The Joseph Rowntree Foundation's online public consultation and the specially commissioned discussions with socially excluded and disadvantaged groups – described in the two previous chapters – yielded a diverse range of views about contemporary social evils. Although people's perspectives ranged widely, a number of themes emerged repeatedly that related to moral concepts, such as individualism, declining communal values and greed, as well as more tangible problems like poverty, family breakdown and drug and alcohol misuse. Most – although not all – of these were given renewed emphasis during a subsequent phase of the consultation project, which investigated people's direct experiences of living with the social evils that had been identified and sought people's views on potential solutions.

Experiences of social evils

In this second phase of the research conducted by NatCen (National Centre for Social Research), 60 people from socially disadvantaged groups took part in three workshops and two discussion groups held across England, Scotland and Wales. The sample profile of participants captured a broad spread of characteristics (see Mowlam and Creegan, 2008). The aim was to avoid further detail on what constitute ‘social evils’, in favour of finding out how people were coping with these issues from day to day, and obtaining their views on possible solutions for dealing with them.

Social evils were clearly interconnected in participant's day-to-day lives. For example, among the young people who were living in a hostel, violence was cited as one of the main causes for their own family breakdown and they described how it had often stemmed from their parents’ drug and alcohol misuse. Age also played an important role in shaping views and experiences. This was particularly evident in relation to young people and a decline in values. Older people tended to associate crime and violence with young people with a strong sense of fear and anxiety. Young people did not always make the same link, instead describing how they felt discriminated against and stereotyped by older people. Another striking finding was the extent to which participants spoke about the constraining forces of poverty – including a view that people resorted to crime as a means of ‘getting by’ and making their way in the world.