Dealing, Music and Youth Violence: Neighbourhood Relational Change, Isolation and Youth Criminality 9781529216530

Table of contents :
Front Cover
Dealing, Music and Youth Violence: Neighbourhood Relational Change, Isolation and Youth Criminality
Copyright information
Dedication
Table of contents
1 Introduction: Nearly Two Decades of Concern, Yet Young People Are Still Dying
An overview of the context of knife crime and the efforts to address serious youth violence in the UK
Neighbourhood research
Neighbourhood crime: some theoretical underpinnings
Chapter structure
2 The Wider Historical and Social Context of ‘Black Criminality’ and Youth Violence
Racism, resistance and addressing offending behaviour within a changing political climate
Historical context of migration, deprivation and racism
New Labour: new focus?
Serious youth violence and gangs branding
Understanding the impact of oppression, racism and policy failure on youth safety
3 Exploring the Neighbourhood
Deprivation, population change, diversity and relational change
The people who make it all happen
St Mary’s young people
Taking a wider view
The built environment of the estate
Local concern and local action
4 Localized Disempowerment and the Development of Criminal Cultures
How council interventions increased the space for a violent street culture to evolve
St Mary’s Estate youth project
Studio time
Early signs of youth violence
A new cooperative approach
Proposal
New values, relationships and statuses
Death, mourning and action
5 All Alone: Youth Isolation and the Embedding of a Violent Street Culture
The emergence of street culture
Further isolation and the entrenchment of a violent street culture
Continuation and escalation
Professionalizing support, relational breakdown and increased violence
6 Studio Time, Drill and the Criminalization of Black Culture
Drill: the sound of the estate
The attention economy
Police crackdowns and criminalization
Criminal personas or an artistic income stream?
7 Separated, Isolated and Unconnected
Focusing on primary school children and leaving the olders to police enforcement
Residents standing up for themselves
Summer play scheme
Operation Shield
St Mary’s Football Project on the estate
Residents rebuilding their confidence and the failure of enforcement
8 The New Normal: From Gang Violence to Individualized Danger and Child Criminal Exploitation
Disconnected simulation
From gang violence to criminal exploitation and individual risk
Lowered threshold
Violence normalization and desensitization
Criminal exploitation, desensitization and the new drivers of violence
9 Learning from the Past or More of the Same
Shifting to a public health approach to tackling serious youth violence
Public health approach
A child first approach within youth justice
Supporting young people at risk of child criminal exploitation
A contextual approach to safeguarding young people from violence and criminal exploitation
Locally in Lambeth
Movement in the right direction
Protecting children at risk and trying to address the causes of youth violence
10 Conclusion: Better Support but the Violence Remains
From enforcement led to a public health approach
Working together
Recommendations
Where are they now?
References
Index

Citation preview

D E A L I NG, MU S IC AN D YO U TH V I O LENCE N E I G H B O U R H O O D R E L AT I O N A L C H A N G E , I S O L AT I O N A N D YO U T H C R I M I N A L I T Y JA M E S A L E X A N D E R

DEALING, MUSIC AND YOUTH VIOLENCE Neighbourhood Relational Change, Isolation and Youth Criminality James Alexander

First published in Great Britain in 2023 by Bristol University Press University of Bristol 1–​9 Old Park Hill Bristol BS2 8BB UK t: +​44 (0)117 374 6645 e: bup-​[email protected] Details of international sales and distribution partners are available at bristoluniversitypress.co.uk © Bristol University Press 2023 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-5292-1651-6 hardcover ISBN 978-1-5292-1652-3 ePub ISBN 978-1-5292-1653-0 ePdf The right of James Alexander to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of Bristol University Press. Every reasonable effort has been made to obtain permission to reproduce copyrighted material. If, however, anyone knows of an oversight, please contact the publisher. The statements and opinions contained within this publication are solely those of the author and not of the University of Bristol or Bristol University Press. The University of Bristol and Bristol University Press disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any material published in this publication. Bristol University Press works to counter discrimination on grounds of gender, race, disability, age and sexuality. Cover design: Nicky Borowiec Front cover image: I-Wei Huang - Adobestock.com Bristol University Press uses environmentally responsible print partners. Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

This project could not have been completed without the help of Lenny and Dorothy, whose guidance has been invaluable in so many ways. Thank you also to Eli, Akin, Gerald, Miche, Jonny, Ayub and Marlon and all the other young people who were so open with me. Thank you to Renee, De Andre, Mone and Sapphire, who spent countless evenings with me typing away rather than spending time with you. Saf, you can stop closing my laptop and telling me to play with you now. To Nana and Jason, united again.

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Contents 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Introduction: Nearly Two Decades of Concern, Yet Young People Are Still Dying The Wider Historical and Social Context of ‘Black Criminality’ and Youth Violence Exploring the Neighbourhood Localized Disempowerment and the Development of Criminal Cultures All Alone: Youth Isolation and the Embedding of a Violent Street Culture Studio Time, Drill and the Criminalization of Black Culture Separated, Isolated and Unconnected The New Normal: From Gang Violence to Individualized Danger and Child Criminal Exploitation Learning from the Past or More of the Same Conclusion: Better Support but the Violence Remains

References Index

1 12 24 36 51 67 84 97 114 134 145 160

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1

Introduction: Nearly Two Decades of Concern, Yet Young People Are Still Dying An overview of the context of knife crime and the efforts to address serious youth violence in the UK Over the past 15 or so years, serious youth violence has continued to be a significant concern, affecting cities across the UK. Although overall incidents of violence are decreasing, those that end in a fatality are rising again. What was initially seen as a gang issue now has a broader impact, with only around 20 per cent of knife crime events being flagged by the police as gang related (Massey et al, 2019). Street drug dealing has also developed, changing the risks those involved face. Drug markets were once understood to be controlled by local groups. Yet, due to supply saturation, many young people are first engaging in the drugs trade through exploitative county lines operations where adults send children to other areas of the country to deal for them. This has contributed to the spreading of violence and the sense of isolation felt by many young people involved in this type of activity. For more than a decade and a half, successive groups of young people on St Mary’s Estate, a deprived 882-​property housing estate in South London, have been caught up in these developments, engaging in street dealing and the violence associated with it. Through charting their experiences, this book sheds further light on the lives of those exposed to serious youth violence and the effectiveness of efforts to try and support them. This is a study of where I lived, volunteered and sometimes worked for over 16 years. Despite trying to capture something of the estate, I am well aware that there are many other histories, stories and life experiences that I haven’t even touched. Initially, I wanted to explore how the changing power and relational dynamics on the estate impacted the way people interacted 1

Dealing, music and youth violence

with each other. I was fascinated by how a small group of residents believed in trying to find informal solutions, despite a host of local authority officers constantly telling them they couldn’t do it. In the face of a distinct general lack of interest from others around them, they still believed that they could, in their own little way, improve the estate and, in so doing, inspire others to do the same. The start of the project coincided with the local authority choosing St Mary’s as the pilot area of their new cooperative council approach, mainly due to the growing concerns around local youth violence. Therefore, how the council, residents and others responded to the actions of young people and, in turn, how these actions influenced young people’s behaviour became a significant focus of the study.

Neighbourhood research The study was an opportunistic complete member research project as my involvement on the estate preceded the research (Adler and Adler, 1987; Charmaz, 2004; Anderson, 2006; Denshire, 2014). I had already lived in the area for several years, was a trustee and coach of a local football project, a member of the residents’ committee and was involved in resident activities to support local young people. As my PhD progressed, I took on several additional roles that allowed me greater access to information. These positions included becoming the secretary of the residents’ committee, chair of trustees for the football project, co-​chair of the community hall management group and a member of the council’s local area forum. My paid work during this time of running a youth construction training programme supported by the council helped give me greater access to local officials. I positioned myself to research through collaboration (Amit, 2004; Eglinton, 2013) with continual reciprocity and mutual learning between myself and those around me who helped identify what issues to focus on and often informally told me to “Stick that in your PhD”. Most of the data from the participant observation came from my time administering one of the roles I played on the estate or through the related informal activities that made carrying out these duties possible. The observations were recorded in a fieldwork diary, which was updated at least three to four times a week. The bulk of the fieldwork was completed between 2011 and 2016, although I still visit the estate once or twice a week to help volunteer with activities, observe estate life and catch up with the young people and other residents. The interviews were a mix of traditional semi-​structured interviews and some less formal discussions with people as they hung out on the estate or cleaned buildings with me. Forty-​one interviews with residents, young people, council staff and other local stakeholders took place between 2014 2

Introduction

and 2015, and 13 additional interviews with young people involved in the original research or had come to prominence more recently, and 12 interviews with youth justice professionals were conducted during 2020–​ 21. The other data used included: national government datasets, local and national government policy, local authority and local organizations’ plans and minutes from meetings. The estate’s name and the organizations and people represented here have been anonymized, with pseudonyms and composites used to obscure participants’ identities. Although many young people had nicknames or what some may term gang names, I deliberately refrained from giving them street pseudonyms. This is because I know the young people by their real name, and rarely would someone introduce themselves by their street name or ask me to call them by it. Furthermore, I hope it will be apparent in this book that the young people’s ‘street identity’ is only one part of who they are. Calling them by a street pseudonym would essentialize a small element of their identity and diminish much of what makes them unique individuals. Therefore, the pseudonym reflected the origin of the name I knew them by. For example, if I knew them by an English-sounding name, then the pseudonym was English, if West African, then West African and so forth.

Neighbourhood crime: some theoretical underpinnings I have tried to understand life on the estate through various sociological frameworks, with the Chicago School and the many associated discussions of urban disorganization as a reference point for my work. In many ways, St Mary’s Estate is typical of what you would expect of Park et al’s (1968 [1925]) zone of transition, situated just outside the centre of London, with high levels of working class and immigrant populations and a history of deprivation, poverty and crime. Shaw and McKay (1972 [1942]) understood high crime rates in these areas were due to social disorganization caused by structural issues such as population turnover, deprivation and racial heterogeneity. These conditions break down ties between residents, weakening their sense of obligation to each other (Shaw and McKay, 1972 [1942]; Bursik and Grasmick, 1993; Sampson et al, 1997; Cantillon et al, 2003; Kingston et al, 2009). The following chapters will consider how St Mary’s, like other neighbourhoods, is a complex system of friendship and kinship connections that can produce localized shared values, intergenerational reciprocal exchanges, trust and social cohesion. Where these ties are strong, collective efficacy emerges, producing a willingness to intervene and address deviancy (Sampson, 1988; Sampson and Groves, 1989; Bursik and Grasmick, 1993; Sampson et al, 1997; Sampson and Raudenbush, 1999; Morenoff et al, 2001; Carr, 2003; Cantillon et al, 2003; Bellair, 2006a; Bellair, 2006b; Warner, 2007; Wickes 3

Dealing, music and youth violence

et al, 2013). This community-​level guardianship acts as a protective factor that can prevent young people’s exposure to community violence (Gibson et al, 2009; Wickes et al, 2013). These influential informal relationships are akin to Anderson’s (2000, 2002) respectable ‘old heads’ who used their community status to influence the younger generation positively, providing mentoring, helping to solve problems and connecting people to resources and other networks (Anderson, 2000; Carter et al, 2017). Yet, strong local informal relationships are diminishing (Putnam, 2000 Morenoff et al, 2001; Bellair, 2006a, 2006b). Continual resident turnover, changing demographics, mixed with public policies based on neoliberal economic ideals, a diminishing welfare safety net and people increasingly worried about their own survival (Beck and Beck-​Gernsheim, 2002; Bellair, 2006a; Offer, 2012), have contributed to the breakdown in local connections. When these ‘old heads’ disappear, street-​orientated peers take their place and violence and criminality becomes embodied street capital (Sandberg, 2008, 2012; Stewart and Simons, 2010 Ilan, 2012; Fraser, 2013; Harding, 2014, 2020; Pitts, 2020), which many have understood as gang activity. Most gang analysis today draws on Spergel’s (1995) framework, which suggests that gangs often start out as a group of friends who have often grown up together. In particular environments, these friendships can produce recreational violence and then criminal activity. When these groups are mainly money motivated, illegal activities can develop into a criminal enterprise, which can evolve into organized gang criminality (Densley, 2013; Andell and Pitts, 2018; Whittaker et al, 2018; Densley et al, 2020). Although there are parallels with the UK situation, we must err on the side of caution when applying such an analysis. For example, most groups labelled as gangs in the UK are a temporary feature. Although a particular area may have a persistent ‘gang’ problem, the young people involved generally change every few years. As we will see with the example of St Mary’s, young people typically operate within their friendship group, with little or no connection between different age-​defined groups. Due to the racial connotations of the term gang and the often transitory nature of those involved, I feel it is inappropriate to use this term to discuss the young people featured in this study. Therefore, I have only used the word when referring to other people’s use of the term. Labelling groups as a gang stigmatizes (Pitts, 2020) and can become a self-​fulfilling prophesy. For example, on St Mary’s, the police named the first group of young people on the estate whom the authorities considered a gang. After producing a track entitled ‘Everyone’s a Snake’, often shortened in the lyrics to E1S, the police concluded that this was a gang name. Once the young people realized this, they started mockingly calling themselves E1S, and the name stuck. Regardless of the debates around whether groups of young people constitute a gang, many young people find themselves caught up in an 4

Introduction

increasingly violent and criminal culture. Throughout the following chapters, we will discuss how growing up in an environment of social isolation has led some young people to become involved in a violent and criminogenic street culture as they struggle for status and simple to survive (Sandberg, 2008, 2012; Fraser, 2013; Harding, 2014). Becoming cognizant with the rules of this social space allowed many of St Mary’s young people to feel a sense of belonging and security (Ilan, 2012). Yet, it further excluded them from other more positive social spaces (Gilbert et al, 2011), causing them to remain reliant on a violent street culture to survive. The following chapters are an account of trust between people disappearing and the weakening of relationships that once allowed social capital and neighbourhood controls to flourish. The young people that became central to this study benefited less and less from close relational ties, and actions to support them were decided out of the risk they posed (Kelly, 2003) rather than people’s care for them. This isolation led young people to comment about not feeling supported and, in some cases, blaming adult residents for the survival focused street culture that emerged. Yet this isolation was not a given. Instead, Chapters 4 and 5 show that the young people’s experiences were a consequence of several coinciding factors, including an increase in youth crime and a desire by the local authority to address this by providing specialized professional interventions and a lack of estate intergenerational relationships. As discussed in Chapter 4, the council’s response came as they faced a 56 per cent cut to its budget (Lambeth Council, nda). To address this drop in income, the local authority became a cooperative council seeing it as a credible way to reduce spending and engage local people in providing an acceptable level of public services. However, those engaged in the cooperative process brought their own frame of reference, which was loaded with ideas of professional superiority. The text uses Bourdieu’s theory of practice to explore how the coproductive process disempowered, rather than empowered, residents because those they were interacting with considered them less capable of delivering what the estate needed. How these dynamics shaped the actions of both adults and young people is a running theme throughout the text. Particularly important is how the residents’ inferior position led them to be excluded from the council’s plans for youth support on the estate. This weakened the relational interactions between residents and young people and coincided with the entrenchment of a violent street culture. The book will draw on authors such as Ilan (2012), Densley (2013) and Harding (2014), who expertly discuss the dynamics of street culture alongside the wider socio-economic factors that impact the development of such social spaces. However, the text takes a wider remit. It focuses on how changes in the broader interactions between residents, neighbours, 5

Dealing, music and youth violence

and professionals shape the social and physical spaces young people can find themselves in. Although the localized setting is an important factor to consider, what took place on the estate will be contextualized by considering a succession of policies and initiatives that have sought to address youth violence over the past 25 or so years. These will be discussed in more depth throughout the book. However, it may be helpful to introduce some of them here briefly. The first high-​profile initiative was the Met Police’s Operation Trident, which started in 1998 to try and tackle the rise in Black on Black violence, particularly shootings in Lambeth and Brent. Its specific focus opened it up to criticism of racism and discrimination, which has made it operationally problematic. In 2012, Trident took over the Met Police’s gang’s command. A Black-​focused operation taking over the gang’s command again indicated the Met’s view of gang activity was a predominantly Black problem. After the 2011 riots, the coalition government appeared to take the issue of youth violence more seriously. The Troubled Families and Ending Youth Violence policies essentially placed the blame on a select number of families. In addition, they introduced more powers for local authorities and the police to combat youth criminality. As a response, Lambeth Council set up a Gangs Violence Reduction Unit headed up by a former police borough commander. The short-​lived unit pinned most of its hopes on implementing Operation Shield, a gang call-​in initiative modelled on initiatives from the United States. The operation, piloted in Lambeth and Hackney, offered support to young people alongside the threat of greater police enforcement if they carried on offending. Since then, there has been a move towards a public health approach to tackling youth violence and the emergence of Violence Reduction Units (VRUs) within hotspots across the country. However, locally, although Lambeth Council has adopted a public health model that aims to bring together statutory, third sector and community organizations under one strategic umbrella, it continues to have the highest rate of serious youth violence in the capital.

Chapter structure Chapter 2 sets the book’s social policy and theoretical background and introduces some key theoretical debates around serious youth violence within ‘Black criminality’s’ current and historical context. First, it will explore how changing government policies have influenced the area and how youth criminality is understood and addressed. Here we will briefly discuss relevant public policies from the 1970s to the present day, showing how various approaches have led to different levels and types of support given to young people. Next, the chapter explores how young people, in Lambeth 6

Introduction

and elsewhere, have been subject to discrimination and over policing since the days of the Windrush generation. Here, the impact of the gang branding (Pitts, 2020) that media portrayals, national and local government assertions and tools such as the Metropolitan Police’s gangs matrix leave on Black young people will be discussed. Finally, the chapter will show how the current concerns around the overrepresentation of Black young men within the criminal justice system (Williams and Clark, 2018) are nothing new; and that despite subsequent reports (Scarman, 1981; Macpherson, 1999; Young, 2014; Lammy, 2017) and influential sociological texts such as Hall et al (1978) calling for change, not enough progress has been made. Chapter 3 introduces some of the key people from the estate, along with its physical structure and geography. Then, from interviews with past and present residents, the chapter pieces together a recent history of the estate’s social life and explores the activities, support programmes, and networks that residents set up and ran. This discussion also considers how racism led to discriminatory practices, with Black children excluded from the local youth club, leading to some residents setting up a parallel project for black children. Chapter 4 discusses how a group of residents started informally supporting local young people in 2006 after one parent was concerned about their behaviour. What began as interacting with young people on the estate evolved into a twice-​weekly youth club. However, the club closed in 2009 on the advice of the police after a young person was shot at as he entered the estate. When the same young person was murdered the following summer, the young people were subjected to three months of Territorial Support Group (TSG) policing, which in broad terms is equivalent to a neighbourhood being policed by specialist riot police in full riot gear every day. To try and address the growing animosity caused by the police enforcement, the council moved two short-​term gang intervention programmes onto the estate. For the local authority, the solution to the ‘young person issue’ was not to be found in developing relationships but by introducing professional services delivered by trained experts. These professional activities attracted young people from wider afield to St Mary’s, causing the local authority to seek a long-​term solution at a time when it was piloting a cooperative council model of delivery. The chapter considers how the move to coproduction posed the opportunity to involve people from more diverse backgrounds and experiences in delivering local services. However, the relational dynamics between residents and professionals meant that the empowerment associated with coproductive participation was not realized, resulting in adult residents becoming excluded from activities to support young people. The proceeding chapters discuss the fallout of this abrupt change, both in terms of how it impacted the actions of young people and the support and guardianship they received. 7

Dealing, music and youth violence

Chapter 5 outlines the struggles between the residents who have stayed active and the council funded professionals on the estate. It documents how those with council backing assumed a superior position and how this status meant that their habitus was recognized as most appropriate. The text explores what this meant locally by contrasting young people’s previous informal resident support and the commissioned interventions’ structured, time bound approach. Through considering the experiences of those hanging out on the estate, the chapter will chart the development and entrenchment of a violent and criminogenic street culture, where Class A drug dealing and knife carrying became commonplace. Finally, the chapter will show how intergenerational connections only developed because of activities that brought older and younger residents together. This interaction allowed trusted relationships to be established. Without  opportunities to engage with one another, these relationships disappeared. An example of a barbeque organized by young people highlights the change in the culture compared to a few years before. Unlike previous events where young people asked for permission and received the support of key adults, the young people organized the barbeque entirely independently. Again, the difference in outcome was palpable, whereas previous events were largely uneventful; this time, the young men who hung out on the estate used the evening to sell drugs and take advantage of intoxicated young girls; with the night only ending when shots were fired. The chapter will discuss the implications of the loss of informal supervision and reflect on the risks young girls face in spaces of embedded violent street culture, where predatory sexual activity is taken for granted. Chapter 6 considers the street culture that emerged and evolved on the estate between 2011 and 2020 by discussing the music tracks and videos produced by three different groups of young people. The chapter draws on data from the artists and others in the drill scene to consider how the marketing and revenue implications of the attention economy have caught young people in a dynamic where violent online personas help shape their offline lives in terms of encounters with the police and rivals. Doing so will show how young people balance portraying attention grabbing performative bravado and maintaining a sense of authenticity. The chapter analyses how changes in individuals’ circumstances shape the content of their videos, which reflect, all be it in an exaggerated way, the life course and criminal development of the artists. It is noticeable that many of those featured in the videos, even those depicting particularly violent personas, are not perpetrators of serious violence. It is also clear that although not all drill artists profess to be violent, those who built up a followership by portraying a violent persona needed to keep up this image to maintain their popularity. Young people have a perverse incentive to maintain potentially 8

Introduction

damaging online personas in a sector where opportunities and earning potential are based on views. Despite the performative nature of drill, the risks young people face mean there is some truth behind the online portrayals. It is a reality that gives their online persona, however exaggerated, a sense of authenticity, and what drill fans looking to observe ‘ghetto’ life through their computer screens crave. The text contrasts this more nuanced understanding with that of the police. From a police viewpoint, a drill artist’s online representations accurately reflect their character, and the actions portrayed in videos are evidence of the crimes they are involved in. Online portrayals are criminalized through court injunctions and used within trials to help secure convictions. These actions continue a long history of the criminalization of Black culture within the UK and have essentially turned legal pursuits of income and popularity into a crime. Chapter 7 contrasts the actions of the council and residents in seeking to address young peoples’ continued concerning behaviour. This includes outlining the tenacity of a group of residents to ensure they had ownership and control of a newly reopened community hall. Gaining control of this space helped to give them the space to develop some of their own activities to support young people. It allowed some of the older stalwarts of the estate to impart their experience and care to a new group of parents whom they hoped would continue supporting young people into the future. The account considers how the residents’ committee’s decision to focus on 6-​to 11-​year-​olds left those hanging out on the estate with very little support other than that which came through Operation Shield. The council promoted the project as community led. The discussion here will question the influence of the ‘community’ and whether the support offered was adequate enough to support the young people in the way they needed. The account will finish by showing how even when local trusted people did start to engage with young people on the estate, their actions were isolated and individualized and was not enough to change the prevailing street culture. Chapter 8 draws on young people’s experiences to discuss the impacts of local relational and social dynamics and developments on the estate. It explores why the current young people are more vulnerable now than those growing up ten years ago with weapons carrying now pervasive. The text will draw on the thoughts of those working within the youth justice and law enforcement sectors to explore whether the actions of St Mary’s young people are a localized phenomenon or part of a broader trend. Here there will be a consideration of how despite the narrative of gang violence, most serious youth violence involves young people who are not gang affiliated, and serious youth violence should not be considered simply a ‘gang’ issue. The chapter will show that there was no single group on St Mary’s Estate 9

Dealing, music and youth violence

and no hierarchical gang structure. Instead, peer friendship groups emerged as dominant before dispersing when the members reached 18 or 19 years old. Each of these groups operates independently, often with individuals running their own drug lines. However, despite the separation, similar ways of making money, rivalries and violence persist. The analysis shows how local drug market saturation and the emergence of county lines mean that young people are at increased risk of child criminal exploitation. The account concludes by looking at how the experiences of a new emerging group are leading to them showing signs of desensitization and a greater willingness to use violence. This, which is mirrored elsewhere, puts young people at greater risk of exposure to violence. Chapter 9 explores the recent developments in how young people at risk of exposure to serious youth violence are supported. Initially, the text takes a broader view showing how a public health approach has shifted the focus to addressing some of the underlying causes of youth violence. For example, there has been increased attention on the link between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and youth criminality. The chapter will discuss how, after the Taylor Review (2016), the youth justice sector has embedded a child first approach, where young people are treated as children that need support rather than simply managed as an offender. Included here will be a consideration of how the development of contextual safeguarding has heightened the awareness of professionals’ statutory safeguarding duties to protect young people from extra familial harm such as serious youth violence and county lines. This will include a discussion of some contextual safeguarding responses such as mapping exploitation hotspots, supporting parents to understand how to help young people mitigate online risks, and moving young people and families out of locations that pose a danger to a young person. The chapter then considers whether any of these developments have made a difference on the estate, exploring how the current commissioned support engages young people, including how there is now greater awareness of the need to work with key local individuals to better connect with those who need help. The chapter will conclude by exploring how activities run by local people have adapted to meet the needs of young people better. This will include outlining how trauma-​informed approaches are being embedded in the football project to help both coaches and players deal with their experiences of trauma and ACEs. Chapter 10 summarizes the key themes from the book, reflects on the progress made over the past ten years and identifies how a place-​based approach may enhance the support to young people on estates such as St Mary’s. This will suggest that more work is needed to address the socio-​economic factors conducive to violent street cultures. Despite the developments discussed in the book, young people continue to grow up in 10

Introduction

neighbourhoods of multiple deprivation and will continue to be at risk of engaging in criminal activities, which, when done with groups of friends, will take on gang characteristics. The conclusion also considers how there is very little place for local intergenerational relationships within the professional discourse and suggests that the role of informal guardianship needs further consideration within a contextual safeguarding framework. The book finishes by considering the journeys of some of the people featured, giving an update on where they are currently in their journey through life.

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2

The Wider Historical and Social Context of ‘Black Criminality’ and Youth Violence Racism, resistance and addressing offending behaviour within a changing political climate This chapter outlines the historical and social contexts that have influenced life on the estate, providing an overview rather than a detailed analysis of the issues. The text considers how some of the first post war migrants to the UK settled in Brixton, and the surrounding estates, making the area one of the most diverse places in the country. However, the racism experienced by first and second generation migrants from the Caribbean led to a hybrid Jamaican/​London resistance culture emerging. This culture was labelled anti British and associated with rising crime rates. The account explores how despite statistics to the contrary, the association of Black youth culture with criminality, which Gilroy (1982) aptly termed the myth of Black criminality, remains. The chapter will then outline how shifts in government policy have changed how youth criminality is addressed, including the structural investment approach by New Labour and the more recent child first and public health approaches adopted by public bodies. These latter developments have seen a focus move away from criminal acts and onto the risk factors such as ACEs that increase the likelihood of a young person getting involved in criminality.

Historical context of migration, deprivation and racism The estate is about a 15-​minute walk from Brixton Station in the London Borough of Lambeth. Like many poor neighbourhoods, the estate continues to be the first port of call for many migrant groups resulting in 12

‘Black criminality’ and youth violence

a rich multicultural history; however, one marred by racism, inequality and oppression. Before the late 1940s, the area was mainly a mix of white British and Irish families. This all changed with the arrival of the Windrush Generation. When the first group of new Caribbean migrants came over, Britain had over full employment and struggled to keep pace with the necessary post-​war rebuilding. The invitation to come to the UK seemed to offer the chance to leave behind Jamaica’s growing social issues, including a failing economy and increasing unemployment and crime rates (Heathcott, 2003), and make a new life in the motherland. Unfortunately, those who came to the UK entered a racist environment, lived in the poorest, crime-​r idden neighbourhoods and often had to do jobs they were overqualified for. The government temporarily housed many pioneering arrivals in air raid shelters situated under nearby Clapham Common, with their nearest job exchange located in Brixton. Due to the affordable rents, many moved to Brixton after finding work, which soon became one of the most vibrant multicultural areas in the country and a haven of sorts from the wider hostile British public. On top of the everyday prejudice and discrimination, there was growing political hostility, with a succession of immigration rules making it harder for migrants and their families to settle in the UK. The Commonwealth Immigration Act 1962 took away an automatic right to British Citizenship. When the Labour Party came to power in 1964, even they turned their back on those who had come to help the nation out, realizing that repealing the Act they once so vehemently opposed was tantamount to political suicide (Brake and Shank, 1983). Subsequent immigration laws in 1971 and 1981 further removed the right of those from ex-​colonial countries to live and work in the UK while pathing the way for easier migration from Europe. The message was clear: the UK wasn’t opposed to immigration; it was anti Black migration (Small and Solomos, 2006). It became commonplace for Black people to experience police harassment, including having their immigration status questioned, even when reporting a crime themselves (Brake and Shank, 1983). This institutional hostility was on top of racism experienced in the workplace, the education system and the general abuse and violence experienced on the streets. It was clear to 1st and 2nd generation migrants that the establishment and many white British people did not see those who had settled from the Caribbean as British and treated them as second rate. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, the children of the first post-​war migrants rebelled against their parent’s passivity in the face of constant antagonism and occupation style policing of their neighbourhoods (Gordon, 1984). An improvised resistance culture, symbolized by Ska and then Reggae 13

Dealing, music and youth violence

music and homemade sound systems, emerged, which reconstructed both a real and imagined Jamaican ghetto hustler within the harsh, oppressive London context (Lea and Young, 1982; Brake and Shank, 1983; Heathcott, 2003). Adopting the rude boy image turned making a living through illegitimate means such as drug dealing into a symbol of coolness, escapism from and resistance against the white oppressive state (Brake and Shank, 1983, Heathcott, 2003). For those on the right, the emergence of this ‘foreign’ culture was a sign the ‘migrants’ didn’t understand their place and were not willing to adopt ‘British cultural values’ (Lea and Young, 1982), which in part could explain the nation’s moral and social decline (Gilroy, 1987). Part of the backlash saw an intensified association of Black culture with crime (Gilroy, 1982, 1987) aided by applying the US term mugging to the violent theft from a person by young Black men. The moral panic surrounding ‘Black muggings’ was despite a 1971 Home Office report stating that such crimes were mainly perpetrated by young white men (Hall et al, 1978; Brake and Shank, 1983; Small and Solomos, 2006). The police viewed the situation differently, associating Caribbean culture with youth crime. The popular racist sentiment was that young Black men were lazy and unwilling to work (Lea and Young, 1982) and relied on mugging, drug dealing and welfare fraud to make money. This needed to be dealt with by harsh police enforcement (Brake and Shank, 1983; Hillyard, 1985). When the Conservatives won the 1979 general election, they pursued a neoliberal economic policy, which, within the first seven years, saw earnings for the top taxpayers rise by 200 per cent. They also cut the welfare budget by £14 billion despite those receiving social security benefits doubling from 4 million to 8 million (Chapman and Cook, 1988). The year 1979 signalled a break from a political understanding that the state had a responsibility to mitigate the impacts of structural inequalities on the nation’s poorest. This exacerbated the existing marginality; by 1981, 25 per cent of young people found themselves out of work (Lea and Young, 1982; Chapman and Cook, 1988). Persistent racism, poor education and the state of the economy meant that young Black men were often consigned to the underclass, complete with low-​paid deskilled labour or unemployment (Pryce, 1993; Brake and Shank, 1983). Although the racist portrayals and the negativity surrounding Brixton and St Mary’s were evident, the area did have a significant crime problem, with the borough accounting for 20 per cent of all robberies for the whole of London in 1980. Between 1977 and 1981, robberies in London rose by 38 per cent, contrasted with a 138 per cent rise in Lambeth (Lea and Young, 1982). The police also estimated that 80 per cent of the recorded street robberies were carried out by young Black men (Scarman Report, 1981, in Lea and Young, 1982). 14

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With crime rising in Brixton, there was a move away from consensus policing and an implementation of hard policing based on the SUS laws, which dated back to the 1824 Vagrancy Act (Hall, 1982; Brake and Shank, 1983; Lea and Young, 1982). This allowed the police to arrest someone for loitering with the intent to commit a crime if the opportunity arose. In spring 1981, ten squads of police descended on Brixton, searching for drugs and stolen property under Operation Swamp 81. By their own admission, the police only caught minor offenders, which further deteriorated the relationship between the authorities and the local community (Lea and Young, 1982). In 1980 and 1981, civil unrest boiled over with rioting in cities across the country. Despite the Conservative government labelling the riots as acts of hooliganism, many saw them as a consequence of deep-​rooted resentment caused by years of over policing, harassment, racist attacks and discrimination (Brake and Shank, 1983; Gilroy, 1987). The three days of rioting in Brixton saw cars burn, makeshift barricades erected and clashes with the police. One of the key sites of conflict was the junction of Cold Harbour Lane and Atlantic Avenue, where a popular West Indian pub, the Atlantic, stood. The pub closed down in 1994 after a police raid found many patrons with cannabis on them. Many of the older Brixton residents feel that this was a smokescreen to remove a Caribbean institution from the centre of Brixton. The venue reopened later that year as the Dog Star, a club venue where arguably far more drugs are taken but by a partygoing predominately white crowd. Despite the government continuing to blame a youth criminal culture (Brake and Shank, 1983; Hillyard, 1985), Lord Scarman was instructed to head up an inquiry into the causes of the unrest. Scarman concluded that the rioting in Brixton and elsewhere shared similar characteristics with other civil unrest incidents: perceived deprivation, unemployment, economic insecurity and deep seated hostility to the police. The report acknowledged that discrimination was widespread due to the lack of minority representation in the police and failures in police community engagement. Yet Scarman concluded that the police were not institutionally racist (Small and Solomos, 2006). Unfortunately, the government largely ignored the report’s findings and very little changed. However, shortly after the riots, the Suspected Person (SUS) laws were repealed after a long and drawn out campaign that had started back in the late 1970s. The punitive social measures continued throughout the 1980s, hitting young Black men the hardest. High levels of youth unemployment were the norm, and only around 50 per cent of young people who completed the government Youth Training Scheme, which gave young people a chance to earn while learning a skill, went on to secure full time work. For young Black men, this rate was 1 in 3 (Chapman and Cook, 1988). 15

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The next potential for change in the policing and treatment of minority communities came with the Macpherson Report (1999) following the failed police investigation of Stephen Lawrence’s racist murder on 22 April 1993. When Labour came to power four years after the incident, they did so with a promise to fight for racial and social justice. Accordingly, they appointed Lord Macpherson to head up an inquiry into the police handling of the Lawrence case, which concluded that the police were institutionally racist (Small and Solomos, 2006). The Macpherson Report (1999) contained 70 recommendations, including that the Home Office set key performance indicators for recording and detection of racist incidents and that the government adopt a stance that a racist incident is racist if someone perceives it to be. A vast number of the recommendations focused on police culture and action, including calling for KPIs on dealing with racist incidents and complaints about racist actions of police officers. In addition, there were calls for the police to do more in terms of community relations and for policing to reflect better the local demography, something that the Met is still struggling to achieve. Stop and search powers were deemed necessary, but the report recommended recording and monitoring incidents. Despite some progress, such as the adoption of the recommended definition of a racist incident, the recording of stop and searches and a greater emphasis on community liaison, many issues the Macpherson Report raised featured in the Young Review (2014) and the Lammy Review (2017) over a decade and a half later.

New Labour: new focus? The Blairite years saw a distinct shift in focus, and there was a return to an emphasis on addressing some of the structural causes of youth crime and disorder. At the heart of the Labour government’s policy were public and private partnerships. Inner city areas saw an influx of investment to fund early intervention and other activities to prevent youth offending. Connexions centres and personal advisors in schools were established to help young people navigate through crucial transition periods in their lives. There was also increased government funding for youth and community projects through the Single Regeneration Budget, which distributed over £5.7 billion to local projects and helped leverage four times this initial amount (Rhodes et al, 2007). The introduction of section 106 requirements saw developers obliged to fund local projects to mitigate against the impact of their developments, provided further funding for local projects. Much of the additional funding was used for big infrastructure projects, including building or rebuilding schools, starting with those considered failing. This process saw the transfer of responsibility for such schools from 16

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the local education authority to the newly formed bodies such as Academy Trusts, with funding coming directly from the Department of Education. Schools were allowed to manage their resources as they saw fit, decide on their own disciplinary processes and have a greater ability to raise standards. Once the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition came to power in 2010, they continued the academization policy, pushing for all comprehensive schools to become independent of the local authority. Locally, the approach enabled three new secondary schools to be built and the merger of two failing local primary schools and a local deaf school into one new building in the middle of the estate. Despite the now only primary school’s impressive image and the architects receiving an award for its design, parents, teachers and the pupils soon realized that new is not always better. The building needed substantial remedial repairs, and the governors campaigned for the architect to be stripped of their award. Twenty years after its facelift and a succession of short-​term headteachers, the school is still one of the lowest performing primary schools in the borough, with only 62 per cent of pupils meeting the expected educational standards. The secondary schools are not faring much better. One was built in the middle of an area known for youth violence. The academy trust running the school tried to reassure parents that their children would be safe because the police would minibus their children in from designated pick-​up points, which never happened. In 2019, only 18 per cent of pupils left with a grade five or above in Maths and English. The other schools serving the estate are almost as poorly performing, with the best seeing 39 per cent of students leaving with a grade five or above. Despite signs that the academization policy has increased grades in the country as a whole, it has also resulted in a lack of coordination when children are excluded. Previously, all exclusions would need to be approved by the local education authority, who were responsible for ensuring the excluded pupil’s continued education. Now schools can decide whom to admit and exclude without consultation with the local authority. In effect, critical decisions about children and young people’s education have been taken out of the hands of an organization with democratic oversight and into the hands of independent entities. This is especially concerning when we consider that Black pupils are three times more likely to get excluded than students from other backgrounds (Timpson, 2019). Lambeth local authority statistics show that an average of 48 young people per year between 2009 and 2016 were permanently excluded (Lambeth Council, 2017). The borough’s exclusion rate per percentage of the school population is consistently higher than any other London borough. Of these, 48, on average 37 (77 per cent), had a Black or Black mixed heritage (compared with an overall 57 per cent Black and mixed under 18 population). The schools serving the estate collectively made 14 permanent exclusions each year, leading to many young people hanging out on the estate and ending up at the nearby Pupil Referral Unit. 17

Dealing, music and youth violence

Under New Labour, the youth justice sector changed considerably with the creation of the Youth Justice Board and Youth Offending Service, specifically set up to deal with offenders aged 10–​17. New Labour’s apparent focus on prevention and diversion went hand in hand with a harsher, no more excuses, policy towards youth crime. As a result, by the mid-​2000s, incarceration for those under 18s rose by 60 per cent compared to the mid-​ 1990s (Solomon and Garside, 2008). During this period, new legal mechanisms were introduced, such as the anti-​social behaviour order (ASBO), which could be applied to a young person or groups of young people whom the local authority considered the cause of local anti-​social behaviour. Councils used these orders to prevent people from associating with particular people, going to certain areas and placing people under curfew (see Squires and Stephen, 2005; Macdonald and Telford, 2007; Donoghue, 2008; Brown, 2013; Johnstone, 2016). Despite ASBOs being a civil order, breaching an order could lead to a criminal conviction and 1332 under 18s received a custodial sentence for breaking the conditions of an order (Bateman, 2011). Over the past 15 years, concerted efforts have seen a significant reduction in the use of custodial sentences. The average number of young people in custody has dropped from over 3500 in 2003 to under 414 in February 2022. Much of this has been down to an over 80 per cent reduction in white young men in custody, with the same period only seeing a 40 per cent reduction in the custody of Black young men (YJB, 2020).

