lacked goods and services, so OCGs seized the opportunity to provide them. An example is the “ice cream wars” of the 1980s in Glasgow (McDougall & Robertson, 2004), whereby organised criminals used ice-cream sales as fronts to service local communities with drugs and stolen goods. Van operators were involved in frequent violence and intimidation tactics and on one occasion, six members of one crime family were burned alive in a house during a direct arson attack from a rival outfit (McDougall & Robertson, 2004). Events such as this created a clear separation between Young Teams and OCGs in terms of their “violence capital” (Gambetta, 2009). An influx of illicit drugs in the 1980s only accelerated the profitorientation of OCGs, but this had the unintended consequence of giving the Young Teams something to aspire to “when work disappears” (Wilson, 1996). As OCGs got more territorial and territorial Young Teams got more entrepreneurial, boundaries between the two groups started to blur. Gang fighting for both gang types became more frequent and deadly. The media and public focused on the Young Teams because they were children and out in the open, whereas OCGs were out of sight and out of mind. Somehow no one realised that the Young Teams were the training and breeding grounds for the OCGs and that many Young Team members, like Leo, Raph, and others, made the transition to organised crime by virtue of kinship and criminal capital. Notorious gangsters like Jimmy Boyle (1977), Paul Ferris (Ferris & McKay, 2001), and Tam McGrew (Leslie, 2005), the latter of whom was once one of the wealthiest businessmen in Glasgow, all describe such transitions in their memoirs, but yet the academy and policymakers long treated Young Teams and OCGs as separate, unrelated entities.

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McLean (2018) first demonstrated this natural progression from Young Team to OCG in Scotland, but the landscape has not stood still and continues to evolve. Young Team members first got younger, with 10 or 12 year olds fighting for status and respect, before they got older, and now Young Team membership has precipitously declined. As discussed in the introductory chapter, much of this had to do with interventions such as the VRU and CIRV (Deuchar, 2013; Williams et al., 2014), although in reality a number of community organisations and initiatives like No More Knives, Better Lives doing outreach and street work helped deescalate gang violence. Collectively, these programs have challenged the normalisation of violence in Glasgow, something that Raph memorably reflected on during the initial fieldwork: I have been in jail most my [adult] life… In [HMYOI] Polmont, Glasgow lads were mostly in for fighting, knifing boys, drugs… the boys from [outside Glasgow] were always jailed for pure daft shit. One boy from [a northern Scottish village] was in for two years for only punching a boy… a guy from [the borders] got a couple of years for hitting his bird and battering some boy that was involved…. Here I am, in six months for almost killing a guy… [then back] inside for three months for having a blade and leathering a boy.… My brother got off wi’ community service for stabbing [a male]… Judges are defo stricter outside Glagsow… [they’re] just too use[d] to the fighting and get numb to it.—Raph

Raph suggests the criminal justice system in Glasgow and West Scotland was so accustomed to heightened levels of violence that it had become somewhat desensitised to it. However, the new focused deterrence rubric of the VRU (Deuchar, 2013) has sharpened the woolly ‘welfarist’ response of the Scottish criminal justice system (Martin & Murray, 1982), such as the Children’s Hearing System following the Kilbrandon report (Scottish Home and Health Department, 1964), creating greater accountability for youth offenders. Still, official data confirm the deleterious effects of gang crime on past generations of Glaswegians (Fraser et al., 2010, 2018), with as many as one in five adult males in some communities still living with some sort of criminal conviction. In past decades, young men in and around the

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city had their whole lives shaped by issues of territoriality and hypermasculinity that were symptoms of deprivation and poverty. What was most striking to us in writing this book was just how embedded knife crime was. Glasgow was once dubbed the knife capital of Europe based on official, prosecuted, crime figures (Adam, 2018). As we see from the stories presented here, many slashings and stabbings go unreported. So we must ask ourselves, what do our data say about the true scale of knife crime in Scotland? Other issues in wider society are responsible for recent reductions in knife crime and gang violence, including a more consumer-based globalised society. Television usually depicts and indeed can also influence changes in society, and shows like Geordie Shore, Jersey Shore, Made in Chelsea, and Love Island, all demonstrate a perma-tan and gleaming white teeth form masculinity that appeals to the younger generation in Scotland and is the anthesis of Young Team life. Glasgow and West Scotland have also changed considerably in recent years. Many of the old schemes where Young Teams thrived have undergone significant regeneration and gentrification. The old slum housing has been pulled down and replaced by newer middle-class housing. New tenants have moved into new-build housing through a series of initiatives designed to encourage home ownership, and they are less likely to tolerate gang crime, even vandalism, in their own private spaces. Smart phones and social media have also changed how young people spend their time, with implications for gang life (Densley, 2020). Rather than congregating on the streets, they now socialise indoors—and that was even before the COVID-19 pandemic and global lockdown. Youth used to go to pubs and nightclubs to meet people, which became hubs for drug sales and fights to occur; but thanks to dating apps and the modern ‘Netflix and chill’ home culture, this has all changed. Scotland is a country known for its inclement weather, so being able to communicate without having to congregate on streets in the soaking rain plays a part in eroding the influence of traditional gang structures. Social media and gangs is an area ripe for research. The British government’s newly adopted Serious Violence Strategy explicitly singles out social media for glamorising gang life, escalating gang tensions, and normalising weapon carrying (HM Government, 2018). Research in

