59 The higher levels of prisoner autonomy in HMP Forest Bank led to more 'backstage violence' (reminiscent
of HMP Long Lartin, as described in Sparks et al. 1996). HMP Manchester’s atmosphere was more controlled and oppressive (similar to the description of HMP Albany in Sparks at al. 1996). In this regard, HMP Manchester’s austere regime with much ‘situational control’ to reduce violence was preferred by older prisoners to the ‘risky autonomy’ of HMP Forest Bank (see ibid; Liebling and Crewe 2017). The difference in the numbers of officers present at each prison could also have been affected by the periods of time in which fieldwork took place as by the time I carried out my fieldwork in HMP Forest Bank, government cuts to staffing levels had become more noticeable and severe.
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As I have identified in the previous chapter, street gangs in Greater Manchester range from highly structured, organised entities to relatively fluid groups of offenders, whose criminal activities were semi-normalized in the marginalized communities from which they originated. In light of the numerous gangs which existed in the region, it was not surprising to discover significant numbers of gang members within both prisons: the prison authorities were conscious of the impact these gangs had on the dynamics within their prisons, and on contemporary prison life. However, alongside the formal mechanisms in place to manage gang members were informal systems of governance, which were deployed by gang members (see also Skarbeck 2014). Gang members needed to devise systems and schemes to verify whether individuals really were gang members and affiliated to the gangs to which they claimed allegiance. It was in this regard that signalling was an important means of verifying one’s claims to gang membership. ‘Signals’, which primarily refer to external displays of emotions and specific acts, are integral to offenders maintaining their identities, and have a particularly heightened role within prison (Gambetta 2009); in a carceral setting, projections of ‘toughness’ and hyper-masculinity serve a protective role, as displays of such acts make an individual less likely to be the target of victimization (Gambetta 2009; Levan 2012; Trammell 2014). Being the victim of assault is one of the many ‘pains of imprisonment’ (Sykes 1958), a term which refers to the various vicissitudes which befall individuals held in conditions of confinement. Individuals react to these ‘pains’ in different ways: some prisoners become victims of bullying, aggression or extortion, some side with prison authorities, and others take on the role of the aggressor (ibid). Finally, there are prisoners who are ‘real men’ (Sykes 1958): these individuals demonstrate endurance, abide by ‘inmate decorum’, are widely respected, and stifle conflict with the guards, building cohesion among inmates (Western 2007: xii). During my fieldwork, it became apparent that there were several ‘real men’ on each prison wing, and signalling proved to be one of the primary means through which their status was conveyed to others. These individuals were typically senior gang members: ‘high ranking’ prisoners who rarely needed to commit acts of violence in prison due to their pre-existing reputations. However, when such individuals did engage in violence, it was of a serious nature:
My first real understanding of gangs was when we had quite a big player from Liverpool on our house block. I didn’t really see him as someone who people looked up to, until one day, a young chap from the Liverpool area came up to me and removed a jumper from his face, showing a large laceration, probably about six/seven inches. Now, I’d seen prisoners who’d been assaulted, punched, had a broken nose, the odd fracture here and there, but nothing to
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that extent. But we later found out the guy who cut him was right at the top of the food chain of a large gang in the Liverpool area. So, he was sort of like the Godfather figure on that wing. And that was my first real wake-up call to gang violence in prisons: this is serious stuff we’re dealing with, really serious criminals here that are capable of a lot. And that cut was a warning shot. Member of Prison Management, HMP Forest Bank
Less influential prisoners – both gang-affiliated and unaffiliated - also deployed signals, delivering their own “warning shots” to fellow prisoners. However, unlike the above account (where it was eventually revealed that the serious violence was in relation to a gang/family dispute) the actions of lower ‘ranking’ prisoners were normally to minimize the chances of being victimized, with almost all prisoners being familiar with the role signalling played in the carceral environment. However, they all shared the primary aim of presenting a specific image of oneself to other prisoners and prison officers; at times, signals would bolster reputation, whereas in other instances, they would be employed solely to enable an individual to survive his time in prison. In cases such as the one above, a violent incident could be seen as a critical incident, the reverberations of which could be substantial. From the moment a prisoner began his sentence, his ‘status’ was verified by other prisoners: who he was, what crime he had been convicted of, who he knew, and who he associated with on the streets. For gang members, the last of these was of crucial importance, Signals often provided a means of explicitly demonstrating one’s gang affiliation, and, at times, verified all the other information available to prisoners.
