REVIEWS

(Routledge 2011) addresses the vexed question of youth ‘gangs ’ in the United Kingdom, collating and consolidating the current range of academic evidence and opinion on the subject. Drawing on a broad sweep of contributors, the collection eschews any attempt at a comprehensive account of ‘gangs in the UK’, preferring to open up the youth ‘gang’ question to debate and critique. As a result, it is resolutely more ‘state of the art ’ than ‘state of the nation’, delineating the varied (if somewhat disunified) body of gang re-search in the United Kingdom, and providing a much-needed critical foundation for developing further theoretical and empirical research in this highly fraught area. The collection is book-ended by two excellent reviews of literature and evidence on the gang phenomenon—one on the United Kingdom, one on the global context— which will prove invaluable to the uninitiated researcher or student. The openin