Serious youth violence and gangs branding Despite a 78 per cent reduction in overall proven offences by young people between 2011 and 2021, there has been a fluctuating upturn in violent crimes involving young people. From previous peeks in 2007/​8, incidents of serious violence fell between 2012 and 2015, before increasing by 52 per cent between April 2016 and March 2019 (House of Commons, Home Affairs Committee, 2019). It has been challenging to assess year on year rates since 2019, due to the impact of the COVID-​19 lockdowns. However, reports from local police basic command units suggest rates of serious youth violence for the non-​lockdown months of 2021 show serious youth violence was similar to 2017 levels. One of the first national political recognitions of knife crime came in 2007, during the Callaghan Memorial Lecture, in which Tony Blair, the then prime minister, commented: ‘The Black community –​ the vast majority of whom in these communities are decent, law abiding people horrified at what is happening –​need to be mobilized in denunciation of this gang culture 18

‘Black criminality’ and youth violence

that is killing innocent young Black kids. But we won’t stop this by pretending it isn’t young Black kids doing it.’ (Tony Blair, 2007) Although the Met Police had set up Operation Trident in 1998 to tackle Black on Black murders, the Prime Minister’s speech was the first time his government had connected the increasing rates of youth violence with the Black community. Yet, at the time of his speech, more than twice as many white people were victims of knife crime in London than Black people. Although there has been some recent media scrutiny regarding the authorities’ association between Black young men and gang activity, the public and enforcement discourse that serious youth violence is a Black issue remains. Amnesty International (2018) showed that 78 per cent of those on the gangs matrix, set up by the Met Police in 2012 to identify and risk assess those suspected of gang involvement, were Black. Equally concerning is that the gangs matrix included friends and family members of those suspected of gang association, even if there was no indication they were involved (Mayors Office for Policing and Crime, 2018). One such local example was the brother of a young girl for whom I attended a case conference organized by Lambeth social services. I was at the meeting as the head of the alternative education centre the young girl had started attending. During the meeting, the police officer explained that her brother was in the gang from St Mary’s Estate. I questioned this conclusion, to which the police officer stated that as he was from St Mary’s, he was understood to be a gang member. I then explained that he was hardly ever seen out on the estate, and when he was out, he usually played football with those a few years younger than him as he was not friends with any of the young people his age. Somewhat shocked at the specificity of my knowledge, I too was questioned about my conclusions, to which I explained that the family lived two doors down from me and I had been the brother’s football coach for many years. Without detailed knowledge, the authorities assumed that the brother was gang affiliated due to where he lived. Once on the Matrix, it has proven very difficult to come off it. Even if the case is dropped, those suspected of serious offences, such as firearms, receive a red rating in a red, amber, green rating and will continue to be discussed at local strategy meetings, sometimes years after they have left their former lifestyle behind. The association of particular neighbourhoods and Black young men with serious violence and blunt instruments such as the gangs matrix leaves a gang branding (Pitts, 2020), leading to many being arrested, charged and prosecuted for crimes they didn’t commit (Williams and Clark, 2018 in Pitts, 2020). Despite the likes of the Scarman (1981), Macpherson (1999), Young (2014) and Lammy (2017) reports, the situation of over policing and 19

Dealing, music and youth violence

criminalization of young Black men that Hall et al (1978), Gilroy (1987) describe decades ago, has changed very little. Although the gangs/​youth violence issue simmered under the surface, youth crime didn’t come to the forefront of coalition policy until the August 2011 riots. Triggered by the shooting of Mark Duggan, a Black man in Tottenham and the police’s apparent dismissive response to the family’s request for immediate answers, riots broke out in 22 areas across the capital, including Tottenham, Hackney, Clapham, Peckham, Croydon and Brixton and then in numerous other cities (Bell et al, 2014; Gunter, 2017). In Brixton, young people emptied H&M, Foot Locker and various other shops. In attempts to restore order, the police marched through the high street in full riot gear, banging on their shields and shouting for everyone to leave. Yet, this show of strength was somewhat after the fact, as most of the people involved in the looting had started gathering outside the nearby Currys electrical store. By the time the wall of police had got near Currys, the shop’s doors had been smashed, and the internal shutters breached. Some people took bins from the nearby blocks of flats and pushed them at the police; however, it was soon apparent that the police were not going to engage. In about 30 minutes, Currys was empty, with people taking everything they could carry. An ambulance pulled up several times to load up, while one person I spoke to as he ran past had taken vacuum cleaners for his mum and nan. Despite its proximity, none of the young people from the estate were implicated in what went on that night. The following day, the clean-​up effort started with a mix of council staff, local employees and residents coming out to help sweep up the mess. This triggered a plethora of platitudes from local politicians about the great community spirit in and around Brixton. Local councillors praised a bakery for offering the police and other helpers free coffee and cake as they tried to ensure a return to normality. Nicolas, a local teenager, provided another perspective. At the time, the organization I worked for had taken on five young people as part of the future jobs fund, four of which were from the estate. We received an invitation to an event organized by the Labour Party to discuss what had happened over the past few days. The overwhelming spin was that although the riots showed that something had gone profoundly wrong, the way people have pulled together showed a strong sense of community. In a Durkheimian sense, the riots highlighted the values that we all have as a society. However, Nicholas kept shaking his head and nudging me to say something. I encouraged him to put up his hand to talk. When the mic came to him, what he said has always influenced my thinking. ‘All this talk of community spirit is fake; it’s easy to pick up a broom and sweep up some glass, but where are the people when I need them. 20

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I probably walked past most of you with your nice cars in your driveway every day. But when I need help, where are you? When I couldn’t do my homework, where were you? You haven’t ever stopped to say hello. Picking up a broom is not community spirit.’ A year after Nicholas spoke up about the lack of community spirit, he was sentenced to 19 years for murder. With 23 per cent of those arrested for rioting aged 10 to 17 and 46 per cent between 18 and 24 (Lewis et al, 2011), the government’s response was decisive, and the courts gave rioters particularly harsh sentences (Bell et al, 2014). The government blamed 120,000 troubled families for the current problems of youth criminality and pledged £448 million to fund work with them. In reality, the previous government had identified these families, and after a further government assessment, the number jumped to over 400,000 and the funding increased to £600 million. Most of this was not new money, and local authorities had to resource much of their ‘troubled families’ programme out of existing budgets. Despite the government’s assertions, the LSE and Guardian Reading the Riots report found that 85 per cent of rioters interviewed said police discrimination, especially around the use of stop and search, contributed to their involvement, with police discrimination second only to poverty as a cause of the riots in the views of the rioters. Alongside the Troubled Families Programme, the coalition government’s other significant tackling youth crime initiative was their Ending Gang and Youth Violence Policy. New measures included the gang injunctions that enabled the police and local authority to prohibit 14-​to 17-​year-​olds thought to be involved in gang activity from certain activities, including associating with other known gang nominals, entering certain areas. Concerns over drill music also led to prohibiting the performance of tracks with lyrics adjudged to incite violence. In addition, new mandatory custodial sentences were introduced for threatening another with an offensive weapon, and the worst affected boroughs received funding to deliver gang intervention programmes –​some of which, such as Operation Shield, will be discussed in later chapters. More recently, policymakers and practitioners have sought to address serious youth violence through a public health approach, following notable successes in the US and Scotland. This approach aims to address risk factors that lead to serious youth violence rather than criminalizing young people. This often emphasizes trauma-​informed practice and recognizes the impact that ACEs such as parental separation, abuse and victimization have on the likelihood of a young person becoming involved in criminal activity. As part of this policy change, the Greater London Assembly set up a VRU in 2018, headed by the former leader of Lambeth Council. The unit aims to 21

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embed a public health based strategy for tackling youth violence by bringing together specialists from various sectors, including law enforcement, health, local authority, probation and the community sector, to: • focus on a defined population, often with a health risk in common with and for communities; • not be constrained by organizational or professional boundaries; • focus on generating long-​term as well as short-​term solutions; and • use data and intelligence to identify the burden on the population including any inequalities in levels of risk. (London.gov.uk, nd) The unit’s funding has enabled some councils to work together to develop innovative cross borough projects, while others have sought to develop initiatives to help parents and professionals interact more effectively to support young people earlier. Locally the council has used its VRU funding to commission several organizations to work with individuals from the estate.

Understanding the impact of oppression, racism and policy failure on youth safety This chapter aimed to provide some historical and social contexts that have impacted those living on the estate. Brixton and its surrounding estates have a long, diverse history and were some of the first places post war migrants from the Caribbean settled. However, their reception was often hostile. Along with individual incidents of racism, many of the first and second generation migrants endured structural discrimination in the form of poor housing, poor education, being overqualified for their jobs and heavy handed policing. By the 1970s, a resistance culture emerged, which drew inspiration from music and stylistic influences from Jamaica. Those on the right saw what was emerging as a threat to the British way of life. This, along with rising crime rates in Lambeth, led to Operation Swamp 81, which saw increased police action in Brixton, followed by rioting against the police. Despite the Scarman Report and various subsequent reviews, local neighbourhoods continue to be subjected to heavy policing and are rife with crime-​inducing social conditions such as poor housing, poor educational standards, unemployment and limited social collective efficacy. More recently, the criminal subculture on the estate has centred around drug dealing, drill music and youth violence. However, the public policy response seems to be shifting from primarily an enforcement focus to a public health approach that recognizes youth violence as a culmination of several psychological, familial and environmental risk 22

‘Black criminality’ and youth violence

factors that influence individuals’ actions. Enforcement is still considered necessary, but it now sits alongside more trauma informed and early intervention practices that seek to deal with some of the underlying risk factors associated with youth violence. All of these issues will be discussed in subsequent chapters.

23

3

Exploring the Neighbourhood Deprivation, population change, diversity and relational change This chapter introduces the estate in terms of some key people and its geography. Next, it looks at some of the activities and initiatives run by residents over the past 40 years, such as managing communal buildings, running youth clubs, holiday playschemes and organizing social activities. The chapter then explores how demographic changes led to racism, discriminatory practices and deep divisions led to parallel projects emerging. Finally, the text describes the local geography of the estate, including its layout and community spaces where estate life occurs and how it is becoming an island of deprivation surrounded by nearby gentrification.

The people who make it all happen The first and possibly most noteworthy resident is Dorothy, who came to the UK from Jamaica in her 20s to study nursing. After a short time in Essex and then Manchester, she settled on St Mary’s Estate in the early 1980s. One summer, a few kids lit fires in her block’s bin shelter, and when she found out about the harshness of the boys’ lives, it moved her to go across to the local school and see if she could help out. Her eagerness led her to take some community development classes at the local adult education centre and then retrain as a social worker. Over the past 40 years, Dorothy has been involved in most local initiatives. As the current treasurer of the residents’ committee and as the one who always makes herself available to help, she holds significant influence. Her willingness to work alongside others of her generation who were previously openly racist and tried to obstruct her efforts is an indication of her character. Although Dorothy would sometimes speak of 24

Exploring the neighbourhood

the pain she endured during this period, she never says a bad word against those responsible. Another key figure is Charis. Now in her late 40s, Charis lived in Birmingham when she first came from Jamaica before moving to the estate in the mid-​1990s. She shares a two-​bedroom flat with her brother, two daughters, Miche, now 31 and Stephanie, aged 16, and Miche’s two daughters. When Miche got pregnant in 2006, Charis wanted to ensure Stephanie grew up in a better environment and sought to do something. Soon Charis moved from being a problem mother to a well-​respected member of the residents’ committee. From 2006 to 2009, Charis helped run a resident-​led youth project and became a popular figure among the young people and their parents. By the end of 2012, Charis was a qualified playworker, had a part-​time job at an afterschool club and remains a crucial member of the team that runs the estate’s holiday playschemes. Miche lives out her life on the estate. In many ways, her development mirrors that of her mother. From 13 to 19 years old, she was the only female member of the group who became known as the original olders, with olders being a general term within street culture given to the eldest group of young people from an area. When she became pregnant, Miche came under Charis’ wing once more and started to help out with what her mum had become involved in. While much of the focus was on the boys, Miche developed a small girls’ group and a t-​shirt printing business. Some, including myself, tried to help her by getting her to enrol on training courses; however, Miche would seldom turn up and would cause a scene when asked why she didn’t show. However, in her mid-​20s, she finally plucked up the courage to go to university. Like her mum, Miche still helps out on Dorothy’s play schemes, and more recently, she has taken a leading role in connecting young people with the support offered by youth organizations from off the estate. Elizabeth, a white British woman originally from the Midlands, moved into the area in the 1980s as a squatter before securing a council tenancy. Her New Age disposition is still on show for all who enter her home; beads have replaced the internal doors, and ornate crystals and books on meridian points are almost everywhere you look. A couple of years before retiring in 2012, Elizabeth got her first ever job, working for a community health project. She defended her previous economic inactivity by stating that the estate was her job, running an informal home school outside her flat and offering advice and guidance to all who asked. Elizabeth is a fixer type, and people used to go to her to get problems solved, buy drugs and even get stolen property back. Elizabeth became the residents’ committee’s secretary in 2004 and stayed in this position until early 2012 when she decided to take a step back. As secretary, Elizabeth set the agenda, not just in terms of the meetings. Almost nothing got done if Elizabeth disapproved. Some saw this as an abuse of 25

Dealing, music and youth violence

power; the reality was somewhat different. Once Elizabeth was made aware of an issue, she would research and network tirelessly, talking to residents, councillors and local authority staff before putting it on the committee’s agenda. It was only after this initial investigation was complete that Elizabeth raised the issue publicly. Nothing could happen without Elizabeth knowing about it first. At least once a week, I would find myself in Elizabeth’s flat being told off about something; or talking through some idea I had, only for Elizabeth to recall how others had tried it before and what I would need to do differently for it to work. One such idea was a football project with the local boys, utilizing the football cage on the estate and the park opposite. A couple of nights a week and on Saturdays, I would be running football sessions with local teenagers and their younger brothers, who always seemed to tag along. However, someone had beaten me to the punch, and my efforts earnt the anger of Lenny, a local man who had set up a similar project a year or so before I moved into the area when he decided to take a few boys from his block to the park to play football. This then turned into a summer holiday scheme and eventually a full-​time job, creating the St Mary’s Football Project. At first, Lenny was understandably hostile, accusing me of trying to poach his players. However, although Lenny might let you know how he feels, he is one of the most helpful people you could ever meet, and he couldn’t help but offer his advice and support. This attribute of Lenny’s became even more apparent when I tried to enter a team into a local league and got fined for not paying pitch fees that I didn’t owe. Seeing the injustice, Lenny seemed to always be around at meetings between myself and the league, and when he realized I had to get the bus home after one particular meeting, he offered to give me a lift. During the drive, Lenny asked me what I was doing over the summer, and I replied that I would help him from now on and have done so ever since. Lenny’s first interest in the estate came from him ending up as a parent governor at the local primary school after his wife put him forward for election as a joke, which as the only candidate, he won. Struck by the lack of local representation, he decided to get stuck in, often calling out the other governors who opted to send their children elsewhere despite being on the school board. Half Irish, half Italian, Lenny had spent most of his youth and early adulthood involved in various criminal activities. However, he had started to turn his life around, helped by seeing many of his friends’ lives ruined by drugs and meeting the right woman. In just a couple of years, Lenny went from selling knock-​off clothes outside the school gate to becoming a governor. Despite moving in 2006, he is in the area so often that most people assume he still lives there. The St Mary’s Football Project he started in 2004 is now the largest youth project in the area, working with over 300 young people a week. What started as a kick about in the park 26

Exploring the neighbourhood

now involves providing at least ten weekly football sessions in the park, local schools and the estate’s football cage, table tennis, boxing, English and Maths booster classes and counselling. Many who have been part of the football project since early childhood see Lenny as a surrogate father, with some now either working for him as coaches or still playing in the project’s men’s team. When asked about Lenny, Ashley, who used to play for a St Mary’s Youth Team and is now part of the men’s team, commented: “Lenny is a mad man; I don’t know why he does it; out of all the things he could do, he decides to spend his time helping us. He’s a proper good man.” Despite Lenny’s intimate knowledge of what is going on with those the police and social services are most concerned about, his views are often overlooked. Lenny has reported concerns about numerous young people to schools and social services that have failed to act, only for the young person to end up getting stabbed or going to prison. Yet, despite his long-​term connections to the local young people, when the council commissioned community interventions, the St Mary’s Football Project is never considered an option. Some others used to be prominent but have faded into the background over the years. Marie, now in her 50s, moved to the estate as a two-​year-​ old when her parents relocated from Essex. Marie’s parents, along with Billy, a proud Geordie, were part of the original group of residents who ran Centenary Hall, the local community centre and the estate’s youth club building in the 1970s and 1980s (more about these later). Clashes with other residents, which may have been rooted in prejudice, meant that her mum took a step back, and Marie took up the mantle of estate engagement before stopping herself in 2015. More recently, a new group of volunteers have emerged under the tutelage of Dorothy. Most of them initially got involved in 2014 due to a summer playscheme initially run by Dorothy and me. Kate, a Jamaican mother of three, seemed to be the catalyst, recruiting some of her fellow parents from the local primary school. All liked the opportunity to get paid to do something positive to help their children and their children’s friends. As with the estate volunteers before them, they have a mixed heritage. One is a white British woman who grew up locally, another, alongside Kate, grew up in Jamaica, another is Black British of Jamaican descent, and another is from Congo.

St Mary’s young people The young people from the estate will be discussed throughout the book; however, it is worth giving a general summary here. Over the past 15 years, there have been four prominent groups known for their criminality. The boys, and it is almost solely boys, start appearing as a group in the latter 27

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years of primary school, usually playing football or riding their bikes. By the time they reach the age of 12 or 13, they start to look for more exciting things to do like having firework fights, then stealing and riding mopeds, in a process known locally as easing in, before starting to smoke or deal weed by the time they reach 15. For some, this dealing then progresses to crack and heroin a little while later. Wrapped up in this lifestyle is the dynamic of local rivalries, violence, death and mourning. As they reach 20, most have moved away and are rarely seen in the area. The first group to emerge primarily stayed clear of smoking weed and appeared to be money and opportunity orientated. However, by the time they were 18 or 19 years old (2006), they were largely absent, with all but two working, going to university or in prison. As they moved off the estate, another group, three to four years younger, emerged. Some lived on or near the estate, but by 2011 they were joined by others from further afield, doubling the size of the group. By 2013, nearly half had gone off to university. This subset largely hid their criminal activity, and all but one stayed clear of more public displays of street culture, such as appearing in the grime and drill videos that young people had started to produce. Instead, much of their dealing simply supplemented their legitimate sources of income, which included student loans and retail jobs. Those that did not go to university had a distinctly different view on life. They openly smoked weed and drank and never tried to hide their dealing. They were content with the prospect of making a living from monetizing street life. Many of this more street focused group spent time in and out of prison, with some going away for long stretches for violent offences. Yet, violence wasn’t limited to them but also affected their more educationally ambitious peers. Three of those who went to university were stabbed; thankfully, all recovered. Another, however, Kwame, was shot dead three weeks before he received an acceptance letter from a university 200 miles away. In time, some saw a new revenue stream emerge, the royalties and advertising income from the music they produced. By 2011, making grime and then drill tracks in a studio run by three olders became an everyday activity on the estate. Gerald, Emre and David, the olders, rarely appeared in videos themselves; instead, they helped the youngers produce tracks. During this emergence, Gerald was the most prominent local young person because of his willingness to engage with the residents’ committee and his role in starting the music studio. His connection with the olders and youngers made him a person of interest to the police, and his mum’s flat was raided several times. Over ten years later, Gerald still has no criminal record, despite many arrests, most notably for assaulting a police officer, for which he was acquitted, and for handling stolen goods, which resulted in no further action as he bought the goods legally at an auction. Although 28

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criminal peers surrounded him, Gerald always strived to ensure his business was as legitimate as possible. Today, Gerald still runs a studio, manages seven artists and has been behind several award-​winning tracks. By 2013 a new dominant group emerged, calling themselves 13, consisting of a core group of three young people, two of whom lived in the same hostel a short bus ride from the estate. They were far more entrepreneurial than those who went before, gained national acclaim for their music and moved from street dealing to supplying dealers reasonably quickly. At the time of writing, we are seeing the back end of another group, LSM (Lower St Mary’s); as some move away, another young person, Trevor, has unfortunately been murdered, leaving only one core member of the group on the estate.

Taking a wider view The current older adult residents tend to be first generation migrants from the Caribbean or those of white British backgrounds, with both groups moving on to the estate in the late 1970s or early 1980s. Today, the remnants of these groups sit around tables at residents’ meetings, somewhat hiding the palpable ethnic divides of the past. The estate’s diversity, alongside changes in what is socially acceptable, has muted much of the racist sentiment that remains (Back, 1996). For young people, ethnicity seems to be even less of an issue among themselves. Although they speak of racial discrimination, especially by the police, their culture seems more syncretic (Back, 1996). Youth friendships groups mainly comprise second and third generation West African and Caribbean young people, with some white British and other Europeans interacting as equals. There is an awareness of their various backgrounds, Nigerian, Ghanaian, Congolese, Jamaican, Portuguese, white British and Turkish, but comments about the differences are generally jovial. A common youth culture supersedes any ethnic or racial dichotomy. Their diversity is representative of the local demographic changes. In 1991, 57 per cent of the local population were white, 23 per cent Caribbean and 8 per cent African. By 2011, only 36 per cent of the local population was white (24 per cent white British), with the overall Black population staying stable. However, those from an African background are now the majority. An increase in people of dual heritage explains the drop in the overall white population. Presently, the unemployment rate for the estate stands at roughly 15 per cent, double the national average, and close to 35 per cent of the children in St Mary’s and the surrounding area grow up in poverty (Lambeth Council, ndb). Due to its proximity to a gentrifying Brixton with its underground station, the estate’s private rented leasehold properties are becoming popular with young middle class people. This changing characteristic is 29

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visible in the makeup of the row of shops situated just off the estate. The two Caribbean takeaways, Black barbers, a betting shop and two cafés that used to be mainstays have been replaced by a vegan bar, second-​hand shop, tea and cake shop and hipster coffee shop. This recent popularity has seen house prices rise, and the average local house price in 2020 was £790,000 and £478,000 for flats (Land Registry, 2020). However, compared to the surrounding areas, flats on the estate remain relatively affordable, with three-​ bedroom properties on the market for around £375,000; still too expensive for locals to afford.

The built environment of the estate The area where the estate is situated used to be part of a large family domain, with it and the wider area taking its name from a 17th-​century slave trader. Inheritances and sell-​offs saw the area slowly parcelled off, and over time two main roads appeared to link the emerging houses to nearby Brixton. The London County Council acquired some of the middle class family homes lining one of these roads in the 1930s to build the estate, which is one of four interspersed between rows of large, expensive family homes. The prior status is further evidenced by a prestigious school relocating from central London in the early 20th century to provide an education for boys, with another following suit for girls. The girls’ school remains; however, the boys’ school shut down in 1979. In the mid-​1950s, a comprehensive school adjacent to the estate opened, equipped with a public swimming pool and youth club. After years of underperforming, the school closed in 1994, much to the ire of locals who lost a school and the other amenities. The school was replaced by luxury flats, marking the start of a regeneration drive in the area. The estate comprises 882 slum clearance social housing flats in 32 low-​r ise blocks and is home to around 3,000 people. The kitchens were designed before most working class families had white goods such as fridges, freezers and washing machines, and are particularly small, something that is evident as you walk into homes and see family-​sized fridges in the living rooms or forming an obstacle in the narrow hallways. The communal laundry rooms at the end of each floor of the blocks, which once allowed additional space to carry out household chores, are now boarded up and left empty. When first built, the blocks had open-​access stairways, allowing people to go freely from block to block and home to home. To prevent anti-​social behaviour, open entrances have been replaced with security doors, a symbolic reminder that the communal living that was once encouraged has been all but forgotten. From the late 1970s into the 1980s, the estate had a bad reputation leading to some calling it the ‘Wild West of the South’. By the late 1980s, the area had an issue with drugs. A sign in the local chemist warned, ‘Heroin sold in 30

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this area is cut with brick dust and can kill instantly’. Drug dealing was so rife that the police set up CCTV across the road from the local shops and asked the bookmakers to remove its seating to stop people from using it as a hangout. The newsagent parked two transit vans outside to block the CCTV cameras in response to this. The betting shop replaced the seating with milk crates provided by the newsagent, as both shop managers realized that the targets of the police deterrent were also some of their main customers. Despite this, the estate was also a hive of resident activity. Many spoke of a residents’ cleaning rota for their block, and all the communal buildings were resident led. The oldest was John’s Hut, a tin hut run by John, a council youth worker, supported by resident volunteers, notably two white families who lived opposite. Activities included arts and crafts, homework clubs, table tennis and football tournaments, holiday play schemes and a yearly camping trip. After a resident-​led fundraising drive in the 1980s, John’s Hut was replaced by a permanent building complete with a hall, kitchen and office space named St Mary’s Youth Club. Those who attended the club remember the staff and volunteers’ caring nature and described a support network where the residents would go out of their way to provide informal childcare for parents when the club wasn’t open, help with homework and even basic maintenance in people’s flats. Marie, who still lives in the block where she grew up, commented on the ethos of John’s hut: ‘our parents knew where we were, and John was like a granddad. He was very supportive … if one of us didn’t turn up, we would send out a search party. There was a community and that kind of support. … If your mum had to go out, she would say can I leave my child with you, and they knew you were safe.’ The building may have closed down in 2000 when the council relocated their workers to the new youth club in the adventure playground site that ran parallel to the estate, paid for out of the sale of the school mentioned. However, Billy, one of the resident volunteers, got the keys from the housing office and has kept the building open ever since, renting it out to outside organizations, including Mencap and a Chinese church. The high pointed metal fence erected by Billy reflects that it is no longer an estate resource. The other main communal building, Centenary Hall, a resident-​run community centre and social club, opened in 1977 but closed in 1987 before reopening in 2013. There were mixed reports as to the reason for its closure. Some of the original management committee said it was due to mounting debts owed to a brewery, while Billy commented that he got fed up with the noise and disruptions associated with the building’s commercially orientated Reggae dances and so petitioned the council to close the space down. The 31

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truth could be a mix of the two; without the income from the dances, the hall committee struggled to pay the brewery, so the building had to close. While it was open, the building hosted activities such as lunch clubs during the day and regular jazz, Reggae and dominoes nights in the evening. Many Black residents spoke of how the hall had a great family atmosphere and was the centre of estate life for both old and young. Cynthia, a Jamaican woman who has lived on the estate since she was eight, recalls the intergenerational nature of activities in Centenary Hall as she was growing up: ‘I helped my mum out there, that is where the elderly, the older ones, the youth and the babies, little ones, that’s where everyone used to congregate, it was a family that brought out everybody. … We had Jazz nights, dominos and other things always going on so people could socialize. … You know how the boys hang out now by the main road; we did the same thing outside Centenary hall.’ The two buildings standing side by side are emblematic of some of the estate’s racial tensions. The activities in John’s Hut and the subsequent St Mary’s Youth Club were primarily managed by people who were hostile to Black people, and the place was unofficially only for the estate’s white children, as Cynthia explains: ‘No one would tell us we were not welcome; it’s just a feeling you got. You could tell they didn’t want us there. It was hostile; you just knew it wasn’t a place for Black children. And if you went round to see Billy’s children, Billy would always tell you they can’t come out. But then you would see them with other, how can I put it, not Black children, a little later.’ Centenary Hall’s management team was far more representative of the wider estate demographic, with its activities reflecting this. Some of this original management group felt Billy’s actions to try and close down the hall were motivated by his prejudices more than anything else. A few years after Centenary Hall closed, a new space, Our Place, opened up. Our Place, also known as the community flat, was three flats joined together on the ground floor of Turner House, the largest block on the estate. Initially, it was a social services office but was turned into a communal space when they moved out. Our Place has been home to two churches and an internet café, several children’s and youth activities and an adult education organization, making the Turner block the home of most of the activities on the estate for over 25 years. In the summer of 2017, the council announced it was turning the space back into flats, and it has been vacant ever since. 32

Exploring the neighbourhood

In the mid-​1980s, Dorothy became fed up with Black children having nowhere to go during the school holidays, so she decided to set up an alternative project alongside the one based in the St Mary’s Youth Club. Initially, the scheme had to run in the local park, with the young people using trees for shelter when it rained as no one would let Dorothy use their building. After two years of running the activities outdoors and being met by an Alsatian dog at the nearby Quaker Hall that she was told she could use, Dorothy was allowed to use Our Place. Dorothy explains the struggle: ‘We had to start under the trees in the park and had to fight like mad because most of the children were Black, and it was only Black women in charge, so they’d look at us and say they don’t want to know. Then we were told we could use Friends Meeting House up the road, but one morning we went up there, two dogs came out, and they were vicious, and the kids were crying. So, I told the community worker that there were too many Black faces, so they don’t want us. And when the rain comes, it becomes very difficult, and we had to keep running into people’s houses or under trees. Then the community worker got Turner House, so she started saying I should come there.’ There was a sense that the residents saw the estate as their domain. Although it may not have been the ideal place to live, many people strived to improve it. Support networks and trust, born out of communal activities that helped people get to know one another, existed in abundance. The fact that adults were out in the communal areas meant that these spaces were not given over to young people, as is now the case. Instead, they were shared spaces. As a result, young people had to act alongside adults, many of whom they or their parents knew well. Cynthia comments about that time: “Oh, if we got caught, it would be our parents, neighbours and adults; anybody would scold you there and then. People back then were close; there was caring in the air; I don’t find a lot of caring in the air; I only find anger and selfishness.” The activities undertaken in the communal spaces were catalysts for friendship forming. Professionals valued these relationships. John, the council youth worker, embedded himself within the friendship networks of the estate, which helped him effectively deliver youth activities. Similarly, the resident participation officer who supported Dorothy and others to set up a legal surgery, the alternative summer playscheme and other events played a facilitation role for residents who were far more connected, trusted and generally in a better place to get things done. Yet this status was open to abuse; the racial discrimination at John’s Hut is a case in point. These negatives are a reminder that no matter how positive the residents spoke of the past, the residents still caused many issues. 33

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However, despite the racism, crime and overcrowding, there was a strong sense of responsibility, friendship and care for one another, especially for young people. The activities took place within a distinct field with its own habitus and capital (Bourdieu, 1977). The estate was a social space where residents were in control and determined the rules of the game with their values and dispositions setting what habitus and cultural capital prevailed. In this space, caring about fellow residents was currency, and local friendships were the most effective source of social capital. The most influential were those who were most active regardless of their qualifications or professional skill level. This hierarchy of practical value, similar to Bourdieu’s notion of practical relationship-​based social capital (Bourdieu, 1977), allowed people such as Cynthia’s mum, a part-​time administrator, and Elizabeth, an unemployed fixer and networker, to gain prominent positions on the estate. Getting things done in an informal friendship based way became the doxa on the estate with social capital and status increased by actively helping others. Understanding these dynamics was key to life on the estate. My time spent with Elizabeth helped me find a place on the estate. I became the key holder for the community flat, and alongside Charis, who lived above Elizabeth and spoke to her every day, I was able to help set up a youth project without much objection from others. However, I didn’t realize that Elizabeth’s backing meant that I was seen with suspicion by Dorothy, who saw Elizabeth as often siding with those who she had to battle against in the past. It was only when Elizabeth stepped down from the residents’ committee that Dorothy started to open up to me. A couple of years later, she started cooking for the young people I worked with on the estate. Soon she became the person I trusted most, not just with projects I was trying to establish, but she is also a Godparent to my youngest and one of the people I turn to for advice on a variety of matters.

Local concern and local action The estate has a chequered history; on the one hand, it was a hive of resident activity, which was the driving force behind the local social life and support networks. Residents seemed to run everything from youth projects to communal buildings and what happened in them. The most influential people were those who showed the greatest care for the estate through involvement in various committees and projects and taking an interest in the lives of those around them. The informality of this social space allowed members to act on their prejudices, which led to racial discrimination. This resulted in a dual youth support structure, with the council-​endorsed service known for not 34

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welcoming Black children operating alongside a Black resident-​managed service. These tensions manifested themselves in other ways and contributed to the closing of Centenary Hall in the 1980s, which ultimately took away one of the key spaces where people came together and all important friendships were made.

35

4

Localized Disempowerment and the Development of Criminal Cultures How council interventions increased the space for a violent street culture to evolve This chapter outlines the change from informal resident youth support to several short-​term, local authority-​commissioned professional interventions. Initially, the text discusses how a group of us turned interacting with young people over the summer into a twice weekly youth club after one parent was concerned about how the young people were starting to behave. The chapter moves on to discuss how the commissioning of a series of gang intervention programmes after the murders of two St Mary’s young people shifted the support away from an informal relationship-​based interaction and to professionalized intervention. The analysis considers how the power relationships between the council, intervention providers and residents meant that those of us who had previously interacted with the young people were excluded from future delivery, despite the council aiming for coproductive project delivery.