‘Hard to fake’ signals were something participants in my research spoke of several times. Bona fide gang members knew some individuals would pretend to be gang-affiliated and therefore there were systems in place to verify new prisoners’ gang affiliations. If a new prisoner was not known to others, one of the primary questions he might be asked was, ‘who do you chill with?’ to discern with whom he associated. If an individual was known to other prisoners, such questions were not normally asked as he would immediately gravitate towards friends, associates, or fellow gang members at the prison. After a prisoner was asked who he ‘chilled’ with, there were instances where individuals would falsely claim gang affiliation, or to know certain powerful gang members. However, the consequences of such acts could be severe:
And is it difficult in a jail like this not being gang-affiliated? Well, people just like, what
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they have access to mobile phones, if I come in and I go, “Yeah, I know Joe Bloggs from such an area” because this Joe Bloggs is a big hitter, and you make out you know him to try and be one of boys - one of the gang. But then this person really knows Joe Bloggs, and this person gets on the phone in the night and goes, “Do you know such and such?” And he says, “Never heard of him”. So, next day they go batter him, fucking giving him irons.
Stuart, Non-Gang Member, HMP Forest Bank
In 2002, I ended up in prison and within ten minutes, three big black and half-caste kids come to me door and said, “Right, where you from?” and I said, “Moss Side”. And they asked, “Who’d you chill with? What gang you with out there?” I said, “I don’t class myself as a gang member.” They said, “You’re from Moss Side, you’re mixed race, you must be affiliated with someone”. I said, “If anyone, I lean Gooch”. So, one of them got off, made a phone call, come back, I’d given him me name. And they were related to Gooch: one of them was a Gooch member’s cousin. He says, “Yeah, I spoke to such and such, he told me who you are. So, we’re good. If you was Doddington or lying, there’d be beef.”
Peter, Former Gang Member, HMP Forest Bank
Stuart and Peter both spoke of the violent ramifications which could arise from falsely claiming gang affiliation, with mobile phones being one of several means to verify one’s social connections and gang-affiliation on the streets. Many participants spoke of there being an increased need to verify the status of new prisoners, mainly because of the growing numbers of individuals who would profess gang membership. Writing specifically about English gangs, Wood (2006:1) states that due to the glamorisation of gangs in much of the media, “it is not surprising when (the) youth admire gang members, mimic them and aspire to join gangs” (own emphasis). Several gang members spoke of this issue, highlighting that they had encountered individuals who mimicked being gang-affiliated. Such issues were less pertinent in one’s local prison, where tight kinship networks meant that gang membership was far easier to discern.
