What's going on with UK petty crime?

May 18, 2009 4:23 AM

Can someone explain what the deal is with petty crimes/ASBOs in the UK to a somewhat baffled American expat?

I've been living in Wallasey in the UK for the past ~2 months

There's a large group of mostly young people, say 12-25, who seem to be social nuisances and prone to petty crime. I frequently encounter them drinking, fighting with each other, shouting insults at by-passers, taking off running in a way that suggests they just committed a crime, trying to start fights with others, and just generally making asses of themselves in public. I was "happy slapped" by some teenagers (nothing serious, but still infuriating) and know a girl who was victim of a somewhat more serious assault. Both these attacks were committed by 15-16 year-olds in broad daylight

The locals all use the term "scalleys" for this type of people. It doesn't necessarily mean someone who'd be violent/prone to crime, but implies that it's likely. No one local I ask about it seems to have much of an explanation as to why things are like this, except they think it's been getting worse (but I suppose everyone always thinks that)

I've lived in middle-class areas in the US before, and never experienced this sort of large, continuous presence of people acting like this, nor the locals' acceptance of it as a fact of life

Anyone have insights to help me understand this phenomena from a societal perspective? What is it about the UK's culture/social structure/government policies that have resulted in this young, petty-criminal underclass?

posted by crayz to Society & Culture (40 answers total)

Not a UKian, but you might want to read up on Chavs.
posted by dunkadunc at 4:25 AM on May 18, 2009

I don't think it's UK specific at all; I'm an American who lives in E1 (Whitechapel) and we've got more than our share of street yobs. Drinking, scrumming with each other, eying by passers, it all sounds familiar.

However I lived in The East Village in New York from the early 80's to the late 90's, and it was pretty much the same scene, just different people and different details.

Regardless, I'd suggest its the same dynamic: bored people, almost invariably young, nothing better to do than hang on a street corner and meet up with each other.

Its not a UK thing; its a bored kids thing.
posted by Mutant at 4:33 AM on May 18, 2009

Hi. Some people would say things like 'During the Thatcher goverment of the 80's the traditional working class values were destroyed.' 'People were housed in council estates which led to an all against all mentality instead of community' 'The 80s led to a materialistic culture which drives crime'

I don't know what the truth of it is...IMO seems to have something to do with parents who are just incapable of bringing up kids. Either have a selfish child mind themself, or have been through such f'd up life circumstances that they just don't have the tools to manage.

You must have seen something similar in the US, no?
posted by Not Supplied at 4:35 AM on May 18, 2009

Response by poster: The only places I've seen something similar in the US are very impoverished inner-city areas, many of which have been much worse than this. I guess what's surprised me here is how this is occurring in a middle class area outside a large city. Seems more like a fact of life than "stay away from the bad part of town"
posted by crayz at 4:39 AM on May 18, 2009

Best answer: To be honest I've seen the same in the States: You get bored, probably unemployed teenagers who don't have an apartment of their own and Mom and Dad certainly aren't going to tolerate them boozing and smoking stuff with friends at home, so they get shoved out to the street corner or park. This also brings them into contact with older, sketchier elements who don't really help the situation- homeless junkies, dealers, sketchy old transient dudes and so on.
posted by dunkadunc at 4:41 AM on May 18, 2009

Not a UKian, but you might want to read up on Chavs A Clockwork Orange which saw this coming well before the Thatcher era.
posted by Pollomacho at 4:44 AM on May 18, 2009 [3 favorites]

The driving culture in the US probably factors into why you didn't see it as much.
posted by fleacircus at 5:14 AM on May 18, 2009 [2 favorites]

They don't have jobs. Given the UK's welfare policies, they've never needed to have jobs.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 5:31 AM on May 18, 2009 [4 favorites]

Best answer: I lived in Manchester for three years and saw the same thing. They seem to have a particular hatred of glass bus shelters, which are regularly smashed. Chavs, oiks, yobs, scallies, whatever you want to call them, they stand around in groups, with shaved heads and track suits, often holding their balls inside their pants (no, I don't know why), drinking, spitting on the street and half-heartedly trying to restrain their pit bulls. Delightful. I was knocked in the face while cycling past a group of three of these delightful young gentlemen.
I'm not sure what causes it, but it's certainly more prevalent in Manchester than elsewhere that I've lived. I now live in Kingston Ontario and even though there are the usual rednecks and losers that you find everywhere, this confrontational, nihilistic group seems to be totally absent. I think it has something to do with the culture of entitlement that has developed in the UK. They (the oiks, not all the British) want everything and give nothing. Their futures are bleak beyond description, and somewhere in the depths of their half developed reptilian brains they know it, so they take out their not-very-repressed rage on each other and on random strangers.
I would add though that the track suit and shaved head have become very fashionable in the UK, especially amongst the "underclass", and not everyone who looks like this is a complete asshole. You sometimes have the disorienting experience of being approached by someone who looks like a chav menace, only to be politely asked if you have the time.
I have to disagree with fleacircus about the driving culture in the US. I've never seen a place as choked with cars as Manchester.
In case it wasn't clear, I'm pretty happy I don't live there anymore.
posted by crazylegs at 5:54 AM on May 18, 2009 [6 favorites]