St Mary’s Estate youth project In the summer of 2006, Charis asked Elizabeth what they could do to calm the young people down during the holidays. Miche, Charis’ eldest daughter, hung out with the boys from the estate and got pregnant, and the thought of Miche’s younger sister doing something similar was enough for Charis to spring into action. Elizabeth and Charis approached me to see if I wanted to help do something. Throughout that summer, Charis and I, supported in the background by Elizabeth, spent our evenings supervising the children and young people as they played and hung out on the estate. 36

Development of criminal cultures

By the autumn, we had raised £10,000, and with the help of Miche and volunteers from two nearby churches (but not the churches using any of the estate’s buildings), we ran a youth club in Our Place on Tuesdays and Fridays. The under 13s session was from 4:30 to 6:30, and the over 13s from 6:30 to 8:30. Fridays were a bit different in that the older ones came in earlier and stayed until 9:00. Activities ranged from homework support, arts and crafts, music sessions and a Friday movie night using a borrowed projector and illegally downloaded movies. The older group generally chilled out and played pool or on the PlayStation. One week, Ife, one of the young people, brought some boxing kit, and the latter part of Friday night was taken up with mini boxing matches. When it was my turn to fight, I had Ife on the ropes for about a minute before I ran out of breath, and he started to pound me. The rooms were kitted out with old school chairs and tables and second-​hand furniture donated to the project. They were also small, pool players had to angle their cue quite steeply to avoid hitting the wall when taking a shot, and the place always seemed overcrowded. During this time, we helped a group of young people set up a music studio, arranged work experience placements and organized residentials. If an adult was worried about the actions of a young person or if a young person needed support, they would invariably call Charis, who comments about this time: “It worked because we knew them all; if there was any trouble, we would go round their parent’s house, and people used to call us to check on their children.” Charis, Elizabeth and I saw an opportunity to build a network, hoping it would provide some form of relational support. The idea was simple enough: to help residents interact with and get to know the young people and hopefully influence their behaviour. Some parents got involved in one-​off activities such as dance competitions and the various outings to the park, theatre or cinema. A Christmas party seemed like it might never end because parents and their children wouldn’t stop dancing to ‘Crank That’ by Soulja Boy. Yet, apart from a handful of residents, no one really got involved, and a supportive network did not develop. The established connections were primarily between Charis, me and individual parents; little, if any, broader collective efficacy emerged. This started to take its toll; part of the problem with these initiatives is that the time and commitment needed to make them work can be exhausting. Making yourself constantly available means that your life starts to be consumed by what you are trying to achieve. Lenny warned me early on that it would take over my life. Charis continually commented that she wouldn’t be able to keep going. My work colleagues often accused me of coming into work exhausted, and one of the reasons I moved off the estate in 2017 was that I had a baby on the way and needed to find balance in my life. 37

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However, the work was not in vain. The ward crime data for the area shows a distinct pattern. In the five years when the residents were most active (2006–​2010), weapons offences in St Mary’s only rose by 20 per cent compared to an average 55 per cent increase for nearby wards (Metropolitan Police Service, nd). While the estate was becoming more violent, it did so at a slower rate than other areas. The younger session was for children aged eight and up as there was some understanding that any provision for younger children would require Ofsted registration. However, the children brought their younger brothers and sisters, who they were looking after while their parents were at work. Two of the youngest to attend were Kenny (who was five), who came with his older sister, and his friend Trevor (who was six), whose mum volunteered on outings due to her concerns over his behaviour. It wasn’t that Trevor misbehaved; he just didn’t seem to understand the importance of instructions. When Trevor started playing football with the St Mary’s Football Project, Lenny flagged up to his school and social services that he felt that Trevor had some form of learning impairment. Despite his mum raising similar concerns, neither his school nor social services did anything. Kenny lived with his sister, two uncles and nan after his mum was murdered. His uncles were known user dealers, and his nan had a substance abuse problem. While he was still in primary school, some of us from the estate looked after him, taking him to the barbers and buying school uniforms and Christmas presents. Whenever Dorothy organized a coach trip, one of us would nominate ourselves as his responsible adult so he could go. Lenny even doctored a photocopy of Kenny’s birth certificate so he appeared a year younger and could join one of the St Mary’s football teams. Lenny explained that it was important for Kenny to be doing something positive with people who cared for him, and there was no team for Kenny’s age; the rules had to be bent. The young people could be enterprising to get what they wanted. When Moise, Kobe and Serge, who attended the older session, wanted to host a party in the community flat, they convinced Elizabeth that I had permitted them. Fuming, Elizabeth summoned me to her flat to discuss my actions. I explained that I only agreed because she had done so first. After realizing the young people had played us, our first reaction was to tell Moise and co to cancel the event. After hearing them out, we agreed to help them ensure the party was well organized. We set an 11 pm end time, provided the sound system and ensured that a couple of us were present on the night. Maureen, a local mum, who had recently lost her job, used the event as an opportunity to launch a catering business. From around 7 pm until 10 pm, there was a queue of young people outside her front door waiting to buy some jerk chicken, curried goat or steamed fish. 38

Development of criminal cultures

From early evening until 11 pm, the main room in the community flat was rammed with about 30 young people who insisted that the lights were turned off. A mix of hip hop, grime and funky house played throughout the evening. At one point, Charis turned on the lights to check on everyone, only to see all the girls standing around the outside of the room and Moise, Kobe, Anton, Kwame, Serge and their friends all dancing together in the middle. They attempted to style things out but quickly stopped and joined the girls at the edge of the room. The only actual incident of note was when Denise, Maureen’s daughter, sneaked out and went to the party while her mum was busy selling food. Once Maureen realized what had happened, she and Susan, her neighbour, burst into the community flat, turned the lights on and walked through looking for Denise, who had escaped through the fire exit with Susan’s daughter.

Studio time In February 2010, Gerald, Emre and Ife, from Miche’s group, asked to borrow the projector I had used on Friday evenings to present a plan to set up a music studio to the residents’ committee. Gerald, who was already making tracks with Anton, his younger brother, in their bedroom, set out his plan to help young people make music tracks and videos. The three wanted support to source some funding and a space for the studio. The committee’s chair, Kofi, commented that the residents’ committee did not give any group their own room, so a studio would not be possible. However, Elizabeth had been discussing the project with Gerald and proposed a workaround, which everyone accepted: “What about the cupboard by the main door? It’s only used to store old stuff that no one knows what to do with. Gerald and his friends could help clear it out and store their equipment there.” Elizabeth also knew that the committee would not give Gerard any money, so she asked Carol from a local drama organization to listen to the proposal and get involved. Carol offered to help Gerard submit a funding bid for £10,000 to buy the equipment they needed. After about six weeks, the funding came in. But Carol seemed to go back on her word and insisted that the studio would need to be in her organization’s building, with Gerald able to use it under the supervision of her technician. Disappointed by what seemed a betrayal, they pushed ahead with the project in the community flat. Using some money they had saved and Emre’s student loan, they kitted out the studio, with Gerald’s cousin rewiring, soundproofing and remodelling the room. When finished, the space had a main area that could fit three people standing up and a separate vocal booth that could fit two people at a squeeze. Although only young people from the estate used the studio in the early days and solely when Charis or I were in the building, Gerald soon took 39

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bookings from people from further afield. Almost immediately, there was a problem with people skinning up while waiting to use the studio and leaving the community flat’s foyer area in a mess. Gerald always seemed to push the agreed finish time, and Elizabeth was constantly asking Gerald to come and talk to her about the studio and respecting the building. Soon a group of St Mary’s young people became known as E1S (Everyone’s a Snake), a transitional group of a few St Mary’s residents and young people attracted to the estate following the murder of Tom, a local young person. By all accounts, the police coined this name from a track posted on YouTube. Initially, the young people mocked the police for trying to name them, but it wasn’t long before they adopted the name and the phrase featured in all subsequent videos.

Early signs of youth violence The main issues during this period would not have been anything of note by today’s standard. Once, the older group drove to a nearby estate, pulled the hood over someone’s head, beat him with a baseball bat and broke his arm for apparently mouthing off about them. When I explained that it was a nephew of a woman on the estate, who had a go at me for not being able to control what they were doing, they told Charis to send their apologies to her. The most significant incident before 2009 was a play fight between Moise and Kwame that turned serious. As a crowd gathered around, it was clear that neither wanted to hurt the other and after a few minutes of each shouting “come on then” and wrestling each other to the ground, both went home. On one Friday evening, the young people assembled outside the community flat. Someone had stabbed Kobe, a young estate resident, with something on the previous Wednesday while he was in the pub watching football. No one could say with what, and Kobe seemed to be okay. However, they wanted their revenge and were tooled up with bats, hammers and anything they could get their hands on, and went to a neighbouring estate where the man responsible lived. When they got outside the person’s flat, a man in his 40s came out and said: “What is all this about? Yeah, I got your boy, but he was disrespecting me, and it was a fucking pen; I am not into all this; just go home.” And then shut the door. The boys didn’t know what to do, so they just hung around for a while and then walked back up the road. Around this time, weapons became more of a concern. But our general perception was that the estate’s young people were only on the margins of the emerging youth violence. Yet, there were signs to the contrary and rivalries between Brixton and St Mary’s were developing. On one occasion, a neighbour saw Anton tucking a knife into the back of his jeans, so he put him in a headlock, marched him back up the stairs and told his mum to check him for weapons. 40

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Things intensified in late 2009 with an incident involving Tom. Tom was short for his age and generally a likeable young man who was always up to mischief. Almost every Tuesday and Friday session ended with a hunt for Tom, who would hide in the toilet or a cupboard when it was time to go home. Yet, Tom could run his mouth off. Charis and I regularly warned him that this would one day cause him trouble, but he seemed to brush off our advice with an air of naivety. Unfortunately, one Tuesday evening, Tom told me he had done it, pissed off the wrong person and didn’t know what to do. I tried to get to the bottom of what had happened, but Tom didn’t want to go into details. The project stopped a few weeks later at the request of the police after Tom was shot at while on his way to the community flat. Tom was stabbed to death outside his school the following June. The day of Tom’s killing proved a turning point for the estate. That evening more and more young people congregated outside Our Place; many looked visibly distraught. Charis and Elizabeth decided to organize an impromptu barbeque, knocking on other residents’ doors asking if anyone had food they could contribute. This was not enough to stop the police from descending in full riot gear, marching toward the young people, and throwing cans of CS gas to disburse the gathering crowd. The borough commander later justified this action stating that the police had received several phone calls about a large group of people congregating. With the events earlier on in the day, a decision was made to act swiftly, which seemed like the right one at the time and with the available information. Throughout that summer, grey ‘bully’ TSG vans roamed the estate. Young people were subject to searches, which were, at times, forceful. One elderly couple were so taken aback by what they saw that they started to take their daily walk in the early evening, when the police presence was at its highest, just so there was someone present when the police were harassing the young people. It became commonplace for young people and other residents to film the police, something the local MP condemned at the time as harassing behaviour, only to endorse the action several years later when it seemed more politically expedient to do so. On one occasion, the police forcefully searched Emre in a van and left him badly bruised. Another time, the police had Darren, Adal and Ife, three of the eldest group of young people, face down on the ground outside Our Place, each with two officers over the top of them with their knees on their backs. Several young and old residents shouted at the police from the walkways of the blocks surrounding the area. Gerald felt a bit braver and went downs and started filming what was going on very close to the police, complete with running commentary about police brutality. The police arrested all four young people for assaulting an officer. The police raided Emre and Gerald’s parents’ flats the following day, seizing all digital storage 41

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devices, including Sky boxes and laptops. Emre’s elderly, deaf mum needed hospital treatment because she was forced to the floor and held there by an officer kneeing on her back while the raid was going on. The local MP said to Elizabeth, Dorothy, Kofi, Charis and me before a meeting to discuss the incident a week later that we should understand that many officers join the TSG to do the ‘sexy’ work. The meeting didn’t yield any results, with it clear that the police were unwilling to change tack. Some of Emre’s family came to complain about their mum’s treatment, and one officer offered to give her and her son a lift to the station to make a formal complaint. However, other officers refused to let her into any police vehicle, telling her to make her own way to the station if she wanted to complain. When the case got to court, the young people were tried together. The judge dismissed the first jury as the prosecution constantly referred to the young men as a gang despite presenting no evidence of this. The case against the four collapsed at trial after three police officers gave different locations for the assault, and a fourth admitted he was not sure it actually happened. By the end of the summer, the police action had fostered enough resistance from parents and other residents for the local MP to coordinate a meeting between the police and those affected. About 20 residents and young people went down to a community centre opposite the police station. They were joined by two local councillors, the MP, the Borough Commander and some officers who had been policing the estate. The borough commander commented that there had only been 80 stop and searches in the wider area, not just the estate, in the past three months. He explained that this was typical of Lambeth and showed no deliberate targeting of St Mary’s young people. At this point, Elizabeth pulled out 120 of the stop and search receipts that the young people had given her and accused the borough commander of not knowing what his officers were doing. Again, it was clear that the residents’ account and that of the authorities were substantially different from each other, and there seemed to be an impasse. However, by the end of the meeting, the borough commander agreed to stop using the TSG to police the neighbourhood. The council also committed to investing in youth provision on the estate. The following February, the council proposed that two of their gang intervention activities run by a local mentoring organization and a national outdoor activity provider be moved to Our Place for three months. The residents’ committee objected as the provision would also target young people from off the estate. However, as the plan had widespread council support and, as the councillor for community safety reminded the residents, Our Place was technically a council building, the services went ahead. No residents were invited to be involved as the local authority believed that professional, trained workers would better serve the young people. 42

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Elizabeth or Charis had to clear up after each session and often commented about how the outdoor activity organization “just have no respect” and didn’t seem to know what they were doing. However, the interventions attracted new young people, and the numbers hanging out on the estate soon doubled from around 15 to 30. After the provision ended, the council allocated two youth workers to run a Friday evening session to ensure continued support. Although the sessions were only once a week, the young people had the run of the building as one of the fire escapes had been broken during the previous delivery. Elizabeth had phoned the housing office to get it fixed; however, the building wasn’t on their maintenance system, so they wouldn’t make the repair. The young people came and went as they pleased. Charis or I would go in and ask them to leave every night, knowing that they would just reinter again whenever they wanted. Then one evening in June 2011, Kwame, a 17-​year-​old who lived above Our Place, was shot dead in a drive-​by shooting outside his block after hanging out in the building. The council boarded up Our Place the day after, and the MP called for it to be shut permanently.

A new cooperative approach The incident led the council to seek a more long-​term solution. However, the social, economic and political landscape had changed somewhat, and the impacts of the austerity budget and the Localism Act (2011) were taking effect. As a result, nearly all non-​statutory services were stripped away over the next two years, and one of the first to go was the youth service. Lambeth faced the economic downturn by turning to coproduction with its ability to empower others to deliver services and provide public value in a cost effective way (Pestoff, 2009; McQuaid, 2010; Alford, 2013; Osborne et al, 2016; van Eijk, 2018; Loeffler and Bovaird, 2019). The idea was to foster collaboration between citizens and professionals to develop collective shared goals to address local concerns (Pestoff, 2009; Bovaird et al, 2015; Alford and Yates, 2016; Crompton, 2019; Flinders and Wood, 2019; Vanleene et al, 2018; Booth, 2019). The council hoped that residents would be empowered by learning from those they partnered with to operate more professionally. Lambeth’s cooperative approach was informed by their cooperative commission document, which stated: ‘A significant body of evidence shows that in a number of cases community-​led or community-​run organizations can provide more responsive services that lead to better outcomes’ (from the Local Authority’s Cooperative Commissioning Report, 2011). It also stated that there was the need for: ‘an assessment of which organizations are best placed to meet local need and deliver the improvements citizens and staff wish to see in a local area’ (from the Local Authority’s Cooperative Commissioning Report, 2011). 43

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The council then produced a Cooperative Council Constitution, with a core principle of: ‘Public services planned together and delivered through a variety of organizations, which will improve outcomes, empower citizens and users, and strengthen civil society: staff will play a vital role in providing expertise and experience and we need to align this with citizens working as equal partners’ (from the Local Authority’s Cooperative Council Constitution, 2013). However, there was a lack of clarity on what this new approach meant in practice, leading to the Head of Youth Services commenting: “We have to deliver in a coproductive manner. … I am not sure that anyone at the council knows what this means or is fully supportive of the idea, but it’s what has been decided, so we have to do it.” The council tested out this approach on St Mary’s Estate. Malcolm Hall, the council’s resident participation manager, explained the reason for this geographical focus: “The leader of the council wants something done; the MP is putting pressure on the cabinet to find answers. The residents’ committee has some great people, but they are struggling, so we have to find a way to get more people involved.” Over six months, the council commissioned several projects, including an asset mapping and project development exercise, and the building of a polytunnel, to increase resident participation and ownership. Yet, despite the coproductive labelling, the projects failed to engage anyone new. To aid the transition, the council set up two structures to take over the remnants of local council commissioning. The first was the youth coop, which effectively replaced the youth service but with a purely commissioning remit. The second, which had the most influence on the estate, was the forum network, with its seven local networks, one of which oversaw work in St Mary’s. The forums brought together residents, businesses and voluntary sector organizations. The biggest player in the St Mary’s network was Lambeth Community Trust (LCT), a local adult education organization with two local councillors and a housing association director as trustees and the local MP as its patron. Once the St Mary’s network was set up, it used LCT’s bank account to receive and distribute its funding. In September 2011, Darren, the deputy director of youth services, organized a meeting between the network and council commissioners to discuss potential new youth activities on St Mary’s Estate. Elizabeth, Dorothy, Charis and I represented the estate and were joined by Martha, the director of LCT, and a few residents from other estates, nearly all of whom were volunteers or sessional workers for LCT. Darren explained that the council would invest £25,000 in local youth provision, circulating a document outlining their aims and objectives, which stated:

44

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Proposal • St Mary’s is a priority for the Police and Community Safety. • The youth service has put aside £25K for youth activities. This funding will need to target the identified client group and will require an acceptance that there is a youth crime/​gang issue in the area. • St Mary’s Network and the council should consider: • what is in place and what universal and target services the community wants; and • what venues can be used, for what activities and for what age/​ target group (building on LCT community audit). (Abridged from the local authority’s St Mary’s Youth Commissioning plan). Until now, the engaged residents, namely Charis, Elizabeth, Dorothy and I, defended the young people and portrayed them more as victims than perpetrators, and we felt that we should be managing, if not delivering, any agreed intervention. We understood that the situation around youth violence was getting worse and that ‘our’ young people were getting dragged into an increasingly violent culture. Yet, we were not ready to concede that any of the young people who grew up on the estate were the instigators. The council’s view was that the young people were so entrenched in a violent street culture that the residents needed to step aside and let specialist professionals with the right qualifications and experience take over. Linking the funding to the acceptance of gang activity would force us to accept the council and police narrative and give the local authority greater leverage to seek a professional, not informal, solution to the issue. There are legitimate reasons for this stance; users as coproducers can increase the uncertainty regarding services’ quality and effectiveness (Fledderus et al, 2015). As was the case here, local authorities often opt to invest authority and resources into likeminded professionals to provide assurance that what is coproduced will be effective (Pestoff and Brandsen, 2009; Fledderus et al, 2015; Innes et al, 2018). Antagonisms were developing between us residents, who were seen as having unrealistic and idealistic notions of the young people, and the local authority, whom we viewed as trying to assert their power without having credible solutions. This division made it difficult for fully collaborative working to develop. Coproducers bring their own frame of reference, resulting in some being considered less capable of participating fully or delivering the type of public services needed (Jakobsen and Andersen, 2013; Thijssen and Van Dooren, 2015; Crompton, 2019). However, the cooperative approach meant we had a seat at the table, yet the lack of trust resulted in tokenistic marginal involvement (McQuaid, 2010; Crompton,

45

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2019; Leyshon et al, 2019). Although coproduction can create a more collaborative creative space, the council used their position to dominate, reinforcing existing exclusivist and disenfranchising power structures (Alexander, 2021a). Once it was clear the residents did not feature in the council’s plans, Elizabeth, the resident’s committee’s secretary, emailed an annotated version of the council document to all at the meeting, which included the following final points: ‘You don’t have to deliver anything –​ WE WILL DO IT OURSELVES –​again, we find it outrageous that we have developed a sustainable, sensible, responsible plan, and you REJECT IT!! WE LIVE HERE. WE CARE. WE ARE PREPARED. YOU STOP US. WHY?? –​The young people deserve better.’ Once the commissioned project started, its governance took the form of formal meetings, meaning that only those who were used to professional environments would be comfortable engaging (Fung, 2015). As a result, the residents’ voices became part of the bureaucratic process (Boswell and Corbett, 2017; Crompton, 2019), remaining marginal and tokenistic rather than intrinsic (Arnstein, 1969; McQuaid, 2010; Crompton, 2019; Leyshon et al, 2019). As a result, as the people who had invested so much time and effort in supporting those we cared so much about, we found ourselves disempowered and only able to make suggestions that were routinely dismissed. The council inserted their field, complete with its valuation of different forms of capital and habitus, onto the estate. In this field, professional skills, connections and qualifications acted as symbolic capital that indicated the capability to deliver effectively and gave more assurances than the relational approach of the residents. The need to regulate the outcome led to the council relying on professionalism rather than participatory collaboration. The local people that the council wanted to hand responsibility over to were not ordinary residents but likeminded professionals. Whereas race had once been the most significant cause of schisms on the estate, it seemed here to be essentially a non-​issue, and professionalism became the primary dividing marker. Despite the increasing diversity of the area, most of those involved were Black. All the staff at LCT were of Black Caribbean heritage, as were Dorothy and Charis. Elizabeth and I were the only white people who played any significant role once Darren stepped aside. However, it was noticeable that Dorothy took a more prominent role when Elizabeth resigned from the residents’ committee. Both were from the old guard, and Elizabeth was friends with Antoinette, who had helped run John’s Hut, known for its discrimination. There was never any indication that Elizabeth was racist herself; however, her association with those whom Dorothy had to fight against for so long may have had something to do with Dorothy generally staying out of activities involving Elizabeth. Elizabeth’s departure gave Dorothy a new lease of life, and she became more 46

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of a prominent figure in the eyes of some of the young people. Her initial impact was no more evident than when some young people knocked on her door asking for advice on keeping themselves safe the day after Nicholas had committed the murder.

New values, relationships and statuses In shoring up their position, LCT reinforced the professional boundaries between the workers and the young people. One of the most evident signs of this came when Dwight (the LCT youth coordinator) and I were walking from the estate to the LCT office with Dwight commenting: “You know what is starting to annoy me, all this talk of ‘our children’ by Elizabeth and Charis, it’s gonna cause problems. They are not their children. They didn’t birth them.” The project started in March 2012, running from 5 until 8 pm Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Charis had requested that the project run until later or workers escort the young people home or off the estate to ensure they were not out and about unsupervised. However, Martha said that this was not possible due to the health and safety risks it posed to her staff. There was a new table tennis table, flat screen TV and PlayStation bought for the main room, with the project making use of the pool table already in the building. The intervention represented traditional youth work in many ways, where workers built relationships around the pool table. As the project progressed, it attracted more young people, and LCT estimated that only around 30 per cent of those attending were from the estate. LCT were keen to incorporate Gerald’s studio into the activities; however, it soon became apparent that Gerald wanted to keep his booking system rather than operating on a drop-​in basis as LCT had envisaged. In a compromise, Gerald and Emre were able to open up the studio twice a week during the LCT sessions and work as volunteer youth workers on the other days. However, the two soon became increasingly frustrated by the lack of training and paid opportunities that LCT promised. Emre lasted as a volunteer for a few months before stopping and getting a job as a bin man. Gerald stayed for longer, hopeful that a job would materialize. When it didn’t, he too gave up and got a job as a supermarket delivery driver. The community flat became a gathering point for young people each night, either for the studio or the club. Most used the building to meet up with others, have a couple of pool or table tennis games, and then leave, hardly long enough for any meaningful interventions to occur. Occasionally, a young person would come in and cause a bit of a stir wanting to sell something they had just got hold of. Usually, this was clamped down on very quickly. However, one Tuesday evening Ife from the original group of olders came in and dumped a big duffel bag in the 47

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middle of the room, telling everyone to gather around. Once about ten or so people were looking on, he unzipped the bag and started pulling out designer jeans and jumpers to sell. Simon, one of the youth workers, came over and challenged Ife, who insisted “everything was legit”. After a short back and forth, Simon convinced Ife that this behaviour wasn’t appropriate for inside the community flat, so he packed up and proceeded to go outside, asking anyone interested to follow. As with previous projects, there was a period when young people were gaining access to the building at night. Charis, Miche or I would invariably be called out in the evening or the early hours of the morning to ask the people to leave. There was never any evidence that the young people were doing anything particularly wrong, and apart from the odd empty chicken and chips box or bits of tobacco left on tables, they left things as they found them. The mystery of how they were gaining access was solved when Miche observed LCT staff locking up one evening and noticed that they were overturning the key in the top lock, effectively unlocking the door. It had been known for some time that someone had probably made a copy of the bottom lock; however, as the top key needed the leaseholder’s permission to be copied, no one thought much about it. After this was worked out, the young people didn’t get into the building unless a window was accidentally left open. This repeated action of gaining access to the community flat by successive groups of young people was symptomatic of an ongoing issue of young people seeking their own space. The majority of the young people lived in overcrowded flats and shared bedrooms with one or two siblings. A space they had a degree of ownership over was a luxury that seemed out of their grasp. The community flat and the studio, in particular, were two places that they saw as somewhere they could relax. Yet, the constant adult presence, especially adults with whom they had a minimal relationship, was stifling their freedom. After 18 months of the LCT delivery in the community flat, they moved their delivery to the nearby adventure playground. When they left, the residents’ committee decided to rent the space out in the daytime to an employment training company, which ended up taking over the building. Abdul, a local youth worker who knew some of the young people from his work in Stockwell, commented on their further disenfranchisement: “The young people do not even consider the community flat to be theirs anymore; with all the changes to it, they do not feel comfortable in there.”

Death, mourning and action Some of us tried to replicate this sense of care that was once evident on the estate with the actions in the community flat. Although we achieved a degree of success, it was clear that most residents were not that interested 48

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in getting involved or helping the young people. What was hoped would turn into a thriving project that would connect young people and residents together became somewhat of a burden as the care and concern Charis, Elizabeth and I started to feel for the young people as we built relationships with them caused us to try and be more and more available. The estate had seen the disappearance of almost all the communal spaces where supportive intergenerational relationships once formed. The last vestige was Our Place, where some residents ran a youth project. This was a sign that something was missing; the old collective efficacy based informal guardianship had largely disappeared, resulting in more unsupervised and unstructured peer youth socializing. Yet, the residents’ actions showed that there was still some desire to reinvigorate this once thriving care-​based support network. The resident’s project started just as broader influences bore down on the young people. Youth violence, drug dealing and street robberies were on the rise, and St Mary’s young people were getting sucked in. Despite our efforts to make some impact on the behaviour of young people, when the local authority got involved, we were sidelined. Although the professional interventions were short term stop gaps, they signalled a new approach to the growing problem on the estate. Young people needed targeted interventions provided by trained staff rather than those who simply acted out of care for them. The move to a coproduction model offered the opportunity to involve residents in delivering local services. However, the professional narrative entrenched unequal power dynamics. The professional field was a space of domination (Steinmetz, 2011). Although fields change and evolve (Bourdieu, 2002), the estate experienced an almost overnight shift from one field to another, complete with a new set of rules, hierarchies and processes. This change established a new standard for future operations on the estate. The proceeding chapters discuss much of the fallout of this and explore how active residents both battled against and, at the same time, actively sought to embody the new rules and processes of the professional field in an attempt to acquire status and recognition. The council’s professional doxa was understood as the only effective way to operate, and the staff felt that it was their duty to ensure that others conformed to this ethos. Their capital allowed them to enforce their values on residents; by defining the rules of the field and narrative attached to funding and using their social capital to bring in organizations whose habitus was like theirs. For the local authority, the solution was not to be found in developing relationships but by introducing professional services delivered by trained experts (Evetts, 2003, 2009, 2011). Therefore, the potential of a coproductive hybrid intervention that could have provided the benefits of an informal relational approach alongside professional support was not 49

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realized. The anger and disappointment felt by Charis, Elizabeth and me at being disempowered and seemingly ignored made working relationships difficult. It appeared clear that LCT’s staff, backed by the council, believed their approach was the most effective, and they didn’t feel the need to adjust to the wishes of those who were less qualified. These tensions were heightened as young people’s behaviour became more problematic.

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5

All Alone: Youth Isolation and the Embedding of a Violent Street Culture This chapter reflects on how the young people’s culture evolved after the commissioning of professional interventions. First, the text charts the development and entrenchment of a violent and criminogenic street culture, where class A drug dealing and knife carrying became commonplace. Discussions of street culture by Fraser (2013), Harding (2014), Ilan (2012) and Sandberg (2008, 2012) are used to show how young people’s actions become habitus, allowing young people to understand how to act and capital, helping young people gain street status. Then, drawing on the work of Andell and Pitts (2018), Densley (2013) and Whittaker et al (2018), the chapter considers the interplay between where the young people hang out and the broader developments that saw them move from primarily selling cannabis to dealing crack and heroin. This increased the risk of violence, leading to a situation where almost everyone felt the need to carry a knife for their protection. The chapter uses an example of a barbeque organized by the young people to highlight the change in the culture. The difference was palpable, whereas the party described in the previous chapter was largely uneventful; this time, the young men used the barbeque to sell drugs and take advantage of intoxicated young girls, with the night only ending after shots were fired. This incident is used to explore the implications of the loss of informal supervision and reflects on the risks young girls face in spaces of embedded violent street culture, where predatory sexual activity is taken for granted. The chapter concludes by reflecting on how the failure to find a hybrid support system where professionals and residents worked alongside each other to support the young people ultimately left those whom both groups wanted to help more vulnerable and at increased risk of exposure to serious youth violence. 51

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The emergence of street culture While the residents and those involved in providing services were in conflict, the young people’s reputation was getting more notorious. Opportunistic crimes such as street robbery were accompanied by more organized thefts from people advertising on sites such as gumtree and low level street dealing. Quite a few young people were getting used to spending time inside on remand or short sentences. Two of the first young people to get longer sentences were Nicholas and Nabir. Nabir had come into the community flat some months earlier waving a university acceptance letter and shouting: “Fuck you suckers, I’m out of here; I’m gonna leave the hood.” Unfortunately for him, between receiving the letter and his enrolment date, Nabir got into a fight in Brixton, stabbed his assailant in the leg and received a seven-​year sentence. Despite being caught on CCTV and Lenny and I advising him to plead guilty, Nabir was convinced he could ‘bust case’. On sentencing, the judge commented that because of his previous good standing and the number of people coming forward to give character references, he could have been given a lesser sentence if he had pled guilty. However, as he pled not guilty but was found guilty, there was no option but to give him seven years. Nicholas had got a part-​time job at my work in central London, and things were looking good. He even commented that his mum was happy because he was too tired to hang out with his friends when he got home. However, there were still some temptations; one Friday, his friends were going to Brighton, and Nicholas didn’t want to miss out. He explained that he felt torn between going to work and Brighton. Going to work was the right thing to do, but going to Brighton, where he ended up going and for which he would need some quick money, seemed fun. Unfortunately, in spring 2012, one of his friends was stabbed on a bus while travelling to the estate. In retaliation, Nicholas got 19 years for stabbing the first young person he saw from the area where his friend’s attackers were from, murdering someone unrelated to the initial incident. His trial seemed to alienate him as his defence was based on mistaken identity, with Nicholas blaming one of his friends for the incident. The result was that many of his closest friends rejected him. As the number of young people increased, so did the complaints. Blocks still without door entry systems became a popular hangout after the LCT project ended each evening. In the morning, stairwells were littered with chicken and chips boxes, and empty bottles of Courvoisier, and they smelt of a mix of urine and weed. If you were particularly unfortunate, you would find human faeces and broken crack pipes as you walked down the stairs. Kate, a young mum, explained her experience in 2014: 52

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‘Last summer, we had a lot of boys hanging around our area. One of my neighbours was told to go back to bed when she asked some boys outside her flat at 2 am to be quiet. It is very intimidating when going down the stairs with my kids; they will all be sitting there smoking and drinking, breaking the bottles and leaving them on the step. Sometimes my youngest son asks me what they are doing, but I don’t want to be explaining all of that to him.’ During this time, drug dealing and robbery became more evident, with many young people seeing crime as a viable way to make money. Akin, Ola and Lionel, three young people who grew up on the estate, explain their rationale for making money through dealing and robbery: Akin commented: “You don’t think too much of it. You might start dealing because you want money, you see people with new clothes, new trainers and whatnot, but you don’t want to ask your parents. Same thing with robbery; it’s just its part and parcel of living on the estate.” Lionel explained his situation: ‘I love my weed, so I thought I would sell weed to make some money. But it never really stuck. I’ll get a little something, and as soon as I make my money, I’m happy. So, when the next person calls me, I either pass them on to someone else or think shall I try and get something for myself too?’ Ola, who spent his childhood split between living on the estate with his mum and in North London with his dad, discusses his decision to deal weed: ‘My brother dealt, and he told me to stop asking for money, so I started doing it; everyone knew my brother, so it was easy for me. And with weed, you are not killing people. The weed shotter is a friendly guy. And you can do it while you work.’ Although many young people may start by selling weed, Akin explained that there is very little money to be made by selling among their peers, as their friends often looked to get weed on tick (credit) or for free. Ola explains the maths behind weed dealing: ‘You make about £50–​£60 a day, if you don’t smoke, maybe £150 a day. That’s the only reason why it doesn’t make sense as well. Because you make the same amount of money at Sainsbury’s. I’ve done both of these shifts, and at the end of the day, and it is the same money; it’s just you work less at Sainsbury’s. When dealing, you have to be on call from about lunchtime to 2 am; Sainsbury’s is eight hours straight.’ 53

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For some, like Lionel, this means that dealing is only ever going to be a part-​time pursuit, as he explains that the risks to him were not worth it: ‘I could get £600 a week, maybe every two weeks. But it has risks and consequences, so I realized that this ain’t for everyone. When I got robbed, I had nothing. So now it is a way to make a little money; I don’t want to be in it, in it, if you get what I mean.’ For others, these limitations mean progressing to selling crack and heroin ‘hard food’ as Ola explains: “Weed is a gateway drug, not for the smoker, but the dealer; you learn how to deal, make connections and soon realize you can make more money dealing hard food.” Nevertheless, this comes with added risk, as Ola goes on to explain: “With hard food, you are getting into all the madness because you are getting into people’s business. Two mans selling [crack and heroin] in the same place, it doesn’t work.” The impact of the desire to make money is probably best summed up by Jonny, one of St Mary’s young people, who commented when asked what support would help young people: “Getting a job, it all starts with money; that’s why all this shit happens. If people could get legit money, there would be no looking over your shoulder, no issues. People do what they do coz they need money.” For many, the materialistic environments that offered quick cash limited the influence of remaining intergenerational relationships (Anderson, 2000). Mickey, the last member of the original group of olders to move off the estate, summed up this point as he sat on a wall near the football cage one Friday evening. As some of the younger but now dominant group played football while others smoked weed and drank rum, Mickey called me over and said: “don’t bother trying to help them; they are making their money and think everything is fine, so they won’t listen like I never did. But I’m 22, got a little one on the way, and the money just doesn’t cover what I need. People like me will listen.” A few weeks after the conversation, Mickey was arrested for possession with intent to supply and spent just under a year in prison.

Further isolation and the entrenchment of a violent street culture After a year and a half, the LCT provision all but ended. The council gave them the contract to run the adventure playground on the edge of the estate, so they stopped using the community flat. The residents’ committee discussed whether we should restart some form of youth support, but even Charis, who would have liked to start something up, admitted that the “kids 54

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dem are far too gone now”. The committee felt that the youth club was the main reason for the increase in young people on the estate, with little evidence of any benefits. With no indoor space, the estate became less attractive and fewer young people hung around in the winter months. Yet when the sun came out, so did the old faces, greeting one another with handshakes and fist bumps followed by loud cheers if the welcome was for someone who had recently come out of prison. On one such day in March 2014, many young people congregated by the central roadway running through the estate, sitting on the wall and catching up. By lunchtime, people were drinking from bottles of Courvoisier and smoking weed when a car pulled up, and the passenger fired a shotgun several times at the young people. Thankfully no one was killed; however, Ali, a regular on the estate because his cousin lived there, never got full use of his arm again, and Fashola, Ibe’s younger brother, was on crutches for almost a year. While waiting for the ambulance, Ibe used his T-​shirt to help stem blood coming out of his brother while getting others to do so for Ali. Within 15 minutes, armed police had blocked the entrances to the estate. Local officers joined them shortly after, who cordoned off the area while forensic specialists in white overalls searched the area. Once the victims were taken to hospital, the young people assembled in another part of the estate, some struggling to hold back their tears. Yet, nothing much was made of the incident, and things quickly returned to normal. As I hung around partly out of personal curiosity and a desire to see if everyone was okay, and partly because I wanted to observe what was going on for research purposes, Tyler, one of the young people, told me to go home in case some confused me with a police officer. Despite the severity of the incident, those who seemed to speak about it most were Ayub and Dillan, two local primary school children, who for the week after complained that they didn’t witness it themselves. A few months later, another young person was shot in almost the same spot as he rode his bike back from doing a deal. It was clear that the young people were increasingly targeted where they hung out. Ola comments on his own experiences: ‘The first time, I was at cage playing football, and I saw them coming, so I started running into the block. They jumped out of the car in front of my mum and came around the corner shooting, ran back past my mum and got in the car. But then I was young; it was adrenalin. I was back playing football within ten minutes. Then, when I was waiting for the bus to go to work, a couple of guys jumped out of a car, but it was cold, so I was wearing two jackets. They stabbed me like three or four times. But it was just going into my jacket, not me.’ 55

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Yet, the seriousness of these incidents was not enough to change the actions of St Mary’s young people. They still used the central roadway of the estate as their congregating spot, waiting for their trap phone (the phone used to make drug deals) to ring before jumping on a bike and meeting someone down the road. The threat of violence, needing to be on high alert and the possibility of losing someone or their own life became part and parcel of everyday living. Even when the council and police installed CCTV to cover where the shootings took place, the young people vandalized them so they could continue to hang out without surveillance. Reflecting on this time, Akin recalls: ‘A lot of people don’t understand, we suffered from trauma that has been embedded in us, and we don’t even know it. If something happened the night before, everyone is out the next day. A normal person would be looking to move houses, or they wouldn’t come out. But this was normal from a very young age. It’s probably gonna happen the following week as well. You become numb to it.’ Those associated with St Mary’s found themselves constantly battling people from other areas for status and superiority, with serious consequences. Even while going to the local shops, there was a risk of being shot or stabbed. These were experiences that sucked everyone in. On one such occasion, someone jumped off a moped, pulled out a shotgun and shot at three young people as they went to the newsagent. Another time Moise, who was always only on the edge of proceedings, getting himself a job at 16 while doing his A levels, going off to university and securing a job with a car auction company on graduation, got stabbed while in a takeaway shop. Moise explained that he managed to get his knife out, which scared the attacker; otherwise, he would have probably been killed. Soon, carrying a knife became a necessity in the minds of many, as Ola comments: ‘Everyone had a knife for protection coz then you won’t get caught lacking. People were walking down the road to the shop and getting stabbed. And you’re thinking; I swear man was with me two minutes ago, and now he’s getting stabbed in his chest twice, Nah not me.’

