545407

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CRJ0010.1177/1748895814545407Criminology & Criminal JusticeHolligan and Deuchar

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Criminology & Criminal Justice

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What does it mean to © The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/1748895814545407
undercurrents in the voices crj.sagepub.com

of incarcerated (violent)
Scottish teenage offenders

Chris Holligan
University of the West of Scotland, UK

Ross Deuchar
University of the West of Scotland, UK

Abstract
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 young
men’s trajectories to persistent violent reoffending. Their language highlights attachment and
betrayal issues. Masculinity associated with Scottish history is a resource within Scotland
which may impact on contemporary practices of masculinity. The article’s dominant thesis is
that the young men’s violence reflects immersion in traumatic life histories. The masculinized
cultures they encounter are likely to produce violence and limit opportunities which could
help ameliorate attachment trauma.

Keywords
Crime, masculinity, psychosocial, strain, violence

Corresponding author:
Ross Deuchar, Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, School of Social Sciences, University of the
West of Scotland, Hamilton Campus, Hamilton ML3 0JB, UK.
Email: ross.deuchar@uws.ac.uk

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2 Criminology & Criminal Justice 

Introduction
Our research participants are serving prison sentences for serious violent assaults,
including murder. Weapons such as knives, bottles and baseball bats are examples of
weapons used during their assault crimes. Fists, heads and feet also caused debilitating
injuries to their victims, inflicting eye loss and paralysis. Understanding why these cata-
strophic assaults took place is central to a psychosocial lens on violence (Ritchie, 2014).
Robinson and Ryder (2013) in their psychosocial criminological article recommend a
mental health praxis in opposition to a criminal justice emphasis for the rehabilitation
of violent offenders. By exploring the voices of the research participants our contribu-
tion to knowledge and policy carries the uniqueness of the inside perspective, a strategy
endorsed by the United Nations (1989). And as Gadd and Jefferson (2007) recognize,
individual cases are ideal for pursuing psycho-analytic insight into the aetiology of
violence. In agreement with Robinson and Ryder (2013: 432) we believe it is vital to
identify the back stories of young men’s violence; in their studies of violent girls it was
argued it reflected malformed and absent attachments and an ‘existential response to
powerlessness and betrayal’ by responsible adults.
In Scotland levels of violent crime are higher than elsewhere in the UK or Europe
(Scottish Government, 2012). Scotland is ranked first out of 35 OECD countries for seri-
ous assault, and 12th for homicide (Civitas, 2012). The homicide rate for males aged
10–29 in Glasgow (Scotland’s largest city) is comparable to Costa Rico and Argentina
(UK Peace Index, 2013). Knives were used in 11 per cent of the most violent crimes
(Scottish Government, 2011). The ‘masculinity of crime’ conception is informed by left-
feminist scholarship on gender and power (Newburn and Stanko, 1994; Tomsen, 2008).
We would wish to challenge Polk’s (1994: 59) claim that the killings arose from ‘minor
starting points’ as misleading. The more credible account lies in attributing these ‘starts’
as surface manifestation of the operation of disturbances affecting psychic mechanisms
connected with relationships and emotion (Gadd and Jefferson, 2007).
This article aims to document critically the constructions and practices of masculin-
ity which our research participants appeared compelled to embrace. We also seek to
illustrate that academic discourse can interfere with ‘hearing’ young offenders’ voices
which we endeavour to achieve in giving detailed attention to meanings. In so doing, we
seek to theorize the outcome of violent life-worlds drawing upon ideas about the psy-
chosocial geography of violent crime (Gadd and Jefferson, 2007). Robinson and Ryder
(2013: 438) argue:

Those who experience unsuccessful attachment may continue to perceive others as self-objects
to use for their own needs, not recognizing those of others, and producing maladaptive defenses.
Failure to form empathy or empathic failure is one such defense. Violence is another.

First, we present insights garnered from existing literature on masculinity, violence and
gang culture and position this knowledge as reinforced by a martial tradition of mascu-
linity found in the geography of Scottish history. What Carrington et al. (2010: 393) call
‘frontier masculinities’ to foreground violence in predominantly male communities
involved in the physical labour of resource extraction resonates with the kind of bonding
social capital which militaristic tradition inculcates, and collective ‘working-out’ in the

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Holligan and Deuchar 3

gym also reinforces. Tomsen and Crofts (2012) discovered the violence associated with
masculine honour was reinforced and legitimated by the cultural mores of Australia
enshrined in its legal system. Significantly for the conjecture around historical connec-
tion to violence, Scotland witnessed huge emigration to Australia. Second, we outline the
methodological rationale underpinning our choice of life history interview, the access
arrangements we put in place, the ethical issues we needed to address and data analysis
strategies implemented. Third, we present extracts from interview transcripts alongside
our analysis of the key themes. Finally, we present a discursive thematic analysis of the
key insights from our study. We conclude by tracing implications for policy, practice and
research.

