Despite billions spent over decades in relaunching Glasgow as a modern and sophisticated city of opportunity and leisure, it has never quite managed to shrug off its legacy of 1930s razor gangs. It’s no coincidence that the crime gangs’ main centres of operation are among the UK’s most disadvantaged communities. The districts of Maryhill, Possilpark, Milton, Springburn and Barlanark form a belt of acute deprivation along Glasgow’s northern urban approaches. Their hearts once beat to the steady thrum of heavy industry and employment was plentiful. When a succession of postwar governments dismantled the industries, a void was all that remained in the absence of any long-term or sustainable replacement. Hbard men offered leadership and a sense of purpose in the absence of anything similar being offered by governments. They offered affluence and status in exchange for unshakeable loyalty and generations of young men whose futures had been snatched away by mass unemployment were attracted by the opportunity to even up the score.
John Carnochan was a detective chief superintendent in Strathclyde police and co-founded the world-renowned Violence Reduction Unit. He has no doubt about the role that poverty and social disintegration plays in young men being attracted to this lifestyle.
“You can trace a line of inequality through the communities that the crime gangs operate in,” he said. “If you are a young man who knows he has no future in work but everywhere sees evidence of grossly conspicuous consumption, then of course he wants some of that for himself. And if he feels the state has denied him that, he can easily justify helping himself. Especially if he is given a sense of belonging and purpose to a cause he can belong to. These are attributes valued in public life and by governments. It’s time they started to ask themselves why young men in these communities are seeking it in crime. It’s time they got radical about tackling inequality in these communities. It’s about early intervention in very young lives to combat adverse early events.”
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jul/22/glasgow-gangland-feuds-erupt-in-public-killings
John Carnochan was a detective chief superintendent in Strathclyde police and co-founded the world-renowned Violence Reduction Unit. He has no doubt about the role that poverty and social disintegration plays in young men being attracted to this lifestyle.
“You can trace a line of inequality through the communities that the crime gangs operate in,” he said. “If you are a young man who knows he has no future in work but everywhere sees evidence of grossly conspicuous consumption, then of course he wants some of that for himself. And if he feels the state has denied him that, he can easily justify helping himself. Especially if he is given a sense of belonging and purpose to a cause he can belong to. These are attributes valued in public life and by governments. It’s time they started to ask themselves why young men in these communities are seeking it in crime. It’s time they got radical about tackling inequality in these communities. It’s about early intervention in very young lives to combat adverse early events.”
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jul/22/glasgow-gangland-feuds-erupt-in-public-killings
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