Ross Deuchar
Biographic Data
| ID | 138808 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ross Deuchar |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ross |
| FAMILY NAME | Deuchar |
| SIGNATURE | DEUCHAR R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of the West of Scotland |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9857-6072 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 77 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Governing at a distance: How digital–physical hybridity reshapes drug markets and risk in Scotland
Purpose This study aims to examine how digital–physical hybridity reshapes Scottish drug markets by reconfiguring interaction, trust and exposure to risk. Moving beyond the assumption that digitalisation represents a shift from “offline” to “online” markets, the authors analyse how hybrid arrangements produce interactional distance and redistribute harm within drug supply operations. Design/methodology/approach This study is a secondary analysis …
Storming the Capital: The Place of Street Capital and Social Capital within Gangs
This chapter focuses on the essential internal dynamics of urban street gangs by bringing together discussions on the dual concepts of social capital and “street capital.” The chapter presents an overview of the multifaceted perspectives on social capital theory and how it has been drawn on to explore and understand what may lead the most disadvantaged and vulnerable to join street gangs, before exploring the newer theory of “street capital” and …
Ethics in Qualitative Criminological Research: Risks, Boundaries, Emotions, and Reflexivity
Providing academic insights, reflections, and practical guidance on ethically conducting qualitative criminological research, this book emphasizes real-life examples to navigate research risks, boundaries, and emotions, while spotlighting reflexivity as a pivotal tool for qualitative inquiries, serving as an ethical compass throughout the research process. By engaging with this book, readers will be exposed to critical themes of managing risks, i…
Who are the enforcers? The motives and methods of muscle for hire in West Scotland and the West Midlands
Cops in crisis: Ethnographic insights on a new era of politicization, activism, accountability, and change in transatlantic policing
Against the complex backdrop of a post-modern era, characterised by a renewed emphasis on public accountability, oppositional social and political movements, it has been argued that traditional agents of social control have increasingly begun to experience a sense of disempowerment. Nowhere has this been more apparent than within the context of policing, where the increased influence of the mass media, social media, and newly empowered groups has…
A Typology of Street Robbery and Gang Organization: Insights from Qualitative Research in Scotland
Utilizing interviews with 42 current and ex-street offenders, this study explores the relationship between street gang organization and robbery. Robbery type is affected by level of organization exhibited by the gang. For recreational and territorial young street gangs, robbery is opportunistic, occurring in a diffuse manner, and conducted individually, even when others are present as ‘backup’. For criminal gangs, robbery is often planned in adva…
Putting the ‘Street’ in Gang: Place and Space in the Organization of Scotland’s Drug-Selling Gangs
Street gangs, by definition, enjoy a special relationship with the street. Prior research shows that some communities are synonymous with gangs and that turf holds a combination of expressive and instrumental value for gang members. As gangs evolve over time and through different levels of organization, however, gangs’ relationship with the street changes. This shifting street dynamic is underexplored in prior research, thus, drawing on qualitati…
Journeys in Gang Masculinity: Insights from International Case Studies of Interventions
Drawing on formal interviews and ethnographic participant observation, this paper highlights how effective gang intervention programs can and do supplant negativistic masculine identities based on violent criminality with more positivistic masculine identities based on gainful employment, family life, and desistance. The authors examine how this transition occurs at three prominent gang intervention programs in diverse transnational contexts: Los…
Gangs and Spirituality
Reflections concerning ethnographic ethical decisions and neo-liberal monitoring
Hypothetical, speculative ethical concerns are no match for real situations. As such, this paper argues that there is an unsurpassable gap between planned, prescriptive ethics and real-time, relational, ethnographic decision making. The enforcement of procedural ethics may actually prevent the development of ethnographic work. Also, we critically assess procedural ethics as being not really about ethics, but rather about the risk management embed…
An altered state? Emergent changes to illicit drug markets and distribution networks in scotland
Despondent officer narratives and the ‘post-Ferguson’ effect: Exploring law enforcement perspectives and strategies in a southern American state
