Dispersal Zones: another gimmick goes wrong
Over the summer, my estate has suffered an increase in what the government likes to call 'anti-social behaviour'. Gardens vandalised, a family racially harassed, a car burned out, bikes nicked, a rise in graffiti, and more besides.
Why? Partly because Hackney Council's incompetence forced our youth club to close for more than half a year. But the other main reason: a 'dispersal zone' on neighbouring Pembury estate. The police, supported by the Council, have got one of these court orders whereby coppers can disperse groups of people who are causing a nuisance on Pembury estate. So they leave the Pembury and cross the road to our estate. It's like having a leaky water pipe in your living room and redirecting it to your kitchen instead of fixing it.
There is a genuine problem with anti-social behaviour on the Pembury, probably because it's run-down and neglected and there is nothing for kids to do. It has around a thousand homes, but doesn't have a playground, so even toddlers have good cause to think that society doesn't care about them. The Pembury used to have a playground, but then Peabody, the landlord, built an office on it.
I don't see how this Dispersal Zone is going to solve the problem. I do, however, see loads of pitfalls - for example, dispersing groups of kids who are just minding their own business. And who do you reckon the police are more likely to disperse - a group of youngsters wearing hoodies, or a group of suits discussing the stock market?
And you have to wonder why the police even need this order. If groups of people are threatening or harming others, then the police already have enough power to deal with it. Threatening behaviour is an offence, you know. But I guess that stuff like collecting evidence and proving a case against someone is a little tiresome, so it's just that much easier to move them on - on to someone else's patch, that is.
A member of our Tenants' and Residents' Association committee wrote to our local councillors, and got a reply from one of them saying that he was very sorry to hear what was going on - and, er, that was about it.
The police? Well, they patrolled the estate in the early afternoon, rather than when any trouble was likely to take place. And when we asked them to do something useful - lock up the playground at night - they came up with some lame excuse as to why this was impractical.
I'll comment later on what our TRA is going to do about it. In the meantime, any suggestions are welcome.
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Our TRA's response
Here's the relevant extract from the minutes of last week's meeting:
Residents reported the following recent incidents:
• airgun pellet through a resident’s window
• resident threatened while watering communal gardens
• car burned out on Poulton Close/Spurstowe Road
• repeated destruction of plantings in playground
• tree broken
• wing mirrors stolen from car
• bikes stolen
• stones thrown at resident
• increased graffiti
• racist harassment of family
We believed that the immediate causes for the recent increase in harmful anti-social behaviour are:
• the closure of the youth club
• the ‘dispersal zone’ on the Pembury estate, which has simply displaced trouble onto our estate
We further noted that:
• the police patrolled our estate, but at the wrong time of day, and when we asked them to help lock up the playground at night, they refused
• the Pembury has a genuine problem with harmful behaviour, rooted in it being a run-down estate with poor facilities for children and young people
We agreed to:
• organise an event to get young people along to discuss the issue – perhaps organise a film show and/or invite Leon Black
• reject any proposal to extend the dispersal zone to this estate, as this would simply displace the problem to somewhere else
• initiate a discussion at the youth club (now reopened)
• encourage residents’ involvement in the Hackney Wolverines FC football sessions which will start on 23rd October
• use the Hackney Wolverines FC anti-drugs/guns campaign
• demand that the Youth Service, Council and/or Police make resources available to our estate to tackle this problem eg. extra youth club sessions, events etc
• write to the Gazette, pointing out the ‘downside’ of the Pembury disperal zone
• write to the Pembury TRA
• produce a notice for display around the estate urging residents to come together to defend our community
Helping young people to help themselves? Not Hackney Council!
There's an intersting article in the current (the first, actually) issue of Hackney's Better Homes newsletter (on page 12), about a young man's efforts to improve life for Pembury youngsters and the lack of support he has received.
In 2003, Toks Williams set up a football team called Pembury Knights. They play on Hackney Downs. He got support from the Park Ranger on Hackney Downs, who kept the pitch in good nick, but no support from Hackney Council.
He wants to see changing facilities on the Downs, and funding for kit, balls and training.
More generally, Toks calls for:
He wants to carry out a survey of young people's needs, but guess what? He can't get funding.
Some Suggestions
Janine, hope you are feeling as well as can be expected. I hadn't seen this before or would have replied with some ideas before now. Before I do, I was just thinking about having watched "Carry on Doctor" the other day, and the patients in hospital there for a couple of weeks, and the reality now of lose an eye and get sent home the next day.
Anyway, some ideas. Part of the problem is to see young people as some kind of amorphous mass, whci of course they are not. The police and most parts of the establishment whilst complaining about anti-social behaviour then normally proceed to come up with supposed solutions aimed not at the kids engaged in this kind of activity, but on the ones who are not. Generally, speaking the kids who go to school regularly, keep out of trouble etc. either spend most of the time in their own houses or their friends houses, or else already take part in some kind of activity like going to a youth club, scouts/guides etc. Simply offering to provide more of such facilities, whilst a good thing in itself, offers nothing to the kids that are not part of this milieu.
Again part of the problem with the approach to these kids is an attitude of wanting to control. Myself and another Councillor who had kids of a similar age to mine recognising that a lot of kids, and particularly teenagers, just want somewhere where they can hang out without someone watching their every move, somehwere with a light, somewhere to sit in a bit of shelter, where they can basically do what they want without it affecting anyone else proposed building some solid open buildings with a roof, and a vandal proof light in places away from houses and other facilities, in fact in places where often the kids congregate anyway. We also said that these places should not be supervised or the subject of routine police visits.
Such teen shelters are not expensive to build, and all you need then is a suitable location. My experience though is that whilst the police don't mind the idea of teen shelters, they want them somewhere visible, somewhere where they can control what is going on. They complain the kids might be smoking dope etc. - as though they wouldn't find someewhere to do that anyway. And of course that destroys the whole point of it.
The main problem with providing other things such as Youth clubs is that their is a considerable cost in having youth workers supervise them. But as I have suggested elsewhere every community has a school (and why don't we make the local library the school library so that people use the facilities of the school as their facilities). A TRA could use the school at night time, holidays etc. to run its own activities for kids, cementing a greater bond between adults and kids in the community, and probably resulting in a lot less vandalism of school property. Of course as I said elsewhere this does have the consequence of having to deal with the issue of whether working class self organisation of this type contravenes our other principles on the substitution of jobs - in this case youth workers. My views is its not substituting if its not already being provided, and a strong community confident from such organising will be better placed to demand more outh workers etc. anyway.
By providing opportunities for the large number of kids that want to be involved in some kind of organised activity, and providing facilities for those kids who are not interested in that for whatever reason, those who just want to be involved in anti-social behaviour and petty criminal activity become more isolated and easier to deal with. First of all they are denied a pool to swim in of other kids that might be influenced (let alone that the kids who are the main victims of such elements are likely to have a safer environment), secondly peer pressure will make them less powerful, and finally they will be more identifiable.
My feeling is that where possible the community should then try to deal with such elements, being sympathetic to their problems and trying to help resolve them, but also using its own resources to limit their anti social activities.
But we also have to remember that kids are kids and sometimes they do things that from the outside seem frightening, but in fact are not.
I remember when I was a young teenager we used to play Rallyo which is basically like tick but involves two teams. In our fairly small village their would be anything up to fifty of us, which if we gathered like that now would almost certainly have somebody ringing the police, and when a dozen of us would come haring down the back streets chasing after someone it must have looked pretty alarming to some old lady who wondered what the hell was going on.
But that's all about communication. If people understand what is happening what appear to be threatening events can be recognised as completely harmless.
Arthur Bough