Mutant and dunkadunc are right - it's the same as in the US. The reason it appears to occur outside of "impoverished inner-city areas" is that minorities and lower classes are less ghettoised in the UK. There are plenty of places where you won't find young people behaving like this and accepted as a fact of life but in most built-up areas the poorer areas easily overflow. In the US, antisocial behaviour like this is more confined to poorer areas just as the poor themselves are more confined.
posted by turkeyphant at 6:04 AM on May 18, 2009

they've never needed to have jobs

Yes, right. Because nobody needs a purpose if life; nobody needs a better standard of living than they can get for £50 a week. And providing no state help is the best way to encourage the poor to better themselves...

Some of these kids come from families that haven't seen a real job in three generations. When you've been brought up to believe there's no future for you, then why bother with an education or a shitty job that barely pays? The ones who get out of this cycle of dependence on the state are the ones who do so through luck, through determination in the face of overwhelming peer pressure, or by the intervention of extremely dedicated groups of people who would rather try to make a difference than shit on people who've had more than enough of that kind of thing already.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 6:09 AM on May 18, 2009 [3 favorites]

I think it's a mix of dunkadunc and Cool Papa Bell's comments. No job and nothing better to do within what I've found to be a bigger drinking culture. A quick google for Asbo culture also shows there's a huge debate on their usage exacerbating the problem.

Also, you said that you're in a middle class town. Are you sure it's not a working class town? I've found "middle class" to be a lot more well off here than in the States. Although, that might not matter. I live in Guildford which is considered very posh and I've seen the occasional chav hanging out by underpasses.
posted by like_neon at 6:12 AM on May 18, 2009 [1 favorite]

The driving culture in the US probably factors into why you didn't see it as much.

This. For some kids, it's harder to congregate because they live in spread out/rural areas. For other kids, transportation makes it possible to engage in behaviors like street racing, vandalism, and fighting each other in secluded areas rather than engaging in street assault. The reason that chav-ish behavior is seen in poor urban areas is because the close proximity of dwellings makes it possible for kids to congregate. This simply can't happen in rural or suburban poor neighborhoods.
posted by muddgirl at 6:14 AM on May 18, 2009 [1 favorite]

This simply can't happen in rural or suburban poor neighborhoods.

To clarify, I'm speaking about the United States here.
posted by muddgirl at 6:15 AM on May 18, 2009

i grew up in the u.k. in the mid-to-late 1980s in an area probably ripe for this kind of behavior i.e. lower middle class housing "estate" where aesthetics were pretty non existent and opportunities for entertainment sparse--classic thatcherist. *however*, this baseless, depressing tendency of yoof to aggressively invade other's space wasn't apparent. that's my *perception*. i think a lot of this is down to perception.

i would also agree that in the u.s. (where i now live) this behavior is more contained and tends not to spill out. e.g., i lived on a street in the u.s. where anti-social behavior was evident, but it was very static and 2 blocks away on a far nicer street, these people would never ever congregate. it was like a different world. these stark differences don't exist in such close proximity in the u.k..

i also agree with the comment above about driving culture--public transport plays a large part in this. bus shelters are where a lot of this takes place, and have now become the sole purview of working class youth.

sorry for the lack of explanations; these are more observances.
posted by iboxifoo at 6:19 AM on May 18, 2009

God point from muddgirl. Consider that many of the pretty crimes involving suburban youths happen in the shopping malls where they tend to congregate. I grew up in suburban upstate New York (outside Albany) and the shopping malls installed ever more draconian security measures every year to attempt to counteract the crime problems they were hosting in these otherwise sleepy burbs.
posted by CRM114 at 6:19 AM on May 18, 2009

I think muddgirl makes a good point. Council house estates make it very easy for groups of kids with a similar social backgrounds to hang out. These are probably the closest thing to the "ghettos" in the states but they are not urban.

