Craig Pinkney is a Criminologist, Urban Youth Specialist, Lecturer at University College Birmingham where he is the Working with Gangs Programme Leader. He is also Director of Real ActionUK, a charitable, outreach organisation based in Birmingham (UK), which specialises in working with disaffected youth. Pinkney is well known for working with some of the cities most challenging young people, potentially high-risk offenders, victims of gang violence and youth who are deemed as hard to reach.

The terms ‘Youth Violence’ and ‘Gang Violence’ after often used interchangeably in cavalier attempt to explain the symptoms we see around youth culture today. This lack of distinction betrays a deeper ignorance of the of nature of these phenomenons which too often result in futile interventions programmes best suited to meet short term political target figures. Craig Pinkney is frank and unambiguous in his assesment.