Masculinity, Violence and Gang Culture

Historians discovered that cultures of male violence were widespread (Abrams, 2013).
Evidence from historical studies of 18th- and 19th-century Scotland indicate that, until
the 1820s, social or recreational male violence (often alcohol fuelled) was commonplace.
Indeed, it was seen as a legitimate ‘resource’ for rural working classes to ‘protect or
affirm their status, to restore honour or to avenge a wrong’ (Abrams, 2013: 101).
Urbanization and industrialization during 1800–1860 in Scotland gave rise to inward
migration of unemployed working-class young men from the Scottish Highlands and
Ireland to Glasgow and Lanarkshire. This migration contributed to a dramatic increase in
homicide rates (King, 2011). King (2011: 252) agues loss of kinship networks and mate-
rial insecurities are important factors in explaining this serious violence emerging. King’s
account is not incompatible with a view of physical cultural capital as a resource contrib-
uting to the fuelling of interpersonal violence.
The Scots have long been soldiers (Smout, 1969). Traditional masculine values, such
as courage, embodied a social morality and signified national strength (Carr, 2008). Our
research participants expressed pride in family members serving in the British Armed
Forces, some hoped to join the French Foreign Legion after liberation. The military ver-
nacular ‘troops’ was used by some research participants to describe fellow gang mem-
bers involved in protecting turf. Drawing upon a social constructionist approach, Connell
(2005) argues that ‘hegemonic masculinity’ emphasizes a dominant ideal of heterosexual
power and authority (Deuchar, 2013). For young men who have become marginalized
through the collapse of heavy industry and the lack of meaningful opportunities for
employment, violence may provide a means of ‘doing masculinity’ when other resources
are unavailable (Deuchar, 2013; Muncie, 2009), but some scholars challenge this theo-
rizing as over-simplistic in its rendering of underlying psychological dynamics (Gadd
and Jefferson, 2007).
Excluded social geographies foster cultures of male violence and gangs which inten-
sify violent youth offending (Anderson, 1999; Deuchar, 2009, 2013; Shaw, 1966 [1930];
Whyte, 1943). Poverty pervades parts of Scotland, particularly around the West (Barnes
and Lord, 2012). Rodger’s (1996: 150) historical studies identified the community dam-
age wrought previously by urbanization in 20th-century Scotland; slum clearance in the
1960s forcibly removed vulnerable working-class populations into vast peripheral coun-
cil housing estates (‘schemes’) with inadequate community amenities. It also separated

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4 Criminology & Criminal Justice 

extended families and caused a ‘fundamental realignment of the relationship of individu-

als to the urban milieu, and to perceptions of their own citizenship’ (Paice, 2008). Such
serious and cumulative adversity is a source productive of gang formation, familial trans-
mission of violence and psychopathology (Davies, 2013; Farrington et al., 2009; Murray
et al., 2012).
Melde and Esbensen (2011) found gang membership alters the teenage life-world:
emotion, attitudes and routine unstructured activities impair conventional behavioural
controls and values. Reference made to emotions and attitudes resonates with Gadd and
Jefferson’s (2007) re-reading of The Jack-Roller as a case study susceptible to psycho-
analytic analysis involving tangled family attachments in particular. Residual social con-
trol attaches to gang loyalty where the gang provides a surrogate family for alienated
youth (Deuchar, 2009; Thrasher, 1927). Excitements associated with committing crime
also ‘knife off’ young persons from conventional mainstream society (Katz, 1988; Smith,
2006) and push them away from pro-social ties. Gang membership shares a feature of
studies of Scottish clan membership before the Highland Clearances (Prebble, 1963),
where clan ‘protection’ gives emotional and other types of support: gangs continue to
play this role in Scottish neighbourhoods (Bannister et al., 2010). Inequalities of class
and gender shape experiences of normative institutions like schools and families, affect-
ing the way individuals feel they should act and be treated (Caspi et al., 1990), and such
adversity will be implicated in producing the psychosocial that the essay examines.
Thrasher (1927: 37) argued gangs represented the ‘spontaneous effort of boys to cre-
ate a society for themselves where none adequate to their needs exists’. Vigil (2002)
claimed that youths with limited support from the major institutions of socialization,
family and school, instead encounter ‘street socialization’. The age–crime curve, in indi-
cating criminality peaking at the age range of the sample, is consistent with the impor-
tance of peers and youth socialization during this transitional age. Smith and Ecob (2013)
studied 4300 Scottish teenagers and found that having friends who offended was the
most important variable predicting the likelihood of persistent offending. They con-
cluded that social learning, coupled with neighbourhood effects involving the impact of
their low protective efficacy, helped explain particular friendships between delinquent
affiliations which engendered criminality. Sutherland (1947) suggests that criminal
activity becomes more likely if individuals are exposed to other influences that pass on
ideas about law-breaking. In most of this literature there is silence about the perspective
of the offending subject. By building our inductive treatment on voice this article con-
tributes to knowledge of the offender’s perspective.

