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‘It just feels like it's always us’:young people, peer bereavement andcommunity safetyCarlie Goldsmith aa Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences , Kingston University ,London , UKPublished online: 01 Mar 2012.
To cite this article: Carlie Goldsmith (2012) ‘It just feels like it's always us’: young people,peer bereavement and community safety, Journal of Youth Studies, 15:5, 657-675, DOI:10.1080/13676261.2012.665442
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‘It just feels like it’s always us’: young people, peer bereavement andcommunity safety
Carlie Goldsmith*
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Kingston University, London, UK
(Received 26 September 2011; final version received 7 February 2012)
This article draws from ethnographic research that examined the impact ofneighbourhood based community safety policies on young people living in socialhousing in the south of England. It begins with a brief examination of what localcommunity safety practitioners considered the primary crime and disorder‘problem’ on the estate � youth ‘anti-social behaviour’. It then shows that themost significant generator of fear and insecurity amongst young peoplethemselves was the sudden, and often violent, deaths of peers. This articleexamines the extent of the peer bereavements that punctured the lives of theyoung people in Hillview and demonstrates that these experiences left themfeeling profoundly vulnerable and acutely fearful of their own safety and for thesafety of friends and family.
Keywords: anti-social behaviour; safety; bereavement; community
Introduction
Over the past two decades young people in general, and poor young people in
particular, have been constructed in policy and political terms as ‘a risk’, to the
cohesion of, and quality of life in, local communities rather than ‘at risk’ themselves
(Brown 2005, Burney 2005, Squires 2006, Squires and Stephen 2005, Stephen 2006,
2009). Criminal justice legislation introduced by the former New Labour govern-
ments, including the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and the Anti-Social Behaviour
Act 2002, reflected this thinking and provided local authorities, community safety
practitioners and the police with a range of new interventions, such as Anti-Social
Behaviour Orders1, Acceptable Behaviour Contracts2 and Dispersal Orders3, which
were designed to stop and prevent future ‘anti-social’4 and/or criminal behaviour and
thus make ‘communities’ safer (Home Office 1997, 2003, Respect Task Force 2006).
These interventions have been subject to extensive and sustained academic critique
by commentators who argued, amongst other things, that these further excluded and
criminalised already vulnerable and marginalised young people (Goldson 2001,
Stephen and Squires 2003, Squires and Stephen 2005, Squires 2006, Stephen 2006,
2009, Goldson and Yates 2008). There nevertheless remains little academic research
focused on young people’s perceptions of the risks they face in their communities,
and the strategies they use to negotiate dangers they may be faced with, in their
everyday lives (Squires and Goldsmith 2010).
*Email: [email protected]
Journal of Youth Studies
Vol. 15, No. 5, August 2012, 657�675
ISSN 1367-6261 print/ISSN 1469-9680 online
# 2012 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2012.665442
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In contrast, the ethnographic research from which the findings presented in this
article are drawn, explicitly and intentionally prioritised the views, experiences, and
perspectives of young people living on the Hillview5 estate, an area which has
suffered long term and acute social and economic deprivation. Theoretically it is
anchored in the body of published academic literature that has sought to understand
and explain the impact on marginal social groups, crime and crime control in western
industrialized countries of economic restructuring and the significant changes to
social, cultural and political life this has precipitated (Garland 1996, 2000, 2001,
Young 1999, Lea 2002, Bauman 2004, 2005, Wacquant 2008, 2009). In particular,
this research was interested in exploring empirically the idea that the forms and
patterns of deprivations young people suffer in contemporary western societies are
new and distinctive, and, furthermore, what role, if any, crime control policies play in
processes of exclusion.
The primary aims of the research were, therefore, to examine the impact that
community safety policies and strategies deployed in the neighbourhood had on the
lives of young residents, and, more broadly, how young people experienced
deprivation, exclusion and crime. The research produced a range of significant
insights into the lived realities of young people living in Hillview, however, this article
focuses on one of the key themes that emerged from the data generated with them:
experiences of multiple peer bereavement, and how such experiences had a significant
impact upon their subjective feelings of safety and security in the neighbourhood.
Accounts show that it was not the loss of a friend that stimulated these feelings, but
the repetition of premature deaths concentrated amongst young males between the
ages of 16 and 24 years; deaths that occurred in sudden, unexpected and often violent
circumstances on, or near, the streets of the estate and/or in view of peers. It is
concluded that, that multiple peer bereavement experiences in these circumstances
made these young people feel personally unsafe, fearful for themselves and/or male
friends and family, and stirred powerful emotions of isolation and exclusion. This
article argues that for some of the young participants in this research, feeling unsafe
was not a temporary state, but one embedded in their everyday lived experience.