The fatal shooting of a young, black, and male citizen named Michael Brown by a white male police officer in Ferguson (MO) generated political and media backlash that continues to erode law enforcement legitimacy today. Law enforcement is sensitive to changes in the public discourse on their profession and has responded in kind. A plethora of discussion has focused on the potential existence of a so-called ‘Ferguson Effect’, whereby de-policing h…
If You Want to Get Paid, You've Got to Do It: A Qualitative Study on the Morality of Crime
Although many criminological studies do not make explicit references to morality, judgements around “right and wrong” are implicitly part of criminality. This article seeks to articulate the moral justifications offered by offenders, and to contrast these to the behavioral codes of wider society. Offenders (n = 75) involved in serious organized crime were interviewed in two regions (Glasgow and a county in the North of England), and findings indi…
‘I Trust Them More Than I Trust Myself’: Detached Streetwork, Young People and the Building of Social Capital in Scottish Urban Communities
Young People and Social Control
Weapon-Carrying Among Young Men in Glasgow: Street Scripts and Signals in Uncertain Social Spaces
Our work contributes through a cultural criminological perspective to a contextualised knowledge of street violence and its constructed meanings; uncertainty, familiarity and strangeness in spaces of urban disadvantage as perceived by Scottish white youths are examined. Youth criminal and anti-social behaviour associated with knife-carrying is widely reported and structures political and media discourses which classify street culture. In our arti…
Youth Gangs
Desistance and the micro-narrative construction of reformed masculinities in a Danish rehabilitation centre
Juvenile justice systems and reformatory institutions hold the potential to help young offenders and drug abusers change their behaviours and life-courses. Driven by an ambition to pave new ways to examine the inner workings of reformatory institutions this study explores how young male offenders’ gendered identities are engaged in a Danish reformatory programme. In recent years existing research on the gendered aspects of reformatory interventio…
When you're boxing you don't think so much’: Pugilism, transitional masculinities and criminal desistance among young Danish gang members
This paper draws upon international research evidence that suggests a relationship between protest masculinity and the manifestation of violent crime among young males, and that criminal desistance may be linked to (inter-) subjective processes such as the reconstruction of masculine identity. The paper considers the potential that pugilism (the art and practice of boxing) may have on enabling young, disadvantaged minority male gang members to fi…
Exploring youths' perceptions of the hidden practice of youth work in increasing social capital with young people considered Neet in Scotland
This small-scale research explores the generation of social capital in young people growing up in one urban area and one rural area in Scotland via community-led youth work projects that aim to re-engage young people categorised as NEET (Not in Employment Education or Training). By looking at their varied and complex biographies, it considers young people's experiences and perceptions of their communities and their transitions from education to t…
Curfews
This entry provides a theoretical analysis of the use of curfews as an intermediate sanction, focusing particularly on the perceived benefits and challenges associated with the restrictions related to home confinement. The entry provides a historical overview of the policy and practice associated with electronic monitoring and discusses the controversy that has surrounded the use of the technology in monitoring curfew conditions. A theoretical an…
What does it mean to be a man? Psychosocial undercurrents in the voices of incarcerated (violent) Scottish teenage offenders
This article explores connections between social strain, constructions and practices of masculinity and the prevalence of violence among a white working-class male demographic. The study’s evidence-base is qualitative research conducted in Scotland. It utilized life history interviews with a clinically significant sample of 40 incarcerated young male offenders convicted of violent crimes. Family, school and peer group ‘pressures’ coloured these y…
We're still human beings, we're not aliens’: Promoting the citizenship rights and cultural diversity of Traveller children in schools: Scottish and English perspectives
This article examines the experiences of Traveller children in schools. It uses data from two studies (one in Scotland and the other in England) to examine Traveller children's views about attending school (particularly in relation to their values and ambitions), their experiences of racism and prejudice and their views on how teachers perceive them. In our research, we draw from case study data to argue that despite public policy discourse aroun…
People Look at Us, the Way We Dress, and They Think We're Gangsters: Bonds, Bridges, Gangs and Refugees: A Qualitative Study of Inter-Cultural Social Capital in Glasgow
