Abstract
Chapter 11, Scouse Soldiers in it? Urban Street Gangs on Merseyside, Robert Hesketh and Grace Robinson discuss the emergence of urban street gangs on Merseyside. They observe that although Liverpool’s recent problems with youth-gangs have attracted national and international media attention, academic research has lagged behind. Nonetheless the available data suggests that there are over 200 organised gangs involving an estimated 3000 members. Those involved range from low-level participants, largely engaged in antisocial behaviour to others who have links into international crime syndicates. The authors note that the Knowsley area of Liverpool has the highest rate of children at risk from gangs in the whole country; a rate even higher than London’s. The chapter gathers together the findings of all the recent the research that has been undertaken in Liverpool to give a thorough, and alarming, picture, of developments in the city.
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Hesketh, R., Robinson, G. (2023). Gangs in Liverpool: Scouse Soldiers init? Urban Street Gangs on Merseyside. In: Andell, P., Pitts, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Youth Gangs in the UK . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99658-1_11
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