Research methods
The findings presented in this article were drawn from ethnographic research
conducted over an 18 month period between 2006 and 2008, which explored the
impact of community safety policies and strategies implemented in Hillview between
1999 and 2006 on young people. The research was primarily based at the Union
Club, a grassroots youth organisation located in Hillview, which was established by a
small group of parents in 1999 as a safe space for children and young people between
the ages of 11 and 25 years. The Union Club was open between nine o’clock in the
morning and three o’clock in the afternoon and then re-opened at six thirty and
closed at nine o’clock in the evening five days per week. Throughout the fieldwork
period as much time as possible was spent at the Union Club observing, speaking to,
and participating in a range of activities with children, young people and their
families. Also the work of Union Club staff members, representatives of the many
and varied outside statutory and voluntary sector agencies that provided services at
the Union Club, including Connexions and the Primary Care Trust, was observed.
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Over the fieldwork period 60 young people from two age grades participated in
interviews and two focus groups. Thirty-seven boys and girls between the ages of 14
and 17 years, known collectively in this research as ‘The Kiddies’ (‘kiddie’ being a
local term used by young people to describe a young person), most of whom were
recruited at the Union Club, and had lived on the estate as community safety
strategies were developed and implemented. Twenty-three young men and women in
their twenties, known as ‘The Soldiers’, a self-employed label they used to describetheir role in the collective effort to provide security against the criminal and social
harms they experienced6, who had grown-up on the estate in the 1990s and thus prior
to the establishment of community safety policies. This group were recruited through
personal networks that pre-dated this research which were a consequence of my own
long-term relationship with the Union Club as a volunteer and former resident.
Adopting a comparative approach was important for this research as it facilitated an
analysis of the impact(s) of community safety policies and strategies ground in the
lived experiences of young people across time.
In addition to this observations were conducted at the Neighbourhood Crime
Prevention Forum (NCPF)7 and at a group for new mothers aged between 14 and 19
during the fieldwork period. A significant amount of time was also spent using local
cafes, shops, pubs and other community facilities. Lastly, interviews undertaken with
a selection of local community safety practitioners, youth workers and members of
the Safer Neighbourhood Policing Team (SNPT).The ethical considerations of this research, and the ethical dilemmas that emerged
throughout, were complex and it is not within the scope of this article to address
these in detail (for a full discussion see Goldsmith 2011). Decisions about ethics were
approached, however, from the view of the general underpinning ethos of the research
overall which was to prioritise the views and perspectives of young people. Voluntary
informed consent ‘consent that is given freely, without threat or undue inducement’
(Sieber 1992, p. 5) was, therefore, negotiated directly with all research participants,
including those who under the age of 18. Interviews were unstructured and those with
‘The Kiddies’ and ‘The Soldiers’ began with the same question (or an appropriate
version of it) ‘could you tell me what it’s like to live in Hillview?’ This enabled
participants the freedom to raise and discuss what they felt was important to them
and have control over the interview from the beginning. All participants chose a
pseudonym for the purposes of the research and other names were changed to protect
the anonymity of the individuals and neighbourhood. A Research Advisory Group,
which comprised of six Union Club members, was established at the beginning of the
fieldwork and met approximately once every six weeks throughout its duration. In
these meetings emerging themes from the research were debated and discussed andproblems shared and solutions negotiated, and the advisory group were central to
important decisions made during the fieldwork and beyond.
At the end of the fieldwork the data included a research diary, interview and
focus group transcripts and a variety of documentary sources including minutes from
the NCPF. Line by line coding was conducted manually with the interview and focus
group data and this was organised using MS Word. Following the advice of Charmaz
and Mitchell (2001) the observation data was coded in larger parts using whole
scenarios and events. Codes were kept as active and specific as possible to allow for
better analysis and coded data was compared across the data-sets, analysed and
theoretical categories developed. The volume and variety of data coupled with the
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often extremely sensitive and difficult content made the analysis of the data one of
the biggest challenges of the research. This was completely unanticipated at the
beginning of the process, which was ultimately driven forward by a desire to
disseminate the unique insights into the lives of young people who emerged from it.
The Hillview estate
Built in the 1930s as part of the national slum clearance8 effort and extensively re-
developed in the 1970s and 1980s, the Hillview estate is a small area of social housing
located on the periphery of a city in the south of England. Home to approximately
5000 families, the 2001 Census shows residents of this neighbourhood are
predominately white and working class and very are likely to rent their homes froma social landlord, either Local Authority or Housing Association9. Mainly, the estate
itself consists of single unit homes and low rise blocks of flats that are built outwards
from a main road that runs from top to bottom through the middle of the estate.
