Dr Jade Levell - Boys, Domestic Abuse and Gang Involvement: Eliciting Men’s Stories Through Music

What impact does domestic abuse have on boys when growing up? Why is it that so many young men who are ‘on-road’ or involved in gangs have experienced domestic abuse in the home as children? If the boundaries between being a ‘perpetrator’ and a ‘victim’ of violence are not always as clear cut as we might think, what implications does this have for trying to prevent violence from happening in the first place? We explore these challenging questions and more with Dr Jade Levell, who has recently written a book on her research entitled ‘Boys, Childhood Domestic Abuse and Gang Involvement: Violence at Home, Violence On-Road’, published by Bristol University Press in June 2022.

Jade is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Gender Violence at the University of Bristol, and is part of the Gender and Violence Research Centre there. Prior to her research career she was based for over ten years in organisations working to end gender-based violence, including a refuge for women and children, a rape crisis centre, and other projects supporting survivors.

Find out more about Jade’s work at https://jadelevell.com. Follow her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JadeLevell, and LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-jade-levell-88099830/. Buy her book: https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/boys-childhood-domestic-abuse-and-gang-involvement

We cover the following topics in the episode: 

• The impacts domestic abuse has on boys (01:17 - 02:56)
• What childhood domestic abuse and gang involvement have to do with each other (02:56 - 11:33)
• What Raewyn Connell’s concept of ‘protest masculinity’ means and how it was relevant in Jade’s research (11:33 - 14:56)
• Why and how Jade uses ‘music elicitation’ in her work (14:56 - 18:41)
• Why when talking about serious youth violence, we rarely think about gender (18:41 - 21:37)
• The implications of Jade’s research for policy and practice on preventing violence (21:37 - 24:44)
• The ‘cycle of violence’ theory (24:44 - 28:00)
• The police killing of Chris Kaba and the impacts of stereotypes about young Black men (28:00 - 32:12)
• Why Jade decided to carry out research on domestic abuse and boys and men in the first place (32:12 - 36:54)
• Researching these issues as a parent (36:54 - 40:16)
• What effective work with domestic abuse perpetrators looks like (40:16 - 49:25)
• Three songs which help to tell Jade’s own life story (49:25 - 53:13)

Further reading:

• Piece by Jade for Transforming Society, ‘Invisible child victims of DVA become hyper-visible in gangs’ - https://www.transformingsociety.co.uk/2022/06/13/invisible-child-victims-of-dva-become-hyper-visible-in-gangs/
• Summary of policy recommendations from Jade’s book - https://www.transformingsociety.co.uk/2022/06/13/policy-briefing-boys-childhood-domestic-abuse-and-gang-involvement/
• Read more about Jade’s music elicitation method in the journal Sociological Review - https://thesociologicalreview.org/magazine/november-2021/methods-and-methodology/music-elicitation/
• Read more about Jade’s research on work with perpetrators of domestic abuse in the Journal of Gender-Based Violence - https://doi.org/10.1332/239868021X16425822261273
• ‘Protests across UK over killing of unarmed black man Chris Kaba’ (The Guardian) - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/sep/17/protest-uk-met-police-killing-black-chris-kaba
• ‘A thousand young, black men removed from Met gang violence prediction database’ (The Guardian - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/03/a-thousand-young-black-men-removed-from-met-gang-violence-prediction-database

For domestic abuse support in the UK, contact the National Helpline: https://www.nationaldahelpline.org.uk, the Men’s Advice Line: https://mensadviceline.org.uk, or the Respect Phoneline if you’re concerned about your own behaviour: https://respectphoneline.org.uk