Continuation and escalation In this space, a group that eventually became known as 13 emerged as a concern to the police. Although associated with the estate, only one core member, Ashley, and a few on the periphery grew up locally. Ashley was part of the football project and had started to go to the youth club in the community flat before it closed down in 2009. He was joined by 56

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Eli from Brixton Hill and Jamal from Peckham, who started attending the commissioned interventions. Both Ashley and Jamal had a Jamaican heritage, although everyone assumed Jamal was Nigerian and Eli was Nigerian. Before hanging out on the estate, Eli made money by selling printed t-​shirts and hosting events for his school friends. However, for the entrepreneurial Eli, it soon became apparent that there was more money to be made in illicit activities. This caused his already strained relationship with his parents to break down further, and at 16, he joined Ashley in being kicked out of their homes and housed in a nearby local youth hostel. Eli explained: ‘I was part of the first generation in the UK, so they weren’t used to a lot of things that were going on. I just had to break their rules, so that’s why I got kicked out. In some African cultures, they want to determine who you will become. My parents wanted me to be a doctor. I just wanted to be a footballer. And I was doing wrong things as well, and they didn’t understand how to deal with it. So, I got kicked out.’ Despite moving out, he kept on pretty good terms with his family and is currently supporting his mum with a mortgage application. There was no irreparable breakdown between Eli and his parents; he just refused to stick to the rules. Unfortunately, this situation was repeated among many young men who ended up in hostels. There was an obvious tension in expectations between those who had left home and were freer to do as they pleased and those who still lived with their parents. Sometimes this tension boiled over, resulting in arguments between parents and young people. Nevertheless, many parents seemed to have very little influence, and there appeared to be an inconsequential respect for them. This is possibly best exemplified at memorials, where young people helped mums carry food and equipment, and some would move away and give some space when smoking weed. Yet, these events would often be the site for music video shoots, and the parents and other family members of the dead would have to endure their son’s friends making music videos (with inflammatory lyrics) at the gravesite while they waited for the memorial to begin. For a few parents, it wasn’t enough for their children to be emancipated or left to their own devices, and they were ‘sent back’ to Ghana or Nigeria to experience a different type of discipline and lifestyle. This was the fate of Sammy, who lived in a three-​bedroom flat on the estate with his mum, dad and older brother and sister. I first met Sammy as a six-​year-​old who used to tag along with Emmanuel, his brother, when I started organizing football sessions on the estate. When he got to the age to be in a team, he was my captain. By the time Emmanuel was 15, he had started to deal around the local area. By 16, he was involved in some violent incidents, went to prison 57

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and resettled out of the area for his own safety on release. It looked like Sammy wasn’t going to go down that route, having a group of friends who seemed to keep away from the trouble around them. Sammy had ambitions of being a solicitor and was a bubbly fun loving boy who went to church and was liked by everyone. This all changed when he started to hang out in the community flat when he was 13. Sammy was a big guy and naturally became the leader of the emerging group that were his age. He was into the drill music that those around him were making and soon joined them in the studio. Now, Sammy regularly hung out smoking weed and broke into the community flat with others. After getting excluded for carrying a knife to school, he only had to go to the pupil referral unit (PRU) in the afternoon and spent more time hanging out on the estate. Sammy always denied any involvement or wrong doing, often in an almost comical fashion. When I used to go into the community flat to get the young people to leave, he would put his hands over his face and run past me, shouting, I’m not Sammy, as he went. If he saw Lenny, Charis or me while he was high, Sammy would pull his hood over his face and hide behind a wall, often laying down with his feet sticking out. If I approached to talk to him, he would try and disguise his voice and say he was not Sammy. In the summer after he turned 16, he was arrested twice in a week, once for possession of Class B and then possession of Class A drugs. Having gone down this road before, his parents sent Sammy to Nigeria to stay with family over there. Like those coming from the Caribbean before them, many parents from West Africa found it hard to pass on their cultural, religious and moral values to their children as they balanced parenting and working long hours for low pay. Their task has been made harder by the lure of the street youth culture. Initially, much of 13’s criminal activities were opportunistic; Jamal often carried around a rucksack containing stolen phones and laptops he was looking to shift. This progressed into more lucrative pursuits of selling weed and then crack and heroin, which was relatively disorganized with no formal structure. Those associated with 13 would pool their money together to buy a large enough amount to deal and make some money. Their activities followed the age pattern in that friendships, based around school and recreational activities, coupled with unstructured leisure time in areas of social disorganization exhibiting little informal guardianship, tend to take on a criminal nature. If unchecked, these friendship groups can develop an organized and entrepreneurial character (Densley, 2013; Andell and Pitts, 2018; Whittaker et al, 2018). As the boys’ entrepreneurial activities developed, so did their engagement in serious violence, both as perpetrators and victims. The activities in the community flat made the estate more attractive to young people and exacerbated the localized criminality. However, the 58

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building was also a shared, negotiated space, allowing intergenerational relationships to develop. Charis, Elizabeth and I had hoped that the community flat, like Centenary Hall before it, would be a place for young and old to mix and for obligatory care-​based relationships to develop, but this didn’t happen in the way we had hoped. Unfortunately, the shift to professional interventions prevented the more relational support from continuing, which consequently impacted the actions of the estate’s young people. The disappearance of resident engagement and the short-​term nature of the professional interventions left those on the estate particularly isolated. Most were already growing up in some of the country’s most impoverished areas, living in overcrowded homes and going to, and struggling to stay in, underperforming schools. Now they found themselves with no adult guardianship, informal or professional. This type of multiple isolation often leads to the emergence of a violent and criminal street culture (Ilan, 2012) as young people struggle for status and domination in an environment where the symbolic capital of violence, sexual promiscuity and drug dealing has become embodied street capital (Sandberg, 2008, 2012; Fraser, 2013; Harding, 2014). This street habitus and capital can allow the possessor to feel a sense of belonging and security in peer-​dominated social spaces. But it can further alienate the possessor from more mainstream spaces (Ilan, 2012). Those who cannot develop capital that has value in other social spaces find themselves stuck (Pih et al, 2008; Gilbert et al, 2011). Subsequently, many of those from St Mary’s who were culturally and relationally isolated from anything other than street culture saw drug dealing and drill music as the only realistic source of income. The young people recognized that something was missing in their lives. Some like Kwaku, who still spends his days sitting on a wall waiting for his phone to ring so he can make a deal, were quite vocal in blaming the adults on the estate for his and other young people’s current predicament. Tyler, who was out on bail, charged with possession with intent to supply, commented on how he understands the situation: “You have to say it’s everyone for themselves. … It makes me feel like I am doing something wrong because I am not seeking help even though I don’t know them to ask for help … it’s just fucking shit.” Darren, who went to prison on a drug conviction, and Anton, Gerald’s brother, echoed Tyler’s views about being largely left to their own devices on the estate. Darren shared: “No one really looks out for me, just my parents. They couldn’t really support me the way I wanted. I was just left to find my own way.” Anton agreed: “I would say that people’s parents would try and put sense into their head and guide them the right way, but I wouldn’t say any other people would try and help.” 59

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This stands in stark contrast to comments made by Ife, a few years their elder, who had experienced the benefit of the previous resident-​led youth project, who commented: ‘We used to have the adventure playground and then a little youth club in the community flat. There were residents like Charis, Elizabeth and others trying to help us. There’s still that major respect regardless of what goes on; I want to show them that my head is still screwed on.’ Quantitatively, the impacts of this intergenerational isolation are revealed when considering the increase in weapons offences. Over the past 15 years, weapons offence incidents have risen in the local neighbourhood. However, the area’s ward crime data (Metropolitan Police Service, nd) shows a distinct pattern. In the five years when the residents were most active (2006–​2010), weapons offences only rose by 20 per cent compared to an average 55 per cent increase for nearby wards. However, between 2012 and 2016, which saw professional support dominate and then disappear from the estate, weapons offences tripled in St Mary’s, while the same crimes less than doubled in neighbouring areas. 13 came into their own after the transition to professionally run youth provision with paid workers, not residents supporting them. As a result, the relational dynamic that saw the likes of Moise and Kobe seeking permission to hold their party was missing. Those previously involved in running youth activities were still interested in the young people’s wellbeing. Yet, there was no longer a physical space for regular interaction to take place and relationships to form. Consequently, the mindset was different. This was exemplified one July evening in 2015 during a barbeque organized by the young people. Ashley, Eli and Jamal had two main aims; to make money through selling food, drink and drugs and to have a good time. Here is an account of the first of several barbeques planned that summer: By around 6 pm, the barbeque was in full swing with about 30 to 40 young men and a few year 10 and 11 girls in the Turner House Park. A DJ played a mixture of Afrobeat, hip hop and drill with a generator powering his laptop and Mackie speakers that sat on either side of a trestle table. Ola, fresh back from uni and wearing a t-​shirt that said Ola’s Kitchen, cooked the food. As I walked past, Ashley asked me to hang around, mentioning that the police had circled in a car a few times, and he wanted me to help deal with them if they came back. Ashley tried to get me some food for free, but Ola wanted to charge, saying somewhat apologetically that he would give it for free, but he wasn’t yet making enough money to cover his costs. 60

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About five or six adult residents stood on the walkways of Stokes and Turner House, watching what was going on. When a track made by the young people came on, they would pull their hoodies over their head, make shooting symbols with their hands, and mouth the words while filming each other. As the night wore on, more and more people showed up, around 150 in total. A young person was using his digital SLR to film scenes for a couple of music videos throughout the evening. Now and then, Ashley and a few others would go over to some bushes to get their stash of weed or coke wrapped tightly in black plastic and made a deal, sometimes frantically searching for them before remembering they had already moved them somewhere else. Most guys were between 17 and 22, and the girls were between 15 and 18. As the girls got drunk, they became prey for the boys, with pairs walking off to the stairwells and returning 15 minutes later. One girl was so drunk she couldn’t stand up. A friend helped her to a bench, but she fell onto the floor as she tried to sit down. Anton poured water on her head to sober her up after she fell into a bush. At this point, she got irate and tried and chase after him but kept falling. As she was on the floor, quite a few guys gathered around her. Some tried to film her while others offered to look after her or make sure she got home safely. I helped one of her friends take her off the estate to get a minicab that never came. As we were waiting by the roadside, Miche walked past, and we asked her to help. While we were there, a girl walked past and warned us not to touch the drunk girl as she had chlamydia, to which the drunk girl replied: “Well, you have it too as we are sleeping with the same man.” Two police cars pulled up after about ten minutes, and the officers got out and asked the girl, who was no more than 16 years old (she kept mumbling that the video better not be online; otherwise, it will be hell at school), where she had just come from. Miche asked them to take the girl home or ensure she was safe. The police responded that it wasn’t their concern and then got back into their cars and drove off. Miche persuaded the girl and her friend to take the bus home, and as we were all walking to the bus stop, about six guys followed them. Three of them got into a car and pulled up just past the bus stop. One got out and started walking towards the girls but then got back into the car when he saw Miche calling out to his friends, “Nah man, that girl and guy are there”. Shortly after, the bus arrived, and the girls got on. As the night wore on, some original ‘olders’ turned up in designer clothes. Miche commented, “look at these guys; all the younger lot want to be like them, but they don’t realize what they need to go 61

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through to get like it, and it’s all drugs and fraud; nothing will last.” I asked Miche who on the estate was dealing. Miche sniggered and answered, “it would be easier to say who isn’t dealing than who is and don’t think these boys who have gone off to uni aren’t doing it; they are just the smarter ones; most of them are dealing at uni too … everyone is doing it, and I mean everyone.” At about midnight, there was a loud bang leading to some confusion about whether it was a gun or firework, but after about 10 seconds, no one really paid any attention. Then, about 30 minutes later, about 40 or so young people rushed to the edge of the park. Yoshua, from the estate, had got into an argument with someone, and the two had to be separated. Yoshua walked back to the main barbeque area, and as the other young man was being led off the estate by his friends, he turned and drew a gun, waved it around a few times shouting, “you don’t know about me”, and then fired the weapon above people’s heads then left. There was some panic, with people running for cover for a minute or so before they were back enjoying the music. Within ten minutes, an armed police unit turned up in two SUVs and circled the park a few times, followed by another two SUVs, an unmarked police car and a bully van, but all officers stayed in their vehicles. As the first police car turned up, most people ran off the estate, and many people got into their cars and drove off. Within ten minutes of the police arriving, there were only about 25 people left, some young people who lived on the estate and those who had driven to the estate but didn’t want the police to link them with the car they were driving. This was not an isolated incident. Instead, it encapsulates the results of an ongoing intergenerational ambivalence and increased entrenchment of a criminal youth culture. Like other similar neighbourhoods, the broader socio-economic conditions have taken their toll on the relational dynamics of the estate. Escalating economic precarity (Standing, 2011), partly caused by the 2008 market crash and then the austerity injected neoliberal political agenda, increased job insecurity. In addition, rent increases, under occupancy charges (better known as the bedroom tax) and the impending universal credit welfare reform resulted in households experiencing greater uncertainty. The existing neighbourhood dynamics of poverty and low levels of resident interaction had already heightened the risk of young people being involved in criminal behaviour (Sampson and Groves, 1989; Kim et al, 2016; McAra and McVie, 2016). The neighbourhood was already problematic, with serious youth violence on the rise and the once prevalent informal resident relationships were disappearing (Putnam, 2000; Morenoff et al, 2001; Bellair, 2006a, 2006b). 62

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Before 2012, a handful of residents were engaging with local young people, taking on a kind of ‘old head’ status (Anderson, 2000; Carter et al, 2017). Yet, by 2015, even this had mostly disappeared. This gave the space for a more violent street culture to prevail. Where intergenerational reciprocal relationships are missing, young people from deprived neighbourhoods are more likely to spend time with older and deviant peers in unstructured activities, which increases the likelihood of criminal activities and the institutionalizing of a criminal and violent street code. (Sampson and Groves, 1989; Wikstöm and Loeber, 2006; Harding, 2009; Svensson and Oberwittler, 2010; Melde and Esbensen, 2011; Vettenburg et al, 2013). Like those that developed on the estate, criminal groups generally form out of friendships made at schools, neighbourhoods, youth clubs and other social spaces that draw young people together (see Densley, 2013). However, without guidance, there can be a linear progression where groups evolve from recreational associations to recreational violence, then criminal enterprise and finally organized criminality (Densley, 2013; Andell and Pitts, 2018; Whittaker et al, 2018). The isolation experienced by young people when the ‘Old Head’ relational support all but disappeared led to a criminogenic street culture developing. Here symbolic capital of violence, sexual promiscuity and drug dealing became embodied street capital and a vital way for young people to achieve material goals and status (Sandberg, 2008, 2012; Stewart and Simons, 2010; Ilan, 2012; Fraser, 2013; Harding, 2014, 2020; Pitts, 2020). Professionalizing the youth support at the exclusion of the residents enhanced the intergenerational isolation and acted as a catalyst for the embedding and normalizing of a violent street culture. Structured activities involving local people can provide the opportunity for influential intergenerational relationships to develop (Sacha, 2015; Prince et al, 2019), and incorporating the residents could have provided a more holistic support network for the young people. However, the council viewed residents as unsuitable exponents of what was needed (McKenzie, 2013, 2015; Thisjssen and Van Dooren, 2015). A process that could have provided additional support on the estate disempowered those already engaging with the young people and led to more relational isolation (Alexander, 2021b). This youth street field had its habitus and capital (Wacquant, 2001; Bourgois, 2010 [2003]; Sandberg, 2008, 2012; Harding, 2013; Fraser and Atkinson, 2014; Ilan, 2015; Shammas and Sandberg, 2015; Fleetwood, 2016). The dealing and taking of drugs were acceptable practices done in the open. Similarly, violence became part of the habitus of the youth social space. Although incidents were not an everyday occurrence, the paraphernalia of violence was commonplace (Sandberg, 2008, 2012; Bourgois, 2010 [2003]; Sandberg and Pederson, 2011; Harding, 2014). Young people expected the 63

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presence of weapons at the barbeque, even if they did not expect anyone to use them. Equally as concerning was the acceptance of risky and abusive sexual behaviour by young men and women. The estate was a male-​dominated space; very few women hung out there, and when they did, their subservience was clearly seen. Miche was a matriarchal figure of the original group and was well respected, often scolding her male peers for being stupid. However, although Miche could publicly hold her own, privately things differed. Miche’s two children were fathered by one of the guys she used to hang around with. Although they were not in a committed relationship, the children’s father went off to university and had a child with someone else; Miche often expressed concerns about what he would do if she ever got into a relationship with someone else. For others, risks were more apparent; Hani, one of the only girls who occasionally hung out on the estate, was dragged along by her weave once for saying the wrong thing. On another occasion, Ashley was with some friends waiting for a girl to turn up; with Ashley reassuring the two others he was with by saying: “It’s calm; I’m just going to call her, get her to come to meet me, then I’ll walk off, and you can do what you want with her.” It took me calling him aside and telling him I was just about to ring his mum and tell him what I had just heard unless he called the girl in front of me and told her not to come, for him to agree that he was planning was wrong. Kira, a young mum who moved off the estate to go into a mother and baby hostel, comments about her time on the estate: ‘Uhhh, it was horrible growing up on the estate as a girl. I remember moving on to the estate and walking past and going down to the shops. For example, you would have guys throwing out dirty words –​let’s do this or like running me into the block. The guys were acting like vultures; it was that terrible.’ By the time of the barbeque, a social space emerged in which engaging in short-​lived sexual encounters was normalized and a key component of young men’s status-​gaining capital. For the young women who did not see this as exploitative or coercive, offering this to men was their capital. The estate became somewhat of a haven to the young men, offering a relatively safe space amid serious threats of violence from other groups. Yet, it was fraught with different risks for young girls. The prevailing ethos was that girls were there for guys to do with as they liked, and the young girls who ventured on to the estate were often resigned to this being part of the conditions of their acceptance (Tilley et al, 2014; Hallsworth and Young, 2010 in Firmin, 2018a). 64

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These acts of sexual deviance are usually opportunistic (Leclerc and Proulx, 2017) and part of the offenders’ broader criminal activity (Smallbone et al, 2013). The physical and cultural environment and other risk factors such as intoxication, loneliness and anonymity help to increase the opportunities as young people congregate recreationally (Smallbone et al, 2013; Tilley et al, 2014; Rayment-​McHugh et al, 2015; Firmin, 2020). Such sexual risks are often dealt with through individual child safety responses. Although individual interventions can prevent further offending by an individual, they do little to address the broader risk in a particular community (Tilley et al, 2014). As such, more needs to be done to address the context in which these offences occur (Firmin and Rayment-​McHugh, 2020).

Professionalizing support, relational breakdown and increased violence The disappearance of localized support coincided with the development of more entrepreneurial, profit-​driven youth drug dealing (Windle and Biggs, 2015; Andell and Pitts, 2018; Robinson et al, 2018), which has caused violent crimes to rise in many areas. Once the residents’ support disappeared, the rate of increase accelerated. If informal relational support had been incorporated into the commissioned services, young people would have benefited from relational and targeted support, rather than one and then the other, before neither. It is unfortunate that we all missed an opportunity to provide the type of guidance the young people needed. The escalation of youth violence can be understood as a consequence of various interlocking factors (Coomber, 2015). A money-​motivated (Andell and Pitts, 2018; Windle and Biggs, 2015), violent and trauma inducing culture (McAra and McVie, 2016), was given the space to develop by the disappearance of localized support for young people. The attempt to address the young people’s actions through professional interventions expediated this disappearance. Once staff members go home, move on, or funding streams dry up, residents can be left to figure things out on their own. Although a general ambivalence existed on the estate before the professionalization of youth support, the few residents’ actions were evidence that an alternative was possible. During the barbeque, the only adults who were present, although mainly in a passive observation capacity, were the very people who were devalued and disenfranchised. Charis and Elizabeth, just watching on, is symbolic of the depth of the intergeneration disconnection that had developed. The process to bring about order inadvertently weakened a more long-​term source of social control by decreasing the opportunities for residents and young people to interact and form obligatory supportive relationships. 65

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The earlier events organized by young people had a degree of adult supervision, albeit limiting rather than preventing deviance. This support was primarily motivated by care and concern for the young people, stemming from our relationships with them rather than any professional obligation. The young people who experienced this support recognized our efforts and wanted to show us that their ‘heads were screwed on’. In contrast, those who had become the dominant group during the period of professional support had none of the protection afforded by the relational support and were more at risk of criminogenic influences (Anderson, 2000). The intergenerational connections, influential in curtailing criminality, only developed because activities brought older and younger residents together, establishing trusted relationships. When the adult residents left these spaces, there was no opportunity to build these connections with a new emerging group of young people. Despite our best efforts, it was increasingly more difficult to influence the actions of those on the estate. We had no real connection with the new group that was emerging, and the shared social space to form the relationships needed no longer existed. Young people expressed a sense of isolation, and some blamed the residents for their current predicament; others saw them as a potential but unobtainable source of support. The lack of guardianship and the prevailing social conditions of poverty and deprivation meant the estate became a hot spot for a criminal youth street culture. Drug dealing emerged as the primary source of income for young people. Their involvement in the drug market and their increased reputation made them a target for other groups, and their existence became as much about keeping safe as it did about making money and having fun. The dangers were so pervasive that even those on the periphery found themselves victims of serious youth violence and feeling the need to carry weapons.

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6

Studio Time, Drill and the Criminalization of Black Culture This chapter considers the street culture that evolved on the estate between 2011 and 2020 by discussing the music videos produced by members of E1S, followed by 13 and then a new group called LSM. The analysis helps to add to the various academic discussions on drill music (see Fatsis, 2018, 2019; Pinkney and Robinson-​Edwards, 2018; Ilan, 2020; Scott, 2020). Yet the aim is to go further, drawing on artists and others in the drill scene’s accounts to consider how the marketing and revenue implications of the attention economy have caught young people in a dynamic where violent online personas influence their offline lives. The chapter will show how young people juggle portraying attention grabbing performative bravado, maintaining a sense of authenticity and the less violent and less clickable elements of their lives. The chapter shows how the content produced can reflect, albeit in an exaggerated way, the life course and criminal development of some artists but not others. Many of those featured in the videos, even those depicting particularly violent personas, are not perpetrators of serious violence. Others whose violent lyrics express truer to life experiences are usually involved in street-​level dealing. The content of their tracks became less explicitly violent as and when they progressed out of street-​level drug markets. Yet, those who built up a followership by portraying a violent persona needed to keep up this image to maintain their popularity. As the drill artists from St Mary’s have found, to keep earning enough money to stay ‘out of the game’, others have to believe you are still in it.

Drill: the sound of the estate Gerald, who had built a reputation as one of the best new producers in South London, not content with only being allowed to operate the studio with adult supervision, kept pushing for greater access. 67

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Although the foyer often smelt of weed, and there was evidence that those using the studio were regularly skinning up in the building, on the surface, the studio caused no real concerns. Generally, Charis or I could have a quiet word with those building a joint, and they would leave. However, more and more young people soon hung out in the building entrance, often smoking weed and drinking Courvoisier or Wray and Nephew, while others were in the studio. Regularly, you would see young people hanging out practising their lyrics and the younger boys rapped along to the tracks of the olders. As drill music emerged, St Mary’s had their very own studio and emerging stars to boot. At a residents’ committee meeting, Gerald, then 23, argued for more freedom stating that he was an adult and should be able to operate the studio without someone looking over his shoulder all the time. At the third time of asking, we agreed that a keyholder would have to open up and lock up afterwards, but Gerald and Emre didn’t need another adult in the building. For many, the studio allowed them to express themselves, enhance their reputation and gain status as artists. Ashley explained: “It wasn’t about money; we were more interested in what others thought. If someone did something that was getting attention, we wanted to make a better video, make our lyrics more raw.” Akin agreed: “It was about making a name for ourselves. If someone did something good, we had to do something better. That way, our reputation would grow. We weren’t thinking about the money. We wanted everyone to think we were better than the next man.” For Gerald, the studio was about more than making music; it was about supporting those around him. Speaking in 2021 of the studio’s development, Gerald comments: ‘We’re not really people that are good at letting out their feelings, so, as young people, music was our voice. Why not tell your story or tell what you see or what you caught up with? And hopefully, it becomes something that can create greatness. And that’s why I sacrificed my time to provide a service that these guys didn’t have to pay for. The main focus for me was to create that opportunity for people of people to do something positive.’ Gerald was trying to perform the role of an ‘Old Head’ in supporting the youngers to engage in something and develop their skills. For most, he was the only person offering any informal guardianship. Yet his advice and guidance came from his own limited experience of growing up on the estate, which involved some low-​level criminal activity from time to time to make ends meet. 68

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The early videos, all filmed on the estate, generally featured a few artists in the foreground, with 10 to 15 young people dancing and hyping the artists in the background. Although some tracks were about partying, having a good time or grieving a friend lost to serious youth violence, an increasing number depicted violence and aggression towards others or glamourized drug dealing. Charis and I spoke to Gerald several times about videos the young people were producing, asking him to consider their content. Gerald did put a disclaimer on all videos he made, stating that the views expressed did not reflect the studio’s values. Although we wanted to support Gerald and what he was trying to do, I was increasingly concerned about the content of many of the tracks. A trend was emerging, mirrored elsewhere, with young people using music videos to boast of violence and send a message out to rival groups. Many of those from St Mary’s got caught up in this, and it was difficult to see children you had seen grow up wanting to chat about killing someone else on a video. In our discussions, Gerald often stated that if the studio was not on the estate, they would go somewhere else, so it was better they were somewhere safe and where people wouldn’t be charging them for studio time. However, although we were proud of what he was achieving, Charis and I were also worried about the impact the studio was having. Gerald’s refusal to censor what was produced was often criticized, as he recalls: ‘I don’t see it as this person shouldn’t be allowed on YouTube, and this one should; I just allow everyone. That’s why I am not liked in the studio. All they want to do is pick out the violent videos … they don’t see that girl I helped who was struggling to get her music out there.’ The type of violence displayed in their videos acted as capital giving value and status to the young people (see Fraser, 2013; Harding, 2014, 2020; Ilan, 2012; Pitts, 2020). But the extent to which a young person desired or depended on this capital differed according to their wider circumstances. Many of those who hung out on the estate or appeared in videos were not perpetrators of street violence. In professional speak, they were affiliated with E1S. This in itself is a subjective notion; the police labelled many in or ‘affiliated’ with E1S simply because of where they lived or hung out. However, their presence on the estate or in the videos didn’t necessarily mean they were violent. Akin, who appeared in E1S videos, explained how some young people didn’t get involved in the violence around them: ‘St Mary’s is a place where you don’t have to be in gangs to chill. There was a certain period when everyone was chilling. Then when I was 18, they stopped because mad stuff was happening. They just didn’t 69

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want to get associated with it. So they just took off like maybe they went uni out of London.’ Ola shared his take on wanting to stay away from the violence around him: “I never wanted to have my face bait [making yourself known and therefore more likely to be targeted by other groups] or anything. I’ve always wanted just to live a calm life, like when you’re just off the ends or out of London, you just feel safe.” Despite some making efforts to stay out of trouble, violent online personas were commonplace. Akin, who always tried to stay away from physical violence, was known for lyrics that always featured references to shooting and leaving people for dead. Although this lyrical content was typical, taking it at face value can create a false image of those involved. Among the St Mary’s young people, many had violent online personas yet had no intention of being violent. Although violence was gaining value among the young people, for most young people, it was symbolic, with very few engaging in the violence themselves. For Akin, lyrics reflected what was on people’s minds and what was going on around them: ‘We were chatting about what was going on. The beat was aggressive, so your bars had to be aggressive to match the beat. You’re like in a bubble, so you’re not thinking like, oh, wow, this is violent. So as violent as it may seem, it was just normalized; it didn’t even come across like that.’ This is similar to Gerald’s understanding: “You can’t tell that someone is in a gang because they are in a video what they are saying or doing in it. It’s all exaggerated.” Despite the bravado on display, many simply played a character, which they eventually outgrew. It is noticeable that many of those who only felt the need to talk about violence possessed other forms of capital that had value in different social settings. Through family and church networks and education, wider connections allowed them access to alternative sources of capital and to develop pathways into mainstream adulthood. Akin’s parents were from Nigeria and emphasized discipline, religion and education. Despite his violent persona in the videos, Akin was a mild mannered and polite young man. When his friends went off to uni, Akin’s horizons expanded. Going to parties with his friends in Luton and East London made Akin see that there was more to life than the estate, and he started hanging out there less. He went on to work with young people with learning difficulties before joining the pastoral team at a PRU and working part time as a youth worker for a Christian organization. 70

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Akin, Ola and those who went to university could switch codes (Anderson, 2000). Connections with those outside their immediate peer group allowed them to move from one social space to another, and their options were not limited to what the street social space offered. Speaking of violence and having a street narrative (Sandberg and Fleetwood, 2016) allowed those who had no intention of being heavily involved in criminal activity to fit in and maintain status among their peer group. Although they were performing, there was some acceptance from Akin and others that the tracks could incite violence or be a catalyst for what was occurring: “But it could have turned violent, yeah, because I’m talking a certain way; if anyone that we have problems with heard it, they automatically gonna think, it’s aimed at them and vice versa.” Eli, part of 13, explains these dynamics a bit further: “Being in a video just puts a target on your back, but then most people know you anyway; if you go somewhere, there is always gonna be someone who will recognize you from school or whatnot, but it is just more bait when you are in a video.” In considering the content, Eli’s comments suggest that although for some, online personas didn’t reflect offline lives, for others, they did: “Some people were just playing, maybe that’s why they could chat like that [be more explicitly violent], but me, I said what I said coz it was what I did, I might not have chatted as much, but unlike others, I could back it up.” Although grime and drill lyrics may not be the best indication of a young person’s actions, the videos do indicate the trajectory of the youth culture that was becoming embedded on the estate. Gerald’s YouTube account soon got over 3,000 subscribers and, over the space of 6 years, hosted 202 videos. Twenty of these videos have received over 50,000 views. Between 2011 and 2013, all of the videos were produced on the estate and hosted on Gerald’s YouTube platform. During this time, only five videos received over 100,000 views. The most popular was a collaborative memorial track commemorating Tom, with over 168,000 views. The next two highest, each getting 120,00 views, were collaborations with young people from Brixton Hill. The fourth and fifth most popular videos featured Jamal, with other local young people supporting him. By autumn 2013, most of those associated with E1S had gone to uni or prison or were working and were largely no longer around. This gave space for a younger group to come to the fore, and Jamal, Eli and Ashley started featuring more and more in the videos together under the name 13, occasionally joined by their friend Michael. 13 were a concern to the police for their association with drug dealing and youth violence, and labelled a gang. Eli, though, saw things differently: ‘13 was just a way for us to get out; it wasn’t no gang related or anything like that; it was our way of saying we are putting all our heads together 71

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to get out, forget all of this and that, we are just trying to make it out and whoever is with us is with us and whoever is not is not.’ Despite this assertion, making money involved drug dealing, which led to rivalries and violence. 13 was one of the founding collectives of the UK drill music scene, and their initial videos were similar to those made by E1S, featuring the estate and an entourage of people behind them hyping the track. However, they showed an astuteness, connectedness and calculation that was missing in the actions of E1S. 13 realized that violence sells, and their tracks reflected this. Soon, the content made it hard to reconcile supporting the studio and its reputation. The final track that crossed the line and caused the St Mary’s studio to close was a track by Jamal, which went on to receive over 100,000 views. I was notified of its existence when a police car pulled up beside me one evening, and an officer showed me the track on his phone. The video cut from a music track to a blurred-​out image of a drunk and high girl talking about how her “baby father” from a rival area was no good in bed and that she would rather be with St Mary’s boys. As a result of the video, the council had to move the girl out of London for her own safety. Although the video was a big let-​down, both in terms of the young people’s actions and my and Charis’ inability to influence what Gerald was doing, closing the studio came with some relief. We no longer had to try and manage the young people using it, nor would we need to worry about what they were producing. Initially, I called Gerald and said that I would need to suspend the use of the studio until we could agree on what could be made. Gerald’s initial reaction was to strip all of his equipment out of the community flat and he wasn’t seen on the estate for a while. Once feelings settled down, Gerald explained he understood why the studio had to stop and that he was planning to set up somewhere else. Soon he was back on the estate, filming videos with the young people again. However, by now, 13 were attracting the attention of other YouTube platforms, and by mid-​2014 Gerald’s platform was left behind. 13 started uploading onto channels such as Packman TV, SBTV and Mixtape Madness, which had far more subscribers. Despite the group coming up with Gerald, the desire to make it big and maximize their earnings meant that St Mary’s’ own platform had to be ditched. Over the next three years, 13’s biggest track received 5 million views, their second over 3 million views and their third over 1 million, with Jamal, Ashley and Eli earning £2,000 a month each from shows, streaming income and royalties. Eli comments: “Music was making us a lot of money; all of us had stopped dealing. But the police were just fucking us up because of the music; they were still on us.” 72

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Although the early motivations were more about gaining status, music now offered young people an opportunity to earn money from their talent. Most of E1S’ videos featured young people rapping in various locations, from stairwells to the car park area of the estate, with others in the background smoking weed and hyping things up. 13’s videos started off the same way, then evolved, with the ensemble and the estate featuring less between 2015 and 2016 and not at all after 2016. This partly reflects the changing stages of the lives of those making the music, as Eli comments: “People just weren’t around anymore to do the videos with; some had jobs, uni, but most were in prison, so it wasn’t possible to do the videos like that.” The change also reflects changing priorities. The estate featuring less coincided with Eli, Ashley and Jamal moving away from frontline street dealing and becoming the ‘connect’ for others causing the estate to be less important in their lives. After 2014, only 27 per cent of videos featured the estate, with 40 per cent filmed on location, such as a hotel, central London or on a film-​like set. Collaborations with other drill artists also became more of a feature. 13 also featured on platforms used by drill artists of rival areas because of the exposure it gave them. Their music was becoming more strategically motivated than geographically focused. 13 soon became known across London and further afield. Their notoriety saw them embark on a national tour and feature with the likes of Tim Westwood and do live sets on BBC Radio 1Xtra. Despite their development, depictions of violence continued. Lyrics included references to being fearless because they were always carrying weapons, wetting (stabbing) people up with samurai swords and giving them bullets for breakfast. Ashley was the least lyrically violent of 13’s core members, with very few of his latter lyrics relating to acts of violence, although some early tracks contained opaque violent references and such as speaking of people’s faces appearing on t-​shirts referring to the memorial t-​shirts often made after a young person died. Yet, the symbolic nature of 13’s lyrics didn’t always reflect crime trends. Their most lyrically violent period was between 2012 and 2014, with 13 general references to carrying guns and seven references to using guns to kill people. However, Youth Justice Board (2020) data on violent crimes would suggest that there were less weapons offices during this period than the years before and after. Furthermore, no one associated with 13 was implicated in the shootings that did occur. References to drug dealing were a constant in 13’s videos and maybe better reflect the development in the 13’s criminal activities. Between 2012 and 2014, there were 28 references to street dealing, yet only five references from 2016 to 2019. In 2016, there were three references of other people 73

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working for them. From 2016 and 2018, there were seven references to ‘moving weight’ or ‘packs’ (referring to dealing larger quantities of drugs), which was absent in all other years. This development, from chatting about making drop-​offs on push bikes to selling packs and moving weight, mirrors 13’s core members’ move from hanging out on the estate waiting for a call to make an individual sale to supplying other dealers and staying essentially free of retail deals. Things seemed to change again for 13 in 2017; Jamal went to prison for the attempted murder of a drug supplier, then Eli got three years (serving 18 months) for possession of an offensive weapon. Eli and Ashley reunited with Michael on his release and started making music again. Street scenes were replaced by the West End, Mercedes cars and restaurants, and there were hardly any explicit references to violent acts in a deliberate image transformation overseen by Gerald. Eli explained their rationale: ‘We were making money from music, but there was too much attention on us for the wrong reasons. The police were trying to knock us out. … We are getting older too, so it was kinda stupid to be saying so much on a track. So, we tried to wisen up and changed our image.’ Ashley and Eli previously made around £2,000 a month each from music and saw it as a way out of drug dealing, yet also understood that violent online personas would make them a target for the police. The image change, if successful, would give Eli and Ashley the chance to make money legitimately without hassle from the police and, in the interim, help their drug-​dealing activities go under the radar. In theory, this was a good idea, and Gerald advised Ashley and Eli to believe in the flexibility of drill, which he describes as: ‘Drill is a genre a specific BPM [beats per minute]; it’s a certain sound; it doesn’t matter the concept of the track. But the wider consensus is that drill is made by people from the streets. But I have artists whose parents are well off chatting about their life. So, streets are where it started, but it is bigger now, more mainstream.’ The image change hit their popularity hard, and despite appearances on BBC 1Xtra to launch their new image, their most popular track only got 150,000 views. This meant a significant drop in revenue and an increased need to rely on illicit earnings. On why their more recent musical endeavours were not as popular, Ashley comments: ‘There were a lot of rumours going around that we didn’t feel we needed to address in our tracks because that’s the stuff that we were 74

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trying to stop, the stuff that can get messy. But because we stopped that, people thought the rumours were true and didn’t see us in the same way as before.’ Gerald adds: “Everyone wants to listen to real life events, so there is pressure as people respect a real story more than a fictional one.”