The estate has a high concentration of young residents compared to other areas
locally with 24% of the population being under the age of 18 years. Levels of
educational attainment at the age of 11 and 16 years are the lowest in the area and
some of the lowest nationally, in 2009 for example only 45% of 11 year olds reached
the minimum standard in English set by the Department for Children, Families andSchools, compared to 75% in England. A trend that continues at the age of 16 when
in the same year 15.2% of young people gained five A�C GCSE’s10 (including
English and Maths) compared with 50.2% in England. Official figures also show that
the Hillview estate is in the top 4% most economically and socially deprived areas in
England and Wales, a decline since 2007.
Hillview has a reputation for crime and disorder, which local authority reports,
local history publications and resident biographies, document stretches back to when
the estate was first built and occupied by families formerly resident in the city centreslums. Its peripheral geographical location means it is very isolated and unless you
live in the neighbourhood, or work at one of the public sector buildings on the estate,
which include a primary school and health centre, there is no need to go there.
Hillview is considered by people from other parts of the city as the dangerous place
in the locale, one inhabited by disorganised and ‘risky’ people. Being a young person
who lives in Hillview carries with it a heavy burden of stigma and participants felt
strongly that members of the public, teachers and employers discriminated against
them because of where they lived. It was also the case, however, that Hillview’s‘reputation’ extended to other estates in the city and social housing tenants living in
other deprived areas in the city were keen to avoid the estate. This was illustrated by
the ‘No Hillview’ instruction routinely found on advertisements in the local
newspaper and Free-Ad magazine requesting social housing transfers11.
In 1999 Hillview was designated part of an area of priority urban renewal, and in
2000 a New Deal for Communities12 (NDC) initiative was established. A key part of
the regeneration remit was to address issues of crime and disorder to create a ‘safer
Hillview’, and in line with the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, a resident CommunitySafety Team (CST)13 was located on the estate. Closed Circuit Television Cameras
were installed, NDC money was used to fund a SNPT14, traffic calming measures were
implemented, and, in 2005 41 pedestrian alleyways were gated. Running alongside
these situational measures was the implementation of attempts to tackle Anti-Social
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Behaviour (ASB) and targeted interventions were used against those, predominately
children and young people, identified as ‘at risk’ of perpetrating criminal or ‘anti-
social’ behaviour. By the time the fieldwork started these community safety policies
and strategies had been implemented on the estate for nearly seven years.
Defining ‘the problem’
Young people were considered the threat to social order on the estate by community
safety practitioners and SNPT officers interviewed for this research. This position
was explained by practitioners using one, all, or a combination of the following: that
the behaviour of young people was the primary topic of discussion at the monthly
NCPF; that the majority of reports received by community safety officers fromresidents concerned allegations of ASB involving young people; and that young
people, particularly groups of young people in public space, were responsible for
generating fear amongst residents. Lastly, and echoing Squires and Stephen’s (2005)
‘pounds and pence’ analogy of ASB policy, it was considered that offending by adults
had been effectively ‘dealt with’ by the CST in the early years of enforcement activity
in the neighbourhood and that, in the words of the CST manager, ‘offending by
adults isn’t a problem on the estate’.
Observations at the NCPF over a nine month period confirmed that discussionsabout, and reports of, alleged youth ASB dominated meetings. The six residents who
attended NCPF regularly as Tenants and Residents Association (TRA) representa-
tives for the blocks of sheltered housing accommodation located in the north of the
estate, practitioners including: representatives from the CST, youth and library
service, and SNPT officers spent a great deal of time focused on behaviours
perpetrated, or allegedly perpetrated by young people which were described by them
as ‘anti-social’. Between September 2006 and May 2007 this included: young people
‘hanging around’, underage smoking, street drinking, noise nuisance, fire setting,vandalism, stone and brick throwing, illegal use of mini motors, and ball playing in
restricted areas. ‘ASB talk’ frequently centred on concerns about the perceived misuse
or illegitimate use of public space by young people in the neighbourhood. ‘Youth
ASB’ was explained and understood in these public forums as a consequence of
either irresponsible parenting and/or ‘out of control’ youth who lacked ‘respect’.