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London, England, suggests gang members use social media to achieve expressive goals such as identity, friendship, and revenge, but also instrumental goals like group discipline and drug sales (Storrod & Densley, 2017; Whittaker, Densley & Moser, 2020). Future research is needed to see if this holds in Scotland. As the real world and virtual world become increasingly intertwined (Lane, 2018), do social media increase exposure to online-only gang associations? Do they increase the frequency, duration, intensity, and priority of face-to-face gang communications? Do they create new incentives to “perform” gang membership (e.g. Lauger & Densley, 2018)? Alternatively, do social media incapacitate gang youth by keeping them online instead of on the street where actions are real? Do social media act as a release valve to de-escalate real world tensions? While the above processes have contributed in part to the demise of Young Teams, at the same time OCGs have been ascendant. OCGs have always been present in Scotland but opportunities and preferences for lucrative, market-based crimes have only increased in recent years, primarily via the illegal drugs trade (Densley et al., 2018). The longrunning feud between the Lyons and the Daniels crime families, “which has seen fatal and non-fatal shootings, knifings, vehicle hit and run, firebomb attacks, police corruption, witness intimidation – and drugs, shedloads of drugs” (McKay, 2017), perhaps best illustrates the evolution of organised crime in Scotland. In the early 2000s, the Daniels family ruled arguably the toughest area in the country in Possil Park. As their power extended out of the local scheme and across Glasgow and West Scotland, so did their numbers in order to maintain control and governance. That was until the Lyons family, comprised of several young men from the local Milton Street gang that neighboured Possil Park,1 grew to challenge the Daniels supremacy. The street gang would hang out at a local community hall, which was run by the father of several gang members as a front for his drug business. Eddie Lyons was able to secure funding through the community centre to fund drug operations that the gang were involved in. As the Lyons gang

1 Milton

is unofficially divided into the Top End and the Bottom End thus signifying two street gangs on the estate.

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grew in power, they inevitably clashed with the Daniels family. Eventually the Lyons allied themselves with a notorious OCG from Paisley, which already had battle hardened members who had survived a recent drugs war that had claimed many lives and saw five separate shootings in one week at its height. The Lyons was now able to compete with the Daniels, more so following the assassination of their main enforcer and the death of their leader. Over time, the two gangs have moved away from being familybased OCGs and now have a whole range of criminal actors aligned to them. Media reporting suggests the Lyons and Daniels have a criminal network of over 300 people in one Glasgow scheme alone and are involved in a diverse range of illegal and legal businesses (Silvester & McKenzie, 2020). The two OCGs have become by far the most significant OCGs in the country, with almost all gangs across the central belt being aligned to one side or the other to varying degrees. Over time, tension and refinement has meant that these two gangs are in many ways now established criminal cartels as they carve out the landscape. Yet this does not mean that independent suppliers do not exist, but where they do they usually act as one source of many incomes revenues for either side. The groups likewise operate their own importation and are involved in all aspects of legal and illegal businesses. The latest development, following the incarceration of a number of prominent figures in the feud, was a prison war, which resulted in the gangs being run from within the prison. Recent shootings and the firebombing of prison staff attest to this (Keyden, 2020). If left unresolved, the continual battle will inevitably result in one or both of the gangs obtaining some degree of political power, which in many cases they have already demonstrated in council and police corruption. As Campana and Varese (2018) argue, extralegal governance is contingent on three factors: (1) the ability to generate fear in a community; (2) the ability to coerce legal businesses; and (3) the ability to influence official figures. There is a risk that left unchecked, Glasgow’s main OCGs will evolve further to resemble criminal cartels or Mafias. The Street Boys were one of many gangs that rose and fell ever so briefly. A number of gangs operated in and around the same area at the time. They did before and continue to do so, although perhaps not to

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the same extent. Indeed, The Street Boys was for many research participants, one of many gangs they associated with, often at the same time. By age 15, for example, Raph had connections with two street gangs and two organised crime groups. Likewise, participant Jay was a wellknown “scheme hopper” and affiliated with half the gangs in the south side of the city. Even at the peak of territorial violence in the city, there was more than half a dozen gangs Jay affiliated with at any given time. Gang embeddedness ebbs and flows dependent not only on what is beneficial at the time, but who one has befriended at the time. Gangs are social groups and social relationships are key to their evolution (Densley, 2014; McLean, 2018). Thus while gangs do exist with clear boundaries, they are in a constant state of flux wherein movement is facilitated throughout criminal networks. The relative strength of network ties and the complexity of the relationships within and between gangs is something not always well captured in the book owing to its scope, thus we ask ourselves have we truly captured the picture of the time at all? In the end, however, the gang exists in the eye of the beholder and, as we see here, the way in which it was explained, by the participants themselves, speaks to an evolutionary trajectory of simple to complex, which tracks over time. The narratives in this book indicate a differential progression into organised crime. In other words, people progress to the next level in different ways and, in some cases, the next level is not always up. These different trajectories into organised crime were bounded by issues of time and age, experience and networks, opportunities and preferences. Many interviews described a linear progression or lateral movement from street gangs and neighbourhood crime into organised crime, characterised by the sense that a life of crime was inevitable because it was all anyone ever knew or had available to them. However, only some people became embedded in organised crime and got closer to its core and that was often predicated on their de facto embeddedness in existing criminal networks, which served as a transfer market of sorts. A minority leveraged existing “violence capital” to go in hard , becoming a sought after fixer or hired muscle as they got more skilled in violence, but they remained at the periphery of OC. Others followed the rabbit down the hole to go in deep, experiencing submersion, but not necessary success in OC. Still

