Introduction

Under New Labour, the problem of anti-social behaviour (ASB) has become, and continues to be, a central policy issue. The introduction of a raft of new legislation to deal with this social problem has seen the creation of a variety of behaviour regulation instruments ranging from night curfews to the Anti-Social Behaviour Order (ASBO). However, alongside these new sanctions, one target group of such interventions is distinctly familiar: troublesome young people. Within the current political climate, youths identified as anti-social currently wear the mantle of society's contemporary folk devils. However, despite such symbolic prominence, what is striking is the near-total absence, in both official and more critical research, of the ‘anti-social’ youth perpetrator's perspective. This chapter draws upon the findings of an Economic and Social Research Council-funded exploratory pilot study that was undertaken in 2005 and draws upon in-depth interviews with two youths (both subject to ASBOs) in one locality. The interviews sought to explore the perception and impact of various anti-social behaviour interventions upon the respondents. After presenting the findings, this chapter concludes by advocating the importance of both acknowledging and listening to the ‘anti-social youth perpetrator perspective’ for the purposes of more holistic understandings of anti-social behaviour and the impact and consequences of its regulation.

Anti-social youth

‘Troublesome’ young people feature prominently in the current ASB agenda, from national policy rhetoric through to individual locales where ‘anti-social youth behaviour management [is] a priority in almost all local community safety strategies’ (Hughes, 2007: 126). Within both of these spheres, however, it has been argued that such youths occupy a very narrow yet specific role whereby they are seen primarily as a group from which communities need protecting (Hill and Wright, 2003; Squires and Stephen, 2005b; Hughes and Follett, 2006; Stephen, 2006). Such positioning consolidates the point whereby the problem of ASB is seen as synonymous with the problem of anti-social youth.

The broader consequence of this particular construction of the problem is that ‘Anti-social behaviour has become a convenient peg on which to hang generalised prejudices about young people and their activities which make restrictive policies popular’ (Burney, 2005: 67).