The Effects of Poverty and Prison on British Muslim Men Who Offend

Abstract

Focusing on the lives of British Muslim young men, this article examines the links between their social and economic relations and their prison experiences, desistance, and identity. In understanding the meanings they place on their prison experiences and their social and economic marginalization, the article theorises about social integration, and their place in British society. An intergenerational shift from the availability of local high-waged, skilled, and secure textile work to low-waged, precarious, service work presented them with a series of problems and opportunities, leading them to reject licit wage labour and embrace illicit entrepreneurial criminality. The article concludes that their social and economic relations drove criminal solutions, not ethnicity.

Keywords

• young Muslim men
• gangs
• prison
• solidarity
• discrimination
• hostility