How we learned to hate our kids
One of the great ironies of our nominally centre-left government has been the extent to which it has sought to encroach on civil liberties. Arguably, it stems from the fear that the right-wing Conservative opposition, given any sign of Labour weakness, would decry that the government was ‘softening up’ on crime and safety issues which traditionally poll high in the electorate’s concerns. Thus, one of the government’s most popular pieces of legislation in recent years has been the ASBO, or ‘Anti-Social Behaviour Order’. Introduced in 1999 as part of the Crime and Disorder Act, the ASBO acts as a catch-all punishment for minor offences that don’t legally rate as crimes, but fall under the malleable description of ‘anti-social’. They generally involve the offender being banned from a particular area, or from doing a particular activity, for a minimum of two years. A person issued with an ASBO must conform to the particular rules that it specifies or risk arrest and possible prosecution.
All well and good, and no doubt a source of relief to the middle classes who diligently believe what the tabloids tell them about crime waves and terrifying “yobbos” terrorising their neighbourhoods. Yet in only a couple of years the humble ASBO has become a virtual weapon in a battle being waged, principally, against the nation’s disaffected and increasingly stigmatised youth.
ASBOs are now regularly handed out for the most innocuous of ‘offences’, and increasingly, activities that are not illegal or even offensive. Swearing, playing football, being sarcastic; these are some of the ‘crimes’ committed for which ASBOs have been issued. One young man in Teeside has been barred from wearing hats. A seventeen-year old is banned from his own street, forcing him to access his house via a side alley.
The legislation was supposedly introduced as a means of re-assuring a sceptical public that the civil disobedience perpetrated by young people was under control. Instead, it has succeeded in victimising our youth to a ridiculous degree. Instead of calming the situation, ASBOs have promoted fear and loathing of teenagers wearing hoodie tops and caps, with the result that anyone wearing such items are stigmatised as potential criminals. My grandmother regularly sneers at the kids round her neighbourhood who walk past her house, and describes them as “troublemakers” and “scum”; yet when asked what egregious crimes they had committed, she was unable to come up with a clear example, saying only that they sometimes “make a bit of noise”. Illogical fears such as these – which are well-stoked by the tabloid media - are common. They are beginning to coalesce into more concerted action. The huge Bluewater shopping centre, located just outside London, recently issued a ban which restricts anybody wearing baseball caps and / or hoodies from entering the premises. Other such centres are considering similar policies.
Yet while we live in perpetual fear of the offspring of others, at the same time in Britain we have become increasingly overprotective or our own. A handful of high-profile child murder cases over the past five years have seeped into the national consciousness and convinced people that children are inherently at risk from paedophiles and murderers. Thus, parents now rarely let their children outside the house, preferring to keep them on a sedentary but safe diet of television and video-games. Mindful of the tragic tale of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman – ten-year old friends, abducted and murdered in their small village by the school caretaker – parents are loathe to let their children out to play, and ferry them from school to after-school activity to home in air-conditioned cars.
How to reconcile these two reactions towards childhood? As we convince ourselves more and more that the world is a place of perpetual danger, a bunker mentality prevails, and we seek to protect our own whilst disregarding those outside our immediate circle. It can be seen in microcosm in our treatment of children, and in macrocosm in our attitude towards other cultures – particularly the Islamic world, which (we are perennially told) we are experiencing a ‘clash of cultures’ with. If only we could mature enough to see that we all share the same hopes, fears, concerns and aspirations as those whom we would demonise as the enemy.
All well and good, and no doubt a source of relief to the middle classes who diligently believe what the tabloids tell them about crime waves and terrifying “yobbos” terrorising their neighbourhoods. Yet in only a couple of years the humble ASBO has become a virtual weapon in a battle being waged, principally, against the nation’s disaffected and increasingly stigmatised youth.
ASBOs are now regularly handed out for the most innocuous of ‘offences’, and increasingly, activities that are not illegal or even offensive. Swearing, playing football, being sarcastic; these are some of the ‘crimes’ committed for which ASBOs have been issued. One young man in Teeside has been barred from wearing hats. A seventeen-year old is banned from his own street, forcing him to access his house via a side alley.
The legislation was supposedly introduced as a means of re-assuring a sceptical public that the civil disobedience perpetrated by young people was under control. Instead, it has succeeded in victimising our youth to a ridiculous degree. Instead of calming the situation, ASBOs have promoted fear and loathing of teenagers wearing hoodie tops and caps, with the result that anyone wearing such items are stigmatised as potential criminals. My grandmother regularly sneers at the kids round her neighbourhood who walk past her house, and describes them as “troublemakers” and “scum”; yet when asked what egregious crimes they had committed, she was unable to come up with a clear example, saying only that they sometimes “make a bit of noise”. Illogical fears such as these – which are well-stoked by the tabloid media - are common. They are beginning to coalesce into more concerted action. The huge Bluewater shopping centre, located just outside London, recently issued a ban which restricts anybody wearing baseball caps and / or hoodies from entering the premises. Other such centres are considering similar policies.
Yet while we live in perpetual fear of the offspring of others, at the same time in Britain we have become increasingly overprotective or our own. A handful of high-profile child murder cases over the past five years have seeped into the national consciousness and convinced people that children are inherently at risk from paedophiles and murderers. Thus, parents now rarely let their children outside the house, preferring to keep them on a sedentary but safe diet of television and video-games. Mindful of the tragic tale of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman – ten-year old friends, abducted and murdered in their small village by the school caretaker – parents are loathe to let their children out to play, and ferry them from school to after-school activity to home in air-conditioned cars.
How to reconcile these two reactions towards childhood? As we convince ourselves more and more that the world is a place of perpetual danger, a bunker mentality prevails, and we seek to protect our own whilst disregarding those outside our immediate circle. It can be seen in microcosm in our treatment of children, and in macrocosm in our attitude towards other cultures – particularly the Islamic world, which (we are perennially told) we are experiencing a ‘clash of cultures’ with. If only we could mature enough to see that we all share the same hopes, fears, concerns and aspirations as those whom we would demonise as the enemy.
posted by DN at 6:59 PM
3 Comments:
Dear Mr Nicholas, I fear you are guilty of a minor (but not illegal) offence yourself. That of gross generalisation. Usually your posts are commendable for their quest for factual accuracy but the best you can do for a quote in this essay is your gran, who certainly isnt representative of my views nor the views of my grandmother. Please back up your theories with some sort of survey or poll before you speculate on public opinion. Sure some peoples perceptions of crime have changed but so has the nature of the society in which we live. Sure the tabloids stoke fear, when haven't they? It seems you have fallen into the trap of tarring sections of society with the same brush which I thought was the very thing you set out to denounce.
Len.
Thanks for your comments. You certainly have a point about generalisation, although I would argue that my intention was partly to illustrate how the current climate of fear surrounding today's youth has seeped into the general consciousness of the nation, hence my crass (and perhaps naive) example.
Hasn't the fear of the Youth been around since the 50s? I really dont think its any worse than previous generations. I think that the middle class public have always been scared of the young men they percieve as being criminals. In previous generations the solution was dealt with by things like conscription and corporal punishment and these gave the public the sense that something was being done. now the moaning middle class have lost faith in the ability of the institutions to keep a hold on disadvantaged young men, and the press stoke the fires...
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