Drawing on extensive life-history interviews with serious violent offenders, this book offers a unique socio-historical analysis of gang membership and gang evolution in Glasgow, Scotland’s largest city. The book chronicles the lives of young men in and around Glasgow from early childhood to present day and examines the lived experience of family, friendship, community, and crime. It demonstrates how street reputations are won and lost and how gang membership is not a single event but an experiential process of offending, victimisation, consensus, and conflict. The book follows the young men’s descent into knife crime and street violence and the impact of imprisonment on their life chances. Detailed narratives capture how they individually and collectively transitioned from street violence to profit-driven organised crime, before eventually disengaging from gangs and desisting from offending. The book concludes with an in-depth discussion of the evolution of gangs and organised crime in the 21st century and in the inner-workings of Scotland’s marketplace for illegal goods and services, with implications for police, practitioners, and policymakers. A page-turner from start to finish, Scotlands’ Gang Members is a truly unique contribution to knowledge about gangs and crime, written to high academic standards but readable and accessible to all.

Drawing upon unique empirical data based on interviews with high profile ex-offenders and experts, this book sheds new light on drug markets and gangs in the UK. The study shows how traditional methods of tackling gang violence fail to address the intertwined nature of those criminal activities which can overlap with other organised crime spheres. McLean sparks new debate on the subject, offering solutions and alternatives.

The Times top ten bestseller Granta Best of Young British Novelists Scots Book o the Year Winner of the Somerset Maugham Award & Betty Trask Award ‘Trainspotting for a new generation’ – Independent ‘An instant Scottish classic’ – The Skinny 2005. Glasgow is named Europe’s Murder Capital, driven by a violent territorial gang and knife culture. In the housing schemes of adjacent Lanarkshire, Scotland’s former industrial heartland, wee boys become postcode warriors. 2004. Azzy Williams joins the Young Team [YTP]. A brutal gang conflict with their deadly rivals, the Young Toi [YTB] begins. 2012. Azzy dreams of another life. He faces his toughest fight of all – the fight for a different future. Expect Buckfast. Expect bravado. Expect street philosophy. Expect rave culture. Expect anxiety. Expect addiction. Expect a serious facial injury every six hours. Expect murder. Hope for a way out. Inspired by the experiences of its author, Graeme Armstrong, The Young Team is an energetic novel, full of the loyalty, laughs, mischief, boredom, violence and threat of life on these streets. It looks beyond the tabloid stereotypes to tell a powerful story about the realities of life for young people in Britain today. ‘A swaggering, incendiary debut’ – Guardian ‘Dialect that fizzes off the page’ – Observer ‘One of the most admired young voices in British fiction’ – The Times

In the twenty-first century, Glasgow is still a city living down a fearsome reputation for crime. And for some citizens of the Dear Green Place, brawling is in the blood and gang warfare is a way of life. The stinking deprivation of the Gorbals and the East End, deprivation that helped spawn pre-war gangs like the Billy Boys, the Norman Conks and the Redskins, is largely gone, but in each era new gangs have risen to take their place. Battles over turf and control of the drugs trade still regularly make the headlines. Now newly updated, Gangs of Glasgow takes an in-depth look at the gripping evolution of the city's gangs from the days of the Penny Mob, through the extortion, slashings and street fighting of the Thirties to the smart-suited men of violence of the modern day.

Crime, Justice and Society in Scotland is an edited collection of chapters from leading experts that builds and expands upon the success of the 2010 publication Criminal Justice in Scotland to offer a comprehensive and critical overview of Scottish criminal justice and its relation to wider social inequalities and social justice. This new volume considers criminal justice in the context of the Scottish politics and the recent referendum on independence and it includes a discussion of the complex relationships between criminal justice and devolution, nationalism and nation building. There are new chapters on research and policy, sectarianism, gangs, victims and justice, organised crime and crimes of the powerful in Scotland, as well as chapters reflecting on the use of electronic monitoring, desistance and practice, and major changes in the structure of Scottish policing. Comprehensive and topical, this book is essential reading for academics and students in the fields of criminal justice, criminology, law, social science and social policy. It will also be of interest to practitioners, researchers, policymakers, civil servants and politicians.

Brutal murders. Bizarre crimes. Eccentric crooks. And Scotland's toughest gangsters. Bryan McLaughlin faced the challenge of tackling crime on Glasgow's mean streets and throughout Scotland for more than 30 years, finding himself involved with nearly 300 killings. He started as a bobby on the beat, worked in the elite Serious Crime Squad and later headed up the force's Criminal Intelligence Branch. When he retired he became a private eye, helping free the victim of one of Scotland's most notorious miscarriages of justice. Now Bryan McLaughlin lifts the lid on his dealings with notorious godfather Arthur Thompson, tells of his satisfaction at nailing slippery gangster Tam McGraw with an Al Capone-style tax sting, looks back on the bomb attack on Glasgow's High Court and reveals remarkable information about the legendary Bible John murders. As well as these notorious cases, Bryan also looks back at the human side of policing as he encountered it, including the touching tale of the old lady who grew a tree in her living room, the madman who killed a boy for throwing snowballs and reveals how a million-dollar heist in Germany was cracked because a Glasgow ned stole a video recorder.And who could forget the crooked businessman who had a lie-detecting elephant in his office and a teddy bear as his advisor? Or the strange encounters with murder victims who ended up in bizarre situations - up a tree, frozen to the spot and even one taking part in a game of cards. This is an astonishing memoir from one of our top police officers, sometimes shocking, sometimes hilarious or macabre but always utterly fascinating.