Gangs are back on the agenda with the government's star American adviser arriving for a tour of Britain's inner cities and an international conference. But just how bad is the problem in the UK?
Some people think of "gangs" in terms of a murky underworld, populated by gangland bosses, family-run crime syndicates and mafias who specialise in the trafficking of people and drugs and other forms of high-level organised crime.
But for many Britons, a "gang" means a group of teenagers involved in petty crime, or graduating to selling drugs, stealing phones and even stabbing other young people from rival postcodes.
Gang has become a catch-all word.
In the wake of the recent riots in England, Prime Minister David Cameron promised to wage an "all out war" against gangs.
The riots prompted tough talking from the authorities and a great deal of introspection by the media and the general public about the state of British society.
The government reacted. Culprits were fast-tracked through the courts, a taskforce was set up and Bill Bratton, the former New York and Los Angeles police chief, was appointed as an adviser.
Bratton is back in Britain this week and is due to attend an international gangs conference organised by the Home Office on Thursday.
A major obstacle standing in the way of tackling gangs is an extraordinary lack of information.
The Home Office has no figures on the number of gangs, or indeed the level of gang-related crime, in Britain. There are official statistics on murder rates and the number of people admitted to hospital with knife wounds, but any gang element does not have to be recorded.
There are other reasons why reliable data is thin on the ground. A significant proportion of gang-related crime and violence is never reported and young criminals do not identify themselves as gang members when they appear in court.
The Home Office cannot even provide a definition of what a gang is. And this lack of an agreed definition is another reason why collecting data is so difficult.
Where does a gang begin and a group of mates dressed in sportswear end?
John Heale, author of One Blood, a study of British street gangs, defines a gang as such: "It's a group of about 10 or more individuals who have a name and who claim an allegiance to a geographic area but the reality is that it's a lot more messy."
He says five years ago, youths may have merely associated themselves with being members of a group or representing their estate but the idea of a gang has been amplified in young people's minds and those of the public.
"Every group is perceived to be a gang when in fact they are just kids hanging around street corners because they have nothing to do," says Heale.
Although the available data is patchy, it can be used alongside localised studies, academic research and anecdotal evidence to provide some insight into the extent and make-up of Britain's gangs.
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