Gangs aren’t as territorial as you may think according to the latest research on gangs in one anonymous towns in the United Kingdom by Judith Aldridge et al of the University of Manchester (yes – I reckon this was the towns too!). The research took place over two years using a range of methods such as observations, interviews and focus groups.

The research argues that the idea of the ‘territorial postcode gang’ is a myth – Aldrige says there were many ways that this stereotype was contradicted – for example, there was no consensus amongst gang members about where their ‘territory’ ended and the neighbouring gangs ‘territory’ began – which suggests that territory is not that important to them.

So where does this stereotype come from? – Aldrige argues that orginally in the 1980s and 1990s territory was important to local gangs – there was considerable ‘hanging around on streets’ to sell drugs in particular localities.

Now we have mobile phones, drug dealing gangs do not have to ‘hanging about outside’ to sell drugs – the sellers disappear, they are not on the streets and not getting caught. However, the  problem is that the popular public and police conception is that any group of youths hanging about on the streets is likely to be in a gang – and so we end up with a situation where ordinary kids get policed as if they are gang members while the actual gang members are left alone to deal their drugs from home.

Peter Squires (some interesting links to papers on this site) adds to the idea that the ‘myth of the territorial gang’ partly stems from the police – pointing out that police forces tend to operate in specific localities and like to pin groups down and identify them – in some cases, it was the police who even gave gangs in certain areas names – and this is the kind of easy to understand image that the media was happy to go along with.

At one point Squires cites an infamous case  of the Boston Operation Ceasefire’ (the link is praising the operation!) – when America police intervention in gang violence may have helped to ‘expand the gang’ The police essentially tried to tackle intergang violence by clearly demarcating what they saw as rival gang areas and preventing gangs from entering the territories of rival gangs. The problem was that anyone who was now in one or the other areas came under suspiscion of being a gang member, which may have exacerbated the gang problem in this city.

So this measured piece of research isn’t suggesting that the police and the media label and create gangs but it is saying that the police and the media have the power to create the myth that gangs are more territorial than they actually are and that in certain cases they can actually generate territorial conflicts with their interventions.