Interviews with community safety practitioners and SNTP officers showed that
this group saw their primary role as one of the effective management of ‘anti-social’
or potentially criminal children and young people through the use of a range ofinterventions considered by them to offer a balance of enforcement and support
including Acceptable Behaviour Contracts (ABCs) (often with an attached parent
training requirement), Anti-Social Behaviour Order (ASBO) Injunctions15, and
ASBOs. Practitioners reported that core to their work was the investigation of youth
ASB incidents which required them to gather intelligence, prepare contracts if
necessary, make referrals, supervise young people subject to interventions and
monitor their progress. In addition practitioners were required to monitor and
evaluate the effectiveness of this work in terms of rates of ASB and recorded crimeon the estate. The interviews showed that practitioners were prevention focused and
therefore discussed young people in terms of the potential threat this group posed to
the order of the estate. What was missing was any acknowledgement that, as a
resident population, young people should also be beneficiaries of community safety
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policies and strategies and furthermore that they might have both their own views
and experiences of crime and disorder in the neighbourhood and face specific
problems or forms of criminal or social harm. This was illustrated repeatedly by the
difficulties practitioners and SNPT officers had when asked about the work they
undertook that addressed young people as potential victims, rather than perpe-
trators, of crime and disorder, as this extract shows:
INT: ‘What sorts of crime prevention work do you do with young people?’
CS Off: ‘What do you mean?’
INT: ‘Do you run workshops with young people about keeping safe or have youproduced any sorts of other material that helps them avoid situations wherethey might be victims of crime?’
CS Off: ‘Er. [pause] No. [pause] Well the YISP [Youth Inclusion and SupportProgramme]16 workers do that. We don’t deal with that side of things.’
What is clear from this data is that this community safety practitioner, seven years
after the introduction of community safety policies and strategies on the Hillview
estate, did not consider it part of their role to address young people’s safety and/or
victimisation. Fieldnotes made at the time show that this practitioner appeared
‘genuinely surprised’ when asked this question and ‘lacked certainty’ in the answer
given. The YISP was a limited programme, working only with 50 young people
across the whole NDC area considered most likely to offend, and its primary remit
was to prevent the onset of offending amongst this group not work with young
people on the estate more generally about issues of crime and safety.
This position disregards the disproportionately high levels of criminal victimisa-
tion experienced by young people (Anderson et al. 1994, Aye Maung 1995, Hartless et
al. 1995, Wood 2003, Roe and Ashe 2008, Millard and Flatley 2010) that it has been
shown is further concentrated amongst children and young people in areas of multiple
disadvantage (Turner et al. 2006), including those resident in peripheral housing
estates (Deakin 2006). Similarly it overlooks the broader threats to the safety of young
people it has been shown can cluster in areas of disadvantage including ‘a heightened
exposure to risk in the sense of both environmental hazards and diminished life
chances’ (Turner et al. 2006, p. 451). It is not being argued here that those tasked with
creating a ‘safer’ Hillview deliberately excluded the needs of young residents, but
nevertheless it was the case that ‘doing’ ‘community safety’ on the estate did not
include an engagement with the views, experiences and perspectives of young people.
Despite community consultation, with an emphasis on the engagement of ‘hard
to reach’ groups, being a statutory requirement of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998,
this can at least, in part, be attributed to the failure to engage young people in
Hillview about crime and disorder issues. Community safety practitioners did not
visit the Union Club over the course of the fieldwork. Similarly, The Youth Forum,
who, as part of my role at the Union Club I worked with for over a year, were also
not asked for their views on crime and disorder in the neighbourhood during this
time. Equally and, as already shown, the NCPF, that took place once a month on a
weekday morning, was attended predominately by adult practitioners and TRA
representatives and not young people. Young people who participated in this
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research claimed never to have been asked about their views on local crime and
disorder issues and all of the examples of consultation given by practitioners were
processes which targeted adults.
It is hard not to conclude that the gulf between young people and practitionerscontributed to the construction of young people as ‘the problem’, but it also meant that
the issues that were of concern to young people were entirely absent from spaces where
community safety policies and strategies were discussed, developed and implemented.
However, this is not unique to Hillview, as research has identified that consultation
with young people on crime and disorder has not been widespread (Mason 2000) and,
despite their statutory requirement, has been hindered by inadequate attempts by
agencies to engage young people in consultation processes (Jones and Newburn 2001).
An early NACRO (1999) report concluded that young people are not viewed by thosewith a responsibility for community safety as part of the ‘community’ and Mason
(2000) notes that the emphasis on youth offending reduction, rather than youth safety,
in much local practice places young people outside of consultation processes. A more
explicitly critical perspective on this is offered by Jones and Newburn (2001) who argue
that young people are intentionally excluded from consultation processes because
agencies want to avoid the issues they raise.
From a community safety management perspective not consulting with young
people has certain advantages but, as this article will now illustrate, also furthercompounds the vulnerability of poor young people to arguably the most devastating
form of social harm, premature death.
