Albanian gangs have a strong grip on prisons across the South Coast – from Dorset and Devon to Hampshire and Sussex – while Liverpool’s historic crime families continue to resist outside criminal networks
The UK is home to some fearsome gangs – many are homegrown criminals and others come from further afield. For example, prisons along the South Coast are now brimming with Albanian inmates, from Dorset and Devon to Hampshire and Sussex, following an influx of Balkan gangs causing havoc in local communities.
Over a third of the non-British prisoners in Essex’s HMP Chelmsford are Albanian, demonstrating their sway in the South East. Albanian drug dealer Valentin Roci, who slipped back into Britain on a dinghy after being deported, found out in August that he is due to be expelled again for peddling cocaine.
His most recent arrest occurred when police stopped a Ford Mondeo with a faulty brake light in Southend, Essex, only to find Roci at the helm without insurance, Daily Mail reports.
Officers searched him and found £1,195 in cash, eight packets of cocaine and one packet of cannabis. Albanians also make up three quarters of the foreign inmates in Durham, a third in Bedfordshire and one in three in Sussex.
Algerian mobile theft gangs now rule the City, preying on affluent employees unwinding with a post-work drink.
This trend means over half of the UK’s prison population from the North African nation are now incarcerated in London. The top four prisons for Algerian inmate numbers are all located in the capital – Wandsworth, Wormwood Scrubs, Thameside and Pentonville.
Earlier this year Algerian thief, Enzo Conticello, swiped a whiskey executive’s Givenchy handbag from a Soho pub – not realising it contained a £2million Fabergé egg and watch.
Conticello was jailed for two years and three months with both the egg and watch remaining missing after the theft.
Approximately 91% of inmates in Liverpool’s HMP Altcourse and HMP Liverpool prisons are British, with a mere 19 hailing from Albania. In fact, the majority of these gang members are Scousers themselves, born and bred into one of the city’s prominent crime families.
An expert told the Mail: “There hasn’t been the opportunity of breaking into the criminal networks in those areas. For instance, the cocaine trade has largely been monopolised by Albanians but the one place they can’t infiltrate is Liverpool because the Liverpool gangs are robust – the same handful of influential families for many years – that’s not going to change.
“Delving into history, you find original migrant groups in Glasgow and Liverpool were Irish,” the crime expert said. “They have become settled and integrated but they also still wield a lot of power and influence over the fraternities in those cities. The groups are so close-knit they don’t let the Albanians gain a foothold.”
Expert witness Gary Carroll added: “Cities further north have a lesser multicultural split when compared to the likes of Birmingham and London. These do include Liverpool, Newcastle.
“And in Scotland above urban street gang level, most upper criminal groups are still for now a white majority, especially in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen.”
Liverpool is divided among several potent and historic gangs, and prison sentences have proven insufficient to prevent bosses from orchestrating their criminal operations from behind bars.
The Lyton Firm, established in the late 1990s, has ascended to become one of Merseyside’s most dreaded criminal organisations. The gangsters, who collaborated with Thomas Cashman – the killer of nine year old Olivia Pratt-Korbel – held sway over Merseyside with an iron fist for approximately two decades.