It is widely recognized that refugee integration occurs most effectively within communities that are rich in inter-cultural social capital. This paper explores the dangers associated with intensely bonded and disconnected communities and the relationship between refugee marginalization and the presence of youth gangs. Drawing upon a small-scale qualitative study with young refugees in Glasgow, it seeks to explore the extent to and ways in which t…
Gangs, Sectarianism and Social Capital: A Qualitative Study of Young People in Scotland
In recent years, there has been continuing debate about the extent and significance of sectarianism in Scotland and the wider links with territorial gang culture. This article focuses on a small qualitative study conducted in some of the most deprived urban communities in Glasgow. Semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions were conducted with 10 youth workers and 40 young persons (aged 16-18 years), with follow-up interviews conducted…
Despondent officer narratives and the ‘post-Ferguson’ effect: Exploring law enforcement perspectives and strategies in a southern American state
The fatal shooting of a young, black, and male citizen named Michael Brown by a white male police officer in Ferguson (MO) generated political and media backlash that continues to erode law enforcement legitimacy today. Law enforcement is sensitive to changes in the public discourse on their profession and has responded in kind. A plethora of discussion has focused on the potential existence of a so-called ‘Ferguson Effect’, whereby de-policing h…
Exploring youths' perceptions of the hidden practice of youth work in increasing social capital with young people considered Neet in Scotland
This small-scale research explores the generation of social capital in young people growing up in one urban area and one rural area in Scotland via community-led youth work projects that aim to re-engage young people categorised as NEET (Not in Employment Education or Training). By looking at their varied and complex biographies, it considers young people's experiences and perceptions of their communities and their transitions from education to t…
What does it mean to be a man? Psychosocial undercurrents in the voices of incarcerated (violent) Scottish teenage offenders
This article explores connections between social strain, constructions and practices of masculinity and the prevalence of violence among a white working-class male demographic. The study’s evidence-base is qualitative research conducted in Scotland. It utilized life history interviews with a clinically significant sample of 40 incarcerated young male offenders convicted of violent crimes. Family, school and peer group ‘pressures’ coloured these y…
Territorialities in Scotland: Perceptions of young people in Glasgow
This paper presents the results of an exploratory, small-scale qualitative research enquiry into the perceptions and experiences of young people in communities afflicted by deprivation in Glasgow, Scotland's largest city. The context within which we address this focus contains a culture reputed to involve sectarianism, territoriality and gangs. Glasgow has a reputation for being a 'hard place'. The official crime statistics are consistent with co…
People Look at Us, the Way We Dress, and They Think We're Gangsters: Bonds, Bridges, Gangs and Refugees: A Qualitative Study of Inter-Cultural Social Capital in Glasgow
It is widely recognized that refugee integration occurs most effectively within communities that are rich in inter-cultural social capital. This paper explores the dangers associated with intensely bonded and disconnected communities and the relationship between refugee marginalization and the presence of youth gangs. Drawing upon a small-scale qualitative study with young refugees in Glasgow, it seeks to explore the extent to and ways in which t…
Journeys in Gang Masculinity: Insights from International Case Studies of Interventions
Drawing on formal interviews and ethnographic participant observation, this paper highlights how effective gang intervention programs can and do supplant negativistic masculine identities based on violent criminality with more positivistic masculine identities based on gainful employment, family life, and desistance. The authors examine how this transition occurs at three prominent gang intervention programs in diverse transnational contexts: Los…
Cops in crisis: Ethnographic insights on a new era of politicization, activism, accountability, and change in transatlantic policing
Against the complex backdrop of a post-modern era, characterised by a renewed emphasis on public accountability, oppositional social and political movements, it has been argued that traditional agents of social control have increasingly begun to experience a sense of disempowerment. Nowhere has this been more apparent than within the context of policing, where the increased influence of the mass media, social media, and newly empowered groups has…
Desistance and the micro-narrative construction of reformed masculinities in a Danish rehabilitation centre
