In quotes: Voices from frontline of gangland culture

“We’ve got nothin for the kids. A gravel pitch for everything. And that’s fae the 70s. The central attraction for oor kids here is that shoppin centre, dodgy wee shops, gambling shops.”

Legal professional

“If you picked five nail bars in Scotland right now in a two mile radius you’d probably walk into them and find somebody being exploited within it, and we’re now seeing this network spread across Scotland as well. So it used to be sticking to urban places, Glasgow and Edinburgh really, now it’s random places that you wouldn’t expect to find it in Scotland.”

Police officer

“They’re just starting off as low-level drug dealers so that’s an involvement with organised crime and like any other organisation I think that people higher up the tree will look at some of the young team and identify who in their eyes is doing well and who’s doing a good job and these people will progress through the higher levels.”

Resident

“It all starts when yer younger: ‘he gave me a tenner for tellin somebody something’. And that gets the ball rollin for somebody tae say, right here’s a hundred quid tae put something through a door’. It’s easy enough for somebody a lot older than you tae pressure ye intae it, they use that as an incentive, you should be grateful.”

Social worker

“We do a bit of work with the high school, and like any high school I would say that they’re losing it, and not through teaching standards. We’ve got adults buying alcohol for kids, which impacts on attainment. The schools try their best, but if you’ve got a kid that’s not academically strong, and they look …and don’t see much by the way of opportunity, but a 21-year old driving a fancy motor with no qualifications or work history, then that becomes your role model.”

Police officer

“We had a road block … and within half an hour it was all over social media. It used to be that when we had an operation we could stop the traffic all day. Now, within half an hour, we’re burnt and we need to move it elsewhere. Same thing happened with an operation regarding drug dealing at a flat– within half an hour, there’s a picture of one of my officers in plain clothes with the message ‘polis are all over, blah blah’.”

Resident

“The feeling I get from the young people is a lot of them are only criminals in the sense that they don’t have anything else to do, or they don’t feel like, I mean they obviously do have other things to do but that’s almost, like, natural then, it’s, like, you’ve got nothing to do, ‘let’s go and set a fire’, ‘let’s go and nick something’, ‘let’s go and smash something up’, ‘it gives us something to do for a while, get a chase, whatever’, that kinda thing. I know the field over there gets set on fire every year, for no other reason than it’s something to do.”

Police officer

“There’s a guy in his twenties who drives around in a [upmarked car], not worked a day in his life. That’s gotta be an attraction to the kids – ‘look at him, he doesn’t have to work, he’s protected by that person’… It’s really obvious in terms of the cars on their drive, and they change them quite regularly. The lower-level ones are really quite flash about it, once they get above the level of street dealer.”P
olice officer“They drive about [the area] with big fancy cars, giving out freebies and, before you know it, you’re in it up to your eyeballs, you’re dealing drugs for them and they’re in your house. But these are things that these clients won’t share with the police.”

Social worker

“Cos growin up workin class, when you see somebody wi money, some people might say it’s logical. If ye can get a lotta money for dealin drugs… And it’s easy money if ye know the right people, cos there is a lot of substance abuse in [the area], it is easy money, there’s the demand.”

Resident

“They’ve went to the jail, I think the most that they’ve sorta done’s two year, but they’re goin ‘ach, two years, no bother, I’m coming out to fifty grand’, know what I mean’. They don’t worry aboot the justice system.”