By Maria Jerram

This fieldwork for this inspection took place between April and June 2021. The trial for the murder of George Floyd ran alongside it and concluded during this time. The impact of this case and the rise and influence of the Black Lives Matter movement were strongly felt in almost every service we visited during this inspection. It was clear that these events have reignited overdue discussion about racial discrimination and its impact. Over the course of six weeks, we inspected nine different youth offending services (YOSs). We reviewed comprehensive evidence in advance from each area and in total examined 173 cases of black and mixed heritage boys (59 out-of-court disposal cases and 114 cases dealt with by the courts). We commissioned the services of ‘User Voice’ 1 to obtain the views of 38 boys who had been supervised by the different services. They told us about the support they had received and the challenges they face. Prior to this thematic inspection, we analysed our own core inspection data from a 12-month period and found that the quality of service delivery to black and mixed heritage boys tended to be poorer than that of work delivered to their peers. This was especially evident in the out-of-court disposal cases. We were concerned in this inspection to find that when we looked at this type of work, with an increased focus on ethnicity and experiences of discrimination, we found an even greater disparity. The boys whose cases we looked at had complex needs, and opportunities to support them earlier, outside of the youth justice system, had often been missed. It was therefore concerning to find that, when they came to the attention of the criminal justice system, the quality of services they received at this critical moment in their life was insufficient. 60 percent of the boys subject to court orders had been excluded from education, most of them permanently, and the impact of this on their life chances was significant. Black and mixed heritage boys were consistently over-represented in custodial cohorts. In one service every child in custody was a black or mixed heritage boy and this is deeply worrying. Addressing ‘disproportionality’ has been a longstanding objective in most youth justice plans, but our evidence indicates that little progress has been made in terms of the quality of practice. At a strategic partnership level there is a lack of clarity and curiosity about what is causing the disparity and what needs to be done to bring about an improvement. Partners are not collating data and using it effectively to analyse and address the barriers that contribute to the over-representation of black and mixed heritage boys in the criminal justice system. Most services recognised that things have not been done well enough and stated their commitment to improve. In the last 12 months some YOSs have developed focused strategies and plans to address disproportionality and support anti-racist practice; however, any impact of this is yet to be reflected in the quality of casework. This current impetus must now be used to urgently improve practice, service delivery and outcomes for black and mixed heritage boys. To be effective, there must be a clear vision, strategy and plan that is embraced by all partner agencies and understood by all those working with this group of boys. Training, support, direction and guidance for staff are critical, as is the ongoing monitoring and reviewing of progress and improvement. We will also introduce a more robust set of standards around this issue for our core youth inspections.  

Manchester, UK: HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2021. 71p

Out of Harm's Way:  A new care system to protect vulnerable teenagers at risk of exploitation and crime 

By The Commission on Young Lives

  There is an ongoing epidemic of drug-running, grooming and serious youth violence in England. Harmful criminal exploitation is now an ever-present reality of some childhoods. It involves tens of thousands of marginalised and vulnerable young people, brings misery and destroys lives and prospects. Recent government statistics show that last year almost 13,000 children in England were identified by social services as being involved with gangs, thousands more sexually exploited. Yet this is just the tip of the iceberg, the children who we know about. There are many thousands of others growing up surrounded by addiction issues, domestic violence, serious parental mental ill health, or poverty. Frequently they go unsupported and invisible to the agencies who should be able to protect them. They are the children most likely to fall through gaps in the education or care systems, and who can end up exploited by the ruthless organised criminals or abusers who have such a talent for spotting the most vulnerable.  

London: The Commission on Young Lives, 2021. 63p.

By The Commission on Young Lives  (UK)

Hidden in Plain Sight’ was published in November 2022. It sets out our recommendations for fighting back against those who groom and exploit children and how we can provide the right support to vulnerable teenagers to help them to thrive and succeed in life.

