Revealed:
why it’s normal to be a violent young man
by Stephen Naysmith
http://www.sundayherald.com/35874
Sunday
Herald - 10th August 2003
Violent
young men are not the victims of social injustice, nor the product
of a failing education system. The violence they display is in fact
a normal expression of their masculinity, according to new research.
A study
examining which youths commit crime, and why, has found that violence
in young men is 'normal' and that early encounters with the police
may leave a lasting mark on children who are labelled as 'the usual
suspects' and cannot shift the tag as they grow up.
Meanwhile,
other 13-15 year olds are more likely to be left alone by the police,
including those who said they had been involved in crime.
A number
of striking conclusions can be drawn from the Edinburgh Study of
Youth Transitions and Crime's latest findings. They include:
Boys are
much more likely to be involved in violent offences - but this appears
to be part of "a normal expression of masculinity" for
teenagers.
Youths who
have committed offences are very likely to become victims of crime,
likewise youngsters who have had offences committed against them
are more likely to offend.
Girls are
less likely to be involved in violent offences, but those who are
could well become 'career' criminals, and suffer serious consequences.
Girls are
more likely to truant, especially as they get older, but better
verbal and negotiation skills may mean they come into less conflict
with authority.
Having a
girlfriend or boyfriend makes it more likely that young people will
get into trouble with the law.
Professor
David Smith, of the School of Law at Edinburgh University, said
that certain younger teenagers seemed to be targeted by the police
independently of their involvement in criminal behaviour.
Young people
who had come into 'adversarial' contact with the police by the age
of 12 were very much more likely to experience further police contact
in subsequent years, even if other factors such as offending, drug
use, underage drinking or social class were taken into account.
"The
status of being known to the police sucks young people into a spiral
of amplified contact," Prof Smith said. "It shows that
once young people have been pulled into the net and have been known
to police on a previous occasion as troublemakers it is incredibly
difficult to change that. Meanwhile those who have established a
'good name' to start with can get away with more."
The long-running
study of 4300 children who started secondary school in Edinburgh
in 1998 also calls into question Scottish Executive policy on youth
crime, Smith said, as it puts too much emphasis on 'victims' and
'offenders'.
In fact
they are often one and the same: one of the best indications that
a child will go on to offend aged 13-15 is if they have been a victim
of crime by the age of 12. Likewise, young teenagers are much more
likely to become victims of crime if they have committed offences
themselves.
"The
criminal justice system not only doesn't take account of this, it
is designed on the basis that victims and offenders are in entirely
contrasting categories. The dramatic idea of crime usually features
a deserving, wronged victim and a wicked offender who needs to be
punished. Unfortunately it is not as simple as that."
Explanations
for the findings may include the fact that young people tend to
group together, and steal from or assault one another, or it could
be because they are more likely to frequent risky environments,
such as nightclubs, Smith said.
The survey
confirms an established connection between gender and violent offences,
which are much more likely to be committed by boys. However, researchers
conclude that there is little obvious explanation for this. The
report's co-author Dr Lesley McAra said: "The study shows that
violent boys are very similar as people to those who are not, suggesting
that the phenomenon is a normal expression of masculinity for teenaged
youths. By contrast, violent girls are very different both from
other females and aggressive boys. They are much more likely to
be drug users, gang members, truants and from a low-class background."
Smith said
that other research had demonstrated that most adolescents give
up violent behaviour. "It is almost statistically normal, and
not that worrying. It's more unusual for girls to become involved
in violent offending - and those who do are more likely to become
persistent offenders - it is more of a pathology."
About 860
of the youths said the group they spent time with constituted a
'gang'. Of those, nearly 150 were in an organised gang, defined
by researchers as one with a group name, saying or sign. Members
of these were typically male, from broken families and lower- class
backgrounds. They were more impulsive, more riskful and more likely
to admit to being involved in criminal behaviour.
Truancy
was also an indicator of offending, but much more common among girls
than boys. Truants were likely to have come from areas of high deprivation,
or broken families.
The report
concludes that restorative justice and medi-ation projects based
on the principle of 'offender' and 'victim' must be rethought. It
also argues that skewed notions of 'suspicion' see some vulnerable
youngsters escape the attention of the youth justice system, and
calls for policy to give youths a bigger stake in their community.
