Young People and Community Safety

Inclusion, Risk, Tolerance and Disorder

Lynda Measor, Peter Squires

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138736641
• eBook ISBN: 9781351735131
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This title was first published in 2000: Effective service provisions for young people are often said to be the key to Community Safety planning yet research frequently shows young people as over-controlled yet under-protected. Taking up this dilemma, this work draws upon a large survey of young people's attitudes towards the opportunities facing them and the communities in which they live. The book explores many aspects of young people's lives that adult society finds so disconcerting or threatening or which agency service providers find so difficult to address. The results of these surveys are contrasted with surveys amongst key agency personnel - social services, education, housing, police and the youth service - developing contrasting perspectives on "young people's needs". These findings are then further contrasted with a survey of adult community reactions, revealing markedly different levels of tolerance and intolerance. Discussion of the research findings is situated within a critical review of existing youth diversion and community safety policy initiatives which, by listening to young people and resisting the "demonization" of the young, attempts to take a fresh look at the contemporary "youth question".

1 Young People and Community Problems

Community Safety Planning and Young People

This research was primarily concerned with some of the activities of young people, and related specifically to their interest in gathering in groups in public spaces. These gatherings, either large 'congregations' or small clusters of adolescents 'hanging about' have, over recent years, generated recurring fears and concerns on the part of local residents. In turn, local residents and community groups have repeatedly complained about the behaviour and demeanour of such young people and have looked, initially to the police and the local authority, to 'deal with' the young people involved. Often however, policing interventions have exacerbated problems and typically did little more than displace the activities complained of for a relatively short period of time. In framing the supposed 'problem' in this fashion, local communities and local agencies created an issue, which runs to the very heart of our contemporary notion of community safety. The research was commissioned by a consortium of local agencies (including the Police, the Health Authority and the local District Council, and involving a steering group comprising members and officers from those agencies and also the Youth Service, and a number of Voluntary Sector agencies). It offered a timely opportunity to investigate whether the emerging arrangements for community safety planning and community problem-solving could develop in ways that were inclusive of younger people rather than simply regarding them as a focal point of community concerns: in other words, as a problem requiring a solution.

In their local neighbourhoods, and adjacent parks and open spaces, groups of adolescents often gather together. This is by no means a recent development. In one form or another, this 'hanging about' activity has been much studied (Corrigan, 1979; Anderson et al., 1994). Although sociological studies have frequently demonstrated that such gathering activity is often fairly benign in character, it does give rise to fears and concerns which appear to undermine the quality of life for other residents. More recently such concerns appear to have grown alongside a certain 'demonisation' of young people (Brown, 1999). Many communities considered that the young people's activities undermined their quality of life. Yet, while many residents (and some through by no means all-agency representatives) seemed especially concerned about the problem of young people in their communities, our project was equally concerned with problems for young people in the areas in which they live. We were concerned to develop a programme of research activities, which investigated and explored the differing facets of this issue. In this sense, our own approach sought to remain faithful to the philosophy underpinning an inclusive 'community safety' perspective by not privileging, from the outset, one definition of the issue. For instance, it was as important for us to discover the factors influencing the development of effective and inclusive agency interventions as it was for us to unearth those which produced ineffective and counter-productive ones. We were as interested in the causes of community tolerance as in the factors prompting community intolerance. Finally, we wanted to know how the young people's gatherings might give rise to delinquent or criminal behaviour as well as the reasons when it did not do so.

The study was commissioned by an organisation named the Coalition for Youth in Brighton and Hove. The Coalition was a multi-agency consortium, which aimed to work in partnership with young people. It adopted a philosophy, which emphasised working with young people to develop services.

Aims of the Research

The research had a number of related aims. We sought, in the first place, to understand more about the behaviour, attitudes and motivations of the young people taking part in the gatherings in the Brighton and Hove areas. Any attempt to understand the configurations of the problems also involved, in our view, a grasp of local residents' concerns about these groups of young people. We also considered that the agencies responsible for current provision of services to young people in these communities had an important perspective to offer, and needed to be included in the research. The research also had a policy development focus. The final aim was to suggest strategies which could help local agencies to intervene and create new consultative arrangements which would help in the community safety planning process. This meant that we sought to explore young people's views of the provision of leisure and other services on offer to them in their localities, which might act as alternatives to street socialising. The policy focus also involved a review of existing research to discover how best to respond both to the needs of the young people themselves, and to the needs of the communities of which they form part.