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others narrated an elective progression. They had “criminal capital” in the bank or instant trust credit owing to kinship ties and because of this they were able to be more selective about the type of crime they did and with whom they did it (Densley, 2012). Further, if they had skills to sell on the open market, adult criminals would cover their start-up costs, not unlike venture capital firms in the legitimate sphere. Some early entrants into criminal gangs go in wide and participate in a range of different types of criminal activity. This can be seen as a rather desperate move to make money fast—a scattergun “try anything” kind of approach. However, after finding themselves spread too thin and out of their comfort zone, specialisation becomes a form of risk mitigation. Only if an organised crime group becomes fully established with viable networks of skilled participants does diversification work to sustain the business model. Then, diversification takes on a different meaning, and beyond criminal diversification it entails holding some legitimate business interests and washing money from illegal activity through legal books. Illicit drug sales were found to be the primary modus operandi of more organised criminals, which is consistent with recent Scottish Government-funded research (Fraser et al., 2018). This was for a number of reasons, including an extension of early experience with social supply, the social aspects which accompany drug supply and use, and access to pre-existing crime networks. However, there is some selection bias here in the data, which is a limitation and means that more hidden crimes like human trafficking remain precisely that. Still, it is safe to conclude that organised crime has its roots in the group offending networks that engage in small scale (social) drug supply and, in some cases, acquisitive crimes such as robbery. Future studies thus are encouraged to take seriously such lower-level criminal activity because our research suggests it has implications for later criminal trajectories. Embeddedness within criminal networks was also important for progression into crime beyond drug dealing, including armed robbery, fraud, and debt collection. Versatility in crime can be attributed to a combination of factors, including new associations, a growing criminal reputation, experimentation, boredom, and the fact that with physical

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and intellectual maturity comes the ability to compete with and potentially displace already established adult criminals and criminal groupings. Yet while not all activities were financially profitable, such as those actions associated with hyper-masculine violence, these actions could actually prove to be profitable in terms of social and cultural capital acquired (e.g. Deuchar, 2009; Deuchar & Holligan, 2010). This capital in turn could enable continued criminal progression. Such findings would suggest that regardless of the niche within the given market that organised criminals may operate, it is one in which they are often specialists, or where they exert an effort to be perceived as experts. The narratives indicate that the most serious or ‘successful’ organised criminals would eventually reject “cafeteria style” offending (Klein, 1995, p. 132), in particular crimes without financial rewards, and accept a life of à la carte crime. Versus more serious gangsters in other contexts, however, the data show that most violence in Scotland is still knife violence not gun violence.

Implications for Research and Practice This brings us to some implications for research and practice. Having identified different routes into organised crime, further research is needed to understand who is more likely to enter in a given way and why. Are some routes into organised crime closed off for some people? What are the intervention points? Do we need different forms and types of enforcement and intervention for different types of progression? Which of these different routes is associated with the greatest risk of violent offending or victimisation? Is the repertoire of criminal activity that different types of organised criminals engage in, determined by these different types of progression and entry? The Scottish Police Authority (SPA, 2013, p. 1) estimates organised crime costs the Scottish economy approximately £2 billion per annum, and has highlighted the need to identify specific “roles and responsibilities performed by selected individuals” so that tactics can be tailored to deliver the most ‘appropriate and proportionate policing response’. In its ten-year strategy, Policing 2026 , Police Scotland (2016, p. 22) recognised

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that the force faced considerable demand in the years ahead in respect of “investigations into serious crimes”, thus it needed to “scale and develop” (p. 25) its capabilities to meet new demands in this area. The Serious Organised Crime Taskforce (SOCT) is one component of this effort, focused on four distinct elements: diverting individuals (particularly young people) from engaging in OC; deterring OC; disrupting their activities; and detecting their members by boosting policing capacity and improving coordination o give them “no place to hide” (SPA, 2013, p. 3). The insights in this book could provide more depth to the existing knowledge-base of the SOCT and the ongoing strategic policy discussions by senior officers within Police Scotland, the SPA and wider partner agencies involved in tackling organised crime via the Scottish Crime Campus. The findings could hold the capacity to support Detectives and members of wider agencies with their ongoing vision to dismantle drug supply networks by providing them with a new evidence-base. This evidence-base suggests the need for a multi-pronged approach where organised criminals are targeted but where supportive, desistancecentred interventions are also focused on minor offenders within local communities which avoid the tendency for them to become criminalised. By focusing on neighbourhoods with high numbers of reported incidents involving young men engaging in street-level group offending networks and focusing their energy on vandalism, anti-social behaviour, territorial violence, and/or acquisitive crime such as street robbery, mentoring interventions most likely need to become targeted on educating these individuals about the impact of violence and avaricious (albeit) low-level crime while also actively diverting them from the allure of the drug market as a by-product of gang evolution and criminal capital. Conversely, in areas where offending behaviour have evolved into the social supply of drugs, Police Scotland’s focus may need to be more on the need to deter young men from becoming more deeply immersed in organised crime through working with local partners and preventing drug trading growing into enterprise and governance (Densley, 2014). Finally, where patterns of gang activity have evidently become more organised and there are increased incidents of drug dealing proper, this may indicate an increased presence of organised crime. Detectives will

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thus clearly require an emphasis on the need to deter organised crime by supporting private, public, and third sector organisations to protect themselves and each other; to detect and prosecute those involved in organised crime; and make a concerted effort to disrupt organised crime. It is also clear that further research is needed into the extent to and ways in which young people can be extracted from illegitimate opportunity structures that exist in disadvantaged neighbourhoods through interventions that may include psycho-social and also spiritual components, as a means of enabling law enforcement and wider practitioners to more effectively improve the safety and wellbeing of people, places, and communities in Scotland (Police Scotland, 2016). It is hoped that the research contained within this book will help to stimulate such research.