The attention economy Status and money derived from drill music are inextricably linked to how violent the artist’s persona is. Ashley and Eli have fallen foul to what Stuart (2020) calls the allure of the attention economy. Many young people growing up poor have long seen music as their ‘way out’. Previously, this would need a record deal, unlocking the influence, distribution and marketing power of one of the big labels. Drill artists can now potentially achieve what labels offer with a few clicks of their mouse. Uploading videos onto platforms such as YouTube allows young people to publish and distribute independently. There is, of course, the hope that the number of views, likes and subscribers may attract the attention of the mainstream media. However, the monetization of self-​publishing platforms through shared advertising revenue means that drill artists can earn a decent amount of money without ever being signed. But, as Stuart (2020) points out, this is a crowded space, and the vast majority of artists get very little attention and will never get 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 views and qualify for YouTube advertising income. Companies or individuals with enough financial clout can manipulate how Google and other platforms make their content visible through search engine optimization (SEO). Alex, an exec who manages drill artists for a record label, explained that the ability to manipulate the popularity of tracks financially is the main point of labels in the era of digital distribution. From playlists to blog exposure and radio interviews, almost every exposure channel is boosted by payment; even the leading YouTube platforms, such as Mixtape Madness and Daily grime, charge upwards of £350 for an upload. However, for groups like 13, paying for success is not possible. Instead, their primary option is to manipulate the algorithm that promotes content by using particular words in the track names and ensuring their lyrics are shocking enough to grab the attention of others. The impacts of such strategies are multiplied every time they post another video or collaborate with other controversial figures as search algorithms promote past videos by the artists to viewers of the new and vice versa (Stuart, 2020). Added to the mix is the global reach of these platforms. What is driving this popularity is not local young people viewing their friends’ videos but onlookers from further afield fascinated by what they see as real ghetto life. Alex commented that most of those viewing videos from the London drill 75

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scene are from mainland Europe allured by the thought that they are getting an insight into the life of real gangsters. The analytics of Gerald’s platform shows that an average of 70 per cent of his viewers are based in the UK as a whole, not just London. However, some months as few as 58 per cent of the viewers came from the UK. He also has high viewer numbers from Finland, France, Ireland, Germany, Lebanon, Australia and the USA. Artists from St Mary’s took advantage of this, referencing slums and the ghetto in both lyrics and track titles. This voyeurism has spawned a multitude of blog sites reviewing videos and purporting to give an authentic commentary on the meaning of lyrics. Some have taken on the guise of investigative journalism exploring the criminal acts of particular drill artists, with 13 featuring prominently on these. This, for Stuart (2020), serves to increase the reputation of drill artists and adds gravitas to their all-​important constructed authenticity. The more violent the content, the more interested these voyeuristic onlookers and bloggers are. There is, for Stuart, a digital code of the street, where portrayals of a violent persona allow someone to gain status. This pressure for authenticity and to portray an image to others can lead to young people giving false accounts of events, even to those considered trustworthy. For example, one St Mary’s drill artist told Lenny that he could not participate in a football match as he had been stabbed in the leg earlier on that day. He explained that he was okay, but he did manage to ‘wet up’ the other guy. Lenny, concerned, kept asking about the other person’s welfare, only for another young person to explain to me that he actually injured himself playing with a knife in his bedroom. As 13 vacated the estate, a new group emerged, LSM. Like 13, members of LSM hung around on the estate growing up. Unlike 13, as LSM was forming, all its members lived on the estate. This reflects that, devoid of any significant youth interventions on the estate; there was very little to attract non-​resident young people to St Mary’s. Again, like those who had gone before them, music was the key focus for Trevor, Kenny and Marlon, LSM’s founding members. Trevor previously attended the resident-​run youth activity in the community flat and then played football with St Mary’s Football Project. By year 9, Trevor had been excluded from school and attended a pupil referral unit, at which point he started hanging around with Kenny and Marlon. Unfortunately, Trevor was stabbed on the estate in 2018, with a serious case review showing that his mum and Lenny had repeatedly asked for some form of assessment in an attempt to get Trevor professional support. Still, social services or the education team at the local authority didn’t even have a file on him. Kenny also attended the residents’ project, going along with his older sister, and played football with St Mary’s Football Project. When Kenny was about 76

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11, his uncle killed himself in front of him, which added to the existing trauma of both his mum and dad being murdered. Despite his challenges, Kenny didn’t go to the PRU; instead, he spent most of his secondary school days at a special educational needs school. By 17, the council rehoused Kenny in a hostel on the outskirts of London due to threats to his life. The third member of LSM, Marlon, grew up on the estate and still lives there with his mum and dad. Unlike the other two, Marlon didn’t have any significant issues growing up. He started dealing while still in school and made music from the age of 15. By the time he was 17, he had a significant YouTube following for his drill music, with his tracks regularly getting over 3 million views. His popularity was such that several record labels have been interested in signing him. However, he has decided to stay independent. LSM’s videos follow a similar pattern in terms of lyrics and focus as the early 13 videos. This may not be surprising considering the backgrounds of the young people in both groups are similar. All their families were financially constrained, all struggled at school, all hung around on the estate throughout their teenage years and all received very little informal guardianship. LSM’s mirroring of actions of previous groups is a consequence of the continuation of the risk factors and social conditions that influence the development of criminal street cultures. Of the 25 tracks released by LSM, 24 feature Marlon as the lead artist, and five are collaborations with other artists. Unlike 13, whose collaborations were with friends, only two of Marlon’s collaborations feature friends; the other three were with other big names in drill, chosen to boost his views. Mixtape Madness and Link Up TV, the platforms hosting Marlon’s tracks, were again chosen to ensure the greatest exposure. Although LSM’s videos replicate much of what has gone on before them, there are minimal personal connections between the three groups. Gerald has not been involved in any LSM productions, although Marlon has called him a couple of times to ask how to do something, and Ashley and Eli have no real contact with anyone from LSM. The separation between the groups hits home every time Marlon asks Lenny or me for a lift to football instead of Ashley, Eli or the other olders who play in the same team. Until someone pointed it out to him during a pre-​match chat, Ashley didn’t even know Marlon’s drill name. There are also some distinct differences between LSM and 13 in their trajectory. LSM’s videos showed the same pattern seen in the early years of 13, representing St Mary’s, in both lyrics and visually. As the members of 13 moved away from estate-​based street dealing, ‘repping’ (representing and promoting)‌the estate disappeared, so did the entourage, and clothing changed from hoodies and tracksuits to jeans and designer clothes. LSM has yet to go through this evolution if they ever will. LSM’s videos continue 77

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to ‘rep’ the estate. As LSM’s popularity has grown, so has their ability to attract people to appear in their videos, with this fabricated entourage only coming to the estate for filming. There are also some significant differences in the lyrical content. Quantitatively, the LSM tracks are more violent than the early 13 tracks, with only 80 per cent of 13’s early tracks containing references to violence, compared to 100 per cent of LSM’s tracks. Again, 63 per cent of 13’s lyrics directly antagonistically targeted other areas, compared to 75 per cent of LSM’s tracks. The ferocity of the lyrics seems to have grown. In the five years that 13 were most active, 27 verses of their lyrics specifically mentioned stabbing, shooting or killing in general, whereas, in the two years of LSM’s music, the same was mentioned 60 times. There are also more references to actual events and more explicitly provocative sentiments. LSM’s music seems to be stuck in the period that 13 naturally grew out of before making a conscious decision to break from portrayals of street culture altogether. This may reflect that unlike 13, whose members progressed from the street dealing stage fairly rapidly, LSM has not been able to make that transition. LSM is embedded in lower-​level street dealing, which often attracts greater levels of violence (Jacques and Allen, 2014; Robinson et al, 2018; Pitts, 2019). As violence is a more prominent threat in their lives, it is unsurprising that their lyrics reflect this. This also means that dealing is not as lucrative for LSM as it was for 13. LSM cannot choose between equally lucrative income streams. So, there is more pressure on Marlon to maintain his online popularity (his videos now regularly reach 3 to 5 million views), and he feels more compelled to perpetuate his violent online persona, as he shared during a chat in the park: “It is what it is, really; I know what makes money, so I will keep doing it. Even if people want to target me, I need to make my money.” This dynamic means that artists using prosumer platforms are trapped promoting violent personas (Irwin-​Rogers and Pinkney, 2017), vying for attention in an antagonistic continuum in opposition to other groups (Ilan, 2020). In many respects, the music produced acts as a loop (Pinkney et al, 2018), representing the lives of young people and recreating them at the same time. Although the likes of Ashley, Eli and others were involved in criminal activities that they spoke about in their lyrics, their YouTube personas became part of who they were, mainly because it changed the way others, including the police and peers, perceived them. For others like Marlon, his music is making the target on his back even bigger, and the threats to his life are so serious that he will not leave the estate unless it’s in a taxi or he gets a lift from someone. These digital loops often connect with other larger loops (Ferrel et al, 2015, in Pinkney et al, 2018), causing a further retaliative escalation 78

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(Pinkney et al, 2018). For example, in 2019, a car drove onto the estate and shot at three young people as they were walking into their block. This was retaliation for online comments made about an 18-​year-​old who was murdered in Brixton. The young person in question had been trolling friends and family members of Tom years after his death. On hearing about the murder in Brixton, some from St Mary’s had celebrated online. The shooting was a physical consequence of online bravado about an offline rivalry. How long online personas feature often depends on what alternative possibilities present themselves. For those who have enough non-​street capital and can go to uni or get a job, it is usually over sooner. Eli and Ashley’s economic capital, which allowed them to see an alternative future, was a key component of their transition. Unfortunately, for the likes of Marlon and Kenny, these alternatives have not yet presented themselves, so the violent personas and the risks associated with them continue. Drill music does offer legitimate sources of income and career pathways for those like Gerald, with the potential for improved socio-economic status (Ilan, 2020). Nevertheless, as members of 13 realized, producing videos that others see as inciting violence draws much unwanted attention from the authorities, who often use online content as a reference point to identify those involved in gang violence (Fatsis, 2019; Ilan, 2020). Although there are instances of drill artists being convicted, like Jamal, of serious violent offences, as Fatsis (2019) and Ilan (2020) point out, drill artists find themselves within a legacy of criminalization of what is primarily considered Black music.

Police crackdowns and criminalization As discussed in Chapter 2, the resistance culture, with their Ska, then Reggae sound systems, were considered a danger to British society and inherently linked to enforcement efforts such as Operation Swamp 81. Actions against grime and drill artists have been criticized for continuing the pathologizing of Black culture (Fatsis, 2018). Drill artists have become an easy target in the sights of those looking to do something about youth violence but lack the willingness to tackle its underlying structural causes. The initial enforcement action was the introduction of Form 696 in 2005, a risk assessment that music venues needed to submit to the police 14 days before hosting an artist (Fatis, 2018, 2019), without which the police could oppose the host’s event licence application or renewal. This was seen as discriminately aimed at Black music artists and scrapped in 2017 after the mayor of London called for its review. More recently, authorities have used gang injunctions to prevent particular artists from performing certain tracks or mentioning specific words in their performances, 79

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criminalizing actions that would be legal without the injunction (Fatsis, 2019). In 2018 the Metropolitan Police successfully petitioned YouTube to remove certain drill content, resulting in YouTube taking down 30 videos (Fatsis, 2019; Lynes et al, 2020), although some of these videos, such as one Marlon had taken down, were more mocking of the police than inciting violence. Although drill imagery and personas are only partially based on reality, the police and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) increasingly use videos as evidence in criminal investigations against young Black men (Owusu-​ Bempah, 2020). This was evident in the trial of Nicholas, where the police matched clothing visible in blurred CCTV images to clearer images on YouTube. However, videos are also increasingly used as evidence of someone’s character and their violent intent, helping to secure joint enterprise convictions (Owusu-​Bempah, 2020). This subjects young Black men to further discriminatory practices, lazily attributing criminal characters and motivations to young Black men by conflating their personhood with an artistic persona and cultural performance. This is where a label’s financial imperative can support drill artists. No exposure means no streaming, advertising and performance income for both the artist and the label. Due to the often spurious claims behind injunctions against drill artists, Alex’s label’s legal team have often had banning orders overturned on appeal. The financial dynamics add another degree of complexity to the drill music debate that has not been discussed at any great length. The record label that most recently offered Marlon a contract is part of a wider music group owned by a middle-​aged white man who previously held senior positions in top media companies. Although the staff at the label know the negative connotations of the violent portrayals in the videos, similar to Gerald, they feel it is not their place to censor their artists. Tracks on the label follow a similar trend to the violent videos produced by independent drill artists. Alex from the label explains the reason why: ‘These guys are just chatting about their lives and looking to make a living out of it. Imagine if they chatted the truth about how they have been treated with racism and everything, then they would really be in trouble. It’s not our place to tell them what to chat about.’ These actions are clear speculative profiteering on the back of the risks associated with predominantly young Black men’s violent personas, which will attract the attention of the police and peers who may literally want to cut them down. In this sense, the young people involved are again missing out on the type of guardianship that could help limit the violence and criminality surrounding their lives. 80

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However, although most in the industry act in this way, Alex’s treatment of Marlon looks slightly different. Aware of his financial situation and his felt need to make money illicitly, Alex offered him a contract. The label would pay him a monthly salary to write and record tracks, guaranteeing an income regardless of how successful his releases were. Mixed in with the commercial imperative was a desire to support Marlon and allow him to pursue his interests uninhibited. Before Marlon signed for the company, they paid for his studio time to make a track for them, which he then released on his own without informing the label. In the end, Marlon decided to do what many others in his position have done and go it alone. Despite Marlon’s audacity, the label continues to offer Marlon the chance to work with them. Alex explains: ‘For the label, it is about making money; that’s what we are about, but someone is going to blow up from the drill scene and make it big, so why can’t it be Marlon? It is about money, but I like the guy, so if he wants us to help him, we are there.’ Despite the financial imperative, Alex offered to help Gerald work out how to monetize his efforts and offered a £10,000 advance to Ashley and Eli for five tracks that they would licence to his label for 15 years, down from the usual lifetime ownership. Alex explains the mechanisms of such a deal: ‘For me, it’s not too much of a risk. See, Spotify and the big companies are too scared to officially recognize drill coz what happens if someone at the top of their chart goes down for murder? It is not going to look good for them, so there are no official iTunes or Spotify drill playlists. But four guys set up their own playlists that act as the official charts. And I knew these guys and was giving them tickets to shows right at the beginning when no one was interested in drill. So now I have a deal with them and have paid for four top slots on their playlists, so I can guarantee whatever track I put in those slots will be a hit, simply because of the exposure.’ Unfortunately for Ashley and Eli, while trying to get the 15-​year lease down to five years, Alex signed someone else who took the paid slots, leaving the former 13 members needing to wait or go it alone. However, Alex explained that the flexibility and support offered to those from St Mary’s is uncommon: “This is a cutthroat industry; no one really cares about you. My bosses just want to know how much money the label will make. Our meetings are about streams, downloads and playlists. All anyone is, is a revenue stream.” 81

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Criminal personas or an artistic income stream? Digital platforms allow young people to connect to the broader world around them; however, for many, they are essentially extensions of their own isolated spaces, devoid of guardianship. As a result, young people’s online drill culture simply reproduces, creates and recreates the physical, and social spaces they inhabit, curated almost solely by artists or those consuming violence at a distance. For people like Eli, Ashley and Marlon, the monetization of popularity through streaming, download and advertising income offers the potential to stop relying on illicit income. Within the dynamics of the attention economy, there are two ways to do this: financially boost exposure through paying for SEO services, spots on playlists and platforms, and featured blog posts, or manipulate YouTube and other algorithms by ensuring tracks have explicit content and keywords. Without financial backing, artists rely on the latter. Although some of the content that 13 and LSM produced reflected their life experience, the videos essentially contained artistic performances. Most young people in the videos never intended to inflict violence on anyone, despite portraying the contrary. However, when based on existing offline conflicts, online content can act as a catalyst for serious violence. Offline incidents then add to the authenticity of digital content and serve as motivation for new tracks. This loop increases consumption by those looking to observe ghetto life on their devices and makes the situation all the more profitable. Those hoping to earn a living from drill have to gain the attention of those looking for authentic descriptions of violence. Those like Ashley and Eli, who outgrow street violence, soon realize that it isn’t their talent alone that made them money, but it was also their ability to shock and satisfy the consumers’ appetite for performative violent street culture. Pivoting away from violent online personas results in a loss of popularity and income. This is where the concern lies; for those such as Marlon, there is minimal incentive for them to change their image. The money they are making from their music can be as lucrative as drug dealing but without the threat of arrest. Yet it keeps a target on their back. Followers may get some entertainment out of watching videos. Labels may see people like Marlon in terms of their money making potential, yet Marlon and others like him are young men at serious risk of violence. It does seem negligent of producers and record labels not to want to address this. For the police, the picture is more straightforward. Drill artists’ online representations are accurate reflections of the young people’s character, and the actions portrayed in the lyrics are evidence of the types of crimes they are involved in. Online videos are being criminalized through court injunctions and used within trials to help secure convictions. These actions continue a long history of the criminalization of Black culture within the 82

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UK, turning essentially legal pursuits of income and popularity into a crime. Focusing on the online personas of young people appears to be an attempt to do something about the problem while ignoring the underlying issues that have increased the risk of violent street cultures becoming embedded within deprived neighbourhoods.

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7

Separated, Isolated and Unconnected Focusing on primary school children and leaving the olders to police enforcement This chapter outlines the support offered by residents and professionals as 13 and others were in their element. Initially, the chapter explores how the residents’ tenacity to ensure they had control of the newly reopened Centenary Hall helped give them the space to develop their own activities to support young people. This allowed Dorothy to impart her experience and care to a new group of parents, who are still active today. Yet the account will consider how Dorothy’s decision to focus on 6-​to 11-​year-​olds left Ashley and Eli’s group with very little informal support and guardianship. Instead, attempts to deal with this age group came through the ‘community-​led’ Operation Shield, a joint police and council initiative aimed at presenting ‘gang affiliated’ young people the option of engaging in local support or face additional police enforcement. The account questions the influence of this ‘community involvement’ and whether the operation offered the support the young people needed. The chapter finishes by discussing how even when local trusted individuals did engage with young people, their actions were isolated, amounting to advising specific young people and not enough to change the prevailing street culture.

Residents standing up for themselves Although the local authority did not trust residents to run critical services, they did want their involvement as long as it conformed to a particular professional structure (Pestoff and Brandsen, 2019; Andreassen et al, 2014; Fledderus et al, 2015). Within this space, it was apparent that those operating within the rules of the professional field had greater access to economic 84

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and political capital (Alexander, 2021b). Although the residents’ committee initially rejected this field, some soon understood its dominating character (Bourdieu, 2002) and started to see its value. The residents’ transition from solely operating in an informal way to utilizing a professional ethos is most clearly seen in their struggles to gain the right to manage Centenary Hall. In 2010, the council agreed to invest £170,000 of Section 105 money into the hall, and, initially, the residents were promised a ten-​year lease on the building. However, when the refurbishment work started in 2012, the council staff working with the residents had changed. Yolanda, the new resident participation officer, felt obliged to help the residents’ committee realize that they were not able to manage the space and that LCT should do so instead. Over the next 18 months, Yolanda and others in the council pushed us to accept this position. Matt Hall, the Resident Participation Manager, offered £20,000 to pay for a part-​time hall coordinator, suggesting LCT employ them. The residents vehemently objected to the idea. Yet Yolanda bluntly stated in a hall management group meeting: “The residents’ committee is not capable of running the hall. Despite the issues that have gone on, LCT are a good organization and would do a good job running the hall. The council are prepared to fund a part-​time post if the residents work with LCT.” At the next meeting, Matt stated that the council’s preferred option was for LCT to employ the coordinator; the next option would be for the council to hire someone. The last option was to transfer the money to the residents’ committee, who could employ someone, but the council did not see this as viable. Finally, as it was clear the residents opposed LCT’s involvement, Matt agreed to explore employing someone themselves. Soon after the meeting, Matt emailed me asking the committee to discuss the proposal of LCT running the hall again. At the following residents’ meeting, I raised the issue, and the discussion lasted all of a minute, with some reacting sharply to me even mentioning it. Finally, in April 2013, a month after the hall opened, the council decided to hire the person directly. While they looked into hiring someone, Dorothy, Charis and Simon, who lived opposite the hall, and I, managed it voluntarily. When Matt realized the council salary for a hall coordinator would be higher than he had budgeted, he put working with LCT back on the table. Only after Dorothy and several other committee members threatened to resign did Matt reluctantly allowed the residents’ committee to employ someone directly. We believed running the hall would allow us to organize activities that would enable residents to get to know one another and foster a sense of common purpose. In the face of increasing numbers of transactional services, many wanted the chance to turn a space into a place and help build friendships. However, as the hall committee established itself in the role, a professional rather than a relational way of working prevailed. As a 85

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result, the hall management started to mirror the ‘outsider’s’ service delivery, and the vision of the hall being a catalyst for developing relationships somewhat disappeared. The first sign of this was in discussions of how much to charge for the hall hire. Some wanted to keep the hire costs low; others wanted to benchmark the cost against other spaces. Dorothy argued strongly that this would make Centenary Hall simply a hall for hire and negate its purpose. After some disagreement, the price was set at £40 an hour for residents and £50 an hour for others. For Dorothy, this seemed too excessive, and she would often call me to say that she was going to give a resident a few extra hours for free to help them out. Her call was a safety net to ensure that others couldn’t say that she was acting alone, and as I agreed with her on the pricing, she knew that I wouldn’t object. Jamal, for example, hired the hall for his daughter’s Christening for £100, despite using it for six hours. This practice continued for the first year as the hall committee hired a less than competent hall coordinator, meaning much of the work fell on Dorothy and my shoulders. Yet it started to change after about a year when Francesca, who lived opposite the hall and had an MBA, became hall coordinator. The first thing to go was giving people free time, which caused disagreements between Dorothy and her. In one case, Kate, who lived on the estate with her boyfriend and three boys, wanted the hall for her wedding reception. On a budget, Kate planned to get married on a Thursday afternoon, and Dorothy, wanting to support her, offered the hall for free. When Kate approached Francesca to arrange the details, Francesca refused to take the booking. In the end, a compromise was struck where Kate was allowed to book the small room attached to the hall, which Kate could upgrade for free on the day if the main hall was available. Francesca did not know that Dorothy only conceded to this after giving Kate the money for room hire. Another example occurred after Anton, Gerald’s younger brother, died in a car crash, and the family hired Centenary Hall for the wake. The night before the funeral, Simon let Miche and some friends in the building to decorate the hall without informing Francesca. When Francesca found out, she asked for the keys back from Simon and warned Miche and Charis that they should not have trespassed. Francesca got the hall running more efficiently despite some initial resistance, and income grew significantly. The committee proved that they were competent enough to manage the hall. Nevertheless, most activities resembled what they were so eager to avoid. Even Matt commented that the income generation since Francesca got on board had been impressive, but he would much rather see a greater emphasis on activities with a local benefit. Our experience of controlling the hall was not one of liberation and self-​ determination. As the primary holders of symbolic power, the local authority 86

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used its economic and social capital and status to establish a preferred way of doing things. Through funding, those with professional habitus had created a symbolic reference point (Susen, 2011) based upon a professional rather than relational way of operating. The residents looked to improve their status by adopting the rules of those they saw as superior (McKenzie, 2015). The use and control of spaces on the estate determined much of what else went on; thus, communal spaces were naturally political. In the past, this took the form of Black residents not being welcome in buildings controlled by the older white residents and battles over the use of Centenary Hall, again with racist undertones with the same white residents objecting to the reggae dances held in the venue. By 2011, much of this was in the background; a new schism appeared between the residents’ relational approach and the council’s professional viewpoint. For Lefebvre and Bononno (2003), public areas have traditionally been a space for interaction and relationship building, of the sort older residents commented about in Chapter 3. However, Seeing the hall as a controlled abstract space of commercial value (Lefebvre and Bononno, 2003; Wilson, 2013; Hass and Olsson, 2014) limited its relationship building potential.

Summer play scheme Despite the hall not living up to everyone’s expectations, we did have a space to develop their own initiatives. One was a short-​lived Friday night café run by a mum, who soon realized that she was only selling discount meals to her son’s friends and losing money. In 2014, Dorothy and I secured £9,600 funding and set up a summer playscheme for 6-​to 12-​year-​olds. On hearing the news, a counsellor and board member of LCT commented: “I didn’t think the residents’ committee wanted to run youth activities on the estate.” This was a reference to the committee deciding that after the LCT’s youth delivery, a youth club on the estate was more damaging to the young people than positive. Once the funding came in, Dorothy and I went about putting a team together. We stuck a job advert on the doors of all the blocks, from which we got one inquiry from someone we already knew. The most fruitful recruitment tool was a WhatsApp message I sent to a few mums on the estate telling them of the scheme. Eight residents, including Emre, Charis, Miche and Kate, who brought three of her friends, joined Dorothy and me at the first meeting, where we decided that the wages should be £9 an hour instead of the original £10 so that the budget could stretch to pay all who wanted to work. After that, we met weekly over the next six weeks to plan out the summer holiday project. Throughout the first meeting, Kate insisted that she would only volunteer. After the meeting had finished, I asked her why she did not want to get paid, 87

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to which she replied: “You know my situation, man. That is why I have to volunteer everywhere; I don’t have my papers, you know that.” When I discussed the issue with Dorothy as we walked back to our flats, she simply responded: “It’s so tough for some people but tell her; we will look after her.” One late addition to the team was Mickey, recently released from prison, who Miche was desperate to help out and so asked me to vouch for him. Dorothy had her doubts about his character and, for the first week, had to constantly tell him to keep off his phone, especially as she thought he was still dealing. Yet by week two, this behaviour stopped, and he lasted the entire five weeks, spending much of it running football sessions or helping Miche with arts and t-​shirt printing activities. A couple of years later, Mickey moved down to Croydon when his mum moved off the estate and now runs a trainer customization business. On the first day of the scheme, 38 children signed up, leaving Dorothy concerned that they would be overrun by children, particularly since promotion had only been through word of mouth. By all accounts, the project went well from a participant’s point of view. However, there were lots of disagreements between staff in the background. Most of these centred on one staff member feeling that another was not pulling their weight or were continuations of longstanding issues between friends. At least twice a week, Dorothy would ask me to meet her and one of the project staff when I came home from work to talk through how they could do things differently. However, nothing really changed, and although Dorothy was visibly annoyed, she just kept commenting, “Well, they are young and will understand someday”, and pressed on. Along with supporting the children, the playscheme helped parents earn money, build relationships, get a sense of fulfilment and understand more about themselves. Reflecting on the importance of the playscheme, Miche comments: ‘I want it to help with the community flat and the playscheme because I never had that. It was like an instant way to help; I think that’s why I’m still helping now. It made me understand what I wanted to do. Being a part of organizing things and seeing kids happy or smile, especially when you hear all these crazy stories. Seeing them enjoy just a moment, oh my gosh, it just warms my heart.’ The first project ran under budget, mainly due to the staff working harder for less, so Dorothy gave Kate and Miche the responsibility of organizing a subsidized day trip to Butlins with the remainder of the funding. Dorothy met with Kate and Miche every Monday evening for progress updates and

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to troubleshoot issues. Although Dorothy wanted families to have a good day out, she had a bigger goal in mind, as she explains: ‘I have to think about the future, so if I can train up Kate and Miche to do this, then they can take on other things in the future. Hopefully, Charis and Miche can take over the play schemes in a few years. I just want them to do well for themselves and the estate; that’s why I do this.’ The Monday evening catchups typically involved Dorothy listening to Kate’s worries about her personal life and giving advice and support where she could. Miche would then join them 30 to 45 minutes late. Once Miche arrived, they would review who had signed up, paid their £10 fee and what still needed to be done. The informality of the meetings gave room for new ideas to come up, including the concept of a once-​a-​week stay and play project. Before long, Kate and Miche had the contact details of 40 mums interested in the stay and play. Dorothy got the residents’ committee to let them use Centenary Hall, and Kate got the primary school to loan them some toys. In January 2015, Kate and Miche started their project. The stay and play was slow in taking off, with three or four parents coming each week. By 2016, this number had grown, and the project was promoted to all new mums in the area. The project is still going six years later, although numbers have been low since coming back after the COVID-​19 lockdowns. The summer playscheme and the stay and play project have enabled Dorothy to impart her experience to others and help the work she started all those years ago continue. Seven years on from organizing the Butlins trip, Miche realized: “She’s [Dorothy] always telling me that she’s training me up. She’s making sure I understand how to do everything, and that’s what Miss Dorothy wants. But at the same time, I want to be part of it.” This support only happened because the residents had gained control of a vital resource, Centenary Hall. Management of this asset allowed the activities not to be totally governed by the notion of abstract space (Lefebvre and Bononno, 2003; Steinmetz, 2011). It gave Dorothy some power to deliver activities that forged relationships, developed individuals and potentially foster some form of guardianship on the estate.

Operation Shield As the playscheme primarily focused on primary school children, the only support older young people received came in the form of the council’s youth violence strategy, which centred on the delivery of Operation Shield.

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Trialled in Hackney and Lambeth, Operation Shield was based on US-​style gang call-​ins, such as Operation Ceasefire, most notably used in Chicago and Boston. Operation Ceasefire centred on community-​ based working groups organizing call-​ins. At these events, local people, organizations, churches and youth workers offered gang members support in return for a promise that they would be subject to a massive enforcement crackdown if the violence didn’t stop. Although during the two periods of the intervention, 1996–​2000 and 2006–​2010, there was a statistically significant reduction in violence from the gangs targeted, it is unclear whether the decrease came from the support offered or the additional police enforcement (Braga et al, 2014). Although there are some similarities between the London and US call-​ in settings, such as the concern that gangs from deprived neighbourhoods were responsible for large percentages of the cities’ homicides (Braga et al, 2014), Andell (2019) describes the gang call-​ins as a solution that did not meet the local problem. It seemed somewhat naive to think that something designed to address a specific problem could simply be replicated elsewhere. The police in Boston had far more ability to use their powers to disrupt activities than the police in London (enforcement activities in Boston included serving outstanding warrants, cracking down on trespassing and public drinking) (Braga et al, 2014). The first ‘community’ targeted was in north Brixton. To give an indication of the area’s reputation, for about a year, I ran afterschool football sessions at the local secondary school, which were regularly interrupted by young people outside the gates wearing balaclavas and threatening the players. The youth club has security bars on the windows and a big steel door in front of the main entrance. Unfortunately, this hasn’t stopped young people from being attacked in the building with both shotguns and knives. The first call-​in took place at Southwark Crown Court. Young people were meant to meet up at the youth club and get cabs to the court, but only one young person turned up, whom the organizers heralded for being brave. Colin Stevens, a former borough commander leading the council’s gang intervention programme, spun the failure as a good learning experience, which confirmed what he had expected. These types of interventions needed to be embedded in the community. Therefore the call-​in events shifted from neutral areas to locations where the young people already hung out, with a redo at the youth club followed by one on St Mary’s Estate. About a month after the North Brixton call-​in, Colin introduced the idea to St Mary’s residents, stating that out of 24 gang members targeted in the original call-​in, 23 had ceased gang activity. Later, privately he explained that one young person had moved out of London, one young person had decided 90

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to stop gang involvement, and 21 young people were now on remand so had stopped their criminal activities. From an enforcement perspective, this was a success; Colin commented that for him, 21 young people on remand meant that they could no longer terrorize people and cause mayhem. The St Mary’s call-​in took place on a Thursday evening in Centenary Hall. Abdul, an ex-​council youth worker, was contracted to get the young people into the building. Abdul, in turn, got the council to agree to pay Ife, a prominent older who was on the gangs matrix, to do the outreach work. Due to the council switching accounting systems, causing a delay in all payments for six weeks, Colins ended up paying Ife out of his own pocket as a sign of good faith. Although Colin had briefed the residents’ committee on the call-​in plan, Ife and I were the only residents involved, with my role mainly to ensure the building was available and ready on the day and to welcome everyone. Despite this, Colin insisted that the event’s success rested on it having the community’s backing. On the day, Centenary Hall was laid out with ten tables in an L shape along one side of the room, with representatives of the Young Lambeth Co-​op, a driving school, The Prince’s Trust, Lambeth Housing, Mears (a council maintenance contractor), Lambeth Working, St Giles Trust, the Probation Service and Brixton Job Centre, waiting to offer their support. A couple of PCSOs seemed to spend most of their time hanging around the entrance, which annoyed Colin, who thought they might put young people off coming in. The event was due to start at 6 pm, but the food arrived an hour late. Ife had suggested using a resident who had just started up a catering business; however, the same caterer, who provided rice and peas with stew chicken or fish, was booked for all the call-​ins, so this was not possible. When the food arrived, the young people started filtering in, although most simply got their food and left. At about 7:20, Colin called Ife over to one side and told him to earn his money and get those hanging around outside in the building as he wanted to start. Slowly about 15 or so young people came in, 14 of whom were on the gangs matrix. The call-​in finally started around 7:45, by which time some of the organizations present had packed up and left. I started the talks by welcoming everyone saying to the young people that a few years ago, they were coming to me asking for a place to hang out and play pool, and now they are coming to me asking for jobs. People like Charis and Dorothy and I wanted to help, and this was the first step. I then introduced the two people who helped promote the event, Anton and Ife. Both were invited to say something but were reluctant to do so. Eventually, Ife got up and said a few words, including thanking Raj, who owned the London Underground maintenance firm Ife worked for and who had come to speak. 91

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Abdul spoke next, commenting that he is shocked at how the police acted sometimes, recalling how that week a police car came speeding up to the young people when he was with them and then sped off, to which the young people told Abdul, “don’t mind them they always do it”. The borough commander then praised the young people for coming and said they had not always got policing right, but he was very proud to be at the event and see everyone making an effort. He finished by reminding the young people that the police were there to support and make everyone safe, including them. Raj sat and read a poem about his grief of losing a son. Then he told the story of what happened with his son and how he and his family felt when they turned the life support machine off. This was the only time the young people seemed interested in what was said. The mixture of speaking about the grief that many young people in the room felt and his record of employing young people gave him a sense of authority and authenticity. The young people were then told that those in the room were there to help and they should take some time to go and talk to them about what they could offer. Over the next 20 minutes, almost all young people gave their contact details to the council’s housing support team, and eight young people signed up to receive support from the St Giles Trust. During the staff debrief, many commented that the young people seemed responsive. However, I pointed out that the event mainly attracted the eldest group, most of whom were already trying to get jobs and sort themselves out. The young people who were of most concern locally had, with a few exceptions, stayed away from the event. However, due to the matrix ranking of the young people who did show up, others thought the event reached its intended target. The housing team representatives gave a realistic assessment stating that only four of the young people they spoke to would be in their priority category and able to get any help, so they would simply advise the others to try the private rental market. Stacy from St Giles Trust added that all who signed up with her wanted help with their housing situation. As a follow-​up, she offered to run a fortnightly drop in session with the young people in the community flat. These lasted for about a month before tailing off because few people attended. The manager of the local job centre suggested that the councillors should organize specific young person surgeries. Although most people thought this was a good idea, Abdul and I expressed concern that the most prominent local councillor saw the young people as the problem and not deserving of help. Colin chipped in by saying that he didn’t want to talk about that councillor as she had already told him the event was a waste of time. Although the councillor may have been influenced by her negative perceptions of the young people, in terms of support for the young people, her prejudiced assumption appears correct. 92

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One of the foundations of Operation Shield was meant to be community leadership, with the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) evaluation stating that in Lambeth: The biggest shift within the borough was seen within the governance structures. Although statutory partners within the borough had been working with community organizations and members, the governance structure required by Shield saw formal community representation at both strategic and operational levels within the borough. This has helped provide a more established bridge between statutory partners and the community and this set up is still in place. (Davies et al, 2016: 4) It is hard to understand where this formal community representation existed. At the first ‘community’ meeting, over 100 people turned up. Those in attendance were expected to listen to Colin and the borough commander explain their delivery plan and why community involvement was essential. It was clear from the start that the details were already decided and would not change. Before the meeting, Colin briefed his team that they should expect some animosity but that the plan was the right one. As the event started, attendees were more interested in asking questions and airing their views than listening to those at the front. So, the presenters were almost forced to take questions and comments from the floor after about 20 minutes. All those who spoke expressed their concern about the project or asked for clarification on why it was being trialled in Lambeth. The mood of the room was probably best expressed by a Rasta in his mid-​50s who stood up and shouted out how this was just another governmental programme to oppress Black boys rather than helping them. He then lit a joint and started smoking it. A couple of the 15 or so police officers present came to him to usher him outside while he called out, “what I am breaking the law, but you dare not arrest me, do you?” After this, the meeting never really got back on track, and within another 30 minutes, the event ended. The second meeting was smaller and invitation only. About 20 people attended, including six police officers, representatives of organizations working in Lambeth and some prominent voices in the borough. Before the meeting, Colin asked me to be positive about the operation as it was clear that not everyone was supportive. The meeting was less combative than the public event; however, it was again clear that outside the police and those responsible for delivering the project, no one wanted it. For the St Mary’s call-​in, I was the only local adult involved. My role was largely logistical in securing the use of Centenary Hall and tokenistic in that I was a local face the young people would recognize. No one asked me or any other resident our views on the initiative or what we could offer young people. Contrary to the comments in the MOPAC evaluation, there 93

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was no community representation of any meaningful nature. The attitude of those offering support is best summed up by the majority starting to pack up and go home before they had spoken to a young person. It seemed that they were present due to a professional obligation rather than any sense of care or concern. Operation Shield’s community engagement and offer of support seemed simply to be a façade for a more intensive enforcement effort that, given the historical context of policing in Lambeth, was locally unpopular and seen as racially oppressive. This collective enforcement, as Operation Shield’s enforcement efforts were termed, seemed to be the only element that yielded any success. During the 12 months after the call-​in phase, 40 per cent of those targeted were arrested (Davies et al, 2016). In Lambeth, only 29 per cent of arrests during collective enforcement were for violent offences, with most young people picked up for drug possession (Davies et al, 2016). Although 129 young people were arrested and 115 charged, most of these ended in no further action. The rationale behind this collective enforcement was to hold young people collectively responsible once a threshold crime (such as murder, attempted murder, aggravated burglary, firearms possession or use, weapon enabled crime, including stabbings but excluding knife possession, GBH and serious wounding, affray, violent disorder and kidnapping) was committed, regardless of whether they were involved or not. Although the arrests were an annoyance to the young people, most took them in their stride.