Indeed, in both above cases, Stuart and Peter referred to individuals having their identities “checked out” when they were imprisoned away from their local area. Stuart’s reference to “one of the boys – one of the gang” and Peter’s descriptions of familial gang ties are reflected in the existing literature: much of this identifies gangs, as well as ‘deviant groups’ more generally, being characterized through closed, ‘tight’ networks (see, e.g. Everton 2011; Borgatti et al. 2014; Campana 2010). Gang-affiliation could reliably be ‘checked out’, primarily through telephoning gang members in other prisons. Although both sample sites had
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‘gang questionnaires’ which asked for information on prisoners’ links to gangs upon entry into the prison (see Appendix D), many prison officers conceded that informal networks were often more reliable in establishing and verifying gang status. Accordingly, it was clear that emitting false ‘signals’, whether regarding one’s gang status or offence-committed, was an important subject of discussion for many prisoners. Other prisoners interviewed also spoke of how gang members would, upon seeing a new prisoner, “check them out, see where they’re from. And now, because they have access to mobile phones, if I come in and I’m bullshitting, saying I’m part of some gang when I’m not, they can phone people on the outside, find out, and batter you” (Liam, Non-gang member, HMP Forest Bank). The means of verifying gang membership, then, were evolving, and false declarations of affiliation would result in physical punishment. However, what complicated matters was the fact that some prisoners, such as Peter (above), were only loosely associated with a gang, ‘leaning’ towards a certain gang: this presented a problem as being peripherally associated with a gang made one’s status less certain, and therefore made verification a more complex process. Indeed, the existing body of literature has begun to acknowledge this distinction between gang members, gang affiliates and non- gang members (see, e.g., Wood et al. 2017). In the following section of this chapter, I use Goffman’s theory on ‘presentation of self’ to outline the risks which were inherent when falsely claiming that one was affiliated to a gang, or when one attempted to lie about the offence for which one had been convicted. Prisoners operated their own systems to verify such information, and punished prisoners who were discovered to have engaged in dishonest acts. Moreover, most prisoners were cognisant of the, at times elaborate, ‘performances’ which they had to undertake to bolster reputation and accrue respect.
The existing literature argues that signalling practices originate on the streets, where their utility stems from the fact that those engaged in criminal activities do not have recourse to formal, government-sanctioned regulatory mechanisms (Jacobs 2001; Walklate 2009)61. This
is especially the case for gang members, who are not only outside the ambit of these formal compliance mechanisms but must also co-operate with one another to succeed in their criminal enterprises (Venkatesh 2006; Jacobs 2001; Contreras 2013). Therefore, the signals gang
61 Indeed, projections of hyper-masculinity are not confined to gang members within economically deprived
areas; more widely, working class western communities value such expressions of masculinity (Anderson 1990, 1999) where there is a prioritization of “physical strength, competitiveness…[and] assertiveness…combined with the rejection of femininity and weakness” (Deuchar et al. 2016: 133).
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members emit to one another are crucial in allowing them to determine who can be trusted. Gang members must ‘recruit’ on this basis, judging who is trustworthy based primarily on external displays (Densley and Stevens 2015), combined with recommendations from third- parties and associates (Densley 2013).62 On the topic of gauging trustworthiness more generally, Hamill and Gambetta (2006:33) state, “we look for or try to display signs of trustworthiness that are hard to fake. Before we trust people, we need to trust their signs”. For gang members, it is especially crucial that new members are verified to be trustworthy: untrustworthy individuals may potentially disseminate information to hostile third-parties, either deliberately or through reckless actions. Moreover, on rarer occasions, rival gang members or law enforcement may attempt to infiltrate the gang. These are risks of which gang members are aware and, therefore, they often question unknown individuals who are seen within their ‘territory’ (Venkatesh 2006).
Once within a gang, signalling continues to be an important facet of an individual’s identity. For example, senior gang members must ensure that their ‘presentation of self’ projects an image showing that they are able and willing to carry out acts of violence against rivals, as well as junior gang members who carry out transgressions (Venkatesh 2008). All of this underlines the fact that gangs – at least in most developed countries - are not regulated by state actors and are ultimately viewed as illegitimate institutions by much of the population63. The lack of formalized state regulation of gangs precludes their members from seeking remedies when they are adversely affected; for example, if a gang is robbed of its (illegal) drugs or (ill-gotten) money, its members cannot inform the police. This makes gang members susceptible to attack from within and without the gang (Jacobs 2001; Contreras 2013), and external presentations of the gang’s potential for violence are one of the principal ways of preventing such attacks. Street gang members, then, have the greatest need to cultivate ‘hard to fake’ signals; if they are
62 Arguably, it is not just gang-related criminality which operates on this process of recruitment; for example,
prostitution is also connected to a system of ‘hiring’ through referrals, personal contacts and networks (Venkatesh 2013). Therefore, this process of referrals pervades many criminal activities, as well as law-abiding occupations such as taxi-driving (Hamill and Gambetta 2006)
63 This can be compared to other countries such as Burma (Chin 2009), Russia (Varese 2001), Pakistan (Qureshi
2005) and many African countries (Nordstrom 2001) where the situation is vastly different, and there is regular collusion between actors of the state, such as the police, and organised crime groups.