‘Our friends are always dying’
Bereavement, defined as ‘the process of losing a close relationship through death’
(Ribbens-McCarthy 2007, p. 31) has not been previously identified as a contributory
factor to feeling unsafe and/or insecure in poor neighbourhoods despite recognition
that young people living in such areas are disproportionately exposed to a range of
social and criminal harms (Nayak 2003, Deakin 2006, Turner et al. 2006).Throughout the fieldwork for this research, however, the premature death of young
males from accidents, suicide, drugs and murder were a surprising but central issue in
the research. The primary site of observation, The Union Club, was established
following the fatal stabbing of 16 year old Ray Peterson in 1999 and its purpose, to
provide young people with a safe space, grew from that tragic event and represents a
collective, community response to it. The management and most of the staff at The
Union who were instrumental in setting up the Club after Ray’s death, or were his
friends or contemporaries at the time, saw the Union at the simplest level as a lastingmemorial to Ray. It meant that Ray, his life and more specifically the impact of his
death, continued to play a key part in the organisation. In one of the first research
visits to the Union it was noted:
A picture of Ray sitting casually with his hands crossed in front of him, a big smile onhis face and cap perched on his on his head hung at the entrance to the building and wason The Union website. [fieldnotes 6 July 2006].
In addition to this, two other young men in their early twenties, Omar and Michael,
lost their lives as access to the Union Club was being negotiated in 2006. Tiny, aged
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22, one of the first interviewees in the research was fatally stabbed and murdered in
the summer of 2007 and towards the end of the fieldwork two more young men, one
aged 16 and one aged 18, died prematurely as the result of suicide and a fatal car
accident involving the police. Consequentially accounts of loss and bereavement,
both new and old, saturated the data generated with ‘The Kiddies’ and ‘Soldiers’.
‘The Soldiers’ reported multiple peer bereavement experiences that involved the
premature deaths of, on average, eight young people their own age who were
considered by them as part of their immediate social circle since the late 1990s. These
experiences had continued right throughout the period, when community safety
policies and strategies were being developed and implemented in the neighbourhood.
Tiny, eight months prior to his own murder, talked at length about his own peer
bereavement experiences during interview. This discussion was prompted by him
pointing out a photograph of Omar, who had died five months earlier that was on
display next to his television:
INT: ‘How many friends have you lost?’
TINY: [pause] ‘Ray, he was murdered when I was nearly sixteen, just over a year laterCraig died of a heroin overdose and then Mick drove off a cliff and toppedhimself. [pause] Smithy got banged [knocked] out that night by some geezer ina club and died. These are all kiddies I went to school with. Now Omar andMichael. It just feels like it’s always us. Our friends are always dying. We wereadding up how many funerals we’d been to of friends who were our age andthere were tons but none of them died of cancer or shit like that, not that Idon’t think that would be hard because it would but I think it might be easierto deal with but with us its murder, drugs, fighting and shit like that.
This extract gives some sense of the unending wave of bereavement experiences he
had experienced, loss after bereavement and bereavement after loss. Figures that
estimate how prevalent peer bereavement experiences are amongst young people are,
however, ‘elusive’ (Ribbens McCarthy 2007, p. 16), so an assessment of how the scale
of peer bereavement identified in this work compares to the experiences of other
young people is difficult. The only study that attempted this in Britain showed that
10% of a sample of 1746 11�16 year olds reported that they had experienced a ‘close
friend’ who had died (Harrison and Hartington 2001). Clearly the extent of the loss
presented here is much higher; however, qualitative work that has focused on
‘marginalised’ young people living in challenging communities shows that bereave-
ment can be a significant part of life on the edges of society (Johnston et al. 2000,
Jones 2002, Webster et al. 2004). It is argued here that it was not just the number of
peer bereavements ‘Soldiers’ experienced that was significant but also the cause and
concentration of death. As Tiny highlights in the aforementioned extract, his friends
did not die as a result of disease or illness but, akin to research conducted on peer
bereavement in the USA (LaGrand 1985, Podell 1989, Schachter 1991, Ringler and
Hayden 2000), were the consequence of different forms of social and criminal harm;
in the words of Tiny, ‘murder, drugs, fighting and shit like that’.
Premature death in Hillview was gendered and all of the deaths reported by
‘Soldiers’ were of young men between the ages of 16 and 25. This presents a challenge
to the dominant representation of young men who live in socially and economically
challenging neighbourhoods as perpetrators of crime and instead alerts us to arguably
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the worst form of social harm, premature death. The vulnerability concentrated
amongst this group that this research exposes is not unique to Hillview as other
statistical and research evidence makes clear. Young men between the ages of 15 and
25 are more at risk from dying as a result of accidents, violence and self harm than
young women (ONS 2009), but this is a longer term trend. Dorling’s (2008) analysis of
murder in Britain shows that over the last 30 years the chances of being murdered are
significantly higher if you live in the poorest 10% of neighbourhoods, particularly for
young men between the ages of 15 and 25. Furthermore epidemiologists calculate that
the risk of accidental death (Rezaeian et al. 2005) and suicide (Hawton et al. 2001,
Rezaeian et al. 2005) is greater amongst males in socio-economically deprived areas.