St Mary’s Football Project on the estate Seeing the other youth activities diminish, Lenny, in late 2016, made efforts to run football activities on the estate in the form of afterschool football in the cage. Lenny had organized the occasional cage tournament, but this was the first time the St Mary’s Football Project based itself on the estate. Despite the growth of his project, which now supported 120 young people a week, Lenny would still go out of his way to help those in most need, and families from the estate held a special place in his heart. The cage football initially mainly attracted primary school children and the group on the verge of easing in; however, another session was added as the olders such as Marlon started turning up. Lenny explains the reason for the estate activities: “We’ve got to keep in touch with the boys. This helps us keep an eye on them and helps us know what is happening in their lives. It’s important we keep that link.” The sessions allowed Lenny to keep tabs on Marlon, Trevor and Kenny, whom he had known for close to ten years. Although they rarely played football, preferring to hang out close by smoking weed and drinking, Lenny always checked in to see how they were. 94

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The cage football quickly developed into a more holistic service. Food was provided in Centenary Hall by the mum that Ife had tried to use for the call-​in, and a counsellor came down to do group sessions with the boys beforehand. These sessions sought to open up a conversation about healthy relationships, keeping safe and managing emotions. However, the lack of wider supportive networks meant that any adult engaging positively with young people did so in relative isolation. Whereas previous adult relationships with young people resulted from adult networks that extended to young people, the football-​based relationships comprised a young person and an adult. This un-​networked support has been largely ineffective in curbing young people’s behaviour. Often it was only when a young person got arrested and needed some support to try and get out of trouble that they opened up. Generally, they would ask me to write a reference or find a course for them to enrol on to improve their chances at court, and Lenny talked to them about their case, advising them on which solicitors to use and what might happen if they were found guilty. Lenny’s past experiences with the law meant that the young people felt freer to open up to him. His opinion was respected, even if that respect only occasionally resulted in them following his advice. Lenny would try and talk to those who he knew were dealing, warning them of the risks they were facing and how they were putting themselves in danger. Even when there is support on offer, when done in isolation, the transference of habitus and capital that is so important for disadvantaged people to navigate through more mainstream fields successfully (Özbilgin and Tatli, 2011; Woolford and Curran, 2012) rarely materializes. As a result, the individual adult to young person relationships of support were more focused on offering young people help and advice on legal matters and other issues that would assist them in their immediate predicament (Gowan, 2010). They did very little to positively influence the overall culture the young people operated within.

Residents rebuilding their confidence and the failure of enforcement The chapter described a series of isolated actions to address concerns about the behaviour of St Mary’s. Dorothy and Charis, who were once used to young people knocking on their door and asking for help, were now so separated from the groups hanging out on the estate that they turned their attention to working with parents to provide activities for primary school children. Dorothy’s influence ensured that the emerging play scheme was as much about training up the next generation of residents to carry on her work as it was about supporting the children who attended. Charis, Miche and Kate were empowered to take the lead on activities, and the playscheme 95

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is still running in 2022. Yet, the focus on younger children left those hanging around on the estate with little or no informal guardianship. The local authority’s youth violence prevention strategy at the time centred on the delivery of Operation Shield, which saw young people offered support, at the same time as being subject to increased police attention. The offer of help only attracted those who had started to turn their life around, and no one who was currently causing the most concern attended. Those who did show up soon realized that the organizations in the room could not provide the support they needed. Operation Shield’s only real impact was the additional arrests through the collective enforcement efforts. Similar to Swamp 81 in 1981, these were mainly for minor offences. It is hard to see how this approach was going to support any young people. Those in the room didn’t seem to show any care or concern other than fulfilling a professional obligation. The process only acted as a pretence to justify more aggressive policing. The mood in the room at the original ‘community engagement’ event bore out to be true. Those speaking up saw this as a way to legitimize locking up more Black young people, yet police went ahead with it anyway. Operation Shield did not help the situation on the estate, did not provide additional support for young people, and further fractured the trust between local communities and the authorities. The sole positive of Operation Shield was that it was short lived. As 2016 came to an end, the St Mary’s Football Project started running weekly sessions in the caged pitch on the estate, which, with Dorothy’s help, expanded to include group sessions with counsellors in Centenary Hall. This more holistic approach signalled a new direction for the St Mary’s Football Project. For those emerging as the next group of significant concern on the estate, the cage sessions essentially acted as a way for Lenny to keep in touch with them and offer advice and support about their current predicament. Yet efforts are too isolated to make any real impact on their behaviour. Although it is good to keep the connection with young people, the main immediate benefit of the activities is that it provides an adult presence in the areas of the estate where young people hang out. The hope is that by providing this guardianship and access to wider support services, young people may build relationships that will help them at some point in the future.

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The New Normal: From Gang Violence to Individualized Danger and Child Criminal Exploitation This chapter draws on young people’s experiences to discuss the impacts of local relational and social dynamics, alongside developments within the youth criminal space. It will shed light on why the current young people’s social environment is often more violent, with weapons carrying now more pervasive than before, and why they are more vulnerable now than those growing up ten years ago. Here there will be a consideration of how despite the narrative of gang violence, most serious youth violence involves young people who are not gang affiliated, and serious youth violence should not be considered simply a ‘gang’ issue. The text will show that there was no single group of people on St Mary’s Estate and no hierarchical gang structure. Instead, peer friendship groups emerged as dominant before starting to disperse when the members reached 18 or 19 years old. Each of these groups operated independently, often with individuals running their own drug lines. Yet despite the separation, similar ways of making money, rivalries and violence persist. The analysis will discuss how local drug market saturation and the emergence of county lines mean that young people are at increased risk of child criminal exploitation. Those who are exploited are exposed to physical violence, threats and humiliation resulting in more young people becoming victims of violence perpetrated by adults. The chapter concludes by looking at how the experiences of a new emerging group are causing them to show signs of desensitization, putting them at an even greater risk of exposure to violence.

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Disconnected simulation Although the main narrative around knife crime continues to be one where young people become embroiled in a retaliatory cycle of gang violence, this understanding doesn’t necessarily fit the statistics. Most offences (99.6 per cent) are one-​off events that do not involve tit for tat retaliation, and less than 8 per cent of victims and 20 per cent of perpetrators of serious youth violence are gang associated (Bailey et al, 2020). Only around 21 per cent of knife enabled homicides were flagged by the Met police as gang related (Massey et al, 2019). This is not to say that apparent gang involvement does not have an impact. Gang members report higher levels of victimization and perceptions of victimization than non-​gang members (Melde et al, 2009), while 30 per cent of repeat victim–​offenders are associated with gangs (Bailey et al, 2020). Nevertheless, a quarter of all youth violence offenders have no prior convictions, 60 per cent of victims have no previous offending, and over 50 per cent have no prior victimization (Massey et al, 2019). Therefore, although some young people are more at risk than others, keeping free from criminal activity does not prevent exposure to serious youth violence. Another prevailing narrative is that violence is coordinated by olders who run the drugs operations and get their youngers to carry out attacks on rivals. Although others have discussed there being hierarchical structures behind the criminal activities of young people (see Densley, 2013; Andell and Pitts, 2018; Whittaker et al, 2018; Densley et al, 2020), this isn’t the case in St Mary’s. There have been instances of older dealers exploiting younger individuals, which will be discussed later, yet these young people are usually groomed by olders from outside the area. Different groups share common activities on the estate, yet this is not due to any hierarchically coordinated efforts. Instead, each group operates independently while showing appreciation and respect to others while occupying the same space. This independence is evident in the way that people described their dealing activities. For Eli, dealing was a self-​taught process that was picked up from observing those around them. As Eli explains: ‘I just saw other people doing it and thought I could do that. No one ever worked for anyone. Coz you are in St Mary’s, you are kinda doing it with people, you put your money together to buy a bigger amount and then sell it, but there is nothing like working for other people.’ Kendrick and Ola, who are similar ages to Eli, agree. Kendrick stated: ‘It’s an opportunistic thing someone sees someone selling and thinks he can do that, so gets a little money together and starts to sell. Maybe 98

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the higher up you go there is organization, but with us, we just get the weed from a source and sell it to make a bit of money; we are not working for someone.’ Ola added: “Down here, no one will bully you coz everyone knows each other, so you are free to do it and keep the money you make. In some places, you have to buy from one person; otherwise, there will be trouble, but not here.” This theme of learning to do things themselves is repeated by others, such as Kwaku, who still deals from the estate and is scornful of the way that the olders did not help him get started, as he comments: “Don’t talk to me about the olders; they do nothing for you. I have been on the streets since I was 16, and everything I have learnt, I learnt on my own, everything I have I got on my own, no one didn’t help me.” However, Eli explained his reasons for not wanting to help those coming up after him: ‘I don’t wish this life on no one. So, if someone asks, I will tell them to go away. But when it is obvious they are gonna do it anyway, and you see them doing it wrong, I will show man what to do. Coz if it goes wrong, it can end up bad.’ This independent structure of localized dealing was commented on by members of a local police gangs unit who have observed a growing trend for younger dealers aged 13–​14 setting up their deal line or sharing one with a couple of friends. Omar, an officer from the local gangs unit, comments: ‘Before, we would get 13 or 15 year olds picking up orders for olders. But now, a lot more of these youngsters are serious about doing it. It’s a big thing among them to be known as the youngest in charge [running your own line]. It’s got to the level where you don’t need to be 25 to have a drugs line; you can have one at 15.’ Dealing independently or in small groups means less safety in numbers and more need to protect yourself. Localized saturation also means that young people are taking risks going wider afield to deal. Devon, a local authority integrated youth service team leader, explains: ‘Right now, there is more mobility from independents who are financially active in the drugs market and not part of a gang. They are taking more risks, going into areas they shouldn’t be in, based on where they live and their friendship groups, and they are much more violent. I’ve not seen that before; young people used to operate inside their little zone, and this is causing conflict.’ 99

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This independence means that there is no systematic aim for one group in St Mary’s to control the area. For most, the estate’s relevance fades by the time they are 18 and has almost disappeared by the time they reach their 20s. In 13’s street-​dealing days, the estate acted as a safe space to meet friends and was the hub of their dealing. When they progressed to a more strategic networked bulk supply, the estate became less important, and they were hardly seen. With each group’s dispersal, another takes their place, and it is this, instead of the domination of one particular group, which is most concerning. Despite the weak connections between the different groups, a cultural transference occurs, ensuring that behaviours and rivalries have generally remained stable over the past ten years despite the young people changing. One such rivalry increased after a few on the periphery of 13 robbed some boys from Brixton, with the ill feeling continuing today. Jonny, who was involved in a robbery that cemented the rivalry, put his views quite bluntly to an emerging group at a local football training session: ‘You lot are dumb; you don’t even know why you hate them; it was because me and Anton robbed [Jonny stopped suddenly] … listen, when you guys get into trouble, don’t think you can come running to us to help you out, we’re not in that anymore, you are on your own.’ Kobe, Jonny’s peer, summed up the situation succinctly when he commented: “I’ll say probably 90 per cent of these boys don’t even know why they’re beefing these other youts. They just got into it, then someone gets hurt, and they are like, okay, now I have a reason to be like this.” Sammy, who grew up on the estate and started hanging out as 13 were dispersing, spoke about what an inherited rivalry meant to him: ‘When I was coming home on the bus, I saw a boy from Brixton, and I knew I had to do something; I don’t know why, but I just knew it. He looked at me and said he was not involved, so I replied, safe. That could have been it, but as I got off the bus, I felt I needed to do something, so I slammed his head against the window three times and walked off; it’s stupid as I don’t even know why I felt like it that, but I just did.’ These rivalries have a significant impact on the lives of young people and loom large in their minds daily. Most young people who go to college enrol in one over an hour away, so they don’t see anyone from a rival area. Yet, their rivals often have the same idea. Marlon, for example, enrolled on a construction course at a college on the outskirts of London only to see someone from a rival area on his first day. As they walked past each other, both flashed their knife and left. Marlon hasn’t been back since. 100

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A set of information processes, characteristics and public representations of these characteristics were produced, reproduced, transmitted and adapted (Bourdieu, 1977; Jenks, 1993) on the estate, which incrementally developed into a violent street culture, financially underpinned by drug dealing and drill music. Social connections and social media representations help transmit cultural practices and symbols, which become a habitus, guiding how young people think and act (see Sandberg, 2008, 2012; Stewart and Simons, 2010; Ilan, 2012; Fraser, 2013; Harding, 2014). The pervasiveness of these actions and symbols ensures they become shared (Jenks, 1993), reinforcing their adoption and continuation. Yet, this is only part of the equation. Young people from St Mary’s continue to find themselves in vulnerable positions because the underlying issues of deprivation, poor education, lack of opportunities and an absence of informal guardianship and support networks persist. Unless these issues are adequately addressed, young people from areas like St Mary’s will continue to be at risk of becoming involved in violent criminal street cultures. The continuation of patterns of youth violence reflects the persistence of the social conditions that makes street criminality probable. Locally, the embodying of the actions and the culture of the estate is known as easing in, hanging out on the estate, usually playing football or just chilling without adult supervision from nine or ten years old. Of course, some go out and play football for a couple of hours and then disappear home. Those who stay out for longer periods mix with older groups primarily through informal football matches, with others hanging around smoking weed and drinking rum nearby. By the time they are 13 or 14, they look for more exciting activities and around October and November, firework fights appear with the boys ignoring the threat this activity poses to themselves and others as they try and hit each other with rockets, which fly around at head height through the estate. As I was chatting to Kwaku, Dillon and Ayub, two of the latest group who are easing in got out of an Addison Lee cab in their school uniforms, followed by two girls. As soon as he got out, Dillon started pulling fireworks out of his rucksack. Shortly after, Matthew, one of Dillon’s school friends, turned up, and Dillon gave him and Ayub three rockets each. The boys then ran off in different directions laughing. Within two to three minutes, the first rocket flew through the estate, causing a cyclist to serve and come off his bike and an old lady to cower behind a stairwell corner. The action only lasted about ten minutes, but it is ten minutes repeated throughout the following six weeks in a cycle that occurs every year. As Kwaku saw what was happening, he turned to me and said: ‘see, they are easing in; this is what we used to do, then they will look for some more action, bust a few mopeds to ride around the estate, 101

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rob a few people. Then they will look for a way to make more money and start to shot weed; that’s how it starts.’ Two months later, Dillon, Ayub and Matthew were arrested for robbery in Sutton. Wimbledon and Sutton, more affluent areas, a short train ride away from the estate, have long been destinations for young people to go to when looking to rob people.

From gang violence to criminal exploitation and individual risk Over the years, the estate has become quieter, with fewer young people hanging out. Groups of 15, which became groups of 30, are now groups of five or six. Yet, the dangers persist and, for some, have heightened. Those associated with E1S and 13 used the estate as their base during their street-​dealing phase. Now and then, there was some talk of someone ‘going to country’ to deal for a few days, but this was infrequent and invariably described as a choice. However, in recent years local drug markets have become saturated with more young people wanting to sell drugs to make quick money without the customer base expanding (Windle and Biggs, 2015; Andell and Pitts, 2018; Robinson et al, 2018). As a result, more profit-​ driven groups and individuals compete for the same markets (Robinson et al, 2018). At the same time, enforcement efforts in provincial areas have reduced the local drug supply, creating a void (Coomber, 2015; Andell and Pitts, 2018). Therefore, London-​based dealers have looked to expand their networks and establish county lines to fill this gap (Coomber, 2015; Windle and Biggs, 2015; Andell and Pitts, 2018; Pitts, 2018; Robinson et al, 2018; Windle et al, 2020). Rather than dealing themselves, line holders get younger people, through grooming and coercion, to deal in these areas for them. Young people are targeted as they are seen as easier to control and less likely to be known to the police, and, therefore, less likely to be caught (Andell and Pitts, 2018). This draws young people into an increasingly violent world. They can find themselves staying overnight, sometimes for up to two weeks at a time, often in a vulnerable person’s property that dealers have coercively taken over in a process known as cuckooing. The anxiety produced by staying far away from home in squalid conditions, along with the constant threat of robbery, attack and police raids, leave the young people resorting to trying to stay awake for 24 hours at a time to maintain their vigilance, storing the drugs inside their person and carrying a weapon for protection. Often, the particularly vulnerable, such as those with Autism Spectrum Disorder or learning difficulties, are most at risk of getting involved. For example, Marcus, a St Mary’s young person, was arrested aged 17 for 102

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possession with intent to supply when the police caught him with 200 rocks of crack and 200 bags of heroin in Basingstoke. At age ten, Marcus’ St Mary’s football team got to a cup final. Lenny hired a minibus for parents with the meeting point outside Marcus’ block of flats to get his parents to come along. However, his dad told Lenny he would rather spend the afternoon drinking. Marcus struggled at school and, at 16, went to college to do a multi-​skills construction course alongside English and Maths functional skills. During his first year, there was a shooting outside the college linked to St Mary’s. Marcus was implicated as possibly involved and excluded, despite having no knowledge of the incident. This meant that his parents lost their child benefit, so they asked Marcus to contribute to the bills another way. He spoke to some people he knew who offered him the chance to deal outside London. This adds another dynamic to the equation, which is not always discussed. In the same way that Eli mentioned he would help people out if he thought it was necessary, those connecting Marcus to a county lines opportunity believed they were looking out for him. This is a common narrative among line holders when accused of grooming. Rather than seeing their activities as exploitative, they describe it as looking out for youngers in the way others had done for them. On arrest, Hampshire social services’ screening suggested that Marcus had significant learning difficulties. Yet, he had gone through his whole school life without this being picked up. The social worker assigned to Marcus told Lenny that Lambeth Education Services had failed Marcus at every possible stage. Lenny, who acted as a character witness at Marcus’ trial, recalls: “I told the judge that I wouldn’t trust Marcus to go down the road to buy a pint of milk, let alone be responsible for something worth so much money. The judge got what I was saying and thankfully gave him a community sentence.” Kenny was found stuck in Newcastle after being robbed while dealing on a county line. Marlon, who started to drift apart from Kenny after Kenny was rehoused, commented that Kenny was acting more like he was on crack rather than dealing it, with all the risks he was taking. Something that was once relatively rare is becoming so common that while talking to some young people about it by the football cage, a cab pulled up, and two teenage girls and a teenage boy jumped out with JD bags, and one of those I was speaking to just pointed and said, see they’re doing it. When I bumped into a 13-​year-​old, who hadn’t been at football for a while, I half-​jokingly said to him: “I hope you aren’t taking any trips outside London.” Looking at me rather worryingly, he replied: “How do you know about this? Who told you? I haven’t done it much.” For many, the initial appeal of potentially earning several hundred pounds per trip outweighs the risks. One Friday night, I was notified that one of my football players had gone missing. The following day, I asked a few of his friends about it. Marcus simply replied: “He is not missing; he was on 103

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snap [Snapchat] earlier showing off with all his money, waving notes around in his hands.” Yet with quick money comes significant risks. Four different specialist child criminal exploitation workers from various local authorities suggested about 50 per cent of young people involved in County Lines start off wanting to deal, and 50 per cent are coerced. Those looking for opportunities may seek out contacts from friends or respond to an advert on social media to transport a package for as little as £50. Many who start off wanting to be involved then find themselves coerced to continue. Coercion usually takes the form of a young person running up debts from being given weed, being bought food or a robbery, often organized by those the young person is working for. These debts need to be paid back to avoid physical violence or humiliation, including whippings, being slashed with a knife, threats to family members, being stripped naked and being told to parade around while being beaten. Much of this is filmed and shared on social media sites to compound the impact. The gravity of the threat has been confirmed by case managers reporting hearing heavy breathing or coughing coming from the pockets of young people who are forced to have a phone call with line holders active while at their Youth Offending Team (YOT) appointments to ensure they do not say the wrong thing. The desire to make quick money with limited access to local drug markets or the need to pay off debts has led more young people as young as 12 to get involved in county lines dealing (Windle and Biggs, 2015; Andell and Pitts, 2018). It almost appears to be the worst combination, young people from historically deprived neighbourhoods seeking a way to make some quick money and criminal groups happy to offer opportunities in a more exploitative way than previously experienced. Unfortunately, exploitation is a growing business model that will not go away. Reflecting on the risk, Lenny explained: ‘With all the sophistication, it is quite simple and basic really, send young Black boys from London out to towns and villages, places like Aberdeen, where they will stand out like a sore thumb. Those sending them must know that there is a good chance of getting caught. But they are just cannon fodder. There will always be another young person to replace them.’ Connor, a specialist exploitation YOT worker, commented: “Young people are a commodity to make as much money as you can from, and so as long as there is money to be made, it’s not going away; in fact, it will probably increase. It’s already becoming normalized among their peers.” This type of exploitative dealing takes people away from the relative safety of their local neighbourhood and peer associations. It isolates them 104

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in a strange location, where they are unsure who they will meet. Marlon commented that the first and only time he ‘went country’, those sending him tried not to pay him, and he had to draw a knife and hold it against one of them to get paid. After this experience, he decided that it wasn’t for him. Other young people have not been so lucky. Accounts from YOT workers suggest that regardless of whether a young person seeks the opportunity or is coerced, the majority end up ensnared because, at some point, the debt trap is played on them. Debts are also incurred when young people get caught by the police resulting in the seizure of drugs or money. This debt and the fear of physical retribution make supporting those involved in county lines particularly difficult. Those in debt often feel the need to go back and deal again to keep themselves and their family safe. Six years on from Eli and Ashley’s time on the estate, the group of young people who formed LSM has about five members, compared to the 30 or so that spawned 13. The lack of numbers and the limited opportunities for Marlon, Kenny and those coming up after them in the legitimate economy and the drugs market has left them vulnerable to remaining in violent local street dealing or becoming embroiled in equally violent county lines activities. Despite the lower numbers hanging around, their risk seems to have intensified. Rather than engaging in peer dealing practices, young people have found themselves coming in closer contact with older drug dealers involved in coordinating county lines networks. These networks don’t necessarily focus on specific locations or recruit young people they know. Without that relational tie, even the misplaced care that olders like Eli showed is missing. This leaves young people at greater risk of violent retaliation from adult line holders when something goes wrong, which LSM found out too late. Trevor, best friends of Marlon and Kenny, was stabbed to death on the estate in November 2018. Although no one has yet been brought to justice, most people close to the case talk of a group of 25-​year-​olds as the guilty party. This adult on young person violence is something that young people from the estate have not had to contend with before. Sitting on Trevor’s memorial bench that overlooked both the St Mary’s Estate football cage and the place Trevor was stabbed, Lenny recalls: ‘When you consider the sophistication of the case, they stole an SUV from Clapham by breaking into the house and taking the keys. Then they swapped the number plates with another car of the same make and colour, filled up with petrol using latex gloves from a garage where they knew where the cameras were, so they knew how not to be identified. Then drove to the estate, murdered Trevor, drove the car to a spot with no cameras, and burnt it. This kind of planning is beyond any of these boys. But it’s what they are up against now.’ 105

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On the increased risks, Ola comments: ‘They’re killing little youts 16 year olds. And they’re big men. When you hear the little yout stabbed the other, you’re just thinking these stupid little guys. They just need more education. But when you see big guys man’s age coming out doing this stuff, you do need to start thinking, what is going on.’

Lowered threshold These developments have more long-​term implications, as Connor, a YOT exploitation lead, explained: “When they reach the stage when potentially they’re the exploiter, their moral boundaries are not going to ring any alarm bells as to what they are doing; it will all be standard practice.” Successive groups of young people have found the environment in which they operate is increasingly violent. By the time those that stay in it reach a position of dominance, the standard for what is acceptable becomes lower. The trauma young people experience is being passed on to those younger than them through these exploitative interactions. The concern is that this will cause a further escalation in what young people do to each other. The police, YOT workers and those on the ground like Miche and Lenny have expressed concern about how serious incidents seem to be more common, and those involved are getting younger. This is partly because more young people not known to the authorities are carrying and therefore using knives. Kobe, who was one of those who were on the periphery until he went to university, explained his understanding of the current situation: “Today is even on a higher level where everybody feels the need to carry, even people that are not like that, they need to carry protection. Before, it was on a lesser scale. But I feel like now is just ridiculous.” It is no longer only ‘gang affiliated’ that are the perpetrators of youth violence, as Connor explains: ‘After a serious incident, we [YOT staff] could probably identify five or ten names of who we thought was involved and low and behold. It would be one of them. Today, the young person may have been known from an out of court disposal, but they don’t have issues at school, they are in mainstream school, there were no major concerns about them, they were not on our radar for serious offences, like attempted murder, GBH, and when you unpick the situation they are not part of the gang picture.’ Lisa, the service manager of a local authority gang and exploitation team, has also observed: 106

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‘There is a normalization in carrying weapons, which is impacting the violence picture. There is a misunderstanding that it is gangs. But we are seeing the normalization of young people carrying knives because they think that a knife is something you should carry because it makes you safer.’ Lisa goes on to comment: ‘Lots of young people we see carrying knives today have no gang affiliations and don’t deal drugs; they are carrying it for their own protection. They think everyone else is carrying a knife, so they must. So, if they have an issue and a knife on them, it is easier for them to use it. Last week, a young person was coming home from school and got stabbed by another boy. Neither of them was open to YOT, Social Services or Early help. Lots of young people involved in violence nowadays are not known to us.’ This is echoed by Lianne, another YOT case manager from Lambeth, who commented: ‘Every case I have has an offensive weapon in it in one way or another. But it means a lot more first time entrants [to the Criminal Justice System] are serious entries. I had one who was with me for possession of cannabis, and then a few months later, he was arrested for murder.’ Dillon, from the estate, explained how he understands the situation: “Lots of people carry, these days, you can’t trust the police to protect you, or anyone else. As soon as you step out your door, only you can keep yourself safe, and a knife makes you safer.” Young people associated with the estate continue to be victims of knife attacks regardless of their affiliation to any groups. For example, Ricky, whose family moved from temporary accommodation in St Mary’s to a council property out of the area, received threats on Snapchat from a group based near his school because of his St Mary’s connection. Scared about what might happen, Ricky started carrying a knife to protect himself, receiving and got permanently excluded when it was found during a bag check. Discussing why he was targeted, Ricky explains: “Because I am always in St Mary’s playing football, they thought I was in the gang from there, but I just played football.” Two years later, in March 2021, Ricky was stabbed in the arm and leg while walking home from the estate and needed to be airlifted to hospital. Ricky’s victimization is despite him not being involved in any criminal activity and only being in the area for specific youth activities. Ricky was followed by 107

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Chris, another St Mary’s young person, in getting permanently excluded from school for being caught with a knife. As Chris explains, despite the triviality of the initial incident, he felt the threat to his life was real: ‘Yeah, so I got excluded coz I got in an altercation at school, and I didn’t feel safe. People said they were gonna get older boys to come down after school, so I carried a knife. The mad thing is I can’t even remember what it was about, probably some joke or something.’ Ayub, who has started to become more prominent on the estate, was more matter of fact about his decision to start carrying a knife at 14 years old: ‘It’s scary, but at the same time, you feel safe. You feel safe carrying it because you feel like if someone’s gonna take your life, you’re willing to take theirs. Coz, in reality, anyone could stab you. But really, it makes me feel ashamed of myself as I am letting my family down. But if no one is helping you, you have to help yourself.’ This escalation is also evident in the types of weapons being seized by the police. Officers from Gangs Units from various boroughs all commented that they had seen a change in weapons seized now compared to eight to ten years ago. Omar, a Gangs Unit sergeant, explains: ‘And one of the big differences I’ve seen over the years is that young people are now carrying machetes, swords and Rambo knives, as opposed to five to ten years ago it used to be like kitchen knives and flick knives. If we found a big machete, it was a big deal. Now you come across it so often.’ Alongside the prevalence of knives, guns are becoming more of a threat. This is despite London seeing a 48 per cent decrease in firearms cases in the 12 years up to March 2020 and a 60 per cent decrease in the number of fatal gunshot injuries (Office of National Statistics, 2020). Recently, the police have found several guns within the St Mary’s area, including a fully loaded Uzi, in cars parked up on side roads. In 2019, Marlon and Kenny were arrested but bailed without charge for attempted murder after someone attending the Christening at Centenary Hall was shot. For Marlon, this was particularly harassing as he was apprehended by the police the night before going on a family holiday, meaning he and his mum could no longer travel. After a month or so on remand, Marlon was released, with the case yet to progress any further. The incident was the subject of a couple of his tracks afterwards. One described his time inside and another explained how the incident must have been an accidental self-​shooting. 108

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There seems to be a lowering of the threshold of what young people consider needing a violent response. Whereas significant incidents once resulted in a violent reaction, now everyday issues, including friendship disputes, do. Connor, a YOT youth violence specialist, discusses: ‘The gang rivalries from ten or so years ago set the threshold for the violence, and this generation grew up seeing what was going on around them and got accustomed to the violence, so it is nothing to them. Now it’s not gang on gang disputes. It’s small individual disputes that escalate to serious violence. Now young people can get stabbed for something minor.’ This normalization, fear and lowering of the threshold mean that many St Mary’s young people live on the anxious edge of constantly fearing something may happen to them. For Miche, there has been a shift in expectations, as she explains.: ‘I worry a lot about the boys; there’s always a divide at some point. Last time I was in the middle of a battle with two big samurai swords, and it was with friends that I saw grew up together, fighting each other, trying to harm each other, and it’s happened with Ayub’s lot too. It just seems to be getting worse. With my lot, it wasn’t like that. When Mickey fell out with Kojo, they just didn’t talk and wouldn’t be around each other. I don’t think they even fought. So now friends that grew up together are trying to kill each other. So, they are constantly on watch. Not only do they have to watch for the enemy, they have to watch for their friends.’ On this issue, Ayub explained: ‘You can’t trust anyone these days. Everyone has one or two mans that they can rely on, but everyone else, you can’t be caught slipping coz even though they are around you and you’re friends, it’s not like that. You never know what they are thinking. A lot of these robberies and shit like that, it’s people they know who do it to them. They hear that they are stacking or have picked up and just think, Rah, I can get that.’ It is becoming increasingly common for violence to be perpetrated within friendship groups. Two players from the football project got into an argument over a phone charger while at school, which resulted in one stabbing the other. The older brother of another player was murdered when two of his friends robbed him. The seriousness of these ‘beefs’ is intensified by young people feeling the need to carry weapons. This, coupled with lowering the threshold of when to use a knife and who to use it on, leaves young people at greater risk of everyday disagreements ending up in someone getting stabbed. 109

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Today’s reality is a consequence of the normalization of ever increasing violence in young people’s lives. While Gerald, Ife, Mickey and their friends were growing up, weapons were rare, young people were not expected to carry them, and it was even rarer for them to use them. Now, 15 years or so on, successive groups of young people have grown up around first weapons and street dealing, and now county lines exploitation also. These developments have resulted in young people becoming desensitized to the impacts of the now normalized violence around them. Lianne from the YOT explains: “I’ve noticed that younger people are more vicious. And they don’t care, which is scary because, for them, it’s normal. For a young person to say, someone got stabbed. It’s like me asking, did you have breakfast this morning? They don’t care if they stab someone.” More than a decade and a half on from when real political concerns around youth violence were raised, many young people are growing up in social environments where carrying a weapon, fearing for their own life and feeling the need to protect themselves is normal. It is wrong to see youth violence as a gang issue or something that only impacts those caught up in a violent street culture. This affects a much wider group of young people. The way those growing up today adapt to the anxiety caused by being around violence since they were young makes them more of a threat to others, and their fears of being attacked all the more real.

Violence normalization and desensitization While Marlon and other members of LSM get the attention on social media, those a few years younger are starting to make a name for themselves. Ayub, whose older brother used to hang out on the estate, appears the most influential. Miche, who has known him from birth, shares her concerns: ‘So, it’s like they know what his brother has done, and they see Ayub as someone to respect, and others will fear. He’s already got a status he probably doesn’t even understand he has. And what he is willing to do, you know the way he talks, he could be one of the biggest gangsters. And I don’t want him to be like that, but he’s a mistake, boy; not to be rude, it’s just upsetting.’ Miche explained how young people from another area targeted Ayub during a trip to the cinema that she organized. Ayub just laughed the incident off as no big deal, despite Miche having to push him away from an oncoming blade with others bundling the assailant out of the cinema foyer. Ayub’s reaction is potentially a sign of desensitization caused by growing up around violence. This coping mechanism allows Ayub, and others like him, to deal with trauma-​inducing incidents. Nevertheless, this type of maladaptation 110

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heightens the risk of people becoming violent themselves. Children exposed to violence across multiple contexts such as schools, neighbourhoods and homes are more likely to display emotional desensitization, especially when experienced in early adolescence (Ng-​Mak et al, 2002; Gaylord-​Harden et al, 2011, 2017b; Mrug et al, 2016). This emotional numbness is often coupled with higher levels of aggression (Ng-​Mak et al, 2002), leading to serious youth violence in later adolescence (Ng-​Mak et al, 2002, 2010; Allwood et al, 2011; Mrug et al, 2016; Gaylord-​Harden et al, 2017a). Living with repeat exposure, including experiencing violence, feeling threatened, or knowing those who have been attacked, leads to violence normalization (McCart et al, 2007). Normalization can result in a diminished response, with desensitization becoming a form of habituation (Mrug et al, 2016; Gaylord-​Harden et al, 2017a). When this exposure continues into mid adolescence, young people are likely to display hyperarousal, hypervigilance and anxiety (Gaylord-​Harden et al, 2017b). The go-​to way to deal with constantly being on alert is often carrying a weapon. This normalization and desensitization about the impacts of using a knife increase the chance of someone committing a knife offence (Ng-​Mak et al, 2002, 2010; Boxer et al, 2008; Allwood et al, 2011; Gaylord-​Harden et al, 2017a; Zimmerman et al, 2017). Hypervigilance and anxiety can serve people well in life threatening situations. Yet when the fears are constant, the responses can become more permanent, negatively impacting individuals and limiting how they respond to everyday experiences. Many St Mary’s young people have been exposed to violence from a young age, either vicariously through hearing about events taking place around them, witnessing incidents or being involved in incidents themselves. Ayub’s response shows signs of desensitization. The current escalation in violent behaviour could be due to those emerging as the dominant group surrounded by violence from a young age. The pervasiveness of violence has resulted in desensitization and inhibition that appears normal. Miche’s observations of internal conflicts evolving from fistfights and ignoring each other to sword fights suggest the desensitization and normalization of violence. The callousness associated with desensitization would lead to younger people seeing violence as a way to resolve issues. For Miche, although on the surface, the estate may look quieter, young people are more at risk: “This generation is ten times worse. There’s less of them, but they are following their own mind and what they are doing or willing to do, even to each other, is scary.”

Criminal exploitation, desensitization and the new drivers of violence The youth violence picture is continually changing. The dominant narrative up to this point has been that it is predominantly fuelled by gang on gang 111

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violence and olders recruiting and controlling youngers. Although this invariably still happens and, as discussed, is prevalent within the county lines picture, there is also something else significant going on. The vast majority of serious youth violence does not involve those identified by the authorities as gang members. It is also evident that the hierarchical gang structure does not fit many of the associations and activities of young people today. On St Mary’s, every age group acts independently of their olders, running their own drug lines as individuals or groups of friends. As each group get to about 18 or 19 years old, the local area has no real significance in their lives. This separation means that olders do not control youngers, nor are they on hand to advise on how to navigate street dealing or help out with any issues or disputes that may arise. Although each group operates independently, there is enough cultural transmission for the street culture of the older groups to be embodied by the younger. This occurs through observing drug dealing practices and inheriting local rivalries despite not knowing why the conflicts exist. Although the olders feel that taking on this inherited ‘beef ’ makes no sense, especially if they have grown out of street-​level disputes, the realities of the conflicts impact everyday life, affecting young people’s understanding of safety. It is not just those involved in drug dealing or other criminal activity that are affected; anxieties around safety are felt much wider. Many young people living on or around St Mary’s Estate feel at risk of attack. This has led to more young people not involved in gang like or broader criminal activity carrying weapons. However, young people’s actions to feel safe ultimately make them more vulnerable to exposure to violence. The violence is not only more widespread in terms of who is at risk, but the nature of it is also changing. Young people are becoming at risk of child criminal exploitation. Local drug market saturation is causing those wanting to maximize profits to look further afield, and the standard practice is to send children to provincial towns and cities to do the frontline dealing. Line holders use intimidation, violence and debt to control the frontline dealers in a way that is more brutal than before. This has led to increased street violence toward children being perpetrated by adults. The pervasiveness and brutal nature of the street violence that young people are exposed to has caused young people desensitization to its impacts. Those hanging out on the street today have known violence all their lives. They witnessed and heard about young people being shot and stabbed throughout their childhood, played out with their friends as the likes of 13 were cutting their teeth in the local drugs market, and started wanting to make their own money as county lines became popular. Violence among young people is almost all they have known. Those who grow up in this context display a desensitization to the impacts of serious violence and hyper vigilance around the risk present in their lives. For those on the estate today, 112

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it seems normal that they will have to carry a knife to be safe, and if they are carrying a weapon, they may need to use it one day. Previously, young people hung around and dealt in large groups, which, although entrenched some in a violent street culture and seemingly made all young people a target for police and rival action against them, afforded them protection against this type of exploitation. In an ironic twist, the calmer the estate appears, the more vulnerable those hanging out there are.

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Learning from the Past or More of the Same Shifting to a public health approach to tackling serious youth violence This chapter explores the recent developments in how young people at risk of exposure to serious youth violence are supported. Initially, the chapter takes a broad view, exploring how a public health approach has increased local and regional governments’ focus on some of the underlying causes of youth violence. Next, this discussion will consider how, after the Taylor Review (2016), the youth justice sector has moved to a child first approach, focusing on the young person’s welfare and developmental needs rather than the offence committed. From here, the chapter outlines how an awareness of contextual safeguarding has shifted the conversation about professionals’ statutory safeguarding duties from the home to extra familial harm such as serious youth violence and county lines. The text will then consider whether any of these developments have made a difference on the estate. This will include analysing the interactions between commissioned services and young people. Finally, the chapter will explore how activities run by local people such as Dorothy, Miche and Lenny have adapted to address the needs of young people, including an increased focus on trauma within the football project and Miche carrying on Dorothy’s legacy.

