ABSTRACT

This chapter considers offences committed by street gangs. Gang-related violence does not require multiple perpetrators to be present at any given time but violence always takes place within the context of a street gang. The experience that women and girls have of gang-related violence across the UK is rarely understood and often sensationalised. Academic consideration of girls and criminal gangs in the UK is scarce. Most notably, Susan Batchelor and Michelle Burman have investigated girls' use of violence inside and out of gang context. The hyper-masculine nature of criminal gangs means that context that gang-associated women and girls navigate is specifically gendered, and argument Batchelor et al. make for gendered interventions is therefore applicable beyond Scotland. The risks and harms faced by gang-associated female family members is stark, as is the lack of culturally specific service provision available to offer support: also evident for women and girls in romantic or peer relationships with men and boys involved in criminal gangs.