Research Methodology
The use of life history methodology has the advantage of capturing cultural influence and
creating space for respondents to recollect critical events and experiences (Atkinson,
1998). Our methodological sensibility enables attitudes and beliefs to be fore-grounded
from the perspective of insiders (Carlsson, 2012). Throughout 2012, we visited the halls
of Scotland’s largest young offenders’ institution on multiple occasions to conduct indi-
vidual life history interviews with a sample of white UK-born young men who were
between the ages of 16 and 18 years and who mostly came from socially deprived com-
munities from across Scotland. Access to the prison was granted through the Scottish

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Holligan and Deuchar 5

Prison Service, and ethical approval was additionally gained through our own university.
Enhanced Criminal Record Bureau checks were required as a condition of prison access,
and the research participants were recruited through material advertising the study and
issued to prison personnel.
The design of the flexible interview schedule was underpinned with the following
aim: to explore the social strains experienced by young male offenders and the potential
links between hegemonic forms of masculinity in Scotland, psychosocial dynamics and
the propensity towards violence. Transcribing of the interviews was followed by a two-
stage data analysis process. First, we engaged in a conventional content analysis phase
where we immersed ourselves in the data and conceptual themes and sub-themes were
identified. Thereafter, a directed content analysis phase was conducted where emerging
overarching themes were interpreted in light of the existing literature on social strain,
psychosocial dynamics, masculinity and violence (Hsieh and Shannon, 2005). Thus, our
inductive approach to data analysis was in keeping with the interpretative paradigm
suited to privileging voice. In the following sections, we present the insights emerging
from the two-stage data analysis process in the form of salient extracts from individual
interviews where we accommodate our insights with the existing literature (Hsieh and
Shannon, 2005).

Findings: Life Story Narrative Voices

Theme 1: Early strains, adversity and defiance
Over the last 100 years criminological research has amassed knowledge of how urban
social disorganization and ‘strain’ are significantly associated with criminal violence
(Cohen, 1955; Merton, 1938). Agnew (2006) has drawn upon these seminal insights in
constructing General Strain Theory. According to Agnew, social strains include stressful
life events (poverty, unemployment, separation, death or absence of parents and/or health
problems), neighbourhood problems (vandalism, drug abuse or other forms of crime);
goal blockage (lack of opportunities for employment, failure to achieve monetary suc-
cess or – in young men – masculine status); and challenging relationships with adults
and/or peers. Socially excluded young people may suffer more from a cumulative impact
of strain and respond in a criminal manner (Deuchar, 2013). The following extracts illu-
minate how the research participants navigated their way around the social strains expe-
rienced in early life.

Thomas
I don’t really speak to my dad … I don’t get on with him. I only speak to my mum and step-dad
… My mum and dad did not know I was taking drugs until I was 14. I started at aged 8–9. At
11 I smoked cannabis every day … Me and my pals got a score at weekends. It was better than
billiards at the time … at least there you are doin’ something. Smoking is pure daft just sittin’
there laughing … You’ve nae motivation to dae nothin’ when you’re stoned.