Juvenile justice systems and reformatory institutions hold the potential to help young offenders and drug abusers change their behaviours and life-courses. Driven by an ambition to pave new ways to examine the inner workings of reformatory institutions this study explores how young male offenders’ gendered identities are engaged in a Danish reformatory programme. In recent years existing research on the gendered aspects of reformatory interventio…
Gangs, Sectarianism and Social Capital: A Qualitative Study of Young People in Scotland
In recent years, there has been continuing debate about the extent and significance of sectarianism in Scotland and the wider links with territorial gang culture. This article focuses on a small qualitative study conducted in some of the most deprived urban communities in Glasgow. Semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions were conducted with 10 youth workers and 40 young persons (aged 16-18 years), with follow-up interviews conducted…
Putting the ‘Street’ in Gang: Place and Space in the Organization of Scotland’s Drug-Selling Gangs
Street gangs, by definition, enjoy a special relationship with the street. Prior research shows that some communities are synonymous with gangs and that turf holds a combination of expressive and instrumental value for gang members. As gangs evolve over time and through different levels of organization, however, gangs’ relationship with the street changes. This shifting street dynamic is underexplored in prior research, thus, drawing on qualitati…
If You Want to Get Paid, You've Got to Do It: A Qualitative Study on the Morality of Crime
Although many criminological studies do not make explicit references to morality, judgements around “right and wrong” are implicitly part of criminality. This article seeks to articulate the moral justifications offered by offenders, and to contrast these to the behavioral codes of wider society. Offenders (n = 75) involved in serious organized crime were interviewed in two regions (Glasgow and a county in the North of England), and findings indi…
When you're boxing you don't think so much’: Pugilism, transitional masculinities and criminal desistance among young Danish gang members
This paper draws upon international research evidence that suggests a relationship between protest masculinity and the manifestation of violent crime among young males, and that criminal desistance may be linked to (inter-) subjective processes such as the reconstruction of masculine identity. The paper considers the potential that pugilism (the art and practice of boxing) may have on enabling young, disadvantaged minority male gang members to fi…
We're still human beings, we're not aliens’: Promoting the citizenship rights and cultural diversity of Traveller children in schools: Scottish and English perspectives
This article examines the experiences of Traveller children in schools. It uses data from two studies (one in Scotland and the other in England) to examine Traveller children's views about attending school (particularly in relation to their values and ambitions), their experiences of racism and prejudice and their views on how teachers perceive them. In our research, we draw from case study data to argue that despite public policy discourse aroun…
A Typology of Street Robbery and Gang Organization: Insights from Qualitative Research in Scotland
Utilizing interviews with 42 current and ex-street offenders, this study explores the relationship between street gang organization and robbery. Robbery type is affected by level of organization exhibited by the gang. For recreational and territorial young street gangs, robbery is opportunistic, occurring in a diffuse manner, and conducted individually, even when others are present as ‘backup’. For criminal gangs, robbery is often planned in adva…
Weapon-Carrying Among Young Men in Glasgow: Street Scripts and Signals in Uncertain Social Spaces
Our work contributes through a cultural criminological perspective to a contextualised knowledge of street violence and its constructed meanings; uncertainty, familiarity and strangeness in spaces of urban disadvantage as perceived by Scottish white youths are examined. Youth criminal and anti-social behaviour associated with knife-carrying is widely reported and structures political and media discourses which classify street culture. In our arti…
Territorialities in Scotland: Perceptions of young people in Glasgow
This paper presents the results of an exploratory, small-scale qualitative research enquiry into the perceptions and experiences of young people in communities afflicted by deprivation in Glasgow, Scotland's largest city. The context within which we address this focus contains a culture reputed to involve sectarianism, territoriality and gangs. Glasgow has a reputation for being a 'hard place'. The official crime statistics are consistent with co…
Gangs, Sectarianism and Social Capital: A Qualitative Study of Young People in Scotland
In recent years, there has been continuing debate about the extent and significance of sectarianism in Scotland and the wider links with territorial gang culture. This article focuses on a small qualitative study conducted in some of the most deprived urban communities in Glasgow. Semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions were conducted with 10 youth workers and 40 young persons (aged 16-18 years), with follow-up interviews conducted…