Its recommendations include:

• A new ‘invest to save’ “Sure Start Plus” programme. Part-financed by the millions of pounds recovered from the proceeds of crime every year, this ‘Sure Start for Teenagers’ network would bring health and education together to lead the local fight back against those who exploit children, through coordinating services and support in local disadvantaged areas and ensuring that young people at risk get help early when problems occur.

• A one-off £1billion children and young people’s mental health recovery programme, part-financed by a levy on social media companies and mobile phone providers.

• A new army of youth practitioners to identify struggling youngsters, build positive relationships and guide young people away from harm and towards success. 

London: The Commission on Young Lives, 2022. 90p.

By Youth Endowment Fund and Crest Advisory

The Youth Endowment Fund’s mission is to find out what works to prevent children from becoming involved in violence. To do that, we need to understand young people’s lives. That’s why we’ve created a Youth Advisory Board, so that we’re giving young people, including those with experience of violence, a stake in our decision-making. We’ve invested in the Peer Action Collective, to develop young people-led approaches to research. And it’s why we’ve written this report, which uses a survey of over 2,000 teenage children and official statistics to present an overview of young people’s experiences today. We also interviewed young people and youth offending team workers, to see how the data matches their experiences (and will be publishing more details on what they said in the coming months). We’ll repeat this research every year, so we can track trends and changes. This is a summary of our first year’s findings.  

Youth Endowment Fund and Crest Advisory,2022. 99p.

The latest findings from the Edinburgh Study are presented.  The report is based on the latest phase of fieldwork, which involved interviews with cohort members, an online survey, and analysis of criminal records data.

Amongst the findings are that experiences of poverty and trauma in childhood were strongly associated with offending behaviour in adolescence and also going on to offend into early adulthood.  Nevertheless, many of those who were involved in serious offending were not known to the children’s hearings system or the adult criminal justice system. While trauma in childhood was damaging, many of those who continued offending beyond age 25 had also experienced significant trauma in adulthood.

We recommend that policies need to be focused on prevention and early intervention, with specific strategies to tackle poverty and adversity. 

Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh, School of Law, 2022. 46p.

By 

Charles Puzzanchera; Sarah Hockenberry; Melissa Sickmund

Youth and the Juvenile Justice System: 2022 National Report is the fifth edition of a comprehensive report on youth victimization, offending by youth, and the juvenile justice system. With this release, the report series has adopted a new name (the series was previously known as "Juvenile Offenders and Victims"), but the focus of the report remains unchanged: the report consists of the most requested information on youth and the juvenile justice system in the United States. Developed by the National Center for Juvenile Justice (NCJJ) for the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and the National Institute of Justice, the report draws on reliable data and relevant research to provide a comprehensive and insightful view of youth victims and offending by youth, and what happens to youth when they enter the juvenile justice system in the U.S. 

Pittsburg: National Center for Juvenile Justice, 2022. 226p.

By Beatriz Magaloni and Veriene Melo, With contributions from Sara Rizzo,  and Sofia Mac Gregor Oettler

