To what extent can heightened concerns over youth behaviour be considered a contemporary phenomenon?

“There is an anti-child spirit loose in these lands” (Hewlett, 1993). To what extent can heightened concerns over youth behaviour be considered a contemporary phenomenon?

            Hewlett (1993: 2) refers to an ‘anti-child spirit’ loose within the consciousness of modern societies this connotes a sense of increased fear and trepidation concerning the behaviours and attitudes of young people. However, we must ask ourselves; for how long has society held this perception of young people and their behaviours, and what has influenced society’s decision to adopt such negative and exclusionary attitudes towards young people? I will examine how there has been a long history of public concerns over youth criminality and how heightened concerns over youth behaviour could be considered a contemporary phenomenon. “The study of youth has gone through many stages reflecting shifts in societal concerns and structures. Commentaries on youth even a decade ago bear little relevance to the concept now” (Jones 2009: 24).

From a left-realist perspective; the fear of crime can be seen as a ‘reflection of social reality, and it should not be the main aim of criminologists and sociologists to focus their analysis on the media’s tendencies to sensationalise and exaggerate crime, but to focus their analysis on the very real issue of a heightened fear of crime’. (Muncie. 2009: 148). However, the left-realist perspective does not fully account for the misconceptions of young people and crime that the media undoubtedly promotes, by ‘exaggerating particularly negative aspects of an individual or group’ (Baldock, J., et al. 2003: 88). This exacerbates the public’s fear of crime and criminality that essentially would not necessarily be having a significant impact upon their everyday lives. ‘It is widely acknowledged that the media focuses on the most serious types of violent and inter-personal offences to gain public interest and increase their readership. According to Marsh (1991) and Reiner, et al, (2000), cited in Greer (2007: 21) ‘the media focuses overwhelmingly on the most serious types of crime and victimisation, by promoting violent and sexual interpersonal offending even though it has been shown that, low-level property offences account for the significant majority of all recorded crime.’ This is ignoring the illusive shaded areas of unreported crimes, which are commonly interpersonal and low level offences, these offences are those that would be originally thought of as a problem by members of society at a natural and proportionate level without a great amount of foreign influence.

Among the vast number of studies conducted regarding crime and criminality, those examining the public’s perceptions of crime are relatively rare in comparison; however the 2009/10 Home Office publication of the British Crime Survey examined the public’s perceptions of national and local crime in a quantitative study. The British Crime Survey in England and Wales 2009/10 included questions that ‘asked respondents if they believed that the crime levels locally and nationally had improved or worsened over the last two years.’ According to the British Crime Survey 2009/10 (2010: 110), ‘until 2004/05 the trends between the perceptions of crime levels nationally and locally fluctuated, but remained fairly consistent between the two measures. It was not until after 2004/05 that the perceived levels of crime at a national and local level began to diverge as the public believed that national crime was rising, whereas crime in their local area seemed to be falling’. It could be said that these trends in the public’s perception of crime can be attributed to the emergence of a deviant, delinquent, dangerous and uncontrollable youth culture that has been highly exaggerated by the media. However, this perceived youth culture is merely a variation of one that began in the 1950’s and has changed over time, along with; music, film, family structures and values, education and political agendas. 

The past 50 years in England and Wales shows us how there have been numerous moral panics regarding the deviant behaviours of young people, and how the public’s perceptions of youth culture has been altered through the emergence of various new trends and economic changes. Looking back only 20 years can provide us with a great deal of understanding of the changes in the perceptions of young people and their behaviour, especially with regards to the political climate of the Conservatives rule under Margaret Thatcher and John Major in the 1980s and 1990s. The conservative Youth Justice Policies in the 80’s and 90’s were full off ‘ambiguities’ and ‘complexities’ and at the time, the professed cure for youth offending was thought to be to “catch more of them, send out a clear message to them that they would get caught and be punished” (Burke. 2008: 77). These very same policies had a ‘twin track’ approach to dealing with youth crime; down one path, ‘those who were deemed to have briefly transgressed, and whose behaviour could be overcome with support, would be given a lesser sentence by the courts’ (Burke. 2008: 77). These sentences would often be community sentences, drug and alcohol treatment orders the highly popular ‘referral order’. However, ‘the more persistent and serious offenders, who are deemed as more of a risk and those who are perceived to be less able to work with support, are given harsher and more punitive sentences. The latter group of offenders were highly ‘over represented among working class youths and were part of non-skilled and unemployable underclass’ (Burke. 2008: 77).