Thomas’s parents appeared to be unaware of the lifestyle of their child during the teen-
age years, and his father was emotionally detached during his childhood. Cullen et al.
(1999) found social support reduces criminogenic strains. Clearly these conventional

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6 Criminology & Criminal Justice 

attachments were missing from Thomas’s early life. Drug involvement with peers rep-
resents a serious risk factor for subsequent delinquency, particularly when it is boys
aged 8–9 who commit substance abuse (Brook et al., 1996). Thomas’s knowledge that
drugs are ‘pure daft’ and his sense of pointless activity implies that alternative, more
conventional pathways may not be perceived as available (Agnew, 2006). His recrea-
tion revolved around achieving ‘a score’ at weekends. This alternative social landscape
formed a part of his alienated and distraught psychosocial subject position. His broken
relationship with his father would be likely to foster sadness and loss, possibly guilt too.
The introduction of a different male, his step-father, later in his life may have com-
pounded a likely pre-existing emotional anger with others leaving him feeling possibly
unloved and neglected by his mother.
Thomas’s recourse to illicit substances may represent rebellion and desire to escape pain-
ful feelings, but it appeared to have ultimately deprived him of his agency. The frequency of
cannabis consumption tells us the degree to which he experienced severe emotional depriva-
tion in his domestic setting. As Gadd and Jefferson (2007) convincingly argue, accounting
for offending lifestyles by males by merely ascribing them to the practice of ‘doing mascu-
linity’ overlooks the role of psychic hurt which is the underlying trauma through which the
social plane of performative masculinity is engaged. Attachment and loss, themes associated
with John Bowlby’s forensic psychiatry contribution to explaining the developmental roots
of violence in early experience, also haunt Matt’s critical reflections.

Matt
My mother’s dead. She died of a heroin overdose … When I was out I used to argue constantly
with my dad. I’ve got a step-mother now … My two grans died when I was 12 … I never spoke
to my mum and dad so I was taking my anger out on other people. I wouldn’t talk to anyone
about it and drinking and that … I never spoke about it until 17 in the jail.

Matt describes the symptoms of trauma that young people may experience following the
death of a parent through suicide, accident or sudden natural death (Brent et al., 2009).
He clearly also suffered father-to-son as well as mother-to-son alienation in the context
of an absence in his life of someone to share his grief. His drinking patterns suggest that
alcohol helped him to manage depression, anxiety and anger (Brent et al., 2009). The
violence he inflicted on his innocent victims may represent his projection of hate onto
other ‘objects’ and such actions may offer him a temporary sense of relief and psychic
well-being. His emotional isolation and uncommunicativeness regarding the traumatic
life experience of the loss of family members suggests not merely a life characterized by
insecurity and uncertainty, but also one of deep isolation given that he appeared not to
have trusted others with his inner pain. Agnew (2006) argues that negative emotions such
as anger and frustration create a pressure to correct a perceived injustice or to satisfy
desires. Further, angry individuals are ‘less likely to consider the long-term consequences
of their behaviour’ (Agnew, 2006: 33). His mother’s death was not merely bound to be a
harrowing loss, but given its cause would have been preceded by years of uncertainty
and loneliness combined with disturbing observations of his mother’s actions as heroin
addiction became obsessive.

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Holligan and Deuchar 7

Jason
My mum and dad split up and I moved back to (X). I stayed with my mum. I’ve a better
relationship with her … I used to be in child jail. I kept going back stoned every day … I was
in care for a while. I hated it. I used to run away every day. I used to go out all the time and
cause trouble. Not a lot of happy times … Dad battered me. He did me in. I can still picture it.
He got chased out of (X) after what he did to his family. If I see him I’d rip his throat out. I’d
kill him. I’d do time for him.

Jason’s anger and willingness to share homicidal feelings aimed at his father reiterates
the chronic attachment difficulties encountered. His going out all the time and making
trouble is perhaps indicative of grievance and an attempt to communicate his depres-
sion. That Jason spent time in care demonstrates the severity of his neglectful treatment
at home and family life. The recurrent theme of getting stoned suggests self-medication
was employed to manage his unstable and confused inner world. Jason’s admission that
he can still ‘picture’ his father attacking him symbolizes the presence of traumatic mem-
ories afflicting him years later. Meltzer et al. (2009) highlight that children who become
exposed to domestic violence become fearful and inhibited and that these symptoms can
persist into adulthood. Jason’s readiness to assault the father who abused him suggests
he is haunted by intense anger, which Agnew (2006) identifies as a dominant social
strain associated with offending. Institutionalization also pervades his narrative: ‘care’
and ‘child jail’ represent deeply unsatisfactory times in his life, narratives found in The
Jack-Roller and particularly its psychosocial re-reading of Stanley’s life-world (Shaw,
1966 [1930]).

Barry
My brother and cousin are in prison for murder. I used to visit my brother in jail when I was 13
and my cousin too. I was interested in what they used to do. They were just violent. My mum’s
been in jail three times, twice for robbery and once attempted murder. One brother is inside now
for GBH [grievous bodily harm]. Cut someone up. It had been attempted murder … My dad
died when I was young. He actually jumped off a bridge. I didn’t know him.