This study is the result of over four years of active collaboration between the Poverty, Violence and Governance Lab (PovGov) and the Rio-based NGO Agency for Youth Networks (hereafter, Agency). What began in 2012 as an informal conversation between PovGov researchers and the program’s founder and director, Marcus Faustini, led to a solid partnership that has produced not only this research but also opportunities for engagement through events both in California and in Rio de Janeiro. A central objective of PovGov’s research agenda is to assess and disseminate knowledge about initiatives and policies seeking to benefit socially vulnerable populations throughout Latin America. Agency’s target population – namely, young people from the favelas and peripheries of Rio de Janeiro who often find themselves unemployed, out of school, and exposed to high levels of violence – being of great relevance to PovGov’s work. During a 2015 conference hosted by PovGov at the Stanford Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) entitled “Educational and Entrepreneurial Initiatives to Support Youth in Places of Violence,” several Agency educators and participants shared their experiences in the program. They expanded on its mission, challenges, and relevance considering the scenario of vulnerability and limited opportunities that young people face not only in Rio de Janeiro but throughout Brazil. It became clear then that the approach, experience, and impact of the Agency's innovative methodology – which engages young people in marginalized communities as protagonists in the creation and implementation of projects with a potential for social impact – should be analyzed in-depth, with the work beginning promptly after. Employing a mixed-method strategy based on quasi-experimental and non-experimental designs, to build our program impact evaluation, we drew from survey responses from 500 people, as well as interviews, observations, and informational documents of various kinds. The results, culminated in this report, come down to four learning summaries which speak to methodology and curriculum (Agency’s methodology promotes active learning for project creation while strengthening pathways for individual empowerment and community engagement); the profile of program participants (Agency is engaging some of the most vulnerable – but also resilient and hopeful – youth groups in Rio de Janeiro); participant experience (Agency provides participants with tools to increase their life-skills, networks, urban mobility, community engagement, and entrepreneurial competencies); and impact evaluation (participation in the Agency program has a positive impact on several dimensions of employment, business development, social engagement, and individual empowerment). Ultimately, our study has demonstrated that Agency’s youth-inclusive methodology is successful in deepening reflection and facilitating action for meaningful youth-led processes of community change to take place, while promoting mechanisms and pathways for young people to learn, reflect on their experiences, express themselves, amplify their voices, and become protagonists of the changes they want to see.   

Stanford, CA: Stanford University, The Poverty, Violence and Governance Lab (PovGov), 2019. 96p.

By John Hagedorn, et al

  The nature of gang violence in Chicago has been changing, but policies and practices toward it have not. This was the main conclusion of “The Fracturing of Gangs Conference,” held at the Great Cities Institute in Spring 2018. This report shares insights from that conference along with an array of conversations since then. The conference presenters urged that it is time to move on from the narrative of Chicago as a “city of gangs.” Chicago has always been a “city of neighborhoods,” and the violence that has resulted from the fragmentation of traditional gangs into new horizontal gangs and cliques should be addressed within a comprehensive neighborhood policy. The decline of the traditional leadership and structure of African American gangs presents Chicago with an unprecedented opportunity to redirect youth away from gangs and into jobs and movements for social justice. Data from the conference presentations show that Chicago’s high levels of violence are persisting, suggesting that current approaches need to be readjusted. Homicide levels and trends in Chicago are more similar to Rust Belt cities like Cleveland and Milwaukee than to “global cities” such as New York City or Los Angeles. The homicide rate is strongly correlated with race and concentrated poverty, with 75% of all homicides in Chicago taking place between African Americans, despite the fact that the city’s population comprises a relatively equal number of Blacks, Latinos, and whites. Long-term approaches to Chicago’s persistent homicide problem must address the city’s deep-seated issues of racism, disinvestment, and concentrated poverty, as well as the more recent issue of the changing nature of gangs. The conference presenters call for a new anti-violence policy that de-emphasizes gangs and instead emphasizes conflict resolution among youth in a context of significantly increased employment and neighborhood economic development. While drug- and gang-related violence still plagues our city, the conference found that much violence today is the product of interpersonal disputes and retaliation, unrelated to traditional gang rivalries or drug markets. The fracturing of traditional vertically organized gangs into horizontally organized cliques is most pronounced among South Side African American gangs, which were affected the most both by the demolition of Chicago Housing Authority projects and subsequent diffusion of residents and by the displacement of young, African American men from Chicago public high schools via Chicago Public Schools’ Renaissance 2010 plan.   

 Chicago: Great Cities Institute University of Illinois at Chicago. 2019.  28p.

By Jose Miguel Cruz,  Tanyu, M., Vorobyeva, Y., Mizrahi, Y., Coombes, A., Sánchez, J., Hill, C., & Campie, P.

