Drawing upon research undertaken by the present author in East, North West and South London and the work of other UK social scientists, this article considers the evidence concerning the involvement of young people of African-Caribbean origin and Mixed Heritage in street gangs and gang crime in London (For the sake of brevity, I will simply refer to these young people as Black, not least because this is how they usually define themselves). It outlines the sometimes acrimonious debate about the relationship between race, crime and street gangs in the United Kingdom in the past three decades, concluding that while many of the claims made about this relationship may be exaggerated or simply untrue, the evidence for the over-representation of Black young people in street gangs in London is compelling. The article then turns to the changing social and economic predicament of some Black young people in the capital since the 1980s and its relationship with their involvement in gang crime. Finally, it considers the role of drugs business in the proliferation of the gang form and ‘gangsta’ culture and the involvement of growing numbers of younger Black people in County Lines drug dealing.

中文翻译：

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伦敦的黑人青年和帮派卷入

根据本文作者在伦敦东部、西北部和南部进行的研究以及其他英国社会科学家的工作，本文考虑了有关非洲裔加勒比裔和混合遗产青年参与街头帮派和帮派犯罪的证据在伦敦（为简洁起见，我将这些年轻人简称为黑人，尤其是因为他们通常是这样定义自己的）。它概述了过去 30 年间关于英国种族、犯罪和街头帮派之间关系的激烈辩论，得出的结论是，虽然许多关于这种关系的说法可能被夸大了或根本不真实，但有证据表明过度伦敦街头帮派中黑人青年的代表性是引人注目的。然后，文章转向自 1980 年代以来首都一些黑人年轻人不断变化的社会和经济困境及其与参与帮派犯罪的关系。最后，它考虑了毒品生意在帮派形式和“黑帮”文化扩散以及越来越多的年轻黑人参与县界毒品交易中的作用。