Defining the Issues

Sociologists have paid attention to the gathering activities and street-socialising of young people – particularly, from the point of view of policing, the delinquent behaviour of the young or the localised community concerns to which they give rise. However, there is relatively little recent empirical research about what young people actually do whilst 'hanging about' or congregating in large groups. We know rather little about the size and scale of the issue, or of the 'fear problems' they generate in different communities in towns and cities across Britain. Similarly, because adults tend to view these activities from the outside, little is known about young people's own reactions to these gatherings or, for instance, the patterns of inclusion, exclusion or victimisation resulting for young people themselves. Having said this, our first task was to examine agencies' reports (in particular, those of the police and the youth service) of gatherings and map the different groupings across the town in order to understand a little more about the social geography of these activities. We took a phenomenological approach to the study and, in our fieldwork, tried to highlight the perspectives through which the young people viewed their own activities. We aimed to understand the meanings it had for them and the place it had in their lives.

We have suggested that one aspect of the research concerned the intolerance of some neighbourhoods. It was important to understand the residents' own perceptions of the problems they identified in relation to young people gathering in groups in their communities, and to document the fear and annoyance they felt in the face of these activities. We recognise that this approach opens up a series of issues, as it moves away from seeing young people as the 'problem' and instead asks questions about the ways in which interaction between young people and older members of the community can create tensions. This research tested out whether fear of crime rather than prevalence and experience of crime was more significant in this context. A wealth of research, including some we have undertaken in Brighton, suggests that the fear of crime may exceed the risk of relevant victimisation for key groups of the population (Squires and Measor, 1996). Our aim was to understand the significance and scale of the gatherings of young people for people in the localities in which they took place. Issues of 'disorder,' 'crime' and community safety were important, but so also was the nature and extent of a community's fears and concerns.

Whilst complaints from residents indicated that there were issues concerning young people throughout Brighton and Hove, this research tested out our suspicion that the precise nature of the problems encountered varied in different communities within the locality. A variety of factors seemed relevant (type of residential community, age of young people involved, services and facilities in the area, types of behaviour complained about and other characteristics of the problem). Three local areas, within Brighton and Hove were eventually selected. These had varying socio-economic characteristics, which illustrated different aspects of the issue. We have given them names to protect their anonymity. They were Elmindean, Fieldham and Hilltop. In addition we collected important information on Ashdean and Ferryfield as, in the course of the research in the summer of 1996, our tracking of the gatherings of the young people revealed that significant numbers of young people from our primary locations, also gathered there on a number of occasions.

In all of the areas considered, young people gathered in their groups. These were often perceived as threatening by the local community. Nevertheless, the different socio-economic composition of the residential communities did appear to make a significant difference in the way the activities of the young people were perceived. Elmindean was an owner occupied relatively prosperous area of the town, Fieldham was a suburban area on the edge of the town. Hilltop was an estate on the edge of the town comprising some significant areas of social deprivation although also some rather more prosperous owner-occupied areas. It is important to note that Hilltop was chosen because it is an area with a well-established community development facility as well as a number of profound community problems. Ashdean is an estate area in the centre of the town, with a high proportion of public housing within it. Ferryfield was a mixed area with new estate housing clustering round an older central area, away from the centre of the town.

Research Methods

Relatively little was known about the scale or shape of the gatherings of young people in Brighton and Hove. The researchers undertook a wide-ranging programme of activities to investigate and explore the differing facets of the issue. The issue was researched employing a wide range of methods. We selected techniques that were appropriate to the sensitivities and abilities of the groups under consideration. We considered that there was a need for both qualitative and quantitative methods in this research, although we primarily employed qualitative methods. As has been indicated already, we were interested in studying three separate groups in this research, young people, community members and statutory and voluntary agencies involved with communities and young people.

Youth

The first research task was to discover the numbers involved in the gatherings of young people, and something about their behaviour, motivations and attitudes. We used unstructured interviews, focus groups and some questionnaire work with different groups. We suspected it was important to know the age and gender of the 'congregation' participants and something about their socio-economic status, their orientation to school and the world of work. We explored the perceptions of young people in a variety of socio-economic contexts and age ranges about their participation in gathering activities. We considered it important as well to collect the views of young people of the same age who did not engage in the gathering activity to understand the factors that 'protect' or perhaps 'block' their participation. Likewise, while we wanted to examine how involvement in gatherings could lead to forms of anti-social deviance on the part of some of the young people, we were keen to discover why it did not do so most of the time. We were particularly anxious to avoid the accusation that has been made against many academics who research young people that they concentrate only on what is 'deviant' behaviour and fail to understand the perspectives and motivations of the mainstream majority of young people.

Schools were one source of young respondents, we conducted research in selected schools serving the local communities chosen for the research. Questionnaires were used in four schools and followed up by interviews and focus groups with selected pupils. Focus groups are usually defined as a group of people who are in a similar situation and have a good deal in common. The researcher provides the group with a number of issues to discuss which are of interest and relevance to them all.

