The Challenge of Youth Violence

The murder of Garry Newlove in 2007 caused public outrage but the problem of youth violence continues unchallenged. At the heart of the problem is the failure of government to accept responsibility for controlling a small group of dangerous and out of control adolescents who cause mayhem in urban areas across Britain. Ordinary citizens should not feel responsible for confronting violent young people but government inaction makes it inevitable that some will try. This is the key issue. Government must be made to take responsibility for controlling dangerous youths and protecting its citizens.

The Labour government's strategies for tackling youth crime have combined 'soft' welfare approaches with 'tough' ones which focus on changing the behaviour of offenders. The guiding principles have been the prevention of offending and a reduction in the number of juvenile offenders in custody. However, government policy with regard to violent young offenders becomes apparent in the everyday practices of over-worked and under-resourced courts and youth offending teams where difficult decisions are made. Statistics show that only two per cent of youths guilty of a violent offence are sent to custody - the rest are dealt with by cautions or community punishments.

Current strategies for dealing with youth violence are not having any measurable impact on the level of street violence in urban areas. Furthermore, there are concerns that residential care provision has been distorted by privatisation and this reduces the possibility of good outcomes for young offenders taken into the care system.

Young people are very impressionable. They want to look cool and are easily influenced by their peers. It is not uncommon for young people to feel at war against society and to seek out like-minded peers and some will be drawn into a group where violent anti-social behaviour is part of the culture. In urban areas serious youth violence is an increasing problem and the age of offenders is getting younger. The number of gangs is rising and young people feel under pressure to join gangs. Obviously, strong measures are needed to protect young people from peer pressure that encourages violence.

Concerns about youth violence have been around for decades but thirty years ago the fighting that went on between youths was usually confined to the peer group. Nowadays, anyone can be attacked - innocent people who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time or residents who feel responsible for tackling anti-social behaviour. Those in positions of power may protest about the dangers of 'criminalising' young people but lawlessness on the streets should not be tolerated. Whilst projects to prevent offending have created many new jobs for youth workers and academics the wider public is not convinced that this rapid expansion of community-based approaches is the only answer to youth violence.

The causes of violence start in the home and then continue into school. However, if the school fails to deal effectively with the problems troublemakers reach their teens knowing how to work the system and feeling immune from disciplinary measures. They get into trouble at home, at school and in the community. Alienated from parents they become increasingly identified with peers and defiantly anti-authority. While under the influence of alcohol or drugs, groups of youths are more likely to become violent and the sheer size of the peer group makes them believe they are untouchable.

The behaviour of some violent offenders has shocked many people. The intimidating look, the threatening manner, the animal-like ferocity of the attack, the indifference to killing, and the laughter and joking afterwards suggest a sickness that is hard to comprehend. There is also public concern about 'feral' children who roam the streets and whose anti-social behaviour is a blight on communities. In all parts of the country there are reports of young people vandalising their own playing areas, attacking fire-fighters and paramedics and committing arson. Some of these activities seem particularly perverse and provocative.

The important point emerging from this is that if anti-social behaviour is not contained the peer group will produce increasingly provocative and challenging behaviour and this is precisely what is happening now. The failure of controls produces a situation where the frustration and despair of local people grows alongside the anger and rage of young people on the streets and highly charged emotions may trigger dangerous incidents where an innocent person suffers a violent attack.

There is clearly a difference between the normal adolescent group and the abnormality of the dangerously out of control group of adolescents. The normal group may be irritatingly anti-social but their behaviour can be understood as part of the normal developmental stage of testing boundaries and asserting independence. In contrast, the abnormal group shows a paranoid response to outsiders, seeks out violent confrontation and mindlessly attacks others as though this were simply a game. It is important to understand the difference between the two - and to recognize the harmful effect that a violent gang has on peers and not allow our emotions to get in the way of taking appropriate action. Interventions from the state must include an awareness of its responsibility to society as a whole and not only to the violent young person.

