|
Saw a Manchester woman vox-popped on the news, and one of the things she said was: well, they've been labelled scum, so now they're acting like scum.
There's been a near constant narrative in the last 5-10 years in the tabloid media and within political discourse, of 'feral youth' and 'broken Britain'. I've seen some interesting statistics about youth crime and youths as victims of crime, and some interesting survey results on perceptions of crime. Basically, the fear of youth crime far outweighs its incidence rate in people's perceptions. And by far the most common victims of youth crime, are other young people.
Despite the regular caveats thrown in about this not being 'all' young people. but a minority, the tone of the media and political analysis has actually served to suggest the opposite. And the responses to problems have at times been ridiculously heavy handed. I have to say my own party was responsible for some of that when they were in government. The anti-social behaviour order, known as an 'asbo' are an incredibly blunt instrument in judicial terms, and whilst many are fairly harmless, some have done real social harm.
Changes in policing, and in how children are treated if they end up coming to the attention of the authorities have both helped and hindered. We're more likely to identify those young people in vulnerable situations, but we're also more likely to criminalise them at a much earlier, and in some cases inappropriate stage. Petty nonsense that 20 years ago would have had you being taken back to home and handed to your parents by a policeman, but not actually booked as an incident, now ends up with an official caution, and the tentative beginnings of involvement with the criminal justice system.
We incarcerate more young people than anywhere else in Europe. We place them under constant surveillance. If they gather in groups larger than 3 or 4 the police can and will intervene to disperse them. The police might be doing all sorts of outreach work, and running all manner of football and boxing clubs, but they're also the ones stopping young people and searching them whnen all they're doing is hanging about the street.
Hanging about is something young people like to do. I used to like to do it too. Hanging about in a group and larking around. Now, there's always been a battle of wills at the edges of that activity, with raucous behaviour bringing calls to be quiet, go home, stop being a nuisance, and maybe a cop coming over to tell you off and warn you to behave yourelves. But there used to be a general acceptance that whilst it wasn't desirable as a full time occupation, hanging about was something most kids were going to do and we were pretty much left alone to do it if we didn't get in anyone's way.
Now, the very sight of a group of youngsters raises tension, and even if they aren't actually doing anything wrong there's a good chance they'll be interrupted and possibly dispersed by police. Not the case everywhere, but definately the case in a lot of places.
|