Confessions of a gang member: how one girl became trapped

WHAT makes a girl join a gang, The Observer asked yesterday, in the wake of the Met's new initiative to curb gang violence in London. Lisa [not her real name] told the paper she was drawn into a gang to avoid getting bullied and ended up seeing people get stabbed and battered.

She explained how she acquired her "pass" into the gang four years ago by dating a well-known local gang member. After six months he was asking for favours and the next thing she knew it became her role to cut crack cocaine in his "traphouse" - a base for drug dealers - and to ferry her boyfriend's gun.

It's the girls' job to cut up [the drugs] and the boys' job to deliver," she said. "Occasionally other girls knock on the door and offer blow jobs to the boys and then smoke a rock in the kitchen as an exchange."

She described the different roles within a gang, which include a 'hood slag', who doesn't have a boyfriend but sleeps with all the boys, and the 'beg friend' who "isn't really down with gang violence but wants to be one of the cool kids".

Lisa, who managed to escape gang life two years ago, warns that the Met's initiative to curb gang violence will be harder to fulfill than the police realise. That's because the police want to help young people escape gang life while gang culture makes it increasingly hard to get out.

She said the more embroiled she became in gang life, the more dangerous her life became. She couldn't go to her mother's house or be seen on her own by rival gangs for fear she would be attacked.

"I've seen people get dragged out of their cars and beaten up because they're not meant to be in that area, I've seen people get shanked [stabbed]," said Lisa. "Boys would get a pitbull and train it to bite, they'd batter people, rob them for their watches.

"You don't say anything because you don't want that to be you." ·