People Look at Us, the Way We Dress, and They Think We're Gangsters: Bonds, Bridges, Gangs and Refugees: A Qualitative Study of Inter-Cultural Social Capital in Glasgow
It is widely recognized that refugee integration occurs most effectively within communities that are rich in inter-cultural social capital. This paper explores the dangers associated with intensely bonded and disconnected communities and the relationship between refugee marginalization and the presence of youth gangs. Drawing upon a small-scale qualitative study with young refugees in Glasgow, it seeks to explore the extent to and ways in which t…
We're still human beings, we're not aliens’: Promoting the citizenship rights and cultural diversity of Traveller children in schools: Scottish and English perspectives
This article examines the experiences of Traveller children in schools. It uses data from two studies (one in Scotland and the other in England) to examine Traveller children's views about attending school (particularly in relation to their values and ambitions), their experiences of racism and prejudice and their views on how teachers perceive them. In our research, we draw from case study data to argue that despite public policy discourse aroun…
Curfews
This entry provides a theoretical analysis of the use of curfews as an intermediate sanction, focusing particularly on the perceived benefits and challenges associated with the restrictions related to home confinement. The entry provides a historical overview of the policy and practice associated with electronic monitoring and discusses the controversy that has surrounded the use of the technology in monitoring curfew conditions. A theoretical an…
What does it mean to be a man? Psychosocial undercurrents in the voices of incarcerated (violent) Scottish teenage offenders
This article explores connections between social strain, constructions and practices of masculinity and the prevalence of violence among a white working-class male demographic. The study’s evidence-base is qualitative research conducted in Scotland. It utilized life history interviews with a clinically significant sample of 40 incarcerated young male offenders convicted of violent crimes. Family, school and peer group ‘pressures’ coloured these y…
Youth Gangs
Desistance and the micro-narrative construction of reformed masculinities in a Danish rehabilitation centre
Juvenile justice systems and reformatory institutions hold the potential to help young offenders and drug abusers change their behaviours and life-courses. Driven by an ambition to pave new ways to examine the inner workings of reformatory institutions this study explores how young male offenders’ gendered identities are engaged in a Danish reformatory programme. In recent years existing research on the gendered aspects of reformatory interventio…
When you're boxing you don't think so much’: Pugilism, transitional masculinities and criminal desistance among young Danish gang members
This paper draws upon international research evidence that suggests a relationship between protest masculinity and the manifestation of violent crime among young males, and that criminal desistance may be linked to (inter-) subjective processes such as the reconstruction of masculine identity. The paper considers the potential that pugilism (the art and practice of boxing) may have on enabling young, disadvantaged minority male gang members to fi…
Exploring youths' perceptions of the hidden practice of youth work in increasing social capital with young people considered Neet in Scotland
This small-scale research explores the generation of social capital in young people growing up in one urban area and one rural area in Scotland via community-led youth work projects that aim to re-engage young people categorised as NEET (Not in Employment Education or Training). By looking at their varied and complex biographies, it considers young people's experiences and perceptions of their communities and their transitions from education to t…
‘I Trust Them More Than I Trust Myself’: Detached Streetwork, Young People and the Building of Social Capital in Scottish Urban Communities
Young People and Social Control
Weapon-Carrying Among Young Men in Glasgow: Street Scripts and Signals in Uncertain Social Spaces
Our work contributes through a cultural criminological perspective to a contextualised knowledge of street violence and its constructed meanings; uncertainty, familiarity and strangeness in spaces of urban disadvantage as perceived by Scottish white youths are examined. Youth criminal and anti-social behaviour associated with knife-carrying is widely reported and structures political and media discourses which classify street culture. In our arti…
Gangs and Spirituality
Reflections concerning ethnographic ethical decisions and neo-liberal monitoring