Public health approach Maybe the best place to start when considering a public health approach to addressing youth violence in the UK is the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit (SVRU). What began as an initiative of Strathclyde police in 2005 was adopted as a national approach in 2006. The SVRU work focuses on five key areas: Primary Prevention, Secondary Prevention, Tertiary Prevention,

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Enforcement and Criminal Justice and Attitudinal Change (Scottish Violence Reduction Unit, 2020). Rather than being enforcement led, a public health approach seeks to address the underlying causes of street violence, such as ACEs, child–​parent relationships, educational disengagement and unemployment. The SVRU has sought to tackle some immediate concerns by emphasizing securing jobs for young people, especially those with criminal convictions. It also looks to the long term and includes working with families to ensure children develop a secure attachment with their parents, which helps mitigate the impacts of exposure to community violence (Houston and Grych, 2016), and decreases violence in teenagers (Bigras et al, 2011). A two-​year study in Glasgow found that there was an 84 per cent reduction in weapons carrying by young people supported by Community Initiative to Reduce Violence (CIRV), the SVRU’s gang intervention programme and a 40 per cent reduction in young people carrying weapons (Williams et al, 2014). Following the success of the SVRU, the Greater London Authority set up its VRU in 2018. The VRU requires local authorities to develop community safety plans and has an extensive funding programme to help partners implement its strategy. The current projects include supporting frontline youth workers to become leaders, interventions that seek to take advantage of teachable moments immediately after hospitalization or arrest, and employment support for 18-​to 25-​year-​olds with criminal convictions. The current 2021 VRU workplan overseen by the partnership reference group shows that it also funds programmes to support young people’s digital literacy around being aware of the dangers of social media and how to use their digital skills for employment purposes. Its focus on education emphasizes schools developing a trauma-​informed approach, preventing exclusions and additional support for pupil referral units and afterschool activities. The family support workstream includes help for those exposed to or at risk of sexual exploitation and domestic violence, and training for parents on topical issues, including social media and engaging with schools, supporting young people’s mental health issues and dealing with loss and trauma. This is a step in the right direction, and some of the funded project evaluations suggest the interventions have made a significant difference in people’s lives. However, many of the interventions are short term, with funding lasting only a couple of years. Due to the way the budget is allocated, interventions are not universally available across London or even across all areas where knife crime is most prevalent. Nevertheless, the public health approach is changing how youth violence is conceived. Many local authorities are developing trauma champions and providing trauma-​ informed training to school teachers, youth workers and nursery staff within

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the borough. Others have extended their services that usually stop at 18 to continue to support 25s and are providing additional employment support for young people with criminal records. Some local authorities are rewriting their housing policies to better respond to young people at risk of exposure to serious violence. As part of the public health approach, there is now an increased awareness of the impact ACEs, such as parental separation, death of someone close, domestic violence, substance abuse in the home and an incarcerated parent have on youth violence. While it is not uncommon for someone to be exposed to an ACE, multiple or prolonged exposure to ACEs is strongly associated with exposure to community violence (Schilling et al, 2007; Fox et al, 2015; Perez et al, 2016; Lee et al, 2017; Boullier and Blair, 2018). Stephen, a clinical psychologist attached to a North London project supporting 18​to 25 year ​olds who have been involved in knife crime, explains their trauma-​informed approach: ‘Trauma informed practice is about reflecting on the trauma we’ve been through and how that plays out with other people. It’s crucial to recognize that there are huge privileges that others might not have. One of those is safety. A lot of trauma work and models of intervention for trauma are around creating safety.’ Stephen goes on to describe some of the wider considerations of safety: ‘It’s important to reflect on how society isn’t safe. Racism and poverty, for example, are threats to many young people. We need to do more about the systems that surround these young people. Because until we do that, no amount of perfect intervention will be enough without the changes in society. So, an important tenant of our project is empowering the person to feel like they can engage with structural threats like racism and other forms of oppression and try to push back and work against it. That’s the thing that can often give people the most relief from their symptoms.’ Alongside addressing these issues, Stephen gave an example of the practical impact of providing young people with a safe space: ‘Through our drop-​in session, there’s an offer of a safe space, where someone can have some time off from the roads and other people in the community who could wish them ill. Some young people end up falling asleep on the sofa because they haven’t had a safe space to put their head down.’ 116

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Despite his expertise, Stephen and others have commented that this trauma-​ informed approach where young people feel safe, are helped to reflect on their past and are empowered to engage positively with issues affecting them doesn’t need trained psychologists. Instead, it can be embedded in how all practitioners work with young people.

A child first approach within youth justice Since the Taylor Review (2016), there has been a greater emphasis on supporting young people by addressing their criminality’s underlying causes rather than their offence. This child first approach centres on removing the adulterization and responsibilization of children, taking the view that offending behaviour is a normal part of a child’s development and support should focus on promoting pro social behaviour rather than their offending (Haines and Case, 2015). This is best achieved by understanding the child’s lived experiences and identifying interventions to address the child’s welfare needs (Haines and Case, 2015; Smith and Gray, 2019). The child first approach works on the basis that offending behaviour is a culmination of several things that have gone wrong in a young person’s life, which are not their fault. The change in language from young person to child acknowledges that someone should be responsible for a child who needs safeguarding, nurturing and developing. In contrast, the term young person denotes more of a sense of autonomy and responsibility for their actions. Therefore, representatives from health, education, housing, the voluntary sector and youth justice need to play their part in supporting young people and their families to address identified risk factors. This shift has led to a growing view that the youth justice system should be abolished and support for such young people handled by social services (Case and Haines, 2021). The focus of YOT workers is now to support the child manage the issues that contribute to their offending. This includes helping them re-​engage with education, build stronger relationships with family members, access specialist support and develop the young person’s awareness of risks associated with their actions and associations. Although many progressive youth offending services already reflected this way of working, since the Taylor Review, these innovations are now standard practice. Lianne, a YOT practitioner, explains the new approach: ‘There is a change in the way we view our young people. We now see them as children, and we’ve gone to a trauma-​informed approach. We ask what is going on at home, are there any adverse childhood experiences, what is happening at school, are there any learning needs or what is happening in their neighbourhood. So instead of looking 117

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at the behaviour, you’re analysing the young person and finding out how to support them.’ Although things are moving in the right direction, there are still issues with getting everyone to provide support; as Leon, a case manager, explains: ‘This is where we have professionals that fail. I have someone on my caseload who’s been out of education for six months. He is on an educational health care plan, but the education team is struggling to place him anywhere, and when they do, if there’s an incident, the school is very quick to expel him.’ Lianne comments on the challenges this more holistic approach brings: “Sometimes, I feel like I’m doing education, social care, housing, it’s a lot. I’m a YOT worker, but you end up doing things like education placements or helping with housing issues even when you have no idea what the rules are.” The child first approach has transformed how youth justice services support young people. Despite some challenges in coordinating multi-​agency engagement, this shift of focus is changing the outcomes of many of those supported by the youth justice system. Statistically, there are 76 per cent fewer offences committed by young people and far fewer under 18s entering the criminal justice season than ten years ago (YJB, 2020). However, the offences, including first offences, are often more serious than before. For example, violence against a person made up 19 per cent of all offences in 2008/​09, increasing to 30 per cent in 2018/​19, and weapons offences that made up just 3 per cent of first time entrants offences in 2008/​09, have risen by 400 per cent. Nevertheless, despite an increased percentage of serious cases, reoffending rates have increased by less than 1 per cent, suggesting that although YOT caseloads are becoming more complex, this supportive approach is making a difference. However, support has been hampered by resourcing issues and funding. For example, if a YOT worker feels that a young person may have Autism Spectrum Disorder or would benefit from mental health support, they can refer them to the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service. Yet the waiting list for an assessment is usually between 18 and 22 months. Until then, the young person may be offered four or so sessions with an in house counsellor but not much else. Similarly, if there are signs that a young person may have learning difficulties, the school or college can be asked to apply for an Educational Health Care Plan assessment. However, before an assessment is made, the school needs to prove to the local authority’s Special Educational Needs team that they have done all they can to accommodate the child’s learning needs first. This often leads to the request for an assessment being 118

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rejected. Then if the application is accepted, there can be a 20-​week wait for the assessment to be completed before support is put in place. Although services are better at understanding the complex needs behind offending behaviour, they are incredibly slow at providing the support needed. Unfortunately for many, the services they need are put in place far too late.

Supporting young people at risk of child criminal exploitation As discussed in Chapter 8, county lines is a growing concern. A 2019 National Crime Agency report suggests that there are over 1,000 county lines in operation. One of the ways the authorities have responded is through the Modern Slavery Act (2015), which identifies a young person as a victim rather than a criminal if they are exploited into doing it. Section 45 (4) of the act states: A person is not guilty of an offence if –​ (a) the person is under the age of 18 when the person does the act which constitutes the offence, (b) the person does that act as a direct consequence of the person being, or having been, a victim of slavery or a victim of relevant exploitation, and (c) a reasonable person in the same situation as the person and having the person’s relevant characteristics would do that act. This has changed the legal narrative around the young people who find themselves caught up in county lines activities, including a greater understanding of child criminal exploitation. However, although there has been significant progress in the professional knowledge of the issue, supporting those involved is problematic. In the first instance, once a young person has been arrested, a first responder (the police, social services or YOT worker) needs to make a National Referral Mechanism (NRM) referral. This, according to government guidelines, results in the Single Competent Authority (the National Crime Agency) indicating whether the young person is a victim of trafficking and modern day slavery within five working days and providing a definitive answer within 45 days. An NRM showing that the young person is a victim provides mitigation and helps the CPS decide whether to prosecute or not and influences any subsequent sentence if a young person is found or pleads guilty to any subsequent charge. However, the process isn’t working as intended. Four YOT workers across three different boroughs commented that NRMs generally took over a year to come back with a definitive answer. At best, this means a young person 119

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has to endure adjournment after adjournment as the CPS or courts delay making a decision. At worst, young people are kept on remand awaiting a court date. The head of Children’s Services of a nearby borough commented that he was getting annoyed with the CPS, who continued to argue against bail in every case, even when an NRM was pending. Nevertheless, a positive NRM (meaning a young person is adjudged to have been exploited) doesn’t automatically mean that a young person won’t receive a custodial sentence. YOT case managers explained that judges outside of London were more likely to give harsher sentences, and young people who were repeat offenders and those who breached existing orders often receive custodial sentences regardless of the NRM outcome. Young people ending up on remand is becoming a concern. Notwithstanding reductions in the use of custody, remand is increasing, with 28 per cent of the youth custody population on remand in 2019, up from 24 per cent the year before (House of Commons, nd). Like other punitive actions, there is a racial dimension to remand, with 54 per cent of those remanded into custody coming from Black or other minority backgrounds (Gibbs and Ratcliffe, 2018). The racial element of its use is also disproportionate in terms of arrests, with minority young people making up only 23 per cent of arrests (Gibbs and Ratcliffe, 2018) but 54 per cent of remand cases. Once at court, 66 per cent of those remanded in custody don’t receive a custodial sentence, with 48 per cent acquitted altogether (House of Commons, nd). Despite the guidance around NRMs, how young people involved in county lines cases are treated contributes to a rise in young people remanded into custody, many of whom are proven innocent at court. Outside of the problematic use of remand, the narrative around exploitation has helped produce a clear dichotomy of victim and perpetrator, which should lead to a supportive rather than a punitive outcome for the young person. Nevertheless, once arrested, young people are often subject to bail conditions that, given their vulnerability, are hard not to break, as Connor explains: ‘I’m not saying that they’re all angels that are being targeted. A lot of them do things that they shouldn’t. But they are given quite stringent conditions on their order, which, if they breach, counts as an offence. Too often, we put the blame on and target the young person, not their associations; we are not targeting the older ones that are exploiting them.’ Lianne gives an example to highlight the issue further: ‘If a young person gets arrested in Glasgow, there might be a condition that they can’t go back there. But they might be told to go back. Our 120

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kids are scared, so they will feel they have to. When he gets caught, he will say nothing, so he’s gonna go to court, and he’s not gonna care about that. He’d rather be safe and do what those running the line tell him because police are not going to protect them; in his mind, they don’t care.’

A contextual approach to safeguarding young people from violence and criminal exploitation Contextual safeguarding has emerged as a leading approach within the professional response to serious youth violence and child criminal exploitation. Whereas the traditional safeguarding framework focuses on the home (Firmin, 2018a), a contextual safeguarding response acknowledges that young people develop relationships and engage in activities in adolescence that undermine their parents’ ability to keep them safe (Firmin and Abbott, 2018). As such, local authorities have a duty to mitigate extra familial risks that can lead to peer on peer abuse (Firmin, 2018b). Yet, although there is an awareness of extra familial risk, and the Working Together to Safeguard Children 2018 guidance (HM Government, 2018) outlines how agencies need to work together to keep children safe, the processes to support young people are not that well developed. For example, tools such as Child Protection Plans and family court processes are unhelpful because they are designed to influence parental engagement when the risks faced by young people generally undermine their parents’ ability to keep their children safe. Nevertheless, local authorities have developed some practical contextual safeguarding responses. These include at the door exploitation screening questionnaires used whenever a young person is referred to a council service. If the young person meets the statutory at risk threshold, some local authorities have an Exploitation Team Around the Child (ETAC) process. Here relevant council services, including Social Services, YOT, housing, education and any commissioned voluntary sector organizations, agree and action a plan to support the young person. Often the work can seem a little bit too late; one police officer summed up their thoughts on the matter quite simply, stating: “If they are carrying a knife, we have failed them already, and if there are missing episodes [young people staying away from home without their parent/​carer knowing where they are], they are probably already being exploited.” Commenting on the council processes, Toby, a case manager from a local authority exploitation team, commented: ‘Our work can feel reactive. Some of these problems have been 13 or 14 years in the making. We come in off the back of a significant incident. And it’s meant to be relational work, building relationships. 121

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That’s quite difficult to do as our involvement is only for only a short time.’ Interventions often involve referring young people to various specialist organizations such as Rescue and Response, St Giles Trust and Catch 22. These organizations can work more flexibly and support young people for longer. However, Toby explains the limitations of what is offered: ‘You are asking young people to take advice from strangers, which goes against everything we ask young people to do. We are saying they are engaged with strangers, and we are worried about that. So we, a group of professional strangers, come in and say, don’t talk to those strangers because we think they are dangerous, but these other strangers will help you. But the reality is they’re thinking I am getting money in my pocket; I’m getting status out of this, so the positives outweigh the dangers for me.’ A current contextual safeguarding response has been to relocate families and young people away from potential danger. Yet, this process is rather complex. The safeguarding need allows councils to bypass the normal housing processes meaning temporary housing can be offered within a few days. If the young person is 16 or over and willing to be rehoused on their own, the main barrier is affordability. The under 25 single housing rate of £342.72 barely covers a room in a hostel on the outskirts of London or neighbouring counties and leaves very few choices of where a young person can move to. Many housing teams then find that all the affordable hostels and single room lets in safe areas are often taken, and if the young person is deemed high risk, many housing providers will refuse to take them. Therefore, local authorities have developed reciprocal arrangements with other boroughs to support rehousing young people. Safer London also coordinates a Pan London reciprocal process. Yet, currently, the need is greater than the availability. When discussing London wide housing reciprocals, one local authority housing manager just responded: “With the Pan London Housing reciprocals, if you read the document and see what they do, it sounds brilliant, but on the ground, it doesn’t operate well.” What is available often forces young people to either stay in unsafe areas or move away from their existing support network. This often results in them coming back to their previous neighbourhood to feel safe, negating the purpose of any move. One young person from the estate was rehoused in Swindon, over 80 miles away, yet was still regularly seen hanging out on the estate with his friends. Others rehoused on the outskirts of North London have been arrested on the estate, with young people feeling the need to return to what is familiar but unsafe. 122

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Being rehoused on their own puts young people at additional risk. One young person who was rehoused commented: ‘I was just causing trouble, so I had to move. First, I was put in Dagenham; looking back, it was a nice place, and I could just jump on a train back to South [South London]. But I didn’t want to be there, so I just caused trouble to force a move. Then I ended up in Harlow, and that was lonely. I had no one. Then a chance came to move back to London, and it was the worst choice of my life. The road I live on has five hostels, so you are constantly mixing with other people like yourself. This guy was always around asking people to do things, and coz you need money, you do it. But then one day at 3 am, he was banging down my door telling me I need to do this and that for him, and coz you are scared, you just do it. That’s how I got arrested, and now I just want to be out of London.’ Although relocating young people is seen as a way to address imminent safeguarding concerns, it can cause further isolation and leave them open to becoming groomed into child criminal exploitation. Housing families is even more complex. With the council housing stock limited, families are often offered the choice of temporary accommodation or a private tenancy, both of which will result in a loss of any secure tenancy they may have, putting them in a precarious housing situation. The lack of affordability within the private housing sector further complicates things, often leaving families the choice between staying in a now unsafe location or being rehoused away from schools and their support networks. The value of this type of intervention is further diminished by the prevalence of social media and young people’s networks, which, to put it in the words of one young person: “It doesn’t matter where you go; there is always going to be someone that recognizes you.” This sentiment was all too true for one St Mary’s family. Shortly after the barbeque incident, Yoshua and his family were relocated to North London due to safety concerns. However, one Saturday evening, someone broke into his home and stabbed him dead in his living room. Still, there have been more proactive responses to the threats young people face. These have included parent champion projects, where groups of parents undergo training typically only offered to professionals. This has included workshops on keeping their child safe on social media, the Education Health Care Plan process, engaging with neurodiverse young people and how to spot the signs that someone is being groomed. Parent champion groups are being trained to provide support to those within their community who are concerned about their or someone else’s child. In addition, some local authorities have started to map out recruitment hotspots, with the police 123

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and youth workers patrolling, identifying potentially vulnerable young people and signposting them to support services. This can include training programmes for fast food shops and newsagent staff on how to help prevent young people congregating in or near their premises, including practical advice on what music to play and when to turn off any public Wi-​Fi, and how to make a referral if they are concerned about someone. Due to this type of intervention, the chicken and chip shop local to the estate has taken out its seating to reduce the number of young people hanging out in the shop. Although many support mechanisms are problematic, there has been clear progress made in the past decade when considering how young people at risk of youth violence are supported. Yet most of the interventions are focused at the individual or family level, and as Stephen pointed out, part of the issue lies with broader structural factors. These include poverty, racism and inequality. Local authorities and other service providers seek to address these issues by enabling individuals to navigate a harsh, oppressive world. Although this can help individuals, there is a sense these efforts are battling against larger societal problems that are more influential than the interventions.

Locally in Lambeth Locally in 2018, Lambeth Council developed its new Tackling Violence Against Young People Strategy, responsibilizing every council department to work together because ‘young people in Lambeth should be free from violence’. The strategy differs significantly from the enforcement centred approach of Operation Shield, setting out a ten-​year goal that aims to: • prevent young people from being involved in youth violence in the first place; • identify those at risk as early as possible; • help and protect those at risk; and • disrupt those inflicting violence on our young people. (Lambeth Council, 2018) This was further updated in the council’s Lambeth Made Safer for Young People Strategy commitment to intervene early and prevent issues before they arise, disrupt and deter crime, educate and train young people so they have alternative pathways away from crime, better responses and support for those impacted by violence, and more safe places for young people (Lambeth Council, 2020). Although disrupting the perpetrators remains a part of the strategy, the primary attention has focused on the risk factors such as ACEs, poverty and risks associated with peer groups. Operationally, the work aims to develop community engagement and partnership responses, 124

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school-​based programmes, housing estate-​based local plans and practice-​ based interventions. Yet, much like the Co-​operative Council Strategy, there is very little detail on what implementation should look like. The central commitment is that outside of the schools and practice-​based interventions, there should be a hyper local approach led by the ‘community’ to give residents the chance to shape activities to meet the local need. This had led to the development of local meetings bringing together key organizations and residents, mirroring the arrangements set up under the cooperative framework, with very little community led action to date. The professional practice-​based interventions have included commissioning a custody diversion programme and organizations to work 1:1 with young people at risk of exploitation or violence. However, locally, these are not necessarily seen as offering effective support. Lenny, who often gets asked by parents to informally attend intervention meetings, is critical of the support provided: ‘They [workers from commissioned organizations] often call me up to ask me where someone is as no one is picking up their phone. I ask them if they have been round to see them, and of course, they haven’t. Sometimes they have never actually met them. When I get a call like this, I know exactly where the young person is. The worst was when we had a virtual meeting, and one worker from one of these expert organizations just logged on, introduced himself, said nothing for the whole meeting and then said bye at the end. Why are they there? They are getting thousands to support young people and doing nothing.’ Although not commissioned or paid to support the young people, Lenny is relied on to keep track of the most at risk. One of the commissioned workers admitted to Lenny that he still hadn’t managed to speak to a young person, whom Lenny sees several times a week, three months after receiving the referral. Those commissioned to support three St Mary’s young people currently on remand have declined to go on the visitors’ list citing that they did not know them, so there was no point visiting. Their YOT worker then called Lenny to ask if he would see them as they were asking for him.

Movement in the right direction In 2018, in partnership with a national children’s charity, the council won a substantial lottery bid to revamp its ‘community led’ early years work. The project aims to improve early childhood development by ensuring a secure attachment to parents, engaging with fathers, improving child nutrition 125

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and speech and language development, helping children have a good home learning environment and supporting parents’ mental health. The project is working in several of the borough’s most deprived areas, including St Mary’s. Early on, there was a lot of interest in using Centenary Hall as an early years hub. The idea was to base multiple services in a revamped building, including a professionally run nursery, which the residents could still use but would lose control over. However, the architect’s plans were considered impractical due to cost, so attention turned to what could be done to the existing structure. Dorothy wanted an extension to the small hall, including a better kitchenette, an additional toilet and a space that could operate as a staff room and a toy store. Instead, Dorothy was offered some kitchen cupboards and a flower garden in the middle of Centenary Hall’s lawn space, as the capital budget was reallocated elsewhere. Despite the shift away from the estate, 28 per cent of the current participants are from the St Mary’s area. A barbeque organized in the middle of November by one of the parent champions had over 40 children and parents attending, a testament to the project’s local reach. Although the impacts of the early years interventions on youth crime will not be felt yet, improving early years development, such as ensuring secure attachments between parents and their child, will help produce resilient young people who are less likely to engage in violent or risky behaviour (Bowlby, 1969; Bigras et al, 2011; Houston and Grych, 2016). Unfortunately, the estate came under the spotlight again in autumn 2018 when Trevor was stabbed to death. In the weeks following the stabbing, the council organized a meeting inviting the residents association to come together with counsellors and some key youth organizations in the borough to find some way of supporting local young people. Most of the organizations around the table seldom had, if ever, been on the estate before. One founder and director of an organization that worked with young people on other estates commented that she would like to bring her expertise to St Mary’s, but it will need funding. These were almost a carbon copy of the meetings that occurred after Tom and Kwame’s murders, with one difference; there was no money on the table to do anything substantial. Dorothy, who was at the meeting, commented afterwards: “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, people hovering like vultures, saying how wonderful they were and that they could solve all our problems. But they were just after money. If they cared so much, why haven’t we seen them before.” Subsequently, two poorly attended networking events were organized in Centenary Hall to try and get young people to engage with support services, mirroring the call-​in event a few years earlier. Nevertheless, two interlinked projects emerged: a VRU-​funded peer development and resilience training programme run by a pan London organization and a youth forum. The area coordinator for the training programme contacted Lenny, as most 126

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intervention providers do, to access some young people, with an arrogance that annoyed Lenny: “So their area coordinator came to me, with all the usual spiel, we’ve been commissioned, we have the money, we need your young people so we can work with them. It’s always the same. The people who get the money aren’t the ones who know the young people.” After the initial contact, Lenny heard nothing for several months, and then another person, Vinny, made contact, with a different approach, as Lenny explains: ‘I thought it was another organization, to be honest. Otherwise, I would not have been interested. But Vinny seemed alright. He wanted to see how he could help us rather than just using us for their numbers. So, we ran their programme alongside our training sessions, and it seemed to work.’ Vinny explains his approach: ‘Well, I grew up just down the road, have worked in Lambeth most of my life, so this is my patch. I know what these boys are going through. It’s not about my organization or my KPIs; it’s about working with people like Lenny, or Miche, who are trying to help them.’ Dorothy and Miche also felt that Vinny’s approach was critical to the success of his project, with Miche commenting: “Vinny is different, I can call him up about anything, and I know he will help, whether it be about my personal development, the young people or the estate. Unfortunately, the funding for his project has ended, but he is still helping us.” In one of our regular catch ups Dorothy explained: ‘There has been a lot of people coming and going on St Mary’s, but Vinny, you can count on him. The other day I called him to get Ricky’s brother on to a course. Although the St Mary’s money had finished, he managed to get him on a course somewhere else.’ When Miche looked to start a project for young people, she called Vinny for advice. To put it crudely, Vinny knew that Trevor’s death still had capital and, with the help of the council, got LCT to agree to let Miche use the adventure playground building for the project. LCT had stripped out the adventure play equipment due to maintenance costs and wanted additional activities to run in the space, so the project seemed a good fit. As some of the young people Miche was engaging were those the YOT had commissioned a diversionary project to work with, the council asked the organization to provide a worker. It seemed like a good team was forming. Unfortunately, 127

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after eight weeks, the project stopped when a LCT’s laptop went missing, and a young person from Miche’s project was blamed. Miche still feels that this was an excuse for LCT to end the project early. Vinny’s resilience programme ran for 12 weeks, once alongside football training and twice on the estate, with ten participants in each cohort. After Miche completed the course herself, she managed to get Ayub, Dillan and Matthew to attend the final 12-​week block. Vinny explains the content of his delivery: “it is all practical; there is no writing; we get the young people to think about valuing themselves, what makes a good friendship, and how their decisions impact them. It’s all designed to help people have the confidence and resilience to make positive decisions.” The course, for Miche, had a significant impact on her: ‘The sessions were really good. It makes you see the things you need to understand to help you open up and be honest with yourself about how you handle day to day life. It’s not just about the whole violence or selling drugs thing. It’s about you, so you understand how to deal with what’s in front of you.’ However, when reflecting on the impact on the young people, Miche’s assessment was less flattering: ‘As much as I feel that they did a lot, I don’t feel like it’s made a massive impact because it only lasted so long. They got taught some good good stuff, but then they have been let back out on the estate, and it’s all been wiped away, and it’s like they forgot what they learnt. Because it’s not constant support, it’s easy for them to fall back on what they did before.’ Miche’s point encapsulates a significant problem with much of the engagement in St Mary’s and elsewhere. Interventions are often professionally coordinated case management of an individual or short-​term work with a group deemed at risk. There is little in the way of long-​term relational support nor coordinated systemic efforts to address the wider social and economic factors that cultivate violent street youth cultures. This individualized and short-​term support, or even the more foresighted provision such as the early years interventions, really only helps to build young people’s levels of resilience against the harsh realities of growing up in a deprived neighbourhood. They do not remove the abrasive conditions themselves. While young people find themselves socially, educationally and economically isolated from mainstream opportunities and hanging out in areas that lack of informal guardianship and  care, they will always be vulnerable to exploitative and violent street cultures. 128

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Notwithstanding this concern, there has been progress. In 2011, the local authority had no genuine interest in engaging with local people. Instead, outsiders were commissioned to tackle serious youth violence. Ten years on, there is still a tendency to do this, yet there is greater engagement with those already there like Lenny, Miche and Dorothy. Lenny and Miche’s work to support the other organizations may be voluntary, but at least they are included in the discussion. However, their value to those overseeing community safety is open to debate. In response to an email about developing a contextual safeguarding partnership for the estate, the sergeant responsible for the local Safer Neighbourhood team gave the names of several organizations to contact, citing their VRU involvement as evidence of their credentials. However, in the same email, he stated that he doesn’t know of any residents who should be involved. Despite movement in the right direction, there is still a preference for short-​term commissioned interventions over informal ongoing community guardianship, which for some, still doesn’t feature as a suitable way to help address localized youth violence. Nevertheless, throughout all that has taken place, two local pillars remain: the St Mary’s Football Project and Dorothy’s holiday play scheme. Lenny started the football project when he took some kids from his block over the road to the park on a Saturday morning. Now 18 years later, he is still a constant in many young people’s and now young adults’ lives. In 2018, he started an adult team, which became two adult teams in 2021, to keep a link with the football project’s ex-​participants. Alongside the adult football team, most of the project’s coaches are ex-​players. This allows some to turn a hobby into a source of income while continuing their studies or while transitioning into full-​time work. For others, it is the chance for Lenny to keep an eye on them as they transition away from criminal activities. This often leads to tensions as Lenny takes their unreliability personally. Yet, despite many threats to sack them, disciplinary action is very rarely, if ever, taken. Lenny has come to terms with the fact that their employment is an extension of the project’s support. One Saturday, Lenny was about to have a go at Jonny and Eli for turning up late when Jonny’s sister, who had come to sign her son up to join the project, thanked Lenny for keeping Jonny safe when his life was falling apart. Half of the current coaches came through Anton, who played for Lenny until he was 15. Anton was Kwame’s, who was murdered on the estate, best friend. They were so close that you hardly saw them apart. Anton had been one of the first on the scene when Kwame had been shot and had never really got over things. Over the next couple of years, Anton got involved in dealing at his university and seemed quite content with mixing university, helping with his brother’s music studio and dealing. One morning Lenny saw Anton crying in the park, and they started talking. Anton explained 129

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that he felt lost and was on autopilot, going nowhere. So, Lenny got Anton to join his Saturday morning football coaching team. Within a few weeks, Jonny and two other ex-​players also were back in the fold, causing Lenny headaches with their unreliability and lack of work ethic. His annoyance was further acerbated as he would invariably call them all on a Friday night, asking them not to go out too late, only for them to ignore his advice. Regularly, Lenny was heard shouting at them for turning up smelling of alcohol, and their drinking became a concern. Although Lenny managed this by not counting them in staff ratios and giving them little or no responsibility, he took every let-​down personally. One Saturday morning at around 7 am, Lenny got a call from the hospital, the group had all gone out to a party in North London, and Anton had been in a car crash and didn’t make it. Anton’s memorial football tournament led to Lenny arranging a regular Thursday night football session in a safe area for the coaches and their friends. After a year, this progressed into an 11-​a-​ side Sunday league team. As Lenny got reacquainted with so many young people he had watched grow up, he wanted to provide something extra. Therefore, he organized a compulsory trauma-​informed training programme for all staff and volunteers. Although Lenny understood the benefits to the project, he briefed the trainer that the sessions should be about Jonny and his friends recognizing their own trauma. The sessions were telling; nearly everyone started talking about the pain they were experiencing, with most admitting that they drank or smoked weed to forget about it. For Lenny running activities for young people until they turn 16 or 18 isn’t enough, as he explains: “If we get them to 25, then I think they are safe. That seems about the age when they can stop looking over their shoulder, Marlon has a way to go, but Jonny, Eli and Ashley seem to be okay now.” The men’s team and the coaching opportunities are a chance for old St Mary’s guys to let off some steam and reminisce on the past. Much of my time watching the games is spent sharing my memories of Kwaku with his younger brother. For Lenny, it is a chance to offer advice and help those who still mean so much to him. Although most of the original olders, and the groups that formed E1S and 13, have made a concerted effort to leave the violence behind, the spectre of street violence still looms large. Initially, the men’s team played in the park where they had their matches when they were young. However, due to its openness, they felt exposed. So now they use the training pitch of a non-​league team, whose manager used to run a St Mary’s football team. At the matches, the tension is still visible. Two people on mopeds rode up to the pitch during one game, turned around and drove off again. Forgetting the game was still going on, the St Mary’s players all started to ask if anyone saw who it was. It took Lenny to go out into the car park and confirm that no one was there for the match to continue. Another game in August 2022 130

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got called off as a teenager from another area recognized Eli and pulled a knife on him. They do, however, use their past to their advantage when things get heated. During inevitable standoffs in sometimes heated matches, the St Mary’s players will often say, “Does he not know who I am and what I have done,” and things will calm down. Picking up on the concerns around trauma, Lenny has teamed up with various organizations to provide group and individual counselling sessions for players during training sessions. In 2016, the project started sessions in the football cage on the estate, with Dorothy opening up Centenary Hall for the counselling element and food. The cage football sessions and the staff course is, for most, the only opportunity that the young people have to talk about the trauma they are living with. Unfortunately, for most, the level of support they need will never be offered. This situation is likely to worsen; the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service policy of only taking referrals from professionals such as schools, doctors and social workers means most young people in need won’t get referred. Long waiting lists and exclusionary thresholds mean that very few will receive the support they need. After the 2021 COVID-​19 lockdown, the cage sessions started up twice a week, one each for primary and secondary school age groups. The food is now a packed lunch-​style meal prepared by a local mum with young people of all ages hanging around the cage waiting for the food to turn up regardless of whether it is their day or not. Around 20 young people turn up every session, many in Southampton Football Club tops. The football team donated enough kits to the project over the past three years to allow the football project participants and their siblings to have one. Most sessions involve a coach organizing matches while Lenny hangs around outside catching up with olders like Marlon and, latterly, Ayub. Lenny comments: “With everything that’s going on, it’s important we are there. It’s so good to see people like Marlon join in. He gets so excited; it’s like watching the kid we saw grow up.” Young people exposed to violence often have increased defensive and confrontational coping (Rosario et al, 2008). The informal guardianship that Lenny and his coaches are trying to provide during a time in their lives when this type of support usually decreases can help moderate these maladaptations (Gaylord-​Hardon et al, 2017b). Yet unfortunately, it cannot provide an ongoing sense of safety for those growing up on the estate. Despite their importance, the sessions have highlighted the ongoing local concerns. Some coaches have requested not to help out on the estate in case others associate them with the St Mary’s issues. The project’s trustees have debated whether it is appropriate for the cage sessions to be moved to the nearby school or cancelled altogether. Lenny and I have so far convinced the trustees to allow the project to continue on the basis that Lenny cancels sessions if information from the police or a young person suggests that an incident is more likely to happen than usual. After the home of someone 131

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associated with Trevor’s death was shot up, this warning system kicked in, with Lenny getting a call from a young person asking him to cancel the estate sessions for two weeks. Over the past six years, the other constant has been Dorothy’s holiday play scheme. Four of the original mums who were part of the original team still help out, although only two still live locally. The sessions run three to four afternoons a week during the Easter and summer holidays. Equally important is her impact on those working with her. In Miche, she has found someone showing the commitment to the young people that Dorothy has for decades. Dorothy has been upfront with Miche that she will need to take over from her, although Miche still shies away from the paperwork side of running the projects. Miche, who is in the process of starting up her own youth-​focused charity with some local young people who also help Dorothy out, explains her passion for the estate: ‘I see the lives of some of these boys and just want to help. Sometimes they just need someone to talk to or believe in them. I have organized the trips out for Dorothy and am part of anything that happens on the estate, but I want to do more. It’s automatic; it’s part of who I am.’ Ten years ago, Miche had a reputation for losing her temper quickly and was willing to fight anyone who rubbed her up the wrong way. After years of guidance by the likes of Elizabeth and Dorothy, she is focused on helping those around her.

Protecting children at risk and trying to address the causes of youth violence The chapter has discussed some recent developments in how young people are supported. Most, if not all, interventions now follow a public health approach, which seeks to address underlying causes of youth violence rather than simply focusing on the violence itself. There is a greater understanding of how trauma, educational disengagement and social environments impact the lives of young people. The chapter considered the child first approach within the youth justice system, which focuses on addressing the welfare needs of the child rather than simply focusing on the offence committed. There is now a more widespread appreciation of the impacts of ACEs on young people, with interventions becoming trauma informed. On a basic level, this involves people being aware of how trauma influences young people’s actions. More advanced practices seek to provide young people with a sense of safety, help them reflect on their past experiences and understand ways to address the oppression and fear they live with. Yet, for most, the support is far too slow in coming; long waiting lists and referral convoluted 132

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processes mean that identifying the support need is only part of the battle. As a result, many will never access the services they need early enough to make an impact on their childhood experiences. A contextual safeguarding approach recognizes that many of the risks young people face are outside of the family home and that professionals need to consider the school, neighbourhood and wider environment when safeguarding children. Contextual safeguarding responses include mapping exploitation hotspots and working with the police and local businesses to make these areas safer. There is also more help for parents to understand how to support young people to mitigate the risks they face. In cases of immediate danger, local authorities are doing more to make it easier to move young people and families out of the area. Yet this itself doesn’t prevent young people from being at risk of exploitation. Resettlement often means being isolated from support networks, leaving young people still vulnerable. Much of the council’s work to address the issues on the estate has focused on individuals or short term group work rather than the more social structural issues underpinning the problem. This has seen organizations commissioned to provide personal development activities and help young people to (re) engage with education, employment and training. However, staff often find it challenging to connect and build relationships with the young people referred to them. Unlike in previous times, there is greater recognition of the need to rely on others who have an informal connection with those who need support. Lenny has developed his reputation enough to be accepted in some professional circles. Therefore, although not contracted by the council, Lenny can ensure some form of continuity of care in a hybridization of formal and informal working. He does get frustrated that the local authority seems to always commission the same organizations that don’t make the same effort as he does. Yet, ten years ago, neither he nor anyone else operating outside the bounds of what is considered professional practice would have even been involved in the discussion. The cage football feeds young people, gives them structured activities for a couple of hours, access to a counsellor and helps maintain the relationship between Lenny and the older young people. Dorothy’s play schemes are still going, and she has nurtured Miche to continue her work. This means that there are supervised activities for primary school children. As the young people grow older, Miche has often been the link between them and other organizations. Although this in itself doesn’t appear to be enough to prevent the negative influences of the neighbourhood shaping their lives, her presence does offer the hope that these connections can be built upon and a more effective network, providing informal guardianship, can develop. Yet despite these developments, the reality is that St Mary’s Estate appears as dangerous, if not more dangerous, for young people than it ever has.

