Home Grown by Joan Smith

Author:Joan Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Quercus Editions Ltd
Published: 2019-04-05T11:05:27+00:00

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† Because I am writing about individuals from the same families, I have had to use first names to differentiate siblings and parents, something that shouldn’t be taken to indicate sympathy for people who are responsible for mass murder in the worst cases.

5

The World’s Biggest Gang

‘Gangster Islam’

When I began writing about the boys and young men who were going abroad to fight for one or other Islamist militia, I quickly realised that modern terrorist organisations like ISIS are grown-up versions of teenage gangs. Boys who join gangs are usually seeking excitement, a sense of comradeship and an identity based on strength rather than victimhood. The al-Nusra Front and ISIS offered all of that and the chance to act out military fantasies in a situation where the forces of law and order no longer operated. At home, gang members live with the constant threat of arrest, risking prison sentences and serving as a reminder that most outsiders and their own families regard them as little more than petty criminals. While gang ­membership legitimises the carrying of weapons to impress and for self-defence, the kind of hyper-masculine identity it encourages often leads to convictions for very serious crimes, including rape and murder in the worst cases. Nothing like that was going to happen in Raqqa or Mosul while ISIS was running the show and many foreign fighters exhibited a species of bravado about the prospect of dying in battle, ignoring the brutal reality of being blown apart by IEDs or drones. Some, of course, were drawn to ISIS precisely because they were depressed and self-hating, romanticising the idea of ‘martyrdom’ either as a shortcut to paradise or an escape from their problems.

Boys who have witnessed violence by fathers or stepfathers already have a damaged model of how to relate to other people, which they carry with them when they get involved in gangs – a substitute family, in effect. Losing a parent through separation, imprisonment or death is another risk factor, along with mental illness, one of the ‘toxic trio’ of ACEs mentioned in chapter two. According to a government agency, Public Health England (PHE), a study of young people who had been arrested showed that a quarter had a suspected mental illness, while one in ten male gang members was considered at risk of suicide or self-harm.116

Levels of self-harm and suicidal thinking are even higher among gang-affiliated girls, affecting one in three, according to PHE – an unsurprising finding in view of the fact that sexual abuse is rife in gangs. Operating within a rigid male hierarchy, girls find themselves at the bottom of the power structure, expected to perform subordinate functions such as concealing cash, drugs and weapons. They often get involved in a quest for protection, believing that a relationship with a high-status boy will make their lives safer, but nothing could be further from the truth. Even if gang-affiliated girls are not directly involved in fights and muggings, they are at risk of prosecution for offences such as possession of knives or firearms, which carry heavy prison sentences.

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