Youth Gangs and Knife Carrying

In 2008, SCCJR were awarded a research grant of £155,000 by the Scottish Government to undertake ethnographic research exploring the nature of youth gang involvement, and the nature of knife carrying by young people in Scotland, and the roles that such activities may play in young peoples’ everyday lives. The research took place in five locations across Scotland and involved a multi-method approach, combining sets of interviews with young people, police, community and youth workers and other local area ‘experts’, and documentary analyses.  Two draft reports were submitted to the Scottish Government in spring 2010: the first providing a qualitative account of young people’s involvement in youth gangs, and offering a series of recommendation for intervention based on the research, and; the second drawing on an analysis of quantitative data from several sweeps of the Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions of Crime (ESYTC). Findings from the research are due for publication in summer 2010.