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Conclusion: Better Support but the Violence Remains Like many others in deprived areas of London, St Mary’s Estate has a reputation for drug dealing and violence. The preceding chapters have discussed some localized factors that have seen successive groups of young people become engrossed in a violent street culture. The events explored here took place against a backdrop of persisting structural risks. The estate remains one of the country’s most deprived areas and is in the top 10 per cent for indices of child deprivation. St Mary’s young people are likely to go to poor-​performing schools with some of the lowest attainment rates in the capital. Unfortunately, despite the progress discussed in this text, the continuation of these more structural factors makes it almost inevitable that a significant number of St Mary’s young people will become involved in criminality and be exposed to serious youth violence and child criminal exploitation. Many of those in primary school when this project started are now at the forefront of people’s current concerns about serious youth violence. It is rather unfortunate that if another study were conducted in ten years’ time, the discussion would probably be very similar. Added to this, there is a racist dimension that cannot be ignored. Alongside the discrimination faced on the estate, several generations of young Black men have faced over policing, disproportionate levels of school exclusions and unemployment. During the study, the social and political landscape shifted considerably. Initially, the local authority played little attention to what was taking place on the estate. This left a space for some residents to step into, initially making their presence known by watching over the young people as they played and hung out during the summer holiday. However, the activities soon turned into a youth club in the community flat, which included a homework club and arts and crafts activities for primary school children and somewhere to hang out for those in secondary school. The relationships formed allowed the few residents who got involved to influence the young people to some 134

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degree. Although incidents of youth violence continued to rise, they did so at a slower rate than in nearby areas. After the murders of Tom and Kwame, less than a year apart, followed by a period of TSG policing, the context changed. The council decided to commission a series of gang intervention projects on the estate that cut out any resident involvement and attracted young people from wider afield to St Mary’s. Coinciding with their transition to a cooperative council, the local authority sought a longer-​term solution. The cooperative ethos was based on the belief that community-​run organizations can provide more responsive services. For the council, this ‘community’ wasn’t necessarily residents but like-​minded professionals. Despite the empowering cooperative rhetoric, the council was reluctant to cede responsibility to the residents, who they saw as unskilled and unqualified. Instead, they commissioned LCT, an existing delivery partner of adult education programmes, to try and ensure some form of certainty over what would be delivered. This effectively ended the residents’ ability to offer any strategic support. Young people from other areas continued to be attracted to the community flat, hanging out unsupervised on the estate once the LCT sessions ended. The little informal guardianship provided by Charis, myself and a few other residents all but disappeared. It was evident that we were almost trying to swim against the tide to set up a resident network that would support ‘our children’. However, once the residents were effectively excluded from the youth activities, there was little physical and social space for intergenerational relationships to develop. As a result, the remnants of collective efficacy and informal guardianship were further diminished rather than valued and cultivated. Yet the LCT delivery proved popular, resulting in more and more young people hanging out on the estate, most of whom didn’t live there. Instead of addressing the issues of youth deviance, they escalated. Rather than empowering local people to take action, the cooperative process disempowered them. During this period, those who came to the fore were significantly different in actions and outlook than those who went before them. Gone was the sense of support and mutual respect, and in its place, an irreverence and disregard for the other. When Ashley, Eli and others associated with 13 wanted to hold a series of barbeques on the estate, there was no consultation with or involvement of adult residents. The event looked considerably different to the party held a couple of years earlier by those a few years older than 13. Dealing, drinking and smoking weed were clearly visible, as were young men taking advantage of the young women present. The event only ended after midnight after a disagreement led to someone firing shots toward another young person resulting in the police turning up. 135

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The event was symbolic of the evolution of the youth street culture that was developing. As the few intergenerational relationships weakened, young people operated in a more isolated space. The social isolation caused by poverty and deprivation separates people from positive mainstream influences and allows for criminal street cultures to develop. These risks are escalated by localized intergenerational isolation. In this social space, violent personas, drug dealing and sexual deviance became capital and a way to gain status. When the studio opened, making music as a pastime, a mode of expression, and a way to gain status also became an everyday activity. Just as dealing became more visible, it was commonplace to see people practising their lyrics, videos being shot or younger children rapping along to drill tracks playing from their phones. The young people’s actions developed into a set of characteristics that were reproduced, transmitted and then adapted by new groups who embodied them. Their actions became habitus, forming rules that shaped their values. The music videos developed from freestyle shoots filmed on a single digital SLR to more professional shoots on the estate, to videos shot on location. This evolution generally emerged as the groups on the estate changed. 13 were far more entrepreneurial and focused on producing and marketing videos that get noticed than E1S were. This included leaving Gerald’s YouTube page and using platforms with more followers. These actions allowed 13’s tracks to reach millions of views compared to E1S’s tens of thousands. During 13’s era making money from music became more important than representing the estate. The demise of the estate’s importance was also linked to their development from street dealers to suppliers. At their peak, the core members of 13 were earning £2,000 each a month from their music. This money-​motivated professionalism continued with LSM, with only one difference. The estate was back as the primary location of their videos, potentially reflecting their continual involvement in street dealing. Those making the videos have found themselves caught in the attention economy (Stuart, 2020). Most people who upload content to the internet to make money don’t. Those that do often need to manipulate the SEO algorithms to draw attention to their uploads. Some, with budgets, can pay for SEO. For 13, LSM and others like them, this is not possible. Instead, their content has to attract attention another way; making tracks that shock and glamorize violent street culture, including provoking local rivalries, all playing up to the stereotype that ghetto voyeurs are seeking. Although the online personas of the likes of 13 and LSM have elements of truth in them, they were and are somewhat exaggerated, with only some portrayers of online violence being violent offline. This violence often does not resemble what is displayed on screen. Yet this screen violence can loop back and influence wider aspects of the young drill artists’ lives. There is a 136

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pressure to appear authentic, putting pressure on young people to live up to their digital personas. The content of the tracks often puts a target on the back of people appearing in videos, as others seek to physically retaliate in response to online messages. Although drill music and social media content may not start issues between groups, it acts as a catalyst to escalate the risk of serious youth violence. Therefore, although drill music offers young people the chance to gain status and earn a considerable amount of money legitimately, it is full of risks. When drill artists try to change their image and avoid these risks, their viewers do not join them on this journey, and their earning potential diminishes considerably. Drill artists also face the threat of criminalization through gang injunctions with the threat of arrest and imprisonment if the conditions are breached. These orders effectively make something legal illegal, and many have criticized this as simply criminalizing a form of Black youth culture. More recently, the drug dealing context has shifted. When Eli and Ashley started dealing, they were mainly involved in localized street dealing, using the estate as their base. A few years later, when Marlon, Trevor and Kenny were looking to increase their income potential, localized drug markets were saturated and their opportunities were far riskier. Young people entering the drugs trade today are in danger of being coerced into county lines dealing where adults criminally exploit them to sell drugs in provincial towns, often hundreds of miles away from their homes. In addition, debt incurred from arrest and confiscation of product or money and robberies often leaves young people feeling that they need to continue in exploitative relationships with line holders even after arrests and YOT interventions. Thankfully, there is now more recognition that much of the serious abuse, exploitation and violence young people face occurs in a community rather than a home setting (Firmin and Abbott, 2018). Many local authorities have responded by developing processes to help try and identify contextual risks that young people face. Nevertheless, when trying to support someone in immediate danger, actions often need to be reactionary. One response is to relocate young people and their families to a safer area. However, the availability and costs of properties and potential changes in tenancy status can make such interventions undesirable and difficult to achieve. Even when moves are possible, young people can find themselves isolated from their support network, often returning to their home neighbourhood to meet friends. This, in effect, can negate the positive impact that the relocation may bring. Several proactive interventions are emerging to help safeguard young people before young people become victims. These have included empowering parents to understand the risks their children face and discuss these with their children. Some local authorities have started to map out county lines recruitment hotspots, seeking to change people’s behaviours in 137

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these areas and safeguard children. These measures have included increasing police patrols in hot spots and locating detached youth workers in the area to engage with those at risk. For example, if a fast food restaurant or shop is identified as a place where young people are being groomed, staff are offered training on how to make their premises less attractive to groomers and how to support those they feel may be vulnerable. As the number of young people hanging out on the estate decreased, the risk of young people being exploited has increased. What was once somewhat of a rarity is now commonplace. This has shifted the profile of youth violence. When violence first became a significant concern on St Mary’s, it was almost exclusively peer on peer attacks. Recently there has been an increase of attacks by adults on children, partly due to young people’s dealing spheres, more directly crossing paths with violent adults with no relational connection with them. Notwithstanding the county lines dynamic, increasingly, youth violence is not fitting the gangs narrative. Most weapons offences are not flagged by the police as having gang involvement. There is a concern that due to what they have been exposed to, directly or vicariously, many young people on St Mary’s are showing signs of desensitization towards violence. This anxiety, desensitization and the normalization of carrying a weapon increase the risk of exposure to both victims and perpetrators. There has been a lowering of the threshold of when a young person feels they should use a weapon, and now there is much more violence within friendship groups, often triggered by minor issues.

From enforcement led to a public health approach Responses to the actions of young people have changed considerably over the past ten years. The initial gang intervention programmes mainly served as a magnet drawing young people to the estate without engaging young people in activities to stifle the influence of the street culture they were entrenched in. Once these ended, the primary council intervention was the enforcement-​led Operation Shield. Like the commissioned services before, there was little appetite for residents to be involved, and none were invited to offer any support services to those who attended the call-​in. The only real impact of the operation was an increase in arrests of young people. More recently, there has been a culture shift in the professional support offered to young people. Local authorities now accept a public health approach as the way to address youth violence, with 18 VRUs being set up throughout the country. In response, local authorities have focused on providing more supportive programmes that address early years development and have increased early help interventions and multi-​agency support for those in transition stages of their childhood. There is starting to be a particular 138

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focus on preventing school exclusions and enhancing employment support for young people. One of the key developments over the recent years has been the mainstreaming of trauma-​informed approaches when working with young people. On a basic level, practitioners now seek to understand young people’s aggressive, abusive and criminal behaviour through the lens of the trauma that they experienced. On a more therapeutic level, workers reflect on their own practice and seek to provide young people with a safe space and some respite from their anxieties so that they can start to process their emotions, even if it’s for a short while. This has shaped the child first approach within the youth justice sector, which has evolved to concentrate on addressing the welfare, emotional and education needs of children with offending behaviour. Custody is now generally seen as a last resort if public safety cannot be assured through another disposal. There is now a greater understanding of young people’s vulnerability to the influence of older people looking to criminally exploit them. The Modern Slavery Act (2015) makes provision for someone under the age of 18 to be considered not guilty of a criminal offence if they were exploited into doing it by someone over 18. However, the national referral mechanism, the process by which decisions about whether someone is exploited, takes considerably longer than anticipated, leading to many young people being in limbo, sometimes on remand, while assessments are made.

Working together Over the past ten years, there have been some improvements in how commissioned organizations interact with residents and other key local people. Lenny has fostered good relationships with many council staff working in youth justice and community safety and staff from commissioned organizations. He is often called upon to give updates on what is happening in St Mary’s and plays a pivotal role in helping organizations engage with local young people. As someone who provides essential support, his status has been enhanced by the sheer volume of young people his project helps and the support it offers. In 2010, the project was still relatively small and only ran football activities. Alongside the numerical growth of participants, the St Mary’s Football Project stepped into the void left on the estate in several senses, providing mental health support and food alongside the cage football sessions. Other organizations often realize that partnering with Lenny is their best chance of engaging local young people successfully. However, other professionals’ acceptance of Lenny should also be understood as just this, their acceptance of Lenny not as a local person but as a professional. As with the residents’ committee’s struggle to gain control of Centenary Hall, the St Mary’s Football Project has become increasingly 139

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more professional in its organization, governance and activities. Although Lenny himself still interacts with the young people on an informal level, going above and beyond any professional duty, just as he did when he lived locally, he has learnt the rules of the game. In effect, Lenny is more often seen as a professional than a resident, which of course, he is not anymore. It will be interesting to see if Miche can make this transition in the eyes of funders and local authority staff as she starts building and developing her own organization. Nevertheless, despite more key local individuals supporting commissioned services, there is still an overreliance on professional interventions. Rather than the likes of Lenny, Dorothy and Miche and other residents being integral to the council’s plans, they more often than not simply play connecting roles, helping ‘experts’ link with the young people they are paid to support. Dorothy is pushing to keep the holiday club going, yet, all bar two of her staff team no longer live on the estate. The St Mary’s Football Project engages lots of young people, but none of the staff running the sessions live there anymore. And even these projects can only provide a limited degree of informal guardianship to those hanging around on the estate. In reality, it may be naïve to look for signs of informal control stemming from intergenerational relationships, considering the lack of social connection between residents in areas like St Mary’s. However, including this as part of the local authority’s public health approach will give young people a greater sense of care and safety. Many of the current interventions seem to be coordinated case management that provides specific time bound support to individuals, helping them become more resilient. But this does little to change what they need to be resilient against. Youth street cultures are more likely to become criminogenic if young people hang out in isolated social environments. Short-​term and periodic interventions may provide some rest bite from this isolation, but they do not take it away. A good home environment is one in which young people feel loved, supported and cared for. This is also true of where they hang out. Where this does not exist, other influences can take over. Rebuilding a sense of ownership and responsibility among residents to what happens to young people growing up around them is a crucial component of changing the trend on estates such as St Mary’s.

Recommendations There have been some substantial developments within youth justice over the past ten years or so. A public health, child-​led approach has superseded an enforcement led focus. This has led to a greater emphasis on addressing the underlying risk factors associated with youth violence and helping young people become more resilient to these risks. However, despite the apparent 140

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benefits of supporting rather than criminalizing young people, estates such as St Mary’s continue to have a problem with youth violence. Current efforts to address youth violence in St Mary’s feel like coordinated case management or project delivery, which is an improvement on the previously failed enforcement led efforts. However, there is no sense of a coordinated place-​based plan that systematically addresses the risks young people face. This may be idealistic to suggest; however, it is present in the early year’s partnership, which has identified what children need for healthy development and is working to deliver in each of the identified areas through a people and place based approach. Something similar addressing youth violence in St Mary’s may yield very different results to the current situation. The brutal reality is that unless the structural issues of deprivation and disadvantage that see close to 35 per cent of children in St Mary’s and the surrounding neighbourhoods growing up in poverty (Lambeth Council, ndb) are tackled, young people will always be at an increased risk of exposure to violence, while benefiting less from protective factors such as healthy family and community relationships. Like many of the issues discussed in this book, the deprivation experienced by those living in St Mary’s is deep rooted and multi-​faceted. Unfortunately, apart from the local authority, which has limited influence, none of the key players attempting to tackle youth violence can do anything strategic to address poverty and deprivation. There needs to be greater recognition of the role this plays in developing criminal youth street cultures with the view of moving the public discourse to be more focused on addressing structural deprivation to tackle youth violence. Otherwise, the underlying conditions will remain, and young people will always be at greater risk of engaging in criminal activities. When done with other economically and socially isolated young people, this will often take on gang characteristics. Alongside a focus on poverty and other structural factors, a greater understanding of the importance of neighbourhood relational dynamics is needed. Sadly, much of the previous resident engagement with young people has all but disappeared. Under the right conditions, including hybrid programmes that combine professional interventions with helping to develop local intergenerational relationships, informal guardianship could be an influence once more. Yet this will take commissioners acknowledging its value and seeing residents as a potential resource in attempts to combat the social isolation that is often so prominent as criminal youth cultures develop. Funded projects are often time bound and only temporarily or periodically give some respite from the isolation young people experience. Even local organizations such as the St Mary’s Football Project are not always present. Although it does help young people in the long term and provides a positive influence during young people’s transition to adulthood, it isn’t enough to negate the negative impacts of the estate and street culture. Without 141

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this, any progress made is at risk of being lost due to budgetary decisions. However, residents, such as Miche and Dorothy, are ever present. If the type of support they provide was cultivated, it could provide a more sustainable source of much needed informal guardianship to those hanging out on St Mary’s. Even when time-​bound projects offer effective interventions, the current short-​term funding regime means there is neither the consistency nor universality of support required. Many of the issues addressed in this book are persistent long-​term concerns, which need continuous long-​term interventions to mitigate their impacts.

Where are they now? Despite the genuine concerns that have seen successive groups of St Mary’s young people become exposed to serious youth violence and child criminal exploitation, these concerns should be given some context. It is important to reiterate that for most young people, their involvement in a violent youth culture is transitory. Most live on the periphery, with little or no intention of becoming exposed to violence. Connections to more mainstream cultures, through family, religious and friendship networks, mean that their involvement in criminal activities is only ever a small and short lived part of their identity, despite it often becoming essentialized in popular narratives. However, where they live and who they associate with can put a target on their back. This leads many young people to feel the need to carry a weapon for their own protection, increasing their risk of exposure to violence. Those on the periphery usually grow out of activities related to youth violence as their circumstances change, with progress to university, employment or moving to other areas, critical components of this transition. Although their actions may have changed, the risks and the associated anxieties remain, with many still concerned about being attacked long into their 20s. Those that are more entrenched in criminal street culture take longer to transition. For a short while, their pursuit of money and leisure can become centred around street culture, as does their sense of status and belonging. However, almost all young people who become entrenched and do not end up dead or serving long sentences eventually emerge out the other side. It is crucial then that they are supported to manage the risks associated with the social environment they find themselves in. The level of support young people receive as they are finding their way through this social space often determines the amount their youthful activities scar their and other people’s lives. For Anton, Lenny’s care and commitment helped him realize that he could have a purpose after losing his best friend, although circumstances didn’t allow him to fulfil his potential. 142

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Jonny, who was enticed back to the St Mary’s Football Project by Anton and was first on the scene holding Anton’s hand before the emergency services arrived, has just finished his electrician apprenticeship. He and Kobe, another coach, who Anton brought back into the fold, are working with Lenny and me to set up a project where they can help young people from the estate learn a trade. When discussing this with Jonny and Kobe, Jonny explained: “If I knew what I could earn from a trade when I was 16 or 17, I would not have bothered with all the rubbish I did. I need to help these boys learn that; so they don’t mess up their life.” Thankfully, Kenny is now looking for income outside of drill and drugs and has recently been chatting to Jonny while playing FIFA online about getting into construction, and Jonny has got him on to a CSCS card course. Eli has recently overturned a football coaching ban by the Football Association for failing to give a suitable explanation of his many convictions. He still plays for the St Mary’s adult team but had to stop coaching until this was resolved, and he is still trying to find his feet coaching again. He and Ashley have released some new music, free of their previous 13 associations. Unfortunately, it is proving difficult to develop the size of viewership that will earn them a decent income. Undeterred, Eli has started to promote events again, this time with the help of his younger brother and is developing a clothing line. Akin is balancing working in the pupil referral unit and as a youth worker with his responsibilities as a father. Sammy is back in the UK and has just completed his masters in Law. On his return, he decided to stay clear of St Mary’s and now lives outside London. However, he has recently become a trustee of the St Mary’s Football Project and has agreed to do some workshops with the young people about how to turn their life around. He still makes music but has decided to focus on producing tracks with a Christian message. Gerald is still running a studio, working with both up and coming and more established artists while being a father to his four children. We still work regularly together on projects, with me helping him out with funding applications while he takes an interest in my research projects. The hope is that Marlon can follow in their footsteps quite quickly. Yet, his popularity as a drill artist means that maintaining a violent persona and engagement in street culture is ‘paying off’ for him, and his transition seems quite far off. Lenny’s commitment to him through regularly being on the estate to see how he is, getting him to football matches and ensuring he is around others who he has seen build lives not linked to street culture means that he has not been left on his own. For Marlon, while his music pays more than any legitimate alternative he may want to pursue, he will always be at greater risk of experiencing violence than others. The only hope is that 143

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he stays safe long enough to find a path that doesn’t make him a target for young people from rival areas. Recently he took the first step and in a call to Lenny asked how counseling works. Ricky’s key worker brought him to the park during a football session recently, and the hope is that he will become the latest of Lenny’s young people to join the coaching team. Ricky seemed a little sceptical about the idea but did seem overwhelmed by the warmth and care that the other coaches showed him. Aside from Marlon, Ayub is probably the person people are most concerned about. He is still at the age where street culture and status appear exciting, although the thrill comes with risks and evident anxieties. His matter of fact attitude to the threats he faces concerns those trying to support him who feel he may turn out worse than anyone who has gone before him. After dropping out of college, he reached out to Jonny, asking him for help finding work after hearing he was helping people get their CSCS card so they can get work in the construction industry. Lenny continues to be a constant; with the growth of his project, some have advised that he changes tack. For example, the football in the park now attracts people from much wider afield than St Mary’s. A funder recently paid for a consultant to help identify a growth and funding strategy with optimal cost to participation ratios. Although it made far more financial sense to focus on the elements of the project that were growing, Lenny has convinced the trustees to cap this activity and focus more on the estate. The current ambition is to find the money to provide additional support to the families rather than grow the number of those the project works with. This work does take its toll, and after some persuasion, Lenny is receiving counselling to help him process the loss he has experienced, including the deaths of seven young people he had been supporting. In her 80s, Dorothy is still organizing the holiday clubs, although it was noticeable this year that she delegated more work to other people due to feeling exhausted. Miche has gone from strength to strength and has recently recruited five people to be trustees of a local youth organization she is setting up with some young people from the estate. Although the project is in its infancy, her confidence to take this step shows just what is possible when given the proper backing. The hope is that Miche can build on the work of Dorothy and others and ensure that the young people have a local champion supporting them through what often proves to be a difficult and precarious transition to adulthood.

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159

Index 13 group  29, 56, 60, 71–​4, 102, 136 barbeque organized by  135 criminal activities  58 music videos and lyrics  73 street dealing  100

theory of practice  5 Brixton  12, 13, 90 community spirit in  20–​1 crime in  14–​15 riots in  15, 20

A Abdul (youth worker)  48, 91, 92 abusive sexual behaviour  64–​5 academization policy  17 Academy Trusts  17 Adal (young person)  41 adult on young person violence  105 adverse childhood experiences (ACEs)  10, 21, 116, 132 Akin (young person)  53, 56, 68, 69–​70, 71, 143 Alex (exec in a record label)  75, 80, 81 Ali (young person)  55 Amnesty International  19 Andell, P.  51, 90 Anderson, E.  4 anti-​social behaviour orders (ASBOs)  18 Anton (young person)  39, 40, 59, 61, 86, 91, 129–​30, 142, 143 Ashley (13 group member)  27, 56, 57, 60, 68, 74, 143 attention economy  75–​9 Ayub (young person)  55, 101, 102, 108, 109, 110, 111, 144

C cage football  94–​5, 131, 133, 139 see also St Mary’s Football Project Caribbean culture, association with youth crime  14 Caribbean migrants  13 Carol (local drama organization)  39 Centenary Hall  31–​2, 35, 84, 89 battles over the use of  87 costs of hiring  86 as an early years hub  126 for gang call-​in  91 management of  85–​6 Charis (resident volunteer)  25, 34, 41, 43, 44–​5, 46, 47, 49, 50, 65, 72 provision of activities for primary school children  95 and St Mary’s Estate youth project  36, 37, 39 Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service  118, 131 child criminal exploitation  97, 112 supporting young people at risk of  119–​21 child deprivation  134 Child Protection Plans  121 children  primary school age  84 protection of children at risk  132–​3 Children’s Services  120 Chris (young person)  108 Co-​operative Council Strategy  125 coercion  104 collective enforcement  94, 96 commissioned organizations, interactions with residents and key local people  139 Commonwealth Immigration Act (1962)  13 communal spaces  31, 33, 49 community flat (Our Place)  32, 33, 37, 41, 42, 48, 49, 58–​9, 134

B bail conditions  120–​1 barbeques, organized by the young people  8, 51, 60–​5, 135 BBC Radio 1Xtra  73, 74 Billy (resident volunteer)  27, 31, 32 Black criminality, myth of  12 Black culture, association with criminality  12, 14 ‘Black muggings’  14 Black on Black violence  6 Blair, Tony  18–​19 Bononno, R.  87 Bourdieu, P.  notion of practical relationship-​based social capital  34

160

index

community hall  9 see also Centenary Hall Community Initiative to Reduce Violence (CIRV)  115 community leadership  93 community safety  129 community spirit, in Brixton  20–​1 Connor (YOT worker)  104, 106, 109, 120 contextual safeguarding  10, 114, 121, 122, 129, 133 cooperative council  5, 135 coproduction  45–​6, 49 council services, to safeguard young people from violence and criminal exploitation  121 counselling sessions, group and individual  131 county lines operations  1, 10, 97, 102, 103, 104, 105, 110, 112, 119, 120, 137–​8 crime, in St Mary’s and Brixton  14–​15 criminal exploitation  102–​6 safeguarding from violence and  121–​4 criminal groups  63 criminal street culture  142 criminality  association of Black culture with  12, 14 myth of Black  12 Crown Prosecution Service (CPS)  80 cuckooing  102 custodial sentences  18 custody  139 custody diversion programme  125 Cynthia (Jamaican woman)  32, 33 D Darren (deputy director of youth services)  44 Darren (young person)  41, 59 David (young person)  28 debts  105, 137 Denise (young person)  39 Densley, J.  5, 51 Department of Education  17 deprivation  141 Devon (local authority integrated youth service team leader)  99 Dillon (young person)  101, 102, 107 Dorothy (resident volunteer)  24–​5, 27, 33, 38, 45, 46, 84, 126, 127, 140, 144 holiday play scheme  132, 133 provision of activities for primary school children  95 drill artists  9, 75, 137 drill music  9, 21, 67–​75, 137 drug dealing  1, 31, 53–​4, 65, 66, 137 outside London  103 recruitment hotspots  123 and robbery  53 as a self-​taught process  98–​9 Duggan, Mark  20 Dwight (LCT youth coordinator)  47

E E1S (Everyone’s a Snake) group  40, 69, 71, 73, 102, 136 early childhood development  125 early year’s partnership  141 easing in process  28, 101 Education, Department of  17 Educational Health Care Plan assessment  118–​19 Eli (young person)  57, 60, 71, 74, 98, 143 Elizabeth (resident committee)  25–​6, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 43, 45, 46 Emmanuel (young person)  57 Emre (young person)  28, 39, 41, 47, 68 Ending Gang and Youth Violence Policy  21 enforcement  22–​3 ethnicity  29 exploitation  120 exploitation screening questionnaires  121 Exploitation Team Around the Child (ETAC) process  121 exploitative dealing  104–​5 F familial risks  121 family court processes  121 Fatsis, L.  79 firearms cases  108 football  94–​5, 131, 133, 139 see also St Mary’s Football Project Form 696, music venues risk assessment  79 forum network  44 Francesca (hall coordinator)  86 Fraser, A.  51 friendship groups  29, 97 violence within  109 funding  126, 141 G gang analysis  4 gang branding  19 gang call-​ins  6, 90–​2 gang injunctions  79 gang intervention programmes  21, 36, 135, 138 gang members, levels of victimization of  98 Gerald (young person)  28–​9, 39–​40, 41, 67, 69, 70, 72, 143 music studio  47, 68 YouTube platform  76 Gilroy, P.  12, 20 Greater London Authority, Violence Reduction Units (VRUs)  21, 115 groups  13  see 13 group LSM (Lower St Mary’s)  see LSM (Lower St Mary’s) group guns  73, 108

161

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H Hall, Malcolm  44 Hall, Matt  85, 86 Hall, S.  20 Hani (young person)  64 Harding, S.  5, 51 holiday play scheme  87–​9, 95–​6, 132, 133, 140 housing families  123 housing team  92 I Ibe (young person)  55 Ife (young person)  37, 39, 41, 47–​8, 60, 91 Ilan, J.  5, 51, 79 immigration rules  13 informal guardianship  135, 141–​2 informal relationships  4 informal resident support  8 intergenerational isolation  63 intergenerational relationships  8, 135 intervention practices  23, 125, 128 isolated social environments  140 J Jamaica  13 Jamaican/​London resistance culture  12 Jamal (young person)  57, 58, 60, 71, 72, 73, 74 John (council youth worker)  31, 33 John’s Hut  31, 32, 33 Jonny (young person)  54, 100, 129, 130, 143, 144 K Kate (Jamaican mother)  27, 52–​3, 86, 87, 88, 89, 95 Kendrick (young person)  98–​9 Kenny (young person)  38, 76–​7, 94, 103, 105, 108, 137, 143 Kira (young mother)  64 knife crime  18, 98, 111 overview of  1–​2 victims of  107 knives, normalization in carrying of  107–​8 Kobe (young person)  38, 39, 40, 100, 106, 143 Kofi (residents’ committee)  39 Kwaku (young person)  59, 101–​2 Kwame (young person)  28, 39, 40, 43, 129 L Lambeth Community Trust (LCT)  44, 47, 50, 54, 85, 87, 127–​8, 135 Lambeth Council  Cooperative Commissioning Report  43 Cooperative Council Constitution  44

council interventions and evolution of violent street culture  36 Gangs Violence Reduction Unit  6 Made Safer for Young People Strategy  124 Tackling Violence Against Young People Strategy  124 Lambeth Education Services  103 Lambeth Local Authority  5, 134 antagonisms between residents and  45–​6 youth violence prevention strategy  96 Lammy Review  16 Lawrence, Stephen  16 learning difficulties  103, 118 Lefebvre, H.  87 Lenny (resident volunteer)  37, 38, 103, 125, 126–​7, 130–​1, 133, 139–​40, 142, 144 on county lines dealing  104 St Mary’s Football Project  26–​7, 94–​5, 96, 129 on Trevor’s murder  105 Leon (case manager)  118 Lianne (YOT case manager)  107, 110, 117, 118, 120 Link Up TV  77 Lionel (young person)  53, 54 Lisa (local authority gang and exploitation team)  106–​7 local authorities  121 Exploitation Team Around the Child (ETAC) process  121 programmes to address early years development  138 local drug markets  102, 137 local education authorities  17 local organizations  141 Localism Act (2011)  43 LSM (Lower St Mary’s) group  29, 76–​8, 105, 136 M McKay, H.D.  3 Macpherson, Lord  16 Macpherson Report  16 Marcus (young person)  102–​3 Marie (resident volunteer)  27, 31 Marlon (young person)  77, 81, 94, 100, 103, 105, 108, 143–​4 Matthew (young person)  101, 102, 128 Maureen (local mother)  38, 39 Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC)  93 memorials  57 Metropolitan Police  gang’s command  6 gangs matrix  19 Operation Trident  6 petition to YouTube to remove certain drill content  80 see also police

162

index

Miche (young person)  25, 36, 37, 64, 109, 110, 111, 132, 140, 144 and the play scheme  88, 133 on resilience programme  127, 128 Mickey (young person)  54, 88, 109, 110 Mixtape Madness  77 Modern Slavery Act (2015)  119, 139 Moise (young person)  38, 39, 40, 56 mugging  14 music studio  39–​40, 136 music videos  8, 69, 73, 136 to attract attention  136 income from  28 myth of Black criminality  12 N Nabir (young person)  52 National Crime Agency report (2019)  119 National Referral Mechanism (NRM)  119–​20, 139 neighbourhood crime  3–​6 networks, of young people  123 New Labour  16–​18 Nicholas (young person)  20–​1, 52, 80 north Brixton  90 O Ola (young person)  53, 54, 55, 56, 60, 70, 98–​9, 106 olders  25 Omar (Gangs Unit sergeant)  99, 108 online drill culture  82 online personas  79, 136–​7 online videos, criminalization of  82 Operation Ceasefire  90 Operation Shield  6, 84, 89–​94, 96, 124, 138 Operation Swamp 81  15, 22 Operation Trident  19 Our Place (community flat)  32, 33, 37, 41, 42, 48, 49, 58–​9, 134 P Pan London Housing reciprocal process  122 parents  interventions to empower parents to understand risks children face  137 parent champion projects  123 passing on values to their children  58 Park, R.E.  3 PCSOs (police community support officers)  91 peer development and resilience training programme  126–​7 peer friendship groups  97 peer on peer abuse  121 personal development activities  133 Pitts, J.  51 play scheme  87–​9, 95–​6, 132, 133, 140

police  crackdowns and criminalization  79–​81 at St Mary’s Estate  41 see also Metropolitan Police police discrimination  21 police gangs unit, on structure of drug dealing  99 police raids  41–​2 poverty  141 primary school children  95, 133 professional interventions  140 public health approach, to interventions  132, 138–​9 R racism  12, 22, 46, 134 recommendations  140–​2 relocation of young people and their families  122–​3, 137 remand, young people on  120 reoffending rates  118 resident network  135 residents  informal support from  8 interactions with commissioned organizations  139 professional involvement with critical services  84–​7 resilience programme  126–​8 resistance culture  13–​14, 22, 79 Ricky (young person)  107, 144 riots  1980 and 1981  15 August 2011  20 risks, individual  102–​6 rivalry, between groups  100 robbery, drug dealing and  53 S safe spaces, impact of providing young people with  116 Safer London  122 Safer Neighbourhood team  129 safety  116 anxieties around  112 St Giles Trust  92 St Mary’s Estate, South London  1–​2, 12–​13 built environment  30–​4 diversity of  29 neighbourhood crime  3–​6 neighbourhood research  2–​3 schools in  17, 30 young people  27–​9 St Mary’s Estate youth project  36–​9 St Mary’s Football Project  26–​7, 38, 94–​5, 96, 129, 139, 140, 143 St Mary’s Youth Club  31, 32 Sammy (young person)  57–​8, 100, 143

163

Dealing, music and youth violence

Sandberg, S.  51 Scarman, Lord  15 Scarman Report  22 schools  16–​17, 30 Scottish Violence Reduction Unit (SVRU)  114–​15 Serge (young person)  38, 39 Shaw, C.R.  3 Simon (youth worker)  48, 85, 86 Single Competent Authority (the National Crime Agency)  119 Single Regeneration Budget  16 social housing flats  30 social isolation  136, 141 social media  101, 104, 115, 123, 137 social services  117 Southwark Crown Court  90 specialist organizations  122 Spergel, I.A.  4 stay and play project  89 Stephen (clinical psychologist)  116–​17 Stevens, Colin  90–​1 stop and searches  16, 42 street culture  emergence of  52–​4 isolation and the entrenchment of violence  54–​6 survival focused  5 violent and criminogenic  8, 51 Stuart, F.  75, 76 summer play scheme  87–​9 support services, networking events to get young people to engage with  126 Susan (resident)  39 Suspected Person (SUS) laws  15 T Taylor Review  10, 114, 117 temporary housing  122 Territorial Support Group (TSG) policing  7 Toby (local authority exploitation team, case manager)  121–​2 Tom (young person)  40, 41 trauma-​informed approaches  116, 117, 139 trauma-​informed training programme  130 Trevor (young person)  29, 38, 76, 94, 105, 126, 137 Troubled Families and Ending Youth Violence policies  6 TSG (territorial support group)  42 Tyler (young person)  55, 59 U unemployment  15, 29 university  28, 71 V Vagrancy Act (1824)  15 Vinny (resilience programme)  127–​8

violence  adult on young person  105 Black on Black  6 Community Initiative to Reduce Violence (CIRV)  115 defensive and confrontational coping  131 desensitization to  110, 138 displayed in music videos  69 within friendship groups  109 involvement of youth in  142 normalization of  109 normalization and desensitization of  110–​11 safeguarding young people from criminal exploitation and  121–​4 vulnerability to exposure to  112 see also youth violence violence against a person offences  118 Violence Reduction Units (VRUs)  6, 21, 115, 138 violent online personas  70 VRUs (violence reduction units)  6, 21, 115, 138 W weapons  40 carrying of  107, 111, 142 types being seized by the police  108 weapons offences  60, 118, 138 weed dealing  53–​4 West Africa  58 Westwood, Tim  73 Whittaker, A.J.  51 Windrush Generation  13 Working Together to Safeguard Children (2018)  121 Y Yolanda (resident participation officer)  85 Yoshua (young person)  62, 123 YOT (Youth Offending Team)  104, 110, 117 young people  adult supervision of events organized by  66 barbeque organized by  51 evolution of young people’s culture after professional interventions  51 proposal for activities for  44–​5 safeguarding from violence and criminal exploitation  121–​4 tensions between parents and  57 Young Review  16 youth club  7, 31, 32 youth coop  44 youth criminality  association of Caribbean culture with  14 government policy to address  12 impacts of early years interventions on  126 Youth Justice Board  18, 73

164

index

youth justice system, child first approach to  117–​19, 132 Youth Offending Service  18 Youth Offending Team (YOT)  104, 110, 117 youth project, resident-​led  36–​9, 60 youth street cultures  136, 140, 141 youth support structures  34–​5 Youth Training Scheme  15 youth unemployment  15 youth violence  addressing the causes of  132–​3 commissioning of outsiders to tackle serious  129

early signs of  40–​3 efforts to address  1–​2 escalation of  65 and gangs branding  18–​22 local authority prevention strategy  96 offenders  98 perpetrators of  106 public health approach to tackle  114–​17 strategy  89 YouTube  71 Z zone of transition  3

165