Studying the perspectives of young people in school about their attitudes to gathering in groups, however, did not seem to engage sufficiently closely with the activities of the young people. We also sought to gather the views of young people engaging in the congregations, as they actually happened. This involved visiting gatherings of young people as they occurred in streets, parks, railway stations, beaches and parades of shops. We considered it essential to employ sensitive yet also innovative research methods in order to understand the views that the young people hold. We wanted to overcome the barriers which exist for young people in talking about an area of their own adolescent culture which they know the adult world often disapproves of. We employed younger researchers to conduct this research whose age, appearance and style we hoped rendered them capable of approaching and developing trusting relationships with the younger people.

There are significant barriers to developing access to young people in this situation and of securing the trust of young people. We do not consider we overcame these entirely, but attempted to develop methodological and research design features which minimised them. Successful research conducted into the socialising activities of young people like Morse (1965) makes it clear that participant observation is the most effective strategy with which to research this phenomena. It is the case that better quality data would probably have been gathered had a more ethnographic approach been possible. A longer period of fieldwork might also have improved and deepened our insights into the activities and perceptions of the young people.

The Coalition for Youth emphasised that, 'respect for young people and a recognition of their rights and responsibilities is fundamental.' These principles had important implications for this research. We sought to ensure they guided the way the work was conducted and underpinned the ethical safeguards in place. This research was committed to working with methods which allowed the voices of young people to be heard directly regarding the activities we have called 'gathering' or 'congregating.'

Communities

As we have already noted, members of many local communities had voiced complaints about the behaviour and demeanour of the large groups of young people in their areas. Our objective was to understand more about this problem from their point of view. Interviewers took questionnaires with open-ended questions to residents in the three major localities, Elmindean, Fieldham and Hilltop. Some in-depth interviews were subsequently conducted with people who expressed an interest and a willingness to take part in the research. Interviews with Tenant and Resident Associations, Neighbourhood Watch members, community groups, amenity group members and crime victims were conducted to establish what specifically prompted their complaints, and estimate how serious a problem they considered the activities of the young people to be. Finally it was important to establish what these groups of people saw as solutions.

Statutory and voluntary agencies

In this section of fieldwork we aimed to document the views of relevant statutory authorities and other voluntary sector agencies in the different research localities about the adolescent gatherings and the patterns of interaction between young people and their communities. Interviews were undertaken with police officers-especially the tier of community beat officers working in the three primary research areas. We also undertook interviews with social services personnel, educational welfare officers, youth justice team officers, youth workers covering the primary research areas, housing department officials, school-teachers, health promotion workers and workers in a number of non-statutory youth-related advice agencies across the town. We were concerned to establish the ways in which such 'professionals' evaluated the local services provided for young people and their communities. We used unstructured interviews with key representatives from relevant agencies about their perceptions of the issues and their service delivery and its effectiveness. The focus was on the perspectives they brought concerning the issues for young people and their communities, the research aimed to tap into their knowledge and experiences of the matter.

Phases of the Research

There were clear seasonal variations in the activities of young people and fieldwork was organised in such a way as to reflect this. The summer months saw most congregating activity and much of the data collection with young people took place then.

We recognised that our research brief was a wide-ranging one, partly as a result of its multi-agency nature. It was also complex and demanded a high degree of sensitivity from our researchers, with respect to the views of a range of different people. The study aimed to document the views of young people, local residents and statutory and non-statutory agencies concerning the characteristics of the supposed problem of the young people, their activities and their communities reactions to them. It also sought to suggest strategies which might have a positive impact on the tensions and dilemmas identified.

2 Emerging Issues for Youth and Community Safety Policy

Introduction

In this chapter we aim to identify and analyse existing research literature relevant to the themes of the study. It is clear that a number of academic disciplines have an interest in this area of work, and we have attempted to cover the different approaches that they adopt. We have considered material which originates from a range of sources, academic research literature is of course an important category, but the social problem is perceived as both pressing enough and of sufficient interest to result in publications from both government, and statutory and voluntary agencies.

Organisation of the Literature Search

This literature search covers a number of separate topic areas of both a theoretical and practical, policy-relevant, nature. It is an important precursor to our applied research and we have divided the available work into three sections. In the first section we seek first to define the area we are researching. We look at material relating to youth, and particularly where it relates to young people's experience of group activities. There is inevitably a focus on those young people who are experiencing trouble and disturbance in this stage of the life course. Secondly we consider work relating to community responses to the behaviour of young people, and the interaction between young people and their communities. In this section, work relevant to the establishment of community safety partnerships is addressed. We look at some of the practical strategies that have been attempted in Britain in the effort to intervene and improve the dialogue ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• 1. Young People and Community Problems
• 2. Emerging Issues for Youth and Community Safety Policy
• 3. Community and Ambiguity: Deconstructing the Policy Discourse
• 4. Agency Perspectives on Young People's Gatherings
• 5. Everybody's Talking: Young People's Accounts of the Gatherings
• 6. The School Surveys
• 7. Data and Discourses: Contrasting Images of Youthful Disorder
• 8. Community Reactions: The Residential Surveys
• 9. Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index