During the past ten or 15 years, the UK has witnessed an increase in street gang culture and the emergence of violent urban street gangs which are active in a small number of urban areas. This phenomenon includes recent changes in gang composition (increased organisation with ever-younger affiliates staying in the gang longer), (Pitts, 2008b; Densley, 2013), presentation (links to the drug economy and so-called ‘postcode beefs’) (Pitts, 2008b; Densley, 2013) and a concurrent upswing of serious and seemingly chaotic gang-related violence (Centre for Social Justice, 2009). This phenomenon has brought sensationalist media headlines and dissensus among academics as to gang organisation, membership, behaviours and even their existence.

In the US, a similar situation was reported where a ‘major escalation’ of youth gang problems was experienced from 1970 to 2000 (Miller, W., 2001). A striking feature of this growth was the emergence of gangs in smaller towns and cities, from 1970 when fewer than 300 cities reported youth gang problems to 1998 when more than 2,500 US towns and cities reported youth gang problems.

John Hagedorn gives life to Miller's dramatic quantification by narrating the gang renaissance in the US in the 1980s (Hagedorn, 1998) followed by its subsequent ‘institutionalisation’ and ‘globalisation’ (Hagedorn, 2007, 2008). Located in ‘abstract spaces’, and emanating from ‘local histories of economic restructuring and community defeat’, Hagedorn situates the modern global gang as ‘organisations of the socially excluded simultaneously occupying the spaces of both prison and ghetto’ (Hagedorn, 2007, p 25). Academics now report that membership of violent street gangs is on the rise globally (St Cyr and Decker, 2003; Decker and Weerman, 2005; Salageav et al, 2005; Weerman and Decker, 2005; Hagedorn, 2008).

The identification of this phenomenon has precipitated recent academic studies on both sides of the Atlantic, highlighting divergent perspectives between contemporary gang research in the UK and the US, while raising questions about the applicability of US research to the UK. Though informative, and largely contextual, this growing body of work illuminates the limitations of current research, raising many unanswered questions. US research has shifted focus to singular aspects of street gangs: definitions (Klein, 1971, 2006); Chicano gangs (Moore, 1978); gang formation and causality (Spergel, 1995); risk factors (Thornberry, 1998); levels of organisation (Decker et al, 2008); increasing levels of membership (Decker et al, 1998); the multiple marginality of immigrant communities (Vigil, 2002; 2010); and globalisation and institutionalisation (Hagedorn, 1998).