  Can a gang member in Guatemala leave the gang, abandon criminal activities, and rehabilitate? What factors facilitate the process of disengagement from gangs in Guatemala? To answer these questions, the American Institutes for Research (AIR), the Kimberly Green Latin American and Caribbean Center at Florida International University, and Democracy International conducted a study of Guatemalan gang members and former gang members across the country. The study is based on a series of in-depth interviews with 57 former gang members and 48 subject matter experts (SMEs), including government officials, community stakeholders, and service providers who work with people associated with gangs. According to the findings, active gang members do disengage from the gang and its activities, but this disengagement seems to be more difficult in Guatemala than in El Salvador or Honduras. The difficulties with leaving the gang are attributable to a more rigid system of norms within the gangs and the absence of a gang-approved mechanism to leave. Although religious experiences play a role in driving people away from the gangs, as in El Salvador and Honduras, religious conversion seems to be less accepted by gang leaders as a reason to leave. They view disengagement as a potential threat to the economic interests of the gang clique. This study, funded through the United States Agency for International Development Latin America and Caribbean Youth Violence Prevention project, builds on previous academic scholarship on gangs in Central America. We conducted the study by using semistructured interviews with former gang members and SMEs who have worked with or studied gangs in Guatemala. Originally, we designed the study based on a survey with individuals with a history of gang membership; however, the global COVID-19 pandemic forced us to modify the original design. In turn, we focused on increasing the number of in-depth telephone interviews and employed alternative analytical techniques to understand why individuals join and disengage from gangs. AIR contracted a local organization, Instituto de Enseñanza para el Desarrollo Sostenible, with experience on social science research—especially on the topics of security and violence—to conduct the interviews, and we trained a local team of interviewers, who collected the information under our direct supervision. We collected data between October 2019 and June 2020.   

Arlington, VA ; American Institute for Research and Miami: Florida International University, 2020. 74p.

By Maria Micaela Sviatschi   

This paper provides evidence showing how deportation policies can backfire by disseminating not only ideas between countries but also criminal networks, spreading gangs, in this case, across Central America and spurring migration back to the US. In 1996, the US Illegal Immigration Responsibility Act drastically increased the number of criminal deportations. In particular, the members of large Salvadoran gangs that developed in Los Angeles were sent back to El Salvador. Using variation in criminal deportations over time and across cohorts combined with geographical variation in the location of gangs and their members’ place of birth, I find that criminal deportations led to a large increase in Salvadoran homicide rates and gang activity, such as extortion and drug trafficking, as well as an increase in gang recruitment of children. In particular, I find evidence that children in their early teens when the leaders arrived are more likely to be involved in gang-related crimes when they are adults. I also find evidence that these deportations, by increasing gang violence in El Salvador, increase child migration to the US–potentially leading to more deportations.

Princeton, NJ: Department of Economics, - Working Paper - 2020. 52p

By Christopher Blattman, Gustavo Duncan, Benjamin Lessing, and Santiago Tobon  

Medellín’s city government wanted to raise its efficacy and legitimacy, especially in neighborhoods with weak state presence and competing armed actors. The city identified 80 such neighborhoods. In half, they intensified non-police street presence tenfold for two years, attempting to improve social services and dispute resolution. Unexpectedly, despite increased attention from street staff, residents lowered their opinion of the state on average. We trace these adverse effects to communities where state presence was initially weakest. Staff in these neighborhoods worked to improve services, but the central administration struggled to deliver on these promises. Where state presence was already established, however, the intervention raised opinions of the government as expected. We hypothesize that it is costlier for states to improve services where it is weak—an incentive for bureaucrats and elected leaders to concentrate state-building efforts in established areas, widening inequality in public service access and local variance in state legitimacy.   

Chicago: University of Chicago, Development Economics Center, Becker Friedman Institute, 2022. 42p.

By Christopher Blattman, Gustavo Duncan, Benjamin Lessing, and Santiago Tobón

Gangs govern millions worldwide. Why rule? and how do they respond to states? Many argue that criminal rule provides protection when states do not, and that increasing state services could crowd gangs out. We began by interviewing leaders from 30 criminal groups in Medellín. The conventional view overlooks gangs’ indirect incentives to rule: governing keeps police out and fosters civilian loyalty, protecting other business lines. We present a model of duopolistic competition with returns to loyalty and show under what conditions exogenous changes to state protection causes gangs to change governance levels. We run the first gang-level field experiment, intensifying city governance in select neighborhoods for two years. We see no decrease in gang rule. We also examine a quasi-experiment. New borders in Medellín created discontinuities in access to government services for 30 years. Gangs responded to greater state rule by governing more. We propose alternatives for countering criminal governance.

