Glasgow and West Scotland's career criminals have long been implicated in predatory crimes such as robbery, theft, and burglary. Reminiscing about his early years in law enforcement, former police officer David said: “Old time [criminals] carried out robbery. [Of] course, banks getting robbed. More, before I really started [or] joined the force. [Hold-ups] when wages were getting delivered to works was common.” However, countless (auto)biographical accounts written by, for, or about local hardmen and ‘gangsters’ describe a shift in emphasis in the criminal underworld in recent decades (see Boyle, 1977; Ferris, 2005; Findlay, 2012; Johnson, 2017), whereby robbers gradually turned their attention away from robbing places (for example banks, post offices, and jewellery stores) to robbing people, specifically fellow offenders.

This change began with the implementation of ‘situational crime prevention’ measures in Britain in the 1970s (Felson and Clarke, 1998; Clarke, 2012). Target hardening techniques and technological innovations like closed-circuit television (CCTV) and time-delay locks made robbing banks infinitely more difficult (Pitts, 2008). Goldsmith, a convicted armed robber, long retired, told us, “It is harder to do a bank over. It can be done, but not in the same way as once before. You see the Hatton crew [a reference to the 2015 Hatton Garden underground safe deposit burglary] … it is more theft.”

Criminals needed a new venture, Goldsmith explained, and in the 1980s a new supply route linking Afghanistan to Iran presented an opportunity. Afghani and Pakistani heroin that flowed through Europe suddenly became more available, and affordable. This sudden supply glut saw heroin prices drop in Scotland and drug addiction boom. Drugs are an inelastic product, meaning (a) demand remains unchanged even when the price changes, and (b) criminals can make big money servicing an addicted clientele. The drugs ‘business’ quickly became more predictable and profitable than the ad hoc ‘blags’ of a yesterday (Hobbs, 1988; Pitts, 2008; see also, O’Mahoney and Ellis, 2009).

Gone were the days of a getaway car, shotguns, and a crew, Goldsmith explained, and with them went the ‘criminal code’: