Peter Squires

New Labour and the politics of antisocial behaviour

Tackling Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB) has rapidly become a key issue for the government. It was recently given central place in the 2004–2008 Home Office Strategic Plan, the Prime Minister being prompted to describe, in broad ideological terms, his governments ‘crusade’ against the anti-social within a ‘new consensus’ on criminal justice. Yet ‘ antisocial behaviour’ is often treated as if it were something new; a unique aspect of late modernity. Typically neglected are both the history of the concept itself and alternative understandings of the young, often disadvantaged, people who are the most frequent recipients of the ‘anti-social’ label. The article develops a critical analysis of the political and ideological significance of the problematization of ASB and the criminalization of social policy associated with enforcement driven ASB strategies.

‘They’re still children and entitled to be children': problematising the institutionalised mistrust of marginalised youth in Britain

Developing Kellys perspicacious deliberations on mistrust, surveillance and regulation in this journal (Journal of Youth Studies vol. 6, no. 2 (2003), pp. 165–180), this paper illustrates the pernicious consequences of the British Governments ‘Community Safety’ discourses, as effected through the imposition of Acceptable Behaviour Contracts, upon marginalised young people and their families. By drawing upon and presenting extracts from our recent qualitative research with a sample of young people and their families subject to these contracts, the vacuous nature of contemporary constructs of marginalised youth as ‘dangerous Other’ is laid bare as unintelligible and deleterious to fostering any sense of inclusion and social justice in their lives.

Civilian firearm injury and death in England and Wales

Introduction There is currently concern in the UK that injuries and deaths caused by firearms are increasing. This is supported by small local studies but not by wider research to inform targeted prevention programmes. Methods A retrospective analysis was performed of firearm injuries from the Trauma Audit and Research Network (TARN) database (1998–2007), the largest national registry of serious injuries. Data were analysed to determine temporal trends in the prevalence of firearm injuries and demographic characteristics of firearm victims. The UK Office of National Statistics provided data on all deaths by firearms as TARN does not record prehospital deaths. Results Of 91 232 cases in the TARN database, 487 (0.53%) were due to firearm injury. There were 435 men and 52 women of median age 30 years. The median New Injury Severity Score in men was 18 with a mortality of 7.4%, compared with 15.5 and 3.8% for women. The highest rate of firearm injuries as a proportion of all injuries was submitted from London (1.4%), with the South East (0.23%) submitting the lowest rate. 90.5% resided in urban areas, 78% presented outside ‘normal’ hours and 90% were alleged assaults. As a proportion of all injuries submitted, a small upward trend in the prevalence of deaths due to firearms was demonstrated over the study period. An increase in homicides since 2000 was also noted with an increasingly younger population being involved. In contrast, data from the Office of National Statistics showed that the greatest number of deaths were self-inflicted rather than homicides (984 vs 527), with Wales having the highest number of such deaths and predominantly involving older men. Conclusions Deaths and serious injuries caused by firearms remain rare in the civilian population of England and Wales, although an upward trend can be described. Victims of assault and homicide are predominantly young men living in urban areas and the population involved is getting younger. However, of all deaths, self-inflicted wounds are nearly twice as common as assaults, affecting predominantly older men living in more rural areas.

COPS AND CUSTOMERS: CONSUMERISM AND THE DEMAND FOR POLICE SERVICES. IS THE CUSTOMER ALWAYS RIGHT?

Research has drawn attention to the incorporation of localised political elites and a new ‘urban officer class’ into police consultation processes. The resulting corporatist‐style bodies mediate a range of political and economic tensions in the development of local policing priorities. Most research on this issue has focussed upon formal police consultation processes (PCCs) and multi‐agency initiatives. Here, however, we examine the extent to which a rather wider section of ‘the community’ shares this essentially ‘local corporatist’ approach to police policy making. More specifically, in the light of an increasing application of consumerist approaches to public service management, the article attempts to assess the extent to which public attitudes to policing display an increasingly individual and consumerist ideology. The article discusses some possible implications of this.

Broken society, anti-social contracts, failing state: rethinking youth marginality

An analysis of injustice and social exclusion impacting upon the lives of young people in the spheres of employment, social and public policy and the criminal justice system.

Young People and Community Safety: Inclusion, Risk, Tolerance and Disorder : Inclusion, Risk, Tolerance and Disorder

Young people and community problems emerging issues for youth and community safety policy community and ambiguity - deconstructing the policy discourse agency perspectives on young peoples gatherings everybodys talking - young peoples accounts of the gatherings the school surveys data and discourses - contrasting images of youthful disorder community reactions - the residential surveys.

Hunting and Shooting: The Ambiguities of ‘Country Sports’

Beginning with a discussion of recent cases of gratuitous ‘trophy hunting’, this chapter considers live animal shooting as a ‘country sport’ and the attitudes and practices associated with it. It explores the cultural and historical changes which shaping the development of shooting and changing sensibilities towards it. The discussion challenges some of the justifications advanced for the ‘sport shooting’ of live animals, especially arguments implying that animal abuse can engender a distinctive sense of respect or ‘communion’ with the natural world. The chapter then explores the practice of intensive grouse shooting and the collateral harms caused to local environments, including the illegal persecution of indigenous predators. The chapter concludes by questioning the ethical, traditional and ‘environmental’ credentials of sports shooting.

Anti-Social Behaviour: Marginality, Intolerance and the ‘Usual Suspects’

In most contemporary accounts, and especially in anti-social behaviour (ASB) performance management publications, anti-social behaviour is often regarded as if it were a discrete and recognizable class of behaviours occurring in society. It is frequently seen as a particular attribute of the poorest and youngest: the self-evidently ‘undisciplined’ or ‘anti-social’. In this chapter, however, an alternative perspective will be developed. This view sees the emergence of anti-social behaviour as part of a wider project of ‘cultural governance’ where support for the dissemination of broadly framed anti-social behaviour management powers, prompting and recycling a growing intolerance of the discomforting consequences of rising inequality marginality poverty and dependency is indicative of a significant shift in the purposes of social policy. Rather than engage in the consciously political and resource- intensive process of addressing the causes of this debilitating inequality and marginality, anti-social behaviour encourages the view that this low, stigmatized or symbolically troubling behaviour is, by itself, the primary cause of the problems experienced by those associated with perpetrating the behaviour. Thus far, and expressed this way, however, there might seem to be little more to this observation than the familiar response of a critical criminologist to the criminalization of working-class street activities.

The unacceptable (?) face of elite gun culture

An article criticising government failure to increase firearms licensing charges in England and Wales in order to establish a more robust system of oversight for private gun ownership while recognising a consistent pattern of misuse of licensed firearms.

Insecure lives: questioning ‘The Precariat’

In this edition of cjm we examine precarious living in modern conditions. Guy Standings work on The Precariat provides a reference point in relation to this theme. Standings book is subtitled ‘the new dangerous class’: this immediately pitches the idea into a maelstrom of inter-disciplinary concerns. Historically, notions of the ‘dangerous class’ take us straight back to the seething combinations of criminality, pauperism and vice in the nineteenth century and the worlds that modernity, democracy and the welfare state had presumed to have left behind. Culturally, the idea brings to mind the supposedly demoralised ‘underclass’; their feckless offspring, the needy and the risky, of welfare citizenship and an indulgent nanny state. Sociologically, this dangerous class poses questions about inequalities, divisions, social exclusion and the forms of advanced marginality becoming characteristic of late modernity. Politically, the idea raises the spectre of a revolutionary vanguard, of militant resistance, pro...