Chicago: University of Chicago, Development Economics Center, Becker Friedman Institute, 2022. 75p.

By United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti and United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights

This report, jointly published by the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH) and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), shows how armed gangs have used rape, including collective rapes, and other forms of sexual violence to instill fear, punish, subjugate, and inflict pain on local populations with the ultimate goal of expanding their areas of influence, throughout the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince. As of August 2022, large swathes of the capital, accounting for at least 1.5 million people, were reportedly under the control or the influence of gang elements. Gangs are able to commit acts of sexual violence and other human rights abuses mainly because of widespread impunity and ease of access to high caliber weapons and ammunitions trafficked from abroad. Women, girls and boys of all ages, as well as to a lesser extent men, have been victims of ruthless sexual crimes. Children as young as 10 and elderly women were subjected to collective rapes for hours in front of their parents or children by more than half a dozen armed elements during attacks against their neighborhoods. Viewed as enemies for their real or perceived support to rival gangs, or for the simple fact of living in the same areas as those rival gangs, some of these victims were mutilated and executed after being raped. 

United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH): Geneva, SWIT: Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), 2022. 25p

By U.K. Home Office

Country information and protection guidelines for British asylum authorities on fear of gangs (gangs' origins; main gangs; structure, size and reach; characteristics of members; activities and impact; targets of gang violence; returnees; government anti-gang policy and law; effectiveness of law enforcement agencies; freedom of movement)

London: Home Office, Independent Advisory Group on Country Information, 2021. 92p.

By Mohamed Adam

Youth gangs (aged between 15 and 35 years) - known as Ciyaal Weero - emerged in Mogadishu’s periphery districts in late 2021. well as pistols (and bright torches to shine in people’s eyes) and sometimes bajaj (tuk-tuks) to rob people,mostly at night.Unemployment, the use of drugs, and weak local government are seen as the main causes of the rise of communications technology, social media, and the use of out-of-court settlements are also believed to have contributed to the rise of Ciyaal Weero in the Somali capital. Although the police forces launched the ‘Samakaab’ operation against Ciyaal Weero, the government has not yet managed to reduce the threat of the youth gangs. Since its emergence, Ciyaal Weero killed people in Mogadishu including teachers and students and limited the mobility of people in the peripheral examines the factors that contributed to the rise of Ciyaal Weero, its impact on security and mobility in Mogadishu, and puts forward some policy considerations including control of the import of drugs, development of a government strategy to tackle the youth gangs, and the creation of job opportunities.

Mogadishu - Somalia: Somali Public Agenda, 2022. 4p.

By Dana Polan

“In its original run on HBO, The Sopranos mattered, and it matters still,” Dana Polan asserts early in this analysis of the hit show, in which he sets out to clarify the impact and importance of the series in both its cultural and media-industry contexts. A renowned film and TV scholar, Polan combines a close and extended reading of the show itself—and of select episodes and scenes—with broader attention to the social landscape with which it is in dialogue. For Polan, The Sopranos is a work of playful irony that complicates simplistic attempts to grasp its meanings and values. The show seductively beckons the viewer into an amoral universe, hinting at ways to make sense of its ethically complicated situations, only to challenge the viewer’s complacent grasp of things.

Durham, NC: London; Duke University Press, 2009. 230p.