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deceived by individuals who falsely display signs of gang-affiliation (such as rival gang members or the police) they have the most to lose.
Many of my research participants verified the existing findings on gang members’ signalling activities. For example, junior gang members learnt signalling techniques from their older counterparts, becoming aware of times where signals had to be more discreetly displayed (such as instances where there were police crackdowns against gang members), and instances where signals had to be explicitly conveyed (such as instances where gangs were ‘proving a point’ by attacking rivals). Several gang members spoke of tattoos illustrating one’s gang affiliation and signalling to others that they were ‘down’ (affiliated) with a gang; and some specifically mentioned that committing crimes prior to gang affiliation signalled that one was serious about joining a gang. Many gang members also spoke at length about the role played by nicknames within the gang. Nicknames have also long been associated with gangs. As such names are usually only known by members of the criminal underworld, nicknames can often hamper the efforts of law enforcement; for example, referring to individuals only by their nicknames leads to lower chances of police deciphering identities when wire-tapping phones (Gambetta 2009: Ch. 9). Reflecting existing studies, many of my research participants had nicknames. Non-gang members’ nicknames were usually derived from their forenames or surnames, similar to wider society. However, gang members’ nicknames were normally ‘opaquer’, referring to an individual’s physical characteristics, emotional traits or the crimes in which they specialized (see also Gambetta 2009). The following shows one former gang member’s account of the role played by nicknames:
You see, you and me are probably talking about some of the same gangsters, but as I’ve mixed in the same circles, or knew them personally, I only know their nicknames, not their real names. And can you tell me a bit more about whether nicknames are important? Well, even meself, when I started off in prison, because of the way I learnt to speak with people, learnt the patter, had a stance of not giving a fuck, they used to call me the thug. So, it gives an idea of how they saw me. It was all part of that image: I was thuggish; I’d cuss the screws. Derek, Former Gang Member, Manchester
In the case of Derek, his nickname was one component of his wider presentation of self, and “part of that image”; like most nicknames, his has been conferred upon him by others, in part due to his thuggish mannerisms, actions and familiarity with the prison argot. Most crucially,
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being called ‘the thug’ illustrated his propensity for violence. During our interview, Derek further stated that he went by that name throughout his time in the prison system. The nickname, then, signalled to others his violence potential, and his “stance of not giving a fuck”, something which is often seen as a key component of gang membership (see, e.g. Densely 2013). He went onto state that his nickname helped him “to be on that rise, you know, rise through the ranks, be known for not giving a shit, that sort of thing. It helped embed me in the prison culture”.
Nicknames, then, were of great significance for gang members: they demonstrated that an individual was known in the criminal world, familiar with its culture, and acted as another verifier for an individual’s transition from the streets to prison. Most gang members who were interviewed stated that their nicknames had been developed on the streets and were later imported into prison. In this regard, Derek’s case was unusual, as his nickname had been given in prison. However, he was far from unusual in having a nickname whilst in a gang; for example, when conducting fieldwork at HMP Manchester, approximately 21% of the prison’s gang members had nicknames according to prison intelligence records. Prison officers stated that several more gang members probably went by nicknames which the prison had yet to detect. Such names were one of the more explicit signals to illustrate one’s character.
Yet, nicknames were not the only way of signalling one’s identity at the sample sites. Indeed, even acts seemingly as inconsequential as how one stood, walked, and talked denoted important characteristics amongst other gang members (see also Garot 2010), as well as in a street-context more generally (Anderson 1999). ‘Signalling’, then, often encompassed a range of characteristics such as physical attributes, but also included more subtle features. As Sean