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Jarrod Gilbert (2013) Patched: The History of Gangs in New Zealand University of Auckland Press
Jarrod Gilbert's seminal history of the gangs of New Zealand provides gang scholars with an invaluable resource. Jarrod has expertly interwoven the emergence of gang culture within parallel international and national historical and economic developments. The book comprises eleven chapters, including the conclusion, and discusses the history of gangs chronologically from the Second World War over the following six decades. Emphasis is made of what Jarrod terms 'pivot points' or crucial moments in the formation or concretisation of gangs in New Zealand.
I appreciate, as will any others who have undertaken gang-related research, Jarrod's provision of a framework to conceptualise 'gangs'. This framework, while I am sure it is not the final model in the area, is significant in that there is a dire need to combat the media and the criminal justice system's representation of all gangs as a homogeneous group. The provision of such frameworks is invaluable as it hopefully forces readers to reassess the stereotypes and conceptions with which they have been presented in media, policy and political discourse.
Next, the text is especially useful as a teaching tool: providing an empirically-informed resource for scholars and policy-makers on gang culture and exposing them to the theorising around the continued and cyclical deviantisation of a silenced marginalised...