Abstract | The majority of studies about gangs come from the ‘global north’ meaning that we know very little about young people’s involvement in organised crime in the ‘global south’, particularly those that live on the streets. By drawing on interviews with 22 street children, 80 interviews with criminal justice practitioners, NGO workers and community members and over three years of participant observation of the Bangladeshi criminal justice system and wider society this paper argues that in order to understand street children’s involvement in Bangladesh’s organised crime groups – the mastaans - it is necessary to expand the boundaries of criminology to include development studies’ concepts of social protection, patron-clientism and child labour. By doing so this paper explores the nature of organised crime groups and the roles that street children play in these criminal enterprises. The paper concludes with a reflection on the need to build a better, and more cohesive collaboration between criminology and development studies to contribute to the advancement of a ‘southern criminology’; to support understanding of young people’s involvement in organised crime on a global scale. |
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