Against Youth Violence: A Social Harm Perspective

Front Cover
Half Title
Series
Against Youth Violence: A Social Harm Perspective
Copyright information
Table of contents
Series Editors’ Preface
List of Figures, Tables and Boxes
About the Authors
Preface and Acknowledgements
Introduction: Against Youth Violence and Against ‘Youth Violence’
	A harmful society
	Why are we ‘against youth violence’?
		Against youth violence as a reality: we want there to be less violence between young people
		Against the connotations of ‘youth violence’ as a descriptive label: we want there to be less misconception about young people and violence
		Against the sensationalization and industrialization of ‘youth violence’: we want there to be less exploitation of young people’s suffering
	Structure and style
1 The Nature and Scale of Interpersonal Violence in Britain
	Introduction
	Sources of data: strengths and limitations
		Police recorded crime
		Hospital admissions data
		Crime Survey for England and Wales
	Interpersonal violence in England and Wales
	Interpersonal violence in London
	Conclusion
2 Developing an Approach to Social Harm
	Introduction
	Why not simply focus on ‘crime’ in children and young people’s lives?
	From crime to social harm
	Our approach to social harm
		Human flourishing
			Human flourishing as needs fulfilment
			Human flourishing as subjective well-being
		Summarizing our approach to social harm
		Distinguishing ‘social harm’ from (simply) ‘harm’
		Structural harm and interpersonal harm
		Direct and inherent harmfulness
		Limitations and drawbacks of our approach
	Conclusion
3 The Importance of Mattering in Young People’s Lives
	Introduction
	The importance of mattering
		Black Lives Matter
		Why is the psycho-social concept of mattering helpful?
		What does it mean to matter?
		‘The terrifying abyss of insignificance’ and the problem of over-entitlement: the experience of not mattering and the desire to matter ‘too much’
		The cultural and emotional complexity of mattering
		The sense of mattering within individual self-narratives
	An insecure society? Social changes and global processes affecting young people’s sense of mattering in Britain today
	Conclusion
4 Social Harm and Mattering in Young People’s Lives
	Introduction
	Poverty and inequality
		The extent and nature of poverty and inequality affecting young people in Britain today
		The effects of poverty and inequality on children and young people’s sense of mattering
	Declining welfare support: under-resourced communities and social care systems
	Schools and education
		Provision for those with additional educational needs
		School exclusions
		Recruitment, training and support for teachers: the ‘teacher gap’
		Students’ and parents’ relationships with school staff
		Inequalities of harm and mattering in the education system
	Unemployment and ‘marginal work’
	Housing and homelessness
	Harm and subjectivity, structure and agency
	Relative prevalence of social harms
	Conclusion
5 Social Harm, Mattering and Violence
	Introduction
	The functions of violence and the factors most commonly associated with it
		The functions of physical interpersonal violence
		Factors which have the strongest association with violence
	Social harm, the struggle to matter and the propensity to engage in violence
		The psychology of mattering and violence
			Violent escapes from insignificance, agentic impotence, shame and humiliation
			Potency, domination and recognition in the phenomenology of violence
		The psycho-social connections between social harm, mattering and violence
			‘In search of respect’ and in search of mattering: violence in structurally belittled communities
			Class and gender, political economy and patriarchy
			The ‘singular quest for significance’ and the role of violence within complex individual self-narratives
			Nihilistic violence
		Peer groups, gangs and ‘violent street worlds’: structural harm and violent assertions of mattering among groups of young people
			Peer groups, gangs, structural harm and violence
			Questioning the importance of gangs, stressing the role of ‘violent street worlds’
			Applying the concepts of mattering and social harm to gang-related accounts of violence between young people
	Conclusion
6 Harmful Responses to ‘Youth Violence’
	Introduction
	A perennial mythology of youth and violence?
	Demonize them
		Why and how is demonization harmful to young people?
		Connotations of ‘youth’ and ‘youth violence’
		Victorian demonologies of youth, crime and violence
			Victorian conceptions of responsibility and vulnerability, wickedness and weakness
			The boundaries of Englishness: colonial ideas of savages abroad and at home
			Pathological families and the pathology of poverty
			Dangerous youth subcultures and gangs inculcating criminal habits
			Victorian demonologies in an era of Victorian inequality
		Today’s perils: ‘Black youth culture’, gangs, knives and ‘troubled families’
			Some contemporary drivers of demonization
	Punish and control them
		Child and youth imprisonment
		A succession of court orders and injunctions
			Gang injunctions
			Knife Crime Prevention Orders
			Serious Violence Reduction Orders
			Consistent problems in this succession of injunctions and court orders
			Joint enterprise, stop and search and the gangs matrix
			Joint enterprise
			Stop and search
			Gangs Matrix
		Drugs policy
		Punishing and controlling responses to violence between young people
	Save them
		Remoralize them: fix their characters and remould them into ideal citizens
		Target the troublesome and enrol them on programmes that ‘work’
		Industrialize the problem, commodify those affected by it
		Sensationalize the issue, particularly if it earns you donations and support
	Conclusion
Conclusion: Towards a Less Harmful Society for Young People
	Introduction
	The central arguments of this book: social harm, mattering and violence between young people
	2030: a near-future dystopia
	The changes that we need to improve life for Britain’s young people
		Recognition and resources, risk and retribution
			Recognition
			Redistribution of resources
			Risk
			(State) retribution
		Schools and education
			Exclusions
			Inclusive education, safeguarding and punitiveness
			What are schools for? The potential of schools to support their communities
		Support for young people before and beyond school: early years, children’s social care and youth services
			Early years
			Children’s social care
			Youth services
			One-to-one support for young people: relationships that make a difference
		Housing and local communities
		Employment
		Criminal justice, youth justice and policing
		Violence Reduction Units and the public health approach to violence
		Personal responsibility, proportional demands on services and funding
			What about personal responsibility?
			Many of the suggestions in this chapter place hugely unrealistic expectations and demands on important institutions and services
			All of these changes will be incredibly expensive to the taxpayer
	Address harm, reduce inequality, enhance care
References
Index
Back Cover