Summary of the impact

The research reported here has provided `real world' insights into the nature of young people's urban life, their involvement in gang violence and sectarianism and the extent to and ways in which criminal justice sanctions and social interventions reduce social strain and build pro-social capital in their lives. The research has had a national and international influence on public debate about violent youth offending and on practice-based responses to the issue and has led to the further development of services by community-based agencies and police officers in Scotland who work with marginalised young people and young offenders.

Summary of the impact

At a time when youth gangs were high on the UK and Scottish governments' agendas and a focus of media concern, this research was instrumental in changing understandings of the origins of youth gangs, and why they engage in violent conflict. A key insight was that significant gang behaviour had its origins in extreme forms of place attachment. The impact encompassed changes in policy direction and programmes aimed at tackling youth violence, including policies in Scotland such as `No Knives Better Lives'. Through very substantial publicity, including coverage on 2 primetime TV documentaries, the research informed public understandings, and challenged conventional wisdom on the nature, organisation and behaviour of youth gangs.

Summary of the impact

The criminology research team at the John Grieve Centre (JGC) provides a critical perspective on a series of social problems, evaluating our understanding of their definition and threat as well as providing novel empirical research into understanding their threat. Since 2008, the submitting team have made a significant contribution academically, with series of highly rated traditional academic publications and important empirical studies for a range of funders. Our key theme is the contextualising and redefining the key threats from `gangs', `organised crime', `terrorists' in order to inform and challenge professionals involved in their policing. The second argument for the inclusion of `gangs' through to `organised crime' and `terrorism' is justified by the way the identities of those involved can overlap and their offending careers can span all three types of crime.

Our key impacts are:

• Young, Hallsworth and Silverstone have provided a more accurate definition for policy makers and practitioners of the `gang' and its link with organised crime for the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA), 2009; Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC), 2010; the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) 2008.
• Lambert's twin research focus on (i) police/Muslim partnerships tackling al-Qaeda influence (as per the MPS Muslim Contact Unit which he co-founded) and (ii) police and community based responses to far right terrorism and political violence has been acknowledged by awards from the National Association of Muslim Police (NAMP) in 2011, the Muslim Association of Britain in 2012, the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) in 2008, the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) in 2008 and Islam Expo in 2008.
• Silverstone and Ridley's contribution to understanding new or unexplored aspects of organised crime and terrorism have been utilised by the wider law enforcement community, for example the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) in 2008, Europol in 2012, the National Police Improvement Agency (NPIA) in 2009, and NATO in 2012.