When Boris Johnson’s government announced its new ‘levelling up agenda’ we were assured the current administration would finally begin tackling the decades-old decline that has taken over too many of our regional towns and cities.
But if the following account by Robert Hesketh is to be believed the transformation of inner-city Liverpool is as far away as ever. Drug and violent crime is so endemic it’s become normalised, a parallel economy in which people barter for drugs and other illegal merchandise in the same way that the law-abiding majority go shopping at the supermarket.
In his research on the criminal underworld which goes back more than a decade, Dr Hesketh identifies three significant drivers of gang-culture on Merseyside – which if tackled properly may provide a way out of the abyss into which too many of our inner cities seem to be spiralling. The three factors he identifies are:
“The absence of both bonding and bridging in communities; the powerful allure of risk-taking; and the blurring of perception between legal employment and criminality.
All of these, if addressed effectively alongside inequality, could prevent young people from being driven into the arms of gangs and violent criminality. If unchecked, they stand little chance of escaping the city’s lawlessness, dragging innocent children such as Olivia Pratt-Korbel into the vortex with them.”
The author analyses the effect of each of these in turn. On ‘bonding and bridging’
“My study noted that most of Merseyside’s communities, including my own, were extremely insular, suffering from high levels of minimal bonding with very few, if any, forms of bridging — that is, very few attempts by residents to connect to other areas, people and organisations outside of their boundaries.
This had a significant impact on the young people I interviewed: those who became embroiled in gangs and violent crime developed restricted friendship networks consisting of friends from only their school days and residential street.
By contrast
“those young people who decided to abstain completely had done so through building extended friendship networks beyond their respective school and street — taking up Saturday jobs or becoming involved in activities that had brought them into contact with law-abiding peers.”
Second, is the allure – the adrenalin rush – of planning and preparing to carry out the crime. According to American criminologist Jackson Katz
“it wasn’t just the allure of criminal participation that was so enticing. More important was the emotional charge of the preparation and run-up to the act, climaxing in the adrenalin rush of successfully getting away with the crime and the rewards that it brought.”
And third, the normalisation of this activity as a substitute for legitimate work
“to the extent that the boundaries between legitimate employment and criminality had become entirely clouded. From the vivid descriptions given to me, the young men I interviewed had long-ceased positioning themselves as gang members.
Instead, they had adopted an alternative identity of deviant entrepreneurs ready to utilise marketing strategies: they offer Buy-One-Get-One free on bags of “lemo” (cocaine) and send out price menus, with opening and closing hours of serving, via text message. They have, in effect, convinced themselves that they are doing a job just like any other.”
So where is the glimmer of hope?
“Merseyside Police have started to think about what is being called “preventative policing”. It’s not going to change anything overnight, but it’s a start. Finally, there is the realisation that partnership collaboration has become a vital cog — that, to have any impact on this problem, structural issues must be addressed and the social biographies of communities must be scrutinised. But this will take time, and time doesn’t fill me with hope: in Knowsley, we have seen out-of-touch ministers brag about levelling-up on our TV screens, but so far haven’t seen any tangible solutions to poverty, homelessness and, of course, organised violent crime.
The full article can be read below with a link to the original here:
Simon Stacpoole/Offside/Getty Images
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