Abstract
The neighborhood setting in which children and young adults reside has a profound impact on their life chances. Previous research demonstrates that youth who reside in highly segregated, isolated, disadvantaged neighborhoods experience numerous negative social, behavioral, and psychological effects, as well as the impact on their physical health. While John Pitts does not use the term “neighborhood effects,” he contributes nonetheless to this scholarship by adding reluctant gang affiliation to the list of harmful consequences of living in socially and economically isolated neighborhoods, or in this case, boroughs.
In Reluctant Gangsters, Pitts asserts that “economic and cultural globalisation” (p.7) were in large part responsible for creating “gangland” (p. 101) in three high-crime London boroughs between 2005 and 2008. Gangland refers to geographic and psychological territories in which gangs have control over both its affiliated and unaffiliated residents (p. 6). Framing the daily lived experience of youths within gangland against the backdrop of larger social forces is the most significant sociological contribution of the book.
Pitts demonstrates that victimization is a multi-stage process that begins with the neo-liberal government pushing poor families into isolation from the social and economic mainstream and continues within the criminal justice system. Instead of recognizing distinctions between voluntary and involuntary gang affiliation, the criminal justice system engages in “joint enterprise” (p.109) in which both groups are found to be equally culpable. Therefore, instead of fulfilling “its responsibility to defend the victims of injustice, the criminal justice system becomes just another brick in the wall that confines David and many other young people like him within gangland” (p. 108).
Reluctant gangsters is the term Pitts developed to describe youths who do not voluntarily choose gang membership, but instead have their gang affiliation ascribed by their residency in gangland as well as affiliate out of concern for their personal safety (p.101). The concept of reluctant gangsters provides significant contributions. First, the questions of what is a gang, who are the members, and what are the benefits for joining a gang have been at the core of street-gang research for the past several decades. Pitts augments this scholarship by providing a slightly different understanding of gang membership. In doing so, he revitalizes the concept of “conflict” which was central to the early definition of gangs popularized by Thrasher (p. 13), while at the same time, he demonstrates that criminological theories do not adequately account for the motivation of reluctant gangsters.
Additional strengths of the book include comparisons between the activities and organizational structure of gangs in Britain and the United States. The media and social commentators have depicted Britain’s gang problem to be similar to that of American gangs for at least 50 years (p. 2), however social scientists contend that vast differences exist in the organizational structure, age, number, degree of violence, and race and ethnicity of its members (p. 2). Pitts demonstrates that things have changed within the past five to eight years making gangs in the United Kingdom resemble U.S. gangs in their violent behaviors (p. 2), with social class rather than race being the more salient explanation for the gang phenomenon in the United Kingdom (p. 5).
Despite the strengths noted above, the book suffers from several serious flaws. First, the book is frustrating to read. It is poorly organized, chapters are short and choppy, the first interview quote (on which the majority of findings are based) is not presented until nearly halfway through the book, and while the title of the book, Reluctant Gangsters, accurately identifies the most innovative of the research findings, only one, short chapter towards the end of the book is devoted to developing this concept. In this chapter and elsewhere the research data is underutilized, making his claims and theoretical arguments appear stronger than the data on which it is based.
The most damaging of the book’s flaws is the lack of adequate information regarding data collection and analysis. The absence of this information makes it difficult to judge the validity of Pitts’ theoretical arguments. Additional critiques include a disappointing, poorly structured research design. The three-site design of the study could lead to interesting comparisons, however comparable data were not collected in each site. While all three sites included interviews with gang members, residents, and individuals who work in one of the three select high-crime London boroughs, in only two boroughs was a gang desistance program evaluated and in only one borough was “available statistical data” (p. 4) interrogated. Because of the poor research design, nuances particular to each fieldsite are unexplored, making it unclear why this study was multi-site based.
In sum, Pitts’ goal of turning “private troubles into public issues” (p. 1) and his sense of social justice are admirable. However, his research design is less impressive, his claims are stronger than his evidence demonstrates, and the lack of adequate information regarding data collection and analysis makes it difficult to judge the validity of his theoretical arguments.