It was not the purpose of this research to examine what are the inevitably highly
complex psycho-social roots of such a concentrated and distinct pattern of harms
and so any contribution to understanding these are limited. It is important to note,
however, that the young people who participated in this research were clear that they
considered themselves active agents in their own lives who were able to make choices
and were responsible for their own actions. Indeed, one of the striking things about
the views of this group, ‘The Kiddies’ in particular, was the fluency with which they
operated the language of personal responsibility.
Individual choices, whilst significant, must, however, be understood as part of the
broader social and economic context of young people’s lives. The pivotal role of
unequal and unjust social structures on trends in premature death rates of poor boys
and young men is highlighted in a study conducted on behalf of the Transition to
Adulthood Alliance17. This report states:
. . .moving from childhood and adolescence into young adulthood marks an importantthreshold in anyone’s life. In England and Wales, it also marks an increased incidence ofdeath. This increased incidence is not distributed equally. It affects males much morethan females. It affects the poor far more than the rich. These increased risks and theirdistribution are determined by social structures. This pattern holds internationally(Garside 2010, p. 13).
In the next section of this article the impact of such vulnerability and how it translates
into different constellations of fear and insecurity for males and females is examined
and discussed. Before this, however, this article will examine two of the consequences
of this lived reality, the repetition of bereavement and the proximity of death.
During the interviews ‘Soldiers’ discussed the psychological impact of bereave-
ment and it is clear in these accounts that one of the key challenges faced by them
was the difficulties repeat peer bereavements, as opposed to individual events, posed.
Female ‘Soldiers’ described the psychological and emotional damage such events
caused was at least, in part, made more difficult because of the repetitive reality of
these experiences, as Simone (23) articulated:
SIMONE: ‘I don’t think we’ll ever really be the same from what’s happened [multiplepeer bereavements]’
INT: ‘What makes you say that?’
SIMONE: ‘How you feel. [pause] Not getting over it. . .or thinking you’re getting over itand then it happening again. I think when it happens one after the other you
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don’t get a chance to properly make sense of it and get back on with your life.Look at Luke [a friend]. He got depression, left his job and wouldn’t go outthe house after Omar and then Michael. His dad took him away becausethey were so worried about him. But really most of them haven’t even gotover Ray’.
Simone paints a picture of young people floored by bereavement and struggling to
get back up, only to be knocked over again. ‘Soldiers’ went to work, looked after
families, had active social lives but observations of the night of Tiny’s murder not
only give insight into the powerful emotions a bereavement stirred, but also shows
that at the core of his distress was the fact that this experience had happened again,
not just that it had happened at all:
The room was crowded with people littering the sofas and the floor but the room wasdark. Only the light from the kitchen spilled in to show the blank, pale and sometimestear stained faces of ‘The Soldiers’. Smallsy got up and manoeuvred his 6ft 2inch frameonto the exposed wooden floor in the centre of the room. He started to pace. ‘It’shappened AGAIN, fuckin’ bastard. AGAIN’ he shouted. He started banging his headwith his hands. ‘Shit. This is not even FUNNY’. Agitated he took big gulps of smoky airinto his lungs. Then the tears came in a burst and he just stood crying. He lookedaggressive, furious and defeated all at the same time [fieldnotes July 2007].
It became apparent on the same night that although Tiny’s murder did not happen on
the estate, ‘Soldiers’ had been present in the minutes immediately after his death. Being
cheek by jowl with death was not an uncommon experience for ‘Soldiers’ who described
time and again being present at, or near, the death of a peer. The extract which follows,
taken from the interview with Steve who was 25 at the time illustrates this:
I saw him [Ray] laying on the ground and the ambulance men were working on him,y’know trying to stop the bleeding but he was already dead just on the street [pause] Tilthe day I die that image will be in my brain and I’ll always remember everything aboutthat night. I was gutted mate I tell you. It was like I couldn’t believe what happened. Wellwe all were. We took all our duvets up to the spot [where he died] and just wouldn’t leave.We sat there, the lot of us, in the pissing hard of rain for a week and then eventually themums got us all to go home but I think of that as the beginning of what a lot of us havebeen through. [long pause] It was the first time I’d ever known anything like that.
