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Media's Oppression Of Gangs In Britain

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In the recent years, Britain has seen a mounting problem with ‘gangs’. There is a perception that ‘gangs’ control the streets, leaving the citizens in terror to leave their home after dark.
This ideology engraved into many people through the response of media and the government towards ‘gang’.
“An assassin sips tea in a south London cafe before stepping up behind two men and firing a handgun into the back of their heads. A Chi-nese restaurant-owner in Glasgow struggles to open the door of his Mer-cedes, the lock of which has been de-liberately jammed with matchsticks. Suddenly, he is hacked down with four blows from a meat cleaver. The leader of a group of black gangsters dies in a hail of bullets fired by three rivals as he attempts to leave …show more content…

The prime minister announced“all out war on gangs and gang culture”. The government managed to portray the ‘gang’ problem as new phenomenon.
However, academics like Andrew Da-vies have come to known that the gangs have

been in an existence for a long time, there are traces from the 18th, 19th and 20th century (Rictor Norton, 2001; Davies, 2013; Price, 2009).
This raises many unanswered questions, if gangs have been in existence in Brit-ain for some centuries now. Then why are the media, Politician’s and the policy makers reacting to it now.
This could simply be because of not having a consensus understanding of what ‘gang’ is. The Home Office and every law enforcement agencies across Britain have their own definition of what ‘gang’ is, but there is no national definition.
Post World War II, Britain saw the increase of “youth subcultures” such as the Dandies and Flappers, Teddy Boys, Mods, Skinheads and Rockers (Hemingway, 2011). If the same groups were in existence in today’s era, they will carry the label of being a ‘gang’.
Construction of the …show more content…

So anyone seen wearing ‘hoodies’ was now automatically a ‘gang member’.
The Governments’ re-sponse on ‘gangs’
‘Gang war on streets’ was engraved in everyday Britain and this was enough for the government to be concerned for the safety and wellbeing of society, or enough for the Politician’s to show they are doing something about this prob-lem. This led the policy makers to form number of legislations around the ‘gang’ problems to tackle the ‘gangs’. Although here in Britain we understand very little to nothing about ‘gangs’. There is no consensus definition or understanding of ‘a gang’, or what does being ‘a gang member’ means, nor is there any ac-ceptance of ‘gangs’ in sociological and criminological sense.
There is still very little empirical infor-mation to suggest the involvement of youths in youth violence, knife and gun crime, organised crime. Nevertheless, policy makers have formed the follow-ing pieces of legislation.
Tackling Gangs Action Pro-gramme (TGAP)
Jacqui Smith the Home Secretary in September 2007 introduced TGAP as a six month initiative to show the com-munities, something is being done about the risk that poses our communi-ties. The type of risk TGAP was mainly concerned about was the firearms, and to target and

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