Many young people join gangs as a credible and even necessary “career” choice in inner cities where traditional economic opportunies have gone, according to research.

They seek out “safety in numbers” in deprived areas where a lucrative black economy fuelled by crime and violence has taken root.

Once gangs become influential within communities they are able to assert control over local drug dealing, stolen goods and even protection rackets. They are effectively “protecting their turf”, researchers say.

“Many in the local community live in fear, no one talks to the police or wants to be labelled a ‘grass’. Young people often find it safer to join a gang, ‘thugging up’ – looking the part, walking the walk, however reluctantly. Safety lies in numbers,” a report on gang and gun crime said.

The analysis, published by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, appears to support the warning from Barbara Wilding, Chief Constable of South Wales, on the potential problems developing in deprived areas of larger cities in England. It said that the concentration of violence in deprived areas curtails and distorts the lives, opportunities and aspirations of young people growing up in the area.

The report said: “In such areas, many young people come to see crime and violence as a credible and even necessary ‘career’ choice. Some aspire to become involved, others are drawn, reluctantly, into illegality.

“Many young people who become involved in ‘gang activity’ cite protection, ‘safety in numbers’, as a reason for doing so, and the overwhelming majority who carry weapons say that they do so for the same reason,” the report said.

It highlighted the geographical nature of a gangs. Members of the so-called S4 gang, a postcode area of Shef-field, went in search of a member of the S3 gang to deliver justice for a serious insult to a memebr of an S4 family.

“No doubt in their eyes they were doing what impetuous, reckless and violent young men have done for generations. Not to act in the way they did would be to lose face, suggesting they didn’t have the ‘bottle to protect their turf’,” it said.

Earlier separate research has found that gangs in England are more likely to be based on territory than ethnicity, with territory ranging from local shopping centres to housing estates.

A study of the emergence of youth gangs in Waltham Forest in East London found that they were located in the most socially deprived council wards and that most young people involved in gang activity had been excluded from school, often for trying to bring weapons on to the premises.

Much of the gang violence identified by the Waltham Forest study published last year was linked to gang involvement in the drugs business.

“Those young people who have dropped out of school and have been in contact with the criminal justice system may also see gang membership as the only route to a role in society with some status and a ‘decent wage’.”

Fear of reprisals for attempting to leave a gang was also found to be a common reason for continued membership, the research, by John Pitts, of Bedfordshire University, said.

Gangs are mostly male with research suggesting that most street gang members are under 18, with the age of 25 being about the oldest. The motivation for joining a gang is said to include a sense of belonging to a family, for status, including power and respect, and also protection.

Research commissioned by the Home Office on gun crime found that serious gang activity was almost always linked to illegal drugs, with members building markets and defending their territory. It identified four different types of gangs: close friendships with members who had known each other since school; associates who are not close friends and are periodically involved in low-level criminality; criminal crews who focus on local drug markets; and, finally, organised crime networks whose activities involve middle-market drug activities, more serious armed robberies and quasi-legitimate businesses such as door security companies.

The research said that Salford in Greater Manchester had a “closed”, predominantly white, organised crime culture with links to private security work, drug dealing and armed robbery. On the other hand gangs in Manchester – Doddington and Gooch in Moss Side, the Longsight Crew and the breakaway Pitt Bull Crew in Longsight and Cheetham Hill – were described as multi-ethnic, less organised and prone to violent conflicts with each other.

— Official advice to magistrates that possession of a knife is punishable with as little as a fine was criticised by Tony McNulty, a Home Office minister. He urged the Sentencing Guidelines Council to rethink its advice, bearing in mind public concerns about knife crime.

Guidance issued to magistrates last month sets the lowest punishment as a Band C fine, ranging from 125 per cent to 175 per cent of the offender’s weekly income. Asked by the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee whether he felt that was appropriate, he said: “No, I don’t frankly.”

Growing numbers

17 the number of teenagers murdered in London this year

26 the number of teenagers murdered in London last year

17 were stabbed, eight were shot, one was beaten. The youngest was 14

170 estimated number of gangs in London, some of them with more than 100 members

98 per cent of gang members are male

20 average age

Source: Home Office

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