I actually didn't recognize council estates for a while. They can even be just a group of streets within a larger "nice" town and the transition can be quite subtle. My fiance and I would take walks in his Scottish hometown and we'd deliberately take the long way to avoid certain streets that to my foreign eye looked the same as any other.
posted by like_neon at 6:24 AM on May 18, 2009

CRM114 reminds me of another experience I had in Scotland. I was in his hometown mall and used the toilets and noticed that the lights were UV lights instead of normal lights.

He asked me if I noticed them and I said, "Yeah... what's that about? Is it so they can see pee better to clean it?"

"Uhh not quite."

Turns out it's so people who use the mall toilets to shoot up can't find their veins. Sad. :(
posted by like_neon at 6:27 AM on May 18, 2009

This is getting chatfilterish, but there is an immense amount of anger within these kids- anger born out of being totally left behind by society. All pretty obvious - coming from families that hasn't had a full time breadwinner for generations, and surrounded by similar families - little education, alcoholism, abuse, pregnancy- no wonder they hit out. It certainly isn't a UK phenomenon, though the head shaved tracksuited uniform probably is. Here in Melbourne it's tracksuits too- no ball grabbing yet- not in public at least.
posted by mattoxic at 6:33 AM on May 18, 2009

The Evil Poor

I can remember this sort of thing existing for years though... has it got worse in recent years? Well maybe. Yeah there is a lot less mutual respect that there used to be (and yes I blame Thatcher). People are far more likely to turn their backs on minor abuse/criminal behavior than they used to - due to fear of escalation / retaliation with knives, guns etc, being prosecuted themselves, called a pedo etc etc

One of the big differences I can see from when I was a youth (and roamed the streets on occasion) is the much greater availability of drugs and especially cheap alcohol.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:33 AM on May 18, 2009 [2 favorites]

Brit here, now living in the US. What mutant said, it's bored aggressive kids.

Bored kids from a higher socio-economic level tend to have more entertainment available to them, be it Scouts, pony club and sporting activities. Bored kids in deprived neighbourhoods don't tend to have these available, at most they have a park where it's not maintained and the swing set has already been vandalised. So they hang out on the streets and you may be unlucky enough to be the entertainment.

muddgirl makes a good point that there's a lot more mixing of different income levels in a given geographic area in the smaller towns. The divisions are a lot more marked in the bigger cities such as Birmingham and Manchester. I grew up in a small midlands market town, and you can see it getting markedly rougher when I go back and visit my parents. The hard drinking culture seems to be more tolerated now than when I was that age in the late 80's.

I won't bother going the Daily Mail/Express route and blame video games/movies/rap. It's a lack of involved parenting, under funded schools and resources to show these kids there's options available to them.
posted by arcticseal at 6:39 AM on May 18, 2009 [1 favorite]

For a whimsical fictional perspective on this social phenomenon, you might watch the TV series Shameless.
posted by nicwolff at 6:57 AM on May 18, 2009

Another factor that might make this more common in the UK - and in NYC, as Mutant recalls - than in the US is that law-abiding middle-class citizens in those places are not permitted to keep or bear arms.
posted by nicwolff at 7:05 AM on May 18, 2009

than in the US is that law-abiding middle-class citizens in those places are not permitted to keep or bear arms.

I don't see how this would make a difference. There is a large amount of teenage hoodlam-ism in Compton and Oakland, CA. Those teenage hoodlams sometimes have guns.
posted by muddgirl at 7:11 AM on May 18, 2009

Compton and Oakland have gang wars and drive-bys, not happy-slapping. The question is, basically, why lower class youths in the UK can harass their middle class neighbors with impunity, and one part of the answer may be that in a society where guns are illegal, if there isn't a cop in sight, a small group of teenagers is physically insuperable.

Note that I'm a pro-gun-control NYCer just making an obvious point. Happy-slapping may be an acceptable price to pay for gun control.
posted by nicwolff at 7:42 AM on May 18, 2009

Compton and Oakland have gang wars and drive-bys, not happy-slapping.

That is sort of a stereotype, and not typical of the sort of behavior witnessed in teenagers in those areas. Yes, drive-bys do occur, but usually I saw the same sort of corner-congregation and harassment of pedestrians that crayz describes.
posted by muddgirl at 7:55 AM on May 18, 2009

The driving culture in the US probably factors into why you didn't see it as much.

Yeah, where I live in the US teenagers don't harass people walking down the street because nobody walks down the street. The troublemakers drive around smashing mailboxes and shooting BBs/paintballs at road signs instead.
posted by Daily Alice at 8:25 AM on May 18, 2009

Compton and Oakland have gang wars and drive-bys, not happy-slapping.