Barry describes his childhood sense of being intrigued by life inside prisons and how fam-
ily members experienced incarceration. And like the other research participants, he reports
personal loss of a traditional care-giver: his father committed suicide. His seemingly une-
motional factually presented descriptions of family members who may have helped cause
him to undergo a negative process of social learning suggest, at first blush, that he accepted
this reality. However, we should hesitate before concluding this simple diagnosis of resil-
ience is the case. Instead the rather sanguine manner of reporting may diagnose an attempt
to place emotional boundaries between those events and his fragile inner world. Violence
and imprisonment dominates his characterization of the life-world of his earlier child-
hood. His detailed factual knowledge of how his father committed suicide may indicate a
need to avoid thinking more deeply about his father’s personal circumstances that led to
his decision, and so these accounts represent subjective attempts to manage loss (Sprinkle,
2006). Indeed, the narrative extracts associated with many of the young offenders do not

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8 Criminology & Criminal Justice 

resonate a media stereotype of a callous Scottish ‘tough guy’. Rather, they symbolize
immense pain, loss and attachment traumas lying behind violence.

Theme 2: Courage ‘under fire’

The next interview extracts demonstrate the resonance of Robinson and Ryder’s (2013)
psychosocial thesis. Each research participant appears to manifest ‘courage under fire’
where the term ‘fire’ denotes destructive factors, violence against them. In Davie’s nar-
rative, the school environment was a place of conflict and threat. It ‘educated’ him to be
violent. His consistent chronicles of a childhood involving fighting and aggression
emerged in our interview.

Davie
In first year of secondary I got kicked out for seven weeks for fighting cause I went to
school with the other scheme that I fought with … I always had a big knife or chopper in my
school bag … every time I went to school. I hit another boy with a chopper and ended up
gettin’ a couple of years in secure. That’s the way it is. I had to attack them before they
attacked me so I chopped him in the head, but if I hadn’t it would be me that got chopped.
That’s the script in X.

Davie describes violence being foisted upon him: ‘I had to attack them before they
attacked me’ – and also that threat was created not through contacting the police, but by
a display of weapons signalling his power and violence capital. Adaptation to his neigh-
bourhood ‘scheme’ entailed learning the social rules – ‘the script’. Behind his encounters
the psychic reality is likely to mean that many participants in this social world shared his
background of attachment issues and trauma given that such violence tended to be highly
localized. Hallsworth (2011: 189) argues that, within the context of deprived and stigma-
tized neighbourhoods, violence is a competence that has to be learned and where ‘street
survival is literally the name of the game’. His remark: ‘that’s the way it is’ denotes at
first blush a deterministic and dogmatic script whose hegemony is evident in the levels
of violence in Scotland, but it can also be interpreted to suggest he lacked the inner psy-
chological resources and necessary attachments to bring change to this context.

Connor
It is things from growing up that’s made me the way I am. Just from being in care and that. I
always thought care was preparing me for when I was 16 and they would send you to jail … In
some places they restrain you a lot. It was done to me and others … Some homes are all right.
You always get some staff who restrain you and not letting you do things you shouldn’t … the
[Children’s] Panel just moved me to 10 different homes and then to foster care. It was shit
living in somebody else’s house.

Connor’s interpretation conjures up a sense of loss of control in a regime whose practices

are hostile to flourishing as a child (Guest, 2012). He also reports an apparent failure of
the system of care to address his mental health needs which it compounded instead
through brutalizing relationships and a plethora of shifts prone to undermine further

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Holligan and Deuchar 9

attachment loss. Young people in care often become susceptible to high levels of social
exclusion (Stein, 2006), and the residential care environment (and school environment)
can present encounters that reinforce offending behaviour (Hayden, 2010) by failing to
probe into a deeper mental health nexus.

Adam
I never went to school … I was all right in primary, but as soon as I hit secondary I was like ‘Na,
fuck it!’ I was in a fight with a teacher one day. He walked past me when he was walking round
the class and when I was sitting there he said I was talking to my pal and the fifth time he came
past he started screaming at me. I stood up and head butted him. He was saying ‘Do your
fucking work ye lazy bastard.’ We both got pulled up about it with the Head. He went in a rage
about getting head butted, but I wasn’t caring.

Like Connor, Adam also encountered hostile professional authorities – this time from
teachers in school whose behaviour was again not conducive to building healthy attach-
ments. Brown and Munn (2008: 227) refer to Bourdieu’s concept of ‘symbolic violence’
in identifying the types of coercion that young people are often exposed to in schools
without physical force. The more caring, child-centred practices of primary schools
might explain why his encounters there were ‘all right’.