Any debate about youth violence tends to polarise people - between young and old and between the liberal middle class and the decent working class. At the centre of debate is the belief that some violent behaviour is triggered by intense feelings of rage and anger that is very resistant to professional intervention. Youth workers may be good at relating to young people but their contract-based approach assumes offenders can respond positively to appropriate controls, given enough support. However, very disturbed adolescents are often compulsively anti-social and driven by emotions that may be very resistant to change, even from the most skilled teachers and social workers. There will always be some young people who resist all attempts to engage them in any meaningful contract-based work and have to be excluded from schools.

State provision for school-age offenders is either community-based education with a range of support services or custody provided by the Youth Justice Service and there is virtually nothing between the two. Many offenders are looked-after children living either with foster carers and or in children's homes, which are open establishments. The closing down of the semi-secure provision of remand centres and community homes with education (CHEs) during the 1980's took away a crucial part of provision for young offenders combining care and control. The lack of good quality residential provision today often means that young offenders remain in the family, or move into a succession of foster families, even though it is obvious that they have rejected family life and could benefit from the stability offered by a residential setting.

The rush to close down residential provision in the 1980's was politically driven (public concern about scandals in residential establishments supported these cost-saving measures). The policy change represented a significant shift in thinking about children's needs. Professionals who had previously seen residential provision as a positive experience for some children were over-ruled. A new orthodoxy emerged which was strongly opposed to any form of residential care. This meant that this option virtually disappeared even though research has shown that some young people in care might prefer residential over foster care.

Any attempt to compare the relative merits of foster care and residential care for offenders is fraught with difficulties as information from research is complicated. Research from the Dartington Unit shows that 'residential treatment for offending is best viewed as neither inherently good nor bad but as whether it is appropriate.' Thirty years ago residential school/care was seen as providing support to families under stress but today the lack of suitable residential provision for offenders means this option is rarely considered. For some young people residential care is better than foster care in meeting their complex needs and in providing the firm and consistent parenting that has been lacking at home.

The current situation presents the Youth Court with serious dilemmas. Young people appearing in court may need something tougher than community punishment but less tough than prison - but the appropriate type of care provision may not exist. Magistrates are expected to identify high risk cases - such as vicious and persistent offenders who threaten communities - and, if appropriate, impose secure accommodation orders (based on the use of accommodation for restricting liberty under section 25 of the Children Act 1989) despite the difficulties for local authorities in finding suitable placements. However, there is often no alternative to prison for these offenders and this presents courts with serious dilemmas.

Young people in custody are either placed in secure children's homes or secure training centres. Secure children's homes run by local authorities are provided to accommodate male and female young people, aged between 10 and 18, and may be regarded as an appropriate form of custody for this age group. However, only a tiny minority of offenders are placed in these establishments. Six years ago there were 31 secure children's homes in England and Wales but now there are only 17. Consequently, the majority of offenders under 18 given custodial sentences are placed in institutions provided by the Prison Service which are more concerned with containment than with care and rehabilitation.

A society that values children should invest in effective alternatives to prison. However, when all other interventions fail the youth justice system must still be willing to imprison the most serious offenders. Failure to punish a vicious or persistent offender is not only harmful in itself, but it also undermines efforts to rehabilitate other offenders by sending the message that society is not serious about upholding its own standards.

The setting up of the Youth Justice Board ten years ago created a clearer focus on the punishment and rehabilitation of offenders. It offered the possibility that rehabilitation could begin once appropriate controls were in place. However, professionals cannot change the personality or attitudes of an offender without setting clear rules of behaviour, and such standards cannot be maintained without society showing that it means what it says. There must be a clear message that violence is not tolerated and may even result in imprisonment. Without clear standards the task of parents, teachers and social workers is inevitably much harder.

Disillusionment with government seems to be at its most intense with regard to the problem of youth crime. While preventive programmes are important they do nothing to tackle the current problems of street violence. People of all classes now think that the deterioration into lawlessness in some urban areas has now gained such momentum that only a radical change in government policy will halt it.

Hilary Searing