From this political frustration, and the targeting of young people, young people and their behaviours were over represented in the media, which in turn influenced the public’s perceptions of young people as being ‘dangerous’ and highly ‘deviant’. The Home Office British Crime Survey (2010: 111) found that ‘the proportion of people perceiving an increase in national crime was extremely high for offences that are significantly over reported in the media’. For example; around ‘90% of people perceived an increase of violent knife crime, compared to 67% suggesting a rise in burglary and 60% for car theft. “This suggests that perceptions of more common crimes are more likely to be influenced by personal experience, whereas perceptions of lower volume crime but higher profile crime types (particularly violent crimes) may be influenced by the volume and nature of the media coverage they attract.” (Home Office. 2010: 111-112).

It is all well and good to consider relatively recent statistics of youth crime and public opinions. However, we often forget about past youth cultures, the public’s perceptions of them and what similarities those perceptions may or may not have to those of today. According to Roberts (2004: 503) ‘the public’s perceptions of rising youth crime rates have fuelled the more generalised notion that the youths of today are by far, worse than those of previous generations, however this is most likely because they appear to be committing more, or more serious crimes’. Youths today have ‘little or no respect for the Police or any other kind of authority and they often feel that the Criminal Justice Systems, and all professionals within it, are lazy and uncaring.’ (Lyon, et al. 2007, cited in, Smith. 2007: 200). Smith (2007: 201) also notes that ‘within Lyons study of young people in custody between the ages of 15-21, there were many, who supported various intervention methods of the state to reduce future offending by young people. They gave constructive criticism of the current system, especially with regards to; peer mentoring and in efforts to reduce the effects of social exclusion.’  It is therefore apparent that; even amongst those offenders held in custody, there was; reason, tolerance, and acceptance of the moral obligations by authorities to help young people. It could be said that many members of the public would find this revelation to be extremely hard to fathom.

In order to consider whether increased concerns over youth behaviours are, primarily a contemporary phenomenon, we must examine the youth cultures of the past to determine whether the concerns over young people and their behaviours were similar to those of today. During the 1950’s and 1960’s, one main characteristic of sociological studies of crime was that nearly all of them included the concepts of youth crime and deviancy. This is not surprising given the various moral panics that were rife in society at this time, regarding the emergence of new youth cultures, beginning in 1953 with the ‘Teddy Boys’, as well as the developing social category of ‘teenager’ (Tierney. 2007: 74). The concept of ‘emerging youth culture and subcultures can be seen as relatively unique to the post war period of the 1950’s due to its coverage in criminological and sociological journals’ (Fowler. 2007: 3).

The 1960’s saw the transition in youth subculture, from the ‘Teddy Boys’ to the ‘Mods’ and ‘Rockers’. According to Furlong and Cartmel (1997: 60); there were significant ‘changes to middle class youths revolving round; Progressive Rock and Brit Pop styles orientated around music.’ These new trends in youth culture began to create a divide in society, leading to the emergence of the two teenage subcultures of the ‘Mods’ and the ‘Rockers’. These new trends and youth subcultures can be ‘linked to economic changes, and their developments are closely linked to the relative affluence of youth and the way in which they were targeted by the music and fashion industries’ (Hebdige. 1988: 18).

It can therefore be seen that the public’s perceptions of young people have been continuously negative since 1953, with the first conception of a delinquent youth culture seen in the Teddy Boys. There have been many changes and adaptations of youth behaviour itself, which brought with it changing public attitudes. For example; the increase in aggravated street robbery, also known as ‘mugging’, saw a huge rise in the over-representation of young black males in the media. “In the popular imagination robbery has become synonymous with ‘muggings’, which have become a common part of urban life and cause much fear” (Hall. 1978, cited in, Herring. 2008: 524). Young black males were thereafter highly targeted by the police, especially with regards to the use of the Stop and Search procedures, which after excessive and questionable use, strained community and police relations in South East London to breaking point.

