Background to the research

The city of Manchester in the northwest of England has a rich history. The industrial revolution resulted in it becoming the world's first industrialized city. It was the birthplace of the suffragette movement and globally it is recognized for its substantial contributions to culture, sport and music. However, Manchester could be described as a ‘tale of two cities’. For instance, while economic growth in the city in 2021 was the second highest out of 30 major European cities (Avison Young 2022), according to the 2019 Index of Multiple Deprivation, Manchester ranked as the sixth most deprived local authority in England (Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government 2019). Indeed, at the start of 2022, around one in four young people in the city were living in poverty (Greater Manchester Poverty Action 2022). While the relationship between poverty and childhood adversity is complicated, living in persistent poverty remains (at the neighbourhood level) a key predictor of youth offending (Jahanshahi et al 2022).

When it comes to youth offending in Manchester, ‘serious youth violence’ (hereafter referred to as SYV) – defined as ‘any drug, robbery or violence against the person offence that has a gravity score of five of more’ (Home Office 2018) – rose by over 200 per cent between 2016/17 and 2018/19. And in 2018/19, Manchester had the highest rate of SYV offences out of all the youth justice services across England and Wales that were included in the Youth Justice Board's Serious Youth Violence Reference Group. Indeed, a fifth of all youth offences in Manchester during 2018/19 were classed as SYV. This high prevalence of serious violence has been reflected in media headlines over the last few years, and a perusal of Manchester Evening News headlines since the start of 2021 reveals a range of SYV offences. As can be seen in the sample of headlines that follows, in media discourse the term SYV is often used interchangeably with other evocative terms such as knife crime or youth gangs:

• • The violent teenage gang feud being fought with axes and machetes on the streets of Oldham (13 March 2021)

• • Boy, 14, ‘stabbed in stomach and arm’ during horror assault prompting 15 arrests for ‘serious youth violence’ (19 August 2021)