References Adam, K. (2018). Glasgow was once the ‘murder capital of Europe.’ Now it’s a model for cutting crime. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www. washingtonpost.com/world/europe/glasgow-was-once-the-murder-capitalof-europe-now-its-a-model-for-cutting-crime/2018/10/27/0b167e68-6e024795-92f8-adb1020b7434_story.html. Boyle, J. (1977). A sense of freedom. London: Ebury. Campana, P., & Varese, F. (2018). Organized crime in the United Kingdom: Illegal governance of markets and communities. British Journal of Criminology, 58, 1381–1400. Davies, A. (2013). City of gangs: Glasgow and the rise of the British gangster. London: Hodder & Stoughton. Densley, J. (2012). Street gang recruitment: Signaling, screening and selection. Social Problems, 59, 301–321. Densley, J. (2014). It’s gang life, but not as we know it: The evolution of gang business. Crime & Delinquency, 60, 517–546. Densley, J. (2020). Collective violence online: when street gangs use social media. In C. A. Ireland, M. Lewis, A. C. Lopez & J. L. Ireland (Eds.), The handbook of collective violence: Current developments and understanding (pp. 305–316). Routledge.

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Densley, J., McLean, R., Deuchar, R., & Harding, S. (2018). An altered state? Emergent changes to illicit drug markets and distribution networks in Scotland. International Journal of Drug Policy, 58, 113–120. Deuchar, R. (2009). Gangs, marginalised youth and social capital . Stoke on Trent: Trentham. Deuchar, R. (2013). Policing youth violence: Transatlantic connections. London: Institute of Education Press. Deuchar, R., & Holligan, C. (2010). Gangs sectarianism and social capital: A qualitative study of young people in Scotland. Sociology, 44, 13–30. Ferris, P., & McKay, R. (2001). The Ferris conspiracy. Edinburgh: Mainstream. Fraser, A., Burman, M., Batchelor, S., & McVie, S. (2010). Youth violence in Scotland: Literature review. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Fraser, A., Hamilton-Smith, N., Clark, A., Atkinson, C., Graham, W., McBride, M., et al. (2018). Community experiences of serious organised crime in Scotland . Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Gambetta, D. (2009). Codes of the underworld: How criminals communicate. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. HM Government. (2018). Serious violence strategy. Retrieved from https:// www.gov.uk/government/publications/serious-violence-strategy. Keyden, N. (2020). Cars ‘firebombed’ in Barlinnie prison car park as inmates cheer on from cells. The Scotsman. Retrieved from https://www.dailyrecord. co.uk/news/scottish-news/cars-fire-barlinnie-prison-car-21338572. Klein, M. W. (1995). The American street gang. New York: Oxford University Press. Lane, J. (2018). The digital street. New York: Oxford University Press. Lauger, T., & Densley, J. (2018). Broadcasting badness: Violence, identity, and performance in the online gang rap scene. Justice Quarterly, 35, 816–841. Leslie, D. (2005). Crimelord: The licensee—The true story of Tam McGraw. Edinburgh: Mainstream. Martin, F., & Murray, K. (1982). The Scottish juvenile justice system. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press. McDougall, D., & Robertson, J. (2004). ‘Ice-cream wars’ verdicts quashed as justice system faulted. The Scotsman. Retrieved from https://web.archive. org/web/20041221160154/http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm? id=312182004. McKay, R. (2017). The Lyons v the Daniels, the incredible inside story of Glasgow’s gang wars. Glasgow Live. Retrieved from https://www.glasgowlive. co.uk/news/glasgow-news/the-lyons-v-the-daniels-11346282.

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McLean, R. (2018). An evolving gang model in contemporary Scotland. Deviant Behavior, 39, 309–321. Patrick, J. (1973). A Glasgow gang observed . London: Eyre-Methuen. Scotland, Police. (2016). Policing 2026 . Dalmarnock: Police Scotland. Scottish Home and Health Department. (1964). Children and young persons: Scotland . [Kilbrandon Report]. Edinburgh: HMSO. Scottish Police Authority (SPA). (2013, December 4). SPA board meeting agenda: Serious organised crime. Retrieved from http://www.spa.police.uk/ass ets/126884/199545/item5. Silvester, N., & McKenzie, K. (2020). Over 300 gang members linked to Lyons and Daniel turf war identified in Drumchapel crackdown. Glasgow Live. Retrieved from https://www.glasgowlive.co.uk/news/glasgownews/over-300-gang-members-linked-17193598. Storrod, M. L., & Densley, J. (2017). ‘Going viral’ and ‘Going country’: The expressive and instrumental activities of street gangs on social media. Journal of Youth Studies, 20, 677–696. Whittaker, A., Densley, A., & Moser, K. S. (2020). No two gangs are alike: The digital divide in street gangs’ differential adaptations to social media. Computers in Human Behavior, 110, 106403. Williams, D. J., Currie, D., Linden, W., & Donelly, P. (2014). Addressing gang-related violence in Glasgow: A preliminary pragmatic quasiexperimental evaluation of the community initiative to reduce violence (CIRV). Aggression and Violent Behavior, 19, 686–691. Wilson, W. J. (1996). When work disappears: The world of the new urban poor. New York: Knopf.