The media has been one of the greatest exacerbations of youth crime and criminality for over half a century, the over representation of certain groups within society, the selective processes of news reporting, the dilution of solid facts and theory to cater to their target audiences (infotainment) and the promotion of damaging labels and stereotypes of particular groups of people have all contributed to the growing public concern over the behaviours of young people in society. According to Roberts and Hough (2004: 17), ‘around 75 per cent of the population of England and Wales believed that youth crime was rising, regardless of statistical evidence.’ It was also found that ‘those who perceived this increase in youth crime stated that their primary source of information was in fact the media, and they believed that the media had a significant impact on their beliefs’. This is all the more relevant now as the media has become extremely influential in our Late Modern society, as well as it having the ability to deliver multinational news and concerns.

The public’s concern over the behaviours of the young people within their society can be seen in Roberts and Hough’s (2005) study of ‘public opinion and the sentencing of young offenders’. They examine the public’s reaction to the sentencing of young offenders, as well as exploring a number of other issues, such as; ‘perceptions of the youth courts, attitudes to adult and youth sentencing and public preferences to sentencing young offenders’ (Hough and Roberts. 2005: 212). We live in a punitive society, one that prefers the current ‘out of sight, out of mind’ conditions of criminal sentencing. However, it was found in Robert and Hough’s study that the public’s opinion on the sentencing of young offenders can be drastically changed when they are given even a slight increase of information on specific cases. They found that when researchers do not give the full details of an offence, the public often think of the worst possible scenario and therefore prefer a harsher and more punitive response from the courts. To examine this issue, the study provided the participants with three different descriptions of a particular offence, each with varying detail. “The purpose of the question was to explore relationship between the public expectations of the youth court sentencing practises and public sentencing preferences” (Hough and Roberts. 2005: 218). Their findings show that; ‘the public’s desire to impose punitive sentences, mainly imprisonment, upon young offenders ‘wanes significantly when they are provided with information on the social history, personal mitigating factors and criminal history of the offender’ (Hough and Roberts. 2005: 222). On the other hand, there is considerable evidence to suggest that the punitive element of the public’s response to youth crime is not driven by ‘fear’. For Example, according to Earnscliffe Research and Communications (2000) cited in Roberts (2004: 531) ‘although Canadians appear to be as concerned or more concerned about youth crime than most other countries, their studies show that less than one in ten Canadians admits to being worried about becoming a victim of crime by a young person.’

The public has had concerns over the behaviours of young people in England and Wales for over 50 years, beginning with the emergence of new youth cultures and the development of the new social category of, the ‘teenager’. These new developments and cultures were seen as a huge issue in the 1950’s as they were seen as ‘a challenge to the symbolic order which guaranteed the subordination of young people’ (Hebdige. 1988: 60). There are various other exacerbations of public concern by the media and focused interventions by the state; however all of these exacerbations have existed in the past. The public may perceive the behaviours of young people to be a contemporary concern, as they seem to lack an understanding of past youth cultures and as a result they have adopted many misconceptions of previous, and current, youth cultures. Pearson (1983: 229) describes how society bases its current perceptions of youth behaviours on misconceptions of the past; “The terms and limits within which the problems of lawlessness are understood and acted upon are established within a form of public discourse which has been with us for generations, each succeeding generation remembering the illusive harmony of the past while foreseeing imminent social ruin in the future.”

Hewlett’s statement of an ‘anti-child spirit loose in these lands’ can most certainly be attributed to public discourse today, however it must also be understood that it has also been the case for over one hundred years. The globalisation and increase in influence by the media is a key attribute of our late modern societies, and as a consequence the public are more at risk of being poorly educated on current issues due to the Medias sensationalisation and exaggerations. This however, is simply a variation of existing factors influencing public opinion and attitudes towards young people and their behaviours. I can therefore conclude that the increase in public concern over youth criminality and the behaviours of young people should not be considered a contemporary phenomenon.

References

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