Theme 3: Recreational pastimes and ‘doing masculinity’

The next three extracts on the surface conjure up images of the Scottish ‘hard man’
(Boyle, 1977), and the young men’s descriptions about how they used their spare time
resonates with this ‘hegemonic masculinity’ (Connell, 2005). However, their accounts
also produce deeper meanings. How they describe their pastimes may reinforce potential
pathologies associated with personal trauma known to be prevalent in prison demogra-
phy (Bradley, 2009). We found that their popular reading material was about gangs and
criminal violence. ‘Doing masculinity’ through this literary cultural capital may rein-
force the offending related to social and human capital that they gained on the outside
prior to their custodial sentence through gang membership (Pyrooz et al., 2013). Some
recognized recreational substance abuse had played a role in their journeys to incarcera-
tion, as the next two extracts illustrate.

Andy
I smoked ‘green’ (cannabis) every day. At weekends eccies and speed and coke (cocaine) … I
needed green to feel normal … The people I was with all smoked it … I didn’t want to be sitting
there with them stoned out their mind and I’m sitting there straight as a ruler … I got addicted
to it after a while. I regretted it big time. Drugs changed the way I acted towards my family. If
I didn’t get a bit of green I got at them. I went and stole my wee brother’s X-Box … drugs have
fucked my life up.

Conformity to peers was clearly important to Andy. Conforming bonds with peers often
characterize the lives of unemployed working-class males (Abrams, 2013). Sweeting
et al. (2011) found that during the 1990s use of drugs other than cannabis doubled among

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10 Criminology & Criminal Justice 

youths from low income backgrounds living in the west of Scotland. While cannabis has
been reported to have a low association with the prevalence of violence, the other types
of drugs that Andy was taking often carry with them higher predicators of associated
violence (Hughes et al., 2011). Rather than heal relationships, drug consumption of this
kind often undermines personal and social attachments.

Chris
I’ve always hung about with older boys – I was 12 and they were 18. Half of them are in jail or
they’re junkies. Pals have been killed through fighting in gangs. I wish I’d taken the right path
… through taking them drugs I got into prison. Taking drink and all sorts of bottles of wine and
taking blues (valium) and that … I kept arguing with ma’ bird (girlfriend) all the time. I couldn’t
take it out on her so … so I went out and battered other boys.

A seemingly respectful masculinity towards the female is reflected in the decision by

Chris to take his anger out on other males, and not his girlfriend. However, it may have
been short-sighted of him not to recognize that his incarceration might be a more serious
threat to her well-being. Cloward and Ohlin (1960) claim criminal sub-cultures are nur-
tured in deprived neighbourhoods, as role models are more visible there in the form of
older offenders. Excluded young males find acceptance among peers with similar experi-
ences, and affiliations of that type build criminal sub-cultures, deepen cycles of reoffend-
ing and, we believe, intensify their underlying back stories (Klein and Maxson, 2006).
Kenny’s analysis captures dominant themes constitutive of these psychosocial back sto-
ries productive of aggressive violence.

Kenny
When I was about nine years of age my dad passed away … my ma’ [had] mental health
problems n’that … she had depression, and worrying things … so I started goin’ off the rails,
drinkin’ and hangin’ around with older boys, stupid things. And then it led to bigger crimes …
I felt more comfortable [carrying a knife] … If you’ve been stabbed before, man, you’ve got
nae hesitation if other people want to stab you, but the way I see it, I’m gonnae stab them before
they try and stab me … I like doin’ the gym, boxing, football … I done boxing as a wee boy …
it gets your anger oot, and instead of takin’ it oot on other people you can just take it oot on the
bag … [in the gym] I just like to get fitter, you feel better in yourself and start to like your body
more … you feel a lot better and you look a lot fitter and healthier.

As with many of the other young men we met, Kenny’s case is theoretically important in
demonstrating the role of loss and anger in producing extreme violence. While he
appeared to search for social recognition through crime and violence (Agnew, 2006), in
fact his offending lifestyle symbolizes a troubled inner world of object relations. Kupers
(2005: 714) identifies toxic masculinity as the ‘constellation of socially regressive male
traits’ that foster a need for domination of others and a readiness to resort to violence.
Contrary to the thinking of that tradition, the psychosocial analysis dwells on traumatic
stigmatization and betrayal as producing these masculinized effects. Weapon carrying
became a means of protection for Kenny and a means of engaging in ‘toxic’ masculinity,
where no other means of expressing himself as a man seemed to be available to him

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Holligan and Deuchar 11

(Kupers, 2005; McDowell, 2003). It is the physicality of Kenny’s interests in boxing and
weight-lifting which locate him towards a hegemonic type of masculinity, which being
in prison may reinforce.