There has perhaps been a certain level of immunity against such horrors in a society
that is used to seeing images of distressed young people amassing around a flower
strewn inner city street corner, but the data that has been presented thus far gives a
visceral insight into what this actually means for young people themselves. Partly this
is that young people do bare witness to the deaths of their friends on the streets,
usually the familiar and well-walked streets of their own neighbourhood. To other
young people, who live in more affluent neighbourhoods, these kinds of experiences
would be alien and unknown, but it is argued here that they represent a specific
condition of life endured by some young people who are marginalised and excluded
from society because of their socio-economic deprivation. They are an additional
burden to lives already marked by poverty, discrimination and exclusion. Further-
more, as this article will now show, they have long term consequences for young
people’s sense of safety and security.
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‘It’s like. A fear’
Repeated experiences of the successive loss of young, vital friends instilled sheer
exhaustion in ‘the Soldiers’ and the profound inner conflict triggered by these
bereavements was equally evident in the data. Alongside this, however, was a
complicated fear for the future, for their own future and a startling recognition of
feelings that there might be a real and present threat to their own security and that of
those closest to them. This turmoil was best expressed by Gary as he talked about his
experiences of peer bereavement during interview:
GARY (25): ‘I can’t bury another mate. I don’t think I’ve got it in me to go to anotherfuneral and it’s my mate being put in the ground. . .and everyone’s bawlingtheir eyes out and you’re watching it but you’re a part of it as well. Whenyou’re there [at the funeral] a big part of you’s thinking ‘who the fuck’s itgonna be next?’ And I remember at Omar’s funeral I was looking aroundat all of us there and trying to think ‘who’s it gonna be?’
INT: ‘How do you feel when that goes through your head?’
GARY: ‘I fear for what’s gonna happen next. But it’s gonna be one of us cos it’s alwaysone of us or someone we’ve come up with’
Gary expresses absolute certainty here that his peer bereavement experiences will
continue and that it will be ‘one of us’ who will be next to die; unfortunately, his
assessment of risk was vindicated by Tiny’s murder. What emerges through this
account is the sense of fatalistic certainty among these young adults who live with the
knowledge that as a group they are acutely and unusually vulnerable to the risk of
death. The use of the word ‘fear’ to describe the emotions precipitated by the
experience of multiple peer bereavements was commonplace in their accounts. For
some, like Gary, the fear was immediately felt in the aftermath of the death of a friend.
However, others indicated longer term fearfulness about their own personal safety and
it was understood by them to have its roots in their experiences of peer bereavement.
This sense of personal threat which haunts ‘Soldiers’ was best expressed by Mark (25):
It’s like. A fear. I feel it all time. If I’m walking to the shop and a car pulls up by me I’mlooking over my shoulder and thinking to myself ‘shit’ like ‘what’s happening here’?Sometimes I think I’m paranoid but if you think about it everything that’s happenedover the last few years has all happened quickly, out of nowhere really. One minuteeverything’s fine and then the next it’s not and there’s no reason why that can’t happento me. I’m not special.
Ribbens-McCarthy (2007) argues that bereavement can further erode feelings of
ontological security (Giddens 1991) and this data provides tangible evidence of this.
Gary talks about the fear he felt for his own safety in the immediate aftermath of
tragedy, whereas Mark talks about how he lives with fear that he attributes to his own
experiences of peer bereavement, on a longer term, daily basis. Feelings of fear and
insecurity are not temporary, but are embedded in these participants lived experiences.
Such feelings are not, however, unusual according to published research in this area,
which has shown that young people can become fearful of their own personal safety as
a consequence of the death of a friend. This can manifest itself in withdrawal from
friends, reluctance to leave their homes and nightmares (Podell 1989, Schachter 1991).
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A study by Schachter (1991) who examined the emotions stimulated by single peer
bereavement in a self selected sample of American students, found that feelings of fear
were precipitated by such a loss and that fear was especially likely to result if the
bereavement was caused by something other than illness. Meanwhile, research by
Podell (1989, p. 68), who worked with students in one High School in the USA who
had lost five friends in a fire, noted that this ‘traumatic loss destabilised the students’
psychic poise and turned their emotional worlds upside down’.
What is new was the ways in which the data in the course of this research show
that manifestation of fear and insecurity was also gendered. As Gary and Mark
indicate, young males were primarily fearful of their own safety and in the context of
their own lived experiences this is perhaps unsurprising. Young female participants,
however, did not express concern for themselves but for their male partners, friends
and family as is shown by Kelly in this exchange:
KELLY (25): ‘I’m hyper sensitive to everything around me now and I’m quite a fearfulperson.
INT: ‘Why do you think you’re like that?
KELLY: ‘Because I’ve lost a lot of my friends over the last few years and I thinkmy experiences have taught me in my mind that it’s not safe here’.
INT: Can you give me an example of how this affects you?
KELLY: ‘I don’t like it when my phone goes. Not just late at night but all the timebecause straight away I think something terrible’s happened. I panic ifLee [participants’ partner] goes out to the pub or if he’s with all the ladsI don’t sleep very well. I sit up and wait for him to come home but I’vebeen like this for a long time although it’s got worse again since Mikeand Omar died’.