I live in what is at least though of as a "bad" part of an inner city in Pittsburgh and I've seldom seen that kind of group behavior from either black or white youths. We have some real crime, shootings, drugs, robberies, car theft, etc but not that kind of sort of random belligerence. It probably has to do with the fact that youths mostly have cars and that because of depopulation, we have lots of cheap real-estate and even poor people often live in pretty big houses. Decrepit houses but big.
posted by octothorpe at 8:39 AM on May 18, 2009

Bored kids "play" with whatever they've got handy. The kids down here in Whitechapel have bikes, mobile phones, and dawgs, and sometimes they entertain themselves with just that stuff but other times they'll "play" with bypassers. Or parked cars. Or open doors. Depends upon what they've got access to, and for them what the perceived (meaning immediate) downside is.

Now by contrast I grew up in the country, with only about 40 people in our small, incorporated township. We were reared around guns, and from an early age saw our parents using shotguns and rifles for hunting. You see, growing up poor it was far cheaper to buy a box of shells and eat for the winter than to pay for groceries each week.

In any case, as soon as we got our first gun (typically BB gun but 22 calibres were also popular), most of us would play with it, meaning we'd go shoot up an abandoned car, or house, hornets nest, whatever you came across out in the woods.

But sometimes we'd shoot at each other. I got shot several times before the age of ten. Mostly BBs but rock salt in my ass once (from low gauge shotgun) which seriously makes you hop!

So UK kids seem (based upon actually talking to some of them, which I've found pretty easy to do with an American accent, they always ask me about New York) more bored than anything else. Bored kids entertain themselves, and I don't think they always turn out that badly.

I didn't turn too bad, even though by the age of 12 or so I got bored with shooting stuff and learned that by taking the powder out of shells I could make a bomb. But that bang was pricey and we were poor, so I learned to make black powder and then my bombs got bigger. The biggest I ever made was about the size of Pepsi can. A Pepsi can full of black powder, I was a serious menace growing up not only to my neighbours but also myself. I am so so totally fortunate to still have all my fingers and eyes, really, some of my bombs were powerful.
posted by Mutant at 8:39 AM on May 18, 2009 [1 favorite]

Anyone have insights to help me understand this phenomena from a societal perspective? What is it about the UK's culture/social structure/government policies that have resulted in this young, petty-criminal underclass?

You should read some of "Theodore Dalrymple"'s work, whether or not you ultimately agree with it. ("The British, never fond of children, have lost all knowledge or intuition about how to raise them; as a consequence, they now fear them, perhaps the most terrible augury possible for a society.") He blames something like Irresponsible-Parenting-Abetted-by-Liberal-Nonjudgmentalism, but I'll let someone else try to summarize his views. As a prison doctor and psychiatrist, recently retired, he has written extensively about UK culture, social structure, and government policies. For example.
posted by Dave 9 at 8:43 AM on May 18, 2009 [1 favorite]

Bored kids "play" with whatever they've got handy.

Excellent point, Mutant! I didn't grow up in New England, but I hear from friends that it was somewhat common for teenagers in suburbs there to throw snowballs (made with a rock at the center) at cars driving by, at pedestrians, and at other teenagers. To me, that seems somewhat equivalent to "happy slapping".
posted by muddgirl at 8:56 AM on May 18, 2009

It's accepted as a fact of life because it is one: large groups of bored teenagers will get up to mischief, of varying degrees of seriousness, and I have experienced this on four continents now.

The reasons behind it in the UK are too complex to be explained by some of the sweeping generalisations upthread (though Britain's alcohol culture does play a part the phenomenon existed well before alcopops, and I think others would be surprised at the socio-economic background of some "chavs").

There are a few things that explain why you're seeing it more in the UK than you did in the US. Mostly it's down to Britain being one of the world's more densely-populated countries. Rich areas nestle beside poor ones, and often there's only a couple of streets between them. I have a hostel for the homeless as my neighbour on the right, and £800,000 penthouses to the left. (This is one of the reasons the class system remains so strong: it helps define you when you're forced to live cramped together on a tiny island).

Unlike in the US, the UK has never had anything comparable to white flight, and land has always been at far too great a premium for the sorts of class-delineated suburbs, gated communities and physical exclusion that allow the American middle classes to hide from the poor, if they can afford it.

That said, it might be worth considering if you've moved into a rougher area than you thought. Just as class distinctions can be invisible to an outsider, so can the subtle cues that tell you you're in a rough area. If your rent seemed cheap, that's probably why.
posted by fightorflight at 9:44 AM on May 18, 2009 [2 favorites]

There are plenty of bored, aggressive teenagers in the United States. But in "middle class" areas, you won't see this because it simply wouldn't be tolerated. For better or worse (depending on whether you are "middle class" or not, I suppose) we have lots of police, they are aggressive, and they carry weapons. Where I grew up, loitering laws were enforced with enthusiasm.