10 Conclusion

As a somewhat unconventional book, it makes sense that we end with a somewhat unconventional conclusion. Understanding why the book was written in the first place will go some way in helping to determine whether or not its purpose was fulfilled, so please bear with us. The aim of this final chapter is to reflect upon the research and writing process for this book and some the dilemmas involved in conducting research with Scotland’s gang members and on life and crime in Glasgow.

Why This Book? From the start, we wanted to write a book that accurately reflected what it was like to grow up in and around gangs in Glasgow. It was a goal nearly a decade in the making. Ten years ago, Robert was finishing his Honours Degree and was about to embark on a Ph.D. under the supervision of Professor Ross Deuchar—who kindly wrote the foreword to this book. Ross was a leading criminologist in the Scottish context, thus Robert was highly motivated to study youth crime and violence—topics

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at the forefront of Scottish political agenda at the time, but also his own personal story. Robert grew up in Glasgow and the wider conurbation. Gangs in all their various forms have shaped his life. He grew up in an area of Glasgow renowned for gang crime and violence. At five years old, he witnessed his first gang fight and fights became a regular occurrence thereafter. The local gang had a fearsome reputation and was responsible for a number of murders and attempted murders in the city. Around nine years old, Robert watched his mother administer first aid on a teenager who had been knifed and lay dying outside his tenement close door. Despite his mother’s efforts, and those of the ambulance crew, the boy bled out on the street from his injuries. As a teenager, Robert was a victim of gang-related violence, but also an offender, gang fighting in the streets. At sixteen years old, the constraints of territoriality were evident and Robert even had to delay attending college for fear of gang reprisals. Likewise, when he moved to various locations around the city thereafter, he was often viewed with suspicion and frequently questioned about where he was from and who he socialised with. Aware of district rivalries and alliances, he had to be careful how he answered and his response often changed depending on who was asking. Fast forward a few years and having these experiences, and having lived through them, Robert felt gang research was his calling. It was an achievable research agenda, an area of focus where he could make a real contribution. Like most Ph.D. students, Robert’s first task was to complete a comprehensive review of the literature. “Read everything you can get your hands on in relation to the subject. We will meet again afterwards”, Ross told him. It was a daunting task. It was also a unsatisfying one. While reading everything the library had to offer on gangs and gangsters, Robert realised that essentially two types of books on the subject existed. One was the academic book, which married theory with desk or empirical research. The other was the narrative book, an (auto)biographical account of true crime. The problem was academic books were at times unreadable, seemingly by design. As Douglas Hunter (2018) says, academic books aren’t written to be read, they’re written to be “broken”. Reading them very nearly

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killed Robert’s love of reading. Chapters were constructed with plodding introductions that told the reader what they were about to read and conclusions with equally formulaic reviews of what they had just read. They were full of jargon, sloppy about details. Allegedly explanatory concepts were detached from clear individual behaviour. Yes, there were objective facts and figures, even some quotes from “gang members”, but a lot of what was written bore little resemblance to the people and gangs that Robert knew. Too often, the books missed or silenced them altogether, falling back on well-rehearsed lines from control agents. The books also all ended with the same proforma policy and practice implications no matter what the data had said. The narrative books didn’t fare much better. Yes, they were readable, with well-rounded people or characters, but they were equally formulaic—the lovable rogue or hard-as-nails tough guy who was always respectful of unwritten codes of conduct, and through graft and grit rose to the top to rule the world. They were also well versed in the art of bullshit, thus their veracity could not be trusted—which is a challenge when writing a literature review predicated on separating fact from fiction. There was one academic book that Robert quite liked—James’ 2013 ethnography of gang life in London, How Gangs Work (Densley, 2013). He liked it so much in fact that its gang evolution model informed Robert’s own way of conceptualising what he was observing among criminal groups in Glasgow (McLean, 2018). Being 4000 miles apart (Robert in Glasgow, Scotland, and James in Minneapolis, USA), we first discussed this via Skype back in 2017 and since then we’ve collaborated on more than half a dozen writing and research projects all with the expressed goal of better understanding gang crime in Scotland (Densley, McLean, Deuchar, & Harding, 2018, 2019; Deuchar, Harding, McLean, & Densley, 2019; Harding, Deuchar, Densley, & McLean, 2019; McLean, Densley, & Deuchar, 2018; McLean, Deuchar, Harding, & Densley, 2019; McLean, Robinson, & Densley, 2020; Rahman, McLean, Deuchar, & Densley, 2020; Robinson, McLean, & Densley, 2019). The whole time, we vowed to one day write a book bridging the academic and narrative approaches to gangs. To write a book to high academic standards that was still readable and accessible to a wide audience. To just tell it as it is.