Whilst Kelly describes herself as a ‘fearful person’ when asked to explain this the
example that she gives is not concern about her own safety, but that of her partner,
Lee. This indicates that in much the same way as Gary and Mark, Kelly makes a
rational assessment of where her experiences tell her ‘risk’ is located, and in these
circumstances that assessment communicates to her that Lee is more at risk than her.
The data presented thus far show how experiences of multiple peer bereavement
shredded a sense of self but it was also the case that some ‘Soldiers’ explained these
events as a consequence of the cumulative risks embedded in life on the Hillview estate.
Again in the immediate aftermath of Tiny’s murder these feelings are exposed and in
this observation Roman expresses the idea that the neighbourhood was itself lethal:
‘I hate this place’ Roman said ‘it’s toxic‘. He inhaled once more and continued. ‘What’shappened tonight [Tiny’s death] just confirms that fact. We should just all leave‘. I askedwhat made him stay. ‘What if something else happened’ he said ‘and I wasn’t here,I don’t think I could cope. What if I didn’t know?’ He stayed silent for a minute. ‘I don’tcare. I’m just gonna get wasted’. He lifted the joint to his lips in salute [fieldnotes nightof Tiny’s murder July 2007]
Despite such feelings it was rare for ‘Soldiers’ to leave Hillview as a result of a peer
bereavement experience and an insight into why is also afforded in this observation.
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Although Roman articulates a sense of visceral disgust with the estate in his
description of it as ‘toxic’ he also sees it as the site of his greatest support � his
surviving network of friends � so crucial to his ability to cope and continue with life.
It was not that the community of young people turned inward in the face of eventsmore that these peer bereavement experiences were not recognised by others,
including practitioners, as anything other than individual incidents. Support, such
as bereavement counselling, that is usually seen as a priority after a tragedy that
results in multiple deaths, was not offered or readily available. ‘Soldiers’ were left to
cope together and thus multiple peer bereavement experiences should be considered
an additional factor in debates on processes of social exclusion.
‘Original Union’
So far this article has focused on the impact of peer bereavement experiences on‘Soldiers’, but this does not capture the totality of the impact of these experiences on
the young people who participated in this research. ‘Kiddies’, those between the ages
of 14 and 17, were also acutely aware of these deaths and because of the established
nature of the resident population in Hillview coupled with extensive kith and kin
networks, were deeply affected by them:
EVIE (14): ‘I think it’s terrible what’s happened. Omar was like my big brother cos hewas my brother’s best friend. He taught him everything and they werealways together’.
INT: ‘Why do you think it’s important to raise money?’
JOHN (15): ‘He [Michael] was an original.
INT: What do you mean?
JOHN: Original Union club, part of the crew that was before my older brotherand then us coming up now. Kiddies my age like we follow those that goahead of us. They started it all off and none of this [Union Club] wouldbe here if it weren’t for them.
These accounts illustrate how the complex web of familial and friendship ties that
bind young people to others in their neighbourhood also act to transmit the loss and
shock they feel at these events. It recognises the mutuality between young people
living in working class communities, something that is rarely the focus of academicattention and highlights how profoundly these deaths were felt across the community
and not just to those closest to their epicentre.
Young people in Hillview were not passive in their response to these events;
indeed in the aftermath of Tiny’s murder ‘Kiddies’ and ‘Soldiers’ mobilised an
astonishing range of strategies in an attempt to ameliorate the grief and harm they
felt and that of the bereaved family. Fundraising events were organised, memorials to
Tiny were created in physical and virtual space, and tattoos were used to create
indelible memorials on the body, as this observation illustrates powerfully:
‘Sonny turned to face the window and lifted up his shirt. His back was dominated by alarge, ornate black cross with the words ‘Tiny RIP’ ribboned through the centre. The
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cross was decorated on either side with identical angels’ wings, inky black like thecentral cross. I stepped forwards to take a look and could see the blood of a new tattoosprouting on his skin making it look feverish in the strip lighting of the kitchen. Iwanted to touch it, to feel the ridges of ink. But it looked too painful. After a fewmoments he pulled his shirt down, turned around and stared at me with eyes rimmedwith red. I asked him why he’d done it. ‘So I never forget him’ he said simply pulling theshirt down over his back [fieldnotes August 2007].
Public displays of ‘respect’, for the bereaved family, the dead, and each other,
including the observance of strict codes of behaviour and dress at his funeral were
used in the absence of formal recognition of this accumulation of loss and other more
formal support mechanisms. At the forefront of these strategies stood young
bereaved male ‘Soldiