This paper is an exploration of the ideas and practices informing the current debate about gangs in the UK. Although some would argue UK “youth gangs’” are not a new phenomenon (Pearson 1985, Hallsworth 2013), others report rapid global and local developments that are giving rise to worrying new changes in group youth offending, (Pitts 2008, Hagedorn2009). Cultural criminology explores the existential motivations of crime and turns on it’s head the notion of crime as a mundane
instrumental act (Young 2003). Crime is seen as expressive rather than instrumental (Hayward 2003) and the risks taken are seen as a propellant rather than an inhibitor. The originality of Hallsworth’s (2013) analysis of street culture in apparent opposition to Pitt’s gang structure, provides an epistemological challenge for the UK Gangs Thesis. Hallsworth as an ironic theorist provides a bold critique of Pitt’s work putting forward an alternative understanding of street culture, which at first glance offers an avant guarde challenge to the ontology, epistemology, and methodology of the UK 28 Gang Thesis. However, it can be argued that questions still remain as to the theoretical and philosophical separation of these two positions and the possibility to combine these approaches in developing a cultural realism of gangs?