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The ace up Robert’s sleeve was always his ready access to a sample population that could provide the rich narratives needed to achieve this goal. New material, never before published. But as a Ph.D. student and, later, as an early career researcher, he had to play the game still. The academy pushed him to publish scholarly articles in peer reviewed journals and a monograph derived from his Ph.D. studies. He duly obliged (McLean, 2019), but always struggled with turning gang members into deconstructed variables—another statistic or social actor influenced by micro and macrostructures. After all, they were people. He also got fed up with the, at times arrogant, questions his peers came back with. “What would Bourdieu or Foucault say? ” “Who knows. But here’s what Billy has to say and he’s actually been in a gang so perhaps we should listen to him instead”, Robert wanted to reply. “Do gangs really exist? ” Well, as sociologist W. I. Thomas famously said, “If a person perceives a situation as real, it is real in its consequences”. When you’ve faced twenty guys chanting scheme names, armed to the brim and out to kill you because you come from another area or run with another group, you don’t stop to wonder, “Is this just a figment of my overheated imagination”? Thus, this is the book we felt somewhat compelled to write. Our attempt to tell it as it is without passing judgement on people or getting mired in academic debates internal to the history and practice of criminology. Such was always the intent of the book. To this end, we feel the book fills an important gap in the literature and it justifiably achieves its purpose.

Capturing the Scene with Narrative Criminology: Strengths and Limitations It’s all very well saying we have written a book that puts the people it discusses at the forefront, as opposed to an adroit but superficial or actually misleading presentation of gang members, but this research was fraught with dilemmas. Ethnographers studying gangs have always faced distinct ethical and methodological challenges in their work as compared to other researchers (Durán, 2018), to the extent that some describe gang ethnography as “risky business” and “dancing with danger” (Baird, 2017;

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Koonings, Kruijt, & Rodgers, 2019). It is safe to say, this research would not have been plausible or possible without prior connections and well established trust and rapport. Tapping into the social network Robert built prior to academia, and his past ethnographic research, we accessed a select few, hard-to-reach, and by all objective measures, dangerous, individuals and interviewed them extensively about the lives. Narrative criminology is always more focused and specific (Presser & Sandberg, 2015), but there is no getting away from the fact that this is small, purposive, therefore biased, sample. Some of the people featured in this book, Robert considers friends. How do you leverage social ties without people feeling like you are exploiting them for research? This was something we wrestled with every day. In the end, relationships matter and to get at the depth of information required to write a book like this, Robert called in many favours. At the same time, the individuals in this book are not unique and nor should their stories be told as though they are. Such is the point of the book. It is instinct to want to dismiss the data in this book as extreme, the exception not the rule. Some people will read this book then ask, did that really happen? How could Raph have done that? How could Mikey get involved in that? If that guy was so badly assaulted, how is he alive to tell the tale? Our response is simple: these stories are common in Glasgow because gang involvement is common. During the fieldwork, we encountered so many turbulent lives, so many shared experiences of offending and victimisation and the overwhelming sense of being pulled or pushed into greater or lesser degrees of (dis)organised crime. We are only holding up a mirror to reveal what this looks like to the rest of the world. Still, the book is limited in many ways. First, it presents the lives of our interviewees chronologically, which gives their stories, and criminal trajectories, a somewhat linear, progressive, feel. Such was a device employed to make the book more readable, but it is of course imperfect because no life is linear. Some stories got more time and attention than others. Not everybody advanced from minor to major offending and not every gang evolved along the same lines. Lest we forget, the book emphasises the ‘gang’ component of the lives of the individuals discussed. The individuals in question are, in reality, so much more than gang members.

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Equally, they are so much more than criminals, ex-offenders, drug addicts, drug dealers, perpetrators, and victims. They are fathers, sons, brothers, nephews, husbands, partners, lovers, workers, and carers. Today, most of our interviewees in no way resemble the gangsters portrayed in this book. They are friendly, funny, generous, remorseful. They are human. Yet, given the scope of the book, the lives they lead and the wide range of roles they fulfil, risk being lost in translation. Essentially, the book captures a narrow view of the lives of our interviewees. Robert in particular wanted to capture more, especially moments shared or lines that would make people smile. Like the time when Micky said to Ricky, “You know what I don’t get Ricky?” and Ricky replied, “Wit, pussy, and respect”. This is a very male-centric book, and the voices of the women in these men’s lives are missing. In fact, there is little mention of our interviewees’ domestic lives at all. This was another editorial decision, and we own it, much like how we took great care to change or omit certain details that might reveal the identities of our interviewees, but do so in a way that preserved their language and intentions. Simply anonymising names, dates, and locations was not always enough. When there was a story to be told, occasionally certain actors involved had to be shuffled around to protect them from overexposure. Some people mentioned in the book have died, moreover, thus out of respect for their families, some aspects of their stories were omitted.

Final Remarks Like many Glaswegian men, Robert is a warm but stoic guy. Still, in writing this book, he was at times overcome with emotion. You see, when you code and analyse data like these, the wasted potential of the countless lives claimed or changed by the cycle of gang violence becomes clear. Violence was by far the most common theme in our data. In fact, it wasn’t just common, it was constant. The quantity and quality of the violent episodes reported to us (many of which did not make it into the book) was, frankly, ridiculous. It got us asking, was this really what people wanted for their lives? Was this the best they could do? We looked

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at the names of the families, friends, and acquittances and understood that this violence stretched back generations. It was then we realised that this book was a tragedy. In the last decade, violence in the “city of gangs” (Davies, 2013) has declined significantly. Let this book serve as a warning of what will happen if Glasgow fails to sustain the momentum and energy in communities to prevent and reduce youth and gang violence and victimisation. Sustainability is always a challenge, but this book should remind us of what’s at stake. Never lose sight of the goal—enduring public and community systems, policies and practices that improve life and reduce crime in Glasgow.

