Chapter 2
The SCJS records public experiences of, and perceptions about, crime (Scottish Government, 2019c, 2020d).
1965 was judged to be the peak year for weapon-carrying and its relationship to gang and street violence (ISTD, Scottish Branch, 1970)
The described geographical locations, where the participants had grown up and/or spent their teenage years, were not necessarily always the ones they currently resided in (particularly in the case of the adult members of our sample).
In an abundance of caution and to protect the human subjects of our research, the data sources for these descriptions are either not published or described in loose terms, as a means of ensuring that the specific geographical locations of the fieldwork sites do not become immediately apparent to the reader. More information on the locations may be available upon request on a case-by-case basis and subject to the discretion of the authors.
Chapter 3
The Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) is the Scottish Government’s standard approach to identifying areas of multiple deprivation in Scotland. It is a relative measure of deprivation across 6,976 small areas (called data zones). It looks at the extent to which an area is deprived across seven domains: income, employment, education, health, access to services, crime and housing. SIMD ranks data zones from most deprived (ranked 1) to least deprived (ranked 6,976) (Scottish Government, 2020e).
All interviewee names used are, as in the other parts of the book, pseudonyms. The real names of the organisations that were difficult to disguise because of their high-profile presence within Scotland have, with the permission of the interviewees, been named, while the name of the school has been anonymised. In some cases, the specific named professional roles of the participants have been amended slightly as a further means of providing anonymity to those whose organisations are named.
Our fieldwork was conducted in the months immediately preceding the emergence of COVID-19 cases in Scotland and the subsequent lockdown restrictions introduced in March 2020.
Chapter 4
All geographical areas have been given pseudonyms. See Appendix for further details.
A loose contextual description of each of the geographical areas can be found in the Appendix.
In 2010, a car in which Kevin Carroll was travelling was ambushed by masked men with firearms, who unloaded a series of bullets into the vehicle, killing Carroll (Findlay, 2012).
The nature of knife crime, and the young ages of those involved, meant that the activities of OCGs went under the radar in some respect in the eyes of the public. Indeed, the notorious head of the Lyons crime family in Glasgow was allowed to operate a community centre for years, despite local appeals to have him removed. It was only once two masked men walked into a local garage owned by the Lyons’ OCG and opened fire, injuring two and killing one, that the individual in question was removed from his position (Findlay, 2012).
This drug war saw 14 individuals murdered, and the systemic killing of one of the two main rival groups (McLean, forthcoming).
With the decline of the Daniels OCG, following the death of older and prominent members, another resulting gang emerged in the aftermath, comprised mainly of Daniels allies and remnants of the Daniels gang (McLean and Densley, 2020).
The brothers originate from an area south of the city centre. Their position was not one involved in extorting extra-legal governance over criminal groups in the country but rather in supplying them with the means to do so (McLean and Densley, 2020).
The Milton YSG formed the original core of individuals for the current Lyons OCG. Through the kinship of two of the local YSG members, access to political and police corruption was gained, and premises was established for drug storage and supply. As the gang aged, core members would form alliances with adults and established criminal figures in Paisley. This would provide the muscle for the Lyons gang to evolve (see McLean and Densley, 2020).
A loose contextual description of each of the geographical areas can be found in the Appendix.
In reality some ‘new drugs’ have been around for a number of years but have only now found their way into the realm of more mainstream illicit drug use.
‘On tick’ refers to drug users buying supplies from dealers with an agreement to pay later.
Older dealers are more involved in monitoring the behaviour of youth dealing on their behalf, and indeed, in such situations, may do so through various apps using location finders and FaceTime (Storrod and Densley, 2017).
Chapter 6
In the late 2000s, Rangers FC experienced financial difficulties, entering into administration in February 2012. The Rangers Football Club PLC entered liquidation later that year and the administrators sold the business and assets of Rangers to a new company (BBC News, 2012). Since the other member clubs of the SPL refused to allow the new company to adopt the league membership of the old company, Rangers (now trading as The Rangers Football Club Ltd) entered the Third Division of the SPL. It took the relaunched club four years to climb through the divisions and re-enter the Scottish Premiership, finally re-entering the SPL in time for the 2016–17 season and thus reinstating the regular Rangers vs Celtic league fixture (Herbert, 2016).