Hypothetical, speculative ethical concerns are no match for real situations. As such, this paper argues that there is an unsurpassable gap between planned, prescriptive ethics and real-time, relational, ethnographic decision making. The enforcement of procedural ethics may actually prevent the development of ethnographic work. Also, we critically assess procedural ethics as being not really about ethics, but rather about the risk management embed…
An altered state? Emergent changes to illicit drug markets and distribution networks in scotland
Despondent officer narratives and the ‘post-Ferguson’ effect: Exploring law enforcement perspectives and strategies in a southern American state
The fatal shooting of a young, black, and male citizen named Michael Brown by a white male police officer in Ferguson (MO) generated political and media backlash that continues to erode law enforcement legitimacy today. Law enforcement is sensitive to changes in the public discourse on their profession and has responded in kind. A plethora of discussion has focused on the potential existence of a so-called ‘Ferguson Effect’, whereby de-policing h…
If You Want to Get Paid, You've Got to Do It: A Qualitative Study on the Morality of Crime
Although many criminological studies do not make explicit references to morality, judgements around “right and wrong” are implicitly part of criminality. This article seeks to articulate the moral justifications offered by offenders, and to contrast these to the behavioral codes of wider society. Offenders (n = 75) involved in serious organized crime were interviewed in two regions (Glasgow and a county in the North of England), and findings indi…
Cops in crisis: Ethnographic insights on a new era of politicization, activism, accountability, and change in transatlantic policing
Against the complex backdrop of a post-modern era, characterised by a renewed emphasis on public accountability, oppositional social and political movements, it has been argued that traditional agents of social control have increasingly begun to experience a sense of disempowerment. Nowhere has this been more apparent than within the context of policing, where the increased influence of the mass media, social media, and newly empowered groups has…
A Typology of Street Robbery and Gang Organization: Insights from Qualitative Research in Scotland
Utilizing interviews with 42 current and ex-street offenders, this study explores the relationship between street gang organization and robbery. Robbery type is affected by level of organization exhibited by the gang. For recreational and territorial young street gangs, robbery is opportunistic, occurring in a diffuse manner, and conducted individually, even when others are present as ‘backup’. For criminal gangs, robbery is often planned in adva…
Putting the ‘Street’ in Gang: Place and Space in the Organization of Scotland’s Drug-Selling Gangs
Street gangs, by definition, enjoy a special relationship with the street. Prior research shows that some communities are synonymous with gangs and that turf holds a combination of expressive and instrumental value for gang members. As gangs evolve over time and through different levels of organization, however, gangs’ relationship with the street changes. This shifting street dynamic is underexplored in prior research, thus, drawing on qualitati…
Journeys in Gang Masculinity: Insights from International Case Studies of Interventions
Drawing on formal interviews and ethnographic participant observation, this paper highlights how effective gang intervention programs can and do supplant negativistic masculine identities based on violent criminality with more positivistic masculine identities based on gainful employment, family life, and desistance. The authors examine how this transition occurs at three prominent gang intervention programs in diverse transnational contexts: Los…
Who are the enforcers? The motives and methods of muscle for hire in West Scotland and the West Midlands
Storming the Capital: The Place of Street Capital and Social Capital within Gangs
This chapter focuses on the essential internal dynamics of urban street gangs by bringing together discussions on the dual concepts of social capital and “street capital.” The chapter presents an overview of the multifaceted perspectives on social capital theory and how it has been drawn on to explore and understand what may lead the most disadvantaged and vulnerable to join street gangs, before exploring the newer theory of “street capital” and …
Ethics in Qualitative Criminological Research: Risks, Boundaries, Emotions, and Reflexivity
Providing academic insights, reflections, and practical guidance on ethically conducting qualitative criminological research, this book emphasizes real-life examples to navigate research risks, boundaries, and emotions, while spotlighting reflexivity as a pivotal tool for qualitative inquiries, serving as an ethical compass throughout the research process. By engaging with this book, readers will be exposed to critical themes of managing risks, i…
Sociology (21 works) · Criminology (17 works) · Political science (16 works) · Crime Patterns and Interventions (13 works) · Gender Studies (11 works) · Law (11 works) · Psychology (11 works) · Social science (11 works) · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance (8 works) · Gender Studies (8 works)