References Baird, A. (2017). Dancing with danger: Ethnographic safety, male bravado and gang research in Colombia. Qualitative Research, 18,(3), 342–360. Davies, A. (2013). City of gangs: Glasgow and the rise of the British gangster. London: Hodder & Stoughton. Densley, J. (2013). How gangs work: An ethnography of youth violence. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Densley, J., McLean, R., Deuchar, R., & Harding, S. (2018). An altered state? Emergent changes to illicit drug markets and distribution networks in Scotland. International Journal of Drug Policy, 58, 113–120. Densley, J., McLean, R., Deuchar, R., & Harding, S. (2019). Progression from cafeteria to à la carte offending: Scottish organised crime narratives. The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice, 58, 161–179. Deuchar, R., Harding, S., McLean, R., & Densley, J. (2019). Deficit or credit? A comparative, qualitative study of gender agency and female gang membership in Los Angeles and Glasgow. Crime & Delinquency. https://doi.org/10. 1177/0011128718794192. Durán, R. J. (2018). Ethnography and the study of gangs. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice. https://doi.org/10.1093/ acrefore/9780190264079.013.420. Harding, S., Deuchar, R., Densley, J., & McLean, R. (2019). A typology of street robbery and gang organization: Insights from qualitative research in Scotland. The British Journal of Criminology, 59, 879–897.

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Hunter, D. (2018, July 25). Book breaking and book mending. Slate. Retrieved from https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/07/academic-publishing-andbook-breaking-why-scholars-write-books-that-arent-meant-to-be-read.html. Koonings, K., Kruijt, D., & Rodgers, D. (2019). Ethnography as risky business: Field research in violent and sensitive contexts. Lanham, MD: Lexington. McLean, R. (2018). An evolving gang model in contemporary Scotland. Deviant Behavior, 39, 309–321. McLean, R. (2019). Gangs, drugs, and (dis)organised crime. Bristol: Bristol University Press. McLean, R., Densley, J., & Deuchar, R. (2018). Situating gangs within Scotland’s illegal drugs market(s). Trends in Organized Crime, 21, 147–171. McLean, R., Deuchar, R., Harding, S., & Densley, J. (2019). Putting the ‘street’ in gang: Place and space in the organization of Scotland’s drug selling gangs. The British Journal of Criminology, 59, 396–415. McLean, R., Robinson, G., & Densley, J. (2020). County lines: Criminal networks and evolving drug markets in Britain. Cham: Springer. Presser, L., & Sandberg, S. (2015). Narrative criminology: Understanding stories of crime. New York: New York University Press. Rahman, M., McLean, R., Deuchar, R., & Densley, J. (2020). Who are the enforcers? The motives and methods of muscle for hire in West Scotland and the West Midlands. Trends in Organized Crime. Robinson, G., McLean, R., & Densley, J. (2019). Working county lines: Child criminal exploitation and illicit drug dealing in Glasgow and Merseyside. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 63, 694–711.

Index

A

adverse childhood experiences (ACE) 11, 48 Agent Smith 13, 14, 114, 118, 119, 149 Apoc 13, 119, 120

B

The Billy Boys 3 Blue Team 13, 40, 41, 84, 85, 95, 113, 134, 137

C

Celtic 5, 86 Cessnock 17 Choi 13, 48, 49, 72, 74–76, 79–81, 85

Community Initiative to Reduce Violence (CIRV) 8, 165 county lines 7 crime 1, 2, 5–11, 19, 20, 36, 40, 51, 56, 69, 76, 85, 94, 95, 98, 100, 107, 115, 118, 119, 124, 127, 137, 140, 145, 151, 152, 157, 160, 161, 164–167, 169–172, 177–179, 181, 183 criminal capital 117, 119, 164, 170, 172 Cure Violence 8 cycle of gang violence 85, 182 Cypher 13, 48, 73, 74, 76, 78, 85, 98, 102, 110, 113, 116, 118, 122, 146–150, 155–157, 160, 161

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020 R. McLean and J. A. Densley, Scotland’s Gang Members, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47752-3

185

186

Index

D

G

dancing/nightclubs 79, 81, 82, 85, 89, 98, 110, 113, 118, 120, 121, 124, 131, 157, 166, 180 The Daniels 44, 167, 168 deprivation 4, 103, 127, 166 desistance, from crime 11, 160, 172 Dipsey 13, 120, 146 Donnie 9, 13, 20, 29, 44–48, 51, 55, 56, 67, 71, 73, 74, 79–82, 84–86, 146–149, 160 drug(s) 2, 7, 10, 42, 44, 59–61, 63, 73, 76, 91, 97, 98, 102, 103, 106, 110, 113, 114, 117, 120–122, 124, 127, 128, 130–133, 136–141, 143, 145, 147–149, 151, 155–157, 164, 165, 167, 168, 172 addiction, 11, 120, 127, 156, 157, 161 dealers/dealing, 11, 15, 120, 123, 130, 137, 142, 143, 156, 170, 172, 182 markets, 2 social supply, 120, 128, 170, 172 supply, 10, 170, 172 wars, 110 Drumoyne 17–19, 42, 46–48, 51, 56, 73, 76, 78

gang(s) 1–12, 15, 19–21, 31, 39–41, 47, 51, 56–58, 60, 66, 69, 71–73, 75, 76, 80–83, 86, 96, 99, 100, 107, 117, 140, 142, 143, 151, 156, 160, 163, 166, 168–170, 177–180 disengagement, 160 embeddedness, 169 evolution, 7, 110, 151, 172, 179 gangster 7, 64, 83, 104, 143, 164, 171, 178, 182 Glasgow 1–13, 15–21, 30, 38–46, 48, 52, 58, 60, 63, 73–75, 79–81, 85, 90, 91, 96, 101, 102, 104, 109, 113, 123, 134–137, 140, 142, 144, 145, 151, 156, 160, 161, 163–168, 177–179, 181, 183 Govan 13, 16–19, 30, 32, 35, 37–42, 46–49, 51–53, 59, 64, 71–74, 76, 78–81, 85, 99, 100, 105, 109, 111, 120, 131–133, 139, 145, 146 Govan Centre 17, 19, 72 Governance, illegal 156

