10 - The ‘Ängen Gang’

Summary

As with many other quantitative studies, one of the problems with employing network analyses of this kind for the study of juvenile crime is that the picture produced lacks many of the nuances of social life. This chapter represents an attempt to redress the balance by combining network analysis with a ‘softer’ type of data. Comparing the results of the network analyses with information obtained from key informants and young people themselves (although in this instance these represent a rather small group) also provides a means of validating these methods.

This chapter builds primarily on a finals dissertation produced as a part of the network project by Anna William-Olsson (1998). William-Olsson's study focused on a group of delinquent youths, most of whom live in a suburb of Stockholm referred to by the pseudonym ‘Ängen’. The study is based primarily on interviews with the following key informants:

specialist youth social workers in two social services districts, the one where the group resided, and a neighbouring district;

other youth workers from these two districts;

police who work with the investigation of juvenile offences in the area where the youths resided, as well as other officers from the police district which administrates this area, and also representatives from the Stockholm City police, where the youths occasionally spent time.

In addition, William-Olsson interviewed three of the youths concerned and was able to draw on her own experiences as a social worker who had worked with this group of young people herself. The interviews were carried out in the course of 1995.