Gangs and Social Networks

Social media has the power to amplify conversations and connect far-flung networks – even when those networks are gangs.

Police in the U.S. and U.K. are noticing an uptick in the use of social networking sites like MySpace and Bebo to organize criminal activities and threaten rival gangs. A British judge recently sought to limit the online activity of ten alleged members of the Fallowfield Mad Dogs in Manchester (their MySpace page is pictured above) as part of a sentence for involvement in a fight. The judge ruled that the men couldn’t appear online together in photos. Police are using MySpace to conduct investigations, identifying gang affiliations through profiles.

Law enforcement agencies should use the web to monitor possible violence and threats, but we should tread cautiously here. Using social networks to intimidate is nothing new, and these sites will always mirror society. Efforts to eradicate an activity online that happens in the real word will be futile, the web is now part of the world and we need to treat it as such. The web may add speed and cross boundaries, but violence was around before Bebo, so let’s not blame the medium for offline violence. We also need to be careful with limiting online activities and using spurious claims on MySpace profiles to bolster criminal cases.

It makes sense for judges to hand down specific, targeted web restrictions based on real evidence. The judge’s photo restriction above makes sense to me. The defendants had posed together with weapons online and had leveled threats using the web. Limiting their web use makes sense, and we can survive without posting photos of ourselves. But restricting web use altogether is a different story and a grave mistake.

Too many parolees are denied access to the internet; in the U.S. this is often because they’ve been convicted of a sex offense and judges are trying to prevent access to porn and to sites where the parolees could potentially seek victims. Unfortunately, this sentence also denied the parolee a chance to search for jobs, to take online classes, to stay up to date on news and in touch with family, friends and service providers.

Considering the American criminal justice system’s propensity for knee-jerk reactions and stiff sentences, I wouldn’t be surprised If we started to see broad web restrictions on people convicted of gang-related crimes and known to have used Facebook, Myspace or another site. Sentences denying web access – or even Myspace access – won’t prevent violence, however, they’ll just prevent connectivity and opportunity.

Thanks to Benjamin Chambers at Reclaiming Futures for pointing me to the Independent article above.