By InSight Crime

President Maduro’s plan to help governors fund their states by gifting them each a gold mine soon ran into trouble. In the sprawling state of Bolívar, this led to immediate conflict. The criminal gangs that ran Venezuela’s mining heartland would never surrender. One group, in particular, has led the resistance. On November 5, 2019, threatening pamphlets appeared on the streets of El Callao, a mining town in Venezuela›s eastern state of Bolívar. The town was already on edge. A week before, a severed head was found on a road in El Callao. The pamphlets contained a message from a local gang leader, Alejandro Rafael Ochoa Sequea, alias “Toto,” to the municipal mayor, Alberto Hurtado. “You handed over your land to the government,” they read. “Resign, you have 48 hours to pack your bags because there is going to be more death, and if you don’t go, I’m coming for your head.” That night, armed men on motorbikes raced around the streets, firing off their weapons and setting off a grenade. This investigation exposes how the Maduro regime’s attempts to control Venezuela’s mining heartland in the state of Bolívar has led to criminal chaos, as guerrilla groups, heavily armed gangs and corrupt state elements battle over the country’s gold. Toto’s message and his gang’s terror campaign came shortly after President Nicolás Maduro had announced an unusual new policy: He would give each state governor a gold mine to help fund their administrations. There was one problem. Bolívar’s gold mines were controlled by brutal criminal gangs known as sindicatos (unions). And the sindicatos such as Toto’s had no intention of giving up the mines without a fight.

Washington, DC: InSight Crime, 2021. 31p.

By Joanna Callen

Jamaica’s violence problem is not new. Since the mid 1970’s the island’s per capita murder rate has steadily increased, by an average of 4.4 percent per year, from 19.8 per 100,000 in 1977, to 60 per 100,000 in 2017. In 2019, Jamaica was recorded as having the second highest murder rate in the Latin America and the Caribbean. Jamaica’ extreme violence rate is often attributed to gangs. CAPRI in partnership with the UK’s Department for International Development, and with Ms. Joanna Callen as the Lead Researcher is undertaking a study with an effort to bring focused attention to Jamaica’s gang problem, with the objective of advancing knowledge towards more effective policies and programmes for gang prevention and control. The information garnered will be used to make relevant policy recommendations, with an emphasis on providing a basis to mobilize civic support for and participation in good governance in the area of crime and violence reduction, particularly as it pertains to gangs. Gangs, organized crime, and violence, and the nexus between them, are Jamaica’s biggest citizen security challenge. With the second highest murder rate in the Latin America and Caribbean region in 2019, Jamaica’s extreme violence is often attributed to gangs. Between 2008 and 2018, gang-related violence was responsible for 56 percent of murders in Jamaica, with a high of 78 percent in 2013. Jamaica is a violent country in other ways, with extraordinarily high rates of domestic violence, including intimate partner (IPV) and gender-based violence (GBV). Jamaica’s violence problem is so

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  pernicious that the country has come to be described by academics and policy makers as having a “culture of violence.

Jamaica, WI: Caribbean Policy Research Institute, 2020. 67p.

By Diana Thorburn, Joanna Callen, Herbert Gayle and Laura Koch

Murder and extreme violence are at crisis levels in Montego Bay. The city is also the birthplace and centre of the lottery scamming industry and its offshoots, an industry that generates millions of U.S. dollars a year, and is thought to be connected to the high murder and shooting rates in St. James. This study considers the purported nexus between lottery scamming, gangs, and the high murder rate in St. James by situating St. James’ violence problem in its socio-economic context, and reviews the measures that have been taken over the past decade to tackle both problems.

Jamaica, WI: Caribbean Policy Research Institute, 2017. 72p.

By The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.

This policy note provides a brief background on gangs in El Salvador and the attempts of Salvadoran authorities to negotiate with them to reduce violence in the streets. It analyzes a March 2022 gang-led homicide spree with a particular focus on the government’s response, arguing how it has harmed citizens’ lives, turning fundamental human rights into bargaining chips between licit and illicit actors. Highly punitive responses to contain gang violence have been the norm in El Salvador. In addition, for the past decade, secret negotiations between state actors and imprisoned gang leaders have been conducted, but outcomes have yielded similar or worse results. Authorities must seek alternative avenues for peace, such as promoting restorative justice and community resilience, minimizing the risk of prison riots and providing reinsertion programmes. Mediation from the international community is also needed in order to prevent the situation from spinning out of control.

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2022. 14p.