FWIW, you'll find no shortage of angry, unemployed youth on the street in poor neighborhoods in the US.
posted by cj_ at 9:45 AM on May 18, 2009 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Let me suggest a perhaps controversial explanation.

Correctly or not, in the US you expect it to be the brothahs in da 'hood doing this kind of thing. The stereotype is so pervasive that it's practically subconcious -- no-one is terribly surprised by ASBO from nigga ganstas.

Similarly in continental Europe, the ghettos are mainly populated North Africans or the Middle Easterners.

In the UK, the chavs are white as cotton sheets. Thus transplants to the UK (especially Americans) do a bit of a double-take when white kids are down-out and behaving badly.
posted by randomstriker at 10:59 AM on May 18, 2009 [1 favorite]

Do bear in mind that I'm not suggesting that the OPP is racist, nor that any of these stereotypes are justified. Just suggesting that we are accustomed to certain trends or perceptions in our own society and might not know how to interpret it when things are different in a different society.
posted by randomstriker at 11:42 AM on May 18, 2009

Unlike in the US, the UK has never had anything comparable to white flight, and land has always been at far too great a premium for the sorts of class-delineated suburbs, gated communities and physical exclusion that allow the American middle classes to hide from the poor, if they can afford it.

Gated communities are now something like 8% of housing in the US, and that includes anything from FEMA housing for poor people (which is gated), to extremely affluent enclaves like 17 Mile Drive, and everything in between. It's certainly been a trend since the 90's for middle class people to move into gated communities, but that doesn't make it the norm for most people. "Physical exclusion" is not an accurate characterization of most people's middle class experiences in the US, and it's certainly not what most Americans have grown up with, despite the rapid increase in building those sorts of places since the turn of the last century.

The people who are bringing up car culture are much closer to the reality of the difference, IMO. Even poor teenagers who live in suburbs in America usually know someone with a car, so they don't hang around street corners so much as go off other places to mess around. In the cities you do see kids hanging about- but as someone who lives in Downtown Oakland, groups of adolescent boys tend to harass each other, rather than passers-by.
posted by oneirodynia at 5:49 PM on May 18, 2009

A couple thoughts from a Yank. A real (44-year-old) good friend lives in England, in the town where he grew up. We've talked about this a good bit. Some of it no doubt is the money/options/future stuff.

My friend has spoken of his miscreant teen years, but it was more playing music really loud with his friends, gooning around on an old, cheap dirtbike, some days of drinking a lot (more being loud and silly than happy-slapping, breaking things, etc). It wasn't stuff that cost a ton of money, but definitely more than zero or close to zero. He's said his doings mighta been more like what you're talking about if he didn't have a 50-quid dirtbike, a 20-quid guitar... and some hope for the future/a sense that ending up in jail could mess up his future.

My friend's never been a hardliner, gets that kids will be kids, but he's about ready for a Guiliani-style crackdown on the relatively minor crimes against property/people. Again, he doesn't think life for teens should be like life in the Marines, but does think things have gone too far, will likely get worse if the authorities don't get a better handle on it.

As you might know, this is an ongoing topic of debate/discussion. Hug a hoodie or tolerate no crap.

A sense that increasing alcohol consumpion plays a huge role. I lived there for two years in the mid-80s, near Oxford, and saw my share of drunk people, though it seems like I saw a whole lot more while visiting in the last couple years.

My friend, who has been going to the same pubs for almost 30 years, says the amount of drinking, number of people who get wasted has gone up dramatically.

I trust that his memory is not faulty when he relates that he and his friends, other people would often enough get after it when they were in their late-teens, early-20s, but rarely to the point that he sees so often these days. Not nearly as many young people passing out, throwing up, getting in fights, etc., as there are these days.

He also notes that it seems to have taken root, is more common among beyond their early-20s... which makes sense. If your chances in life are poor, you go down the ABSO/drinking road and... if chances are better, serious drinking problems taking root are problematical to say the least.
posted by ambient2 at 2:56 AM on May 19, 2009

I've read about happy slapping type incidents in the states within the past few months---although that term was not used.
posted by brujita at 2:59 AM on May 19, 2009

Where I live, ASBOs have been handed out to "kids" who were terrorizing a Pakistani cornershop owner, for example, banning them from going into the shop. And also my neighbours got several for partying in a flat til 5AM. With a full band.
posted by yoHighness at 6:58 AM on May 19, 2009

I don't know why I typed FEMA above when I meant FHA (Federal Housing Authority). I thought I better clear that up since they are not the same thing.
posted by oneirodynia at 3:18 PM on May 22, 2009