Discussion
The insights garnered through the adoption of interpretative methodology have the
potential to unsettle received wisdom in criminology about masculinity and violence, by
shifting concern towards a mental health praxis. The language of these research partici-
pants is the language of disrupted attachment and object relations (Klein, 1946; Ryder,
2007). Each case extract resonates with psychosocial themes and illustrates arguably
unsuccessful attempts to address and manage troubled inner worlds. Drug taking, foot-
ball, violent territoriality and loyalty to the peer group provide a degree of temporary
respite from the effects of the young men’s childhoods. Given the secondary punishment
that comes from having a criminal record, it is likely this will affect the availability of
attachments throughout their lifespan – especially those that arise through employment.
Anggard (2005) highlights that ‘boys’ stories’ often focus upon heroism and fighting,
and that the characters and aggressive physical postures of ‘boys’ toys’ are designed for
fighting games. Messerschmidt (1993) claims that to ‘do crime’ is to ‘do masculinity’
(McFarlane, 2013: 321), arguing that ‘young men experience life from a particular posi-
tion in society and differentially construct cultural ideals of hegemonic masculinity’
(Messerschmidt, 1994: 82). The term ‘protest masculinity’ appropriates the psychoana-
lytic nature of ‘masculine protest’: as Tomsen (2008: 95) describes, it refers to ‘a gender
identity that is characteristic of men in marginal social locations with the masculine
claim on power contradicted by economic and social weakness’. That type of masculin-
ity is reflected in hypermasculine aggressive display and anti-social criminal violence.
However, we would argue that an exclusive focus on ‘protest masculinity’ conceals a
destructive mental health landscape. Our data suggest the research participants had been
exposed to a combination of profound social strains (Agnew, 2006).
Experiencing violence vicariously through exposure to domestic violence is a risk
factor for offending and depression: in Scotland domestic abuse is significant, for
instance, during 2009–2010 police recorded 51,926 incidents; 82 per cent were perpe-
trated by men (Scottish Government, 2010). Institutional structures in schools and resi-
dential care homes can stimulate further social exclusion and anger and in that way
produce violence (Harber, 2008; Hayden, 2010; Stein, 2006). The adoption of a puta-
tively detached emotionality suggested in the data is associated with macho identity that
emerged against the backdrop of both the traditional class culture in Scotland’s most
deprived housing estates and also the strains that often characterize young men’s lives
there (Deuchar, 2009, 2012). That type of detachment might also be a technique to man-
age damaged object relations. Many of the young men described leisure interests typical
of ‘Guyland’ (Kimmel, 2008), where traditionally boys learn to become men, and com-
municate this identification. Boxing, football, motorbikes, cars, crime genres, hanging
around on the streets and recreational substance abuse symbolized their public displays
of masculine identity and enabled them to seek ways of coping with troubled inner
worlds. Morgan (1994: 174) describes how certain groups are ‘ideal sites for the

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12 Criminology & Criminal Justice 

construction of abstracted masculinities’. Choices, employment and leisure available to

young men, given the social strains described by them in disadvantaged neighbourhoods,
may strongly engender conformity to an ideal of masculinity which serves to run counter
to their longer-term well-being (Anderson, 1999).
Their exclusions from education also damaged the young men’s mobility and pros-
pects. Houchin (2005) argues that going to prison constitutes a rite of passage for unem-
ployed working-class young males, suggesting prison gives them a status and identity
within a particular culture. It is a symbolic resource helpful for the construction of a
potentially ‘hard man’ violent masculinity, but it is also one likely to confine their futures
severely. The violent adults Boyle (1977) describes in his autobiography held a particular
esteemed status in the community because of their known reputation for fighting and
encounters with criminal justice. However, this sense of status did not appear to have
removed their personal unhappiness associated with childhood adversity and trauma.
Significantly, it was therapeutic interventions in Barlinnie Prison’s innovative Special
Unit that impacted constructively on ameliorating violence in the case of Boyle and the
other criminals he describes. It is widely established that levels of mental ill health in
prison populations are dramatically higher than those outside (Bradley, 2009). Such find-
ings tempt us to argue that social practices designed to build fitness, for example, may be
a proxy for actual psychological therapy.
The football ‘banter’ we heard in the prison halls may symbolize masculinity signals
and cultural membership (Brown, 1996; Deuchar and Holligan, 2010). As the earlier
descriptions by Kenny illustrate, our observations indicated that the prison gym was also
very popular with the prisoners. Bodybuilding develops physical resources which both
officers and prisoners believed ‘told’ potential assailants that an attack on another pris-
oner may be counterproductive. McFarlane’s (2013) study of Raoul Moat, the English
former nightclub bouncer and violent criminal, exemplifies ‘protest masculinity’
(Tomsen, 2008). ‘Working out’ in the gym may also denote a desire to retake power
removed by histories of exclusion (Flannigan, 1994: 239–240; Sykes, 1958). In acknowl-
edging the psychosocial, we believe that weight-lifting and ‘working out’ possibly sup-
ports the management of violent symptoms arising from early trauma.

