RT Article
T1 Street gangs and coercive control: The gendered exploitation of young women and girls in county lines
JF Criminology & criminal justice
VO 23
IS 3
SP 313
OP 329
A1 Havard, Tirion Elizabeth
A2 Densley, James A. 1982-
A2 Whittaker, Andrew
A2 Wills, Jane
LA English
YR 2023
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1852221267
AB This article explores young women and girls’ participation in gangs and ‘county lines’ drug sales. Qualitative interviews and focus groups with criminal justice and social service professionals found that women and girls in gangs often are judged according to androcentric, stereotypical norms that deny gender-specific risks of exploitation. Gangs capitalise on the relative ‘invisibility’ of young women to advance their economic interests in county lines and stay below police radar. The research shows gangs maintain control over women and girls in both physical and digital spaces via a combination of threatened and actual (sexual) violence and a form of economic abuse known as debt bondage – tactics readily documented in the field of domestic abuse. This article argues that coercive control offers a new way of understanding and responding to these gendered experiences of gang life, with important implications for policy and practice.
K1 Violence against women
K1 Gangs
K1 Exploitation
K1 county lines
K1 Coercive Control
K1 Abuse
DO 10.1177/17488958211051513