Mean streets

I just caught up with this excellent article by Catherine Mayer in last month's Time magazine. 'Britons are frightened of their own young,' she notes - we have a propensity 'to recoil in horror' from our children.

On any given Saturday night, in any town center across Britain, it's easy to see why. "It usually starts outside McDonald's — that's the hot spot," explains one London youth. "You might go with one mate, then you get a phone call. Give it an hour, there'll be 10 people there, with nothing to do. Intimidating people is something to do, a way of getting kicks. Like, 'Oh my God, did you see how they ran?'"

As Mayer points out, for a 'significant minority' of British children, unhappiness — and the criminality, excessive drinking and drug-taking and promiscuity that is its expression — really have created a crisis.

Previously:
The street context for youth violence
Collective responsibility for children and young people
Criminalising kids: questions about risk and respect