Conclusion
Our results are consistent with recent reviews of the psychosocial roots of violence in the
context of young offenders (Robinson and Ryder, 2013). Gates (2006: 28) has argued
that masculinity is not a collection of attitudes possessed by males from birth, but rather
a ‘set of expectations that society deems appropriate for a male subject to exhibit’.
Whitehead (2002) argues that the social construction of male culture in western society
has an undercurrent of violence, and often leads young men who are exposed to social
exclusion to develop criminal identities. That argument receives overwhelming support
in Carrington et al.’s (2010) account of ‘frontier masculinity’ which draws some of its
violent authority from a society-wide masculine hegemony. Likewise, apparently ques-
tionably lenient legal responses to violent homicides by men who experienced unwanted
sexual advances by other men indicate the presence of wider mores around masculine
honour (Tomsen and Crofts, 2012).

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Holligan and Deuchar 13

Scourfield and Drakeford (2002: 630) argue that the apparent crisis of masculinity
related to a demise of male-dominated heavy industries means men do not any longer
know what is expected of them, and that this is a condition productive of alienation.
Accordingly, the social construction of masculinity characterized by violent identities
has come even more to the fore as a result (Deuchar, 2013). In view of the literature
presented in this article, it is likely the prison experience will simply intensify the impact
of the hegemonic masculine ideals contributing to the incarceration of young men such
as those we have referred to through our empirical data. We observed that popular culture
in the shape of reading crime books and criminal autobiographies was widespread among
the prisoners, perhaps indicative of role modelling and vicarious participation. In
Scotland, there is an increasing recognition among policy-makers that violence needs to
be seen as a mental health issue, one that education services, as well as justice services,
can – and should – address (Scottish Government, 2008, 2012). Over the last decade, the
Scottish government has focused on the need to find alternative solutions to reduce sig-
nificant levels of reoffending, focusing on a public health approach to tackling crime and
reflecting the World Health Organization’s (WHO) approach to violence prevention.
Thus, primary prevention is aimed at preventing violence from occurring in the first
place; secondary prevention focuses on preventing the escalation of violence towards
serious criminality; and tertiary prevention aims to prevent violent offenders reoffending
(Scottish Government, 2008).
Planned reforms of the prison estate by the British government aimed at emphasizing
rehabilitation through education and work (Ministry of Justice, 2011) rather than retribu-
tive justice if implemented hold the potential to help undo the deleterious impact of
young offenders’ life histories, and reduce significant levels of reoffending (Scottish
Government, 2013). However, early and effective intervention programmes need to be
targeted at young males and children at risk in the context of family settings. Such pri-
mary intervention programmes sensitive to attachment issues, delivered by teachers,
social workers, youth workers and psycho-therapeutic professionals need to be given
priority and research needs to be focused on exploring their impact. A focus merely on
deconstructing stereotypic conceptions of ‘what it means to be a man’ are likely to be
seriously wanting if they neglect to tackle underpinning attachment and loss as drivers of
violence. For some offenders, therefore, primary support delivered through the mental
health praxis is essential to their journey towards rehabilitation.

Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or
not-for-profit sectors.

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Author biographies
Chris Holligan is Professor of Education at the University of the West of Scotland. He has pub-
lished in a range of social science journals. His most recent work focuses on young men’s experi-
ences of imprisonment and assault crime. He is currently investigating prison visiting through the
lens of resilience theories.
Ross Deuchar is Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of the West of
Scotland. He has written numerous articles for peer-reviewed journals on his work on youth crime
and is the author of the recent book, Policing Youth Violence: Transatlantic Connections (2013,
IOE Press).

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