E

ethnographic fieldwork 10 Eurogang, definition of 15

H

Hamilton 11 Homeboy Industries 8 Housing Act 18 housing scheme 1, 3, 5, 16, 40, 91

I F

firearms/guns 20, 139–145, 148 focused deterrence 8, 165

Ibrox 17–19 identity 6, 15, 16, 72–75, 86, 102, 118, 130, 167

Index

illicit drug markets 15, 140

J

Jay 12, 99–101, 106, 120, 131–134, 137–140, 161, 169

187

N

narratives 10–12, 15, 72, 78, 169, 171, 180 Neo 13 No Mean City 2

O K

Kilbrandon report 165 Kinning Park 17–19 knives/knife 1, 5, 8, 11, 20, 35, 62, 64, 65, 84, 90, 91, 93, 96, 99–101, 106, 117, 120, 128, 136, 140, 166, 171, 178

Operation Ceasefire 8 organised crime 6–8, 15, 19–21, 35, 44, 112, 114, 151, 160, 163, 164, 167, 169–173

P

labelling 94, 107 Lala 13, 98, 102, 106, 109–121, 123, 125, 130, 145–149, 155–157, 161 life-course criminology 11 Linthouse 17–19, 30–33, 36, 37, 39, 40, 48, 51, 52, 54–57, 71–74, 76, 77, 99, 105, 110, 111, 120, 131 The Lyons 167, 168

pains of imprisonment 11 Peaky Blinders 3 Poe 13, 98, 109–111, 113, 117, 118, 121, 124, 125, 130 police 3, 7, 8, 30, 44, 66, 68, 89–91, 94, 95, 102, 107, 115–117, 120, 136, 138, 140, 150, 156, 167, 168, 171–173 post-industrial city 1, 5 prison 20, 49, 68, 69, 87, 90, 93, 100–106, 111, 130, 136, 140, 157, 160, 161, 168 public health 8

M

Q

masculinity 5, 6, 8, 12, 29, 166 Mikey 9, 13, 20, 29, 41–44, 51, 66–68, 76, 87, 96–98, 101–103, 105, 107, 110, 111, 118, 120, 121, 146–149, 155, 156, 160, 181 Mouse 13, 98 murder 2, 7, 34, 68, 97, 135, 178

Quartz 39, 59, 60, 84, 99, 106

L

R

Rangers 5, 42, 43, 86, 104 Redbrick 39, 41, 58–60, 67, 68, 84, 98, 99, 106 Red Road 5

188

Index

Red Team 13, 58, 60, 61, 66–69, 80, 84, 85, 89, 92, 99–101, 106, 113 Ringo 13, 98, 99, 101, 116, 129–131, 135, 136 robbery 7, 119, 170, 172 Royaltown 39, 40, 48, 52, 58, 62, 65, 75, 84, 95, 98–100, 110, 118, 130, 131, 135, 137

territory/territorial/territoriality 4, 5, 7, 8, 12, 15, 39, 40, 43, 47, 56–59, 72, 84, 86, 95, 98, 101, 105, 120, 163, 164, 166, 169, 172, 178 Teucherhill (Teuch) 17, 19, 46, 51, 56 Tinky 13, 98, 102, 109–111, 113, 114, 118–121, 125 Trainspotting 3 trauma 48

S

Sandstone 39, 41, 58, 59, 67, 85, 90, 98–100 school 19, 20, 34, 36, 37, 39, 41, 43, 44, 47, 48, 51–53, 56–63, 65–67, 69, 71–75, 78, 82, 85, 91, 92, 96–100, 105, 110 sectarianism 5 self-nomination 10, 80 social media 6, 80, 100, 110, 166, 167 stop and search 91 The Street 13–15, 95, 97, 98, 106, 107, 109–114, 117, 118, 120–122, 125, 130–132, 135, 136, 145, 155 The Street Boys 15, 16, 20, 107, 115, 117, 124, 125, 145, 151, 157, 160, 163, 168, 169 street capital 40, 59 street socialisation 5, 12, 34

U

Under the Skin 5

V

violence 1–8, 11, 12, 19, 20, 30, 31, 40, 45, 48, 49, 60, 61, 64, 85, 87, 93, 94, 96, 104, 107, 117, 118, 123, 128, 141, 156, 157, 160, 164–166, 169, 171, 172, 177, 178, 182, 183 Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) 8, 165

W

weapon carrying 65, 166 Wine Alley 17–19 wounded healer 159

Y T

Tank 13, 98, 112, 114, 118–120, 123, 124, 145–148, 156, 161

young team(s) 34, 58, 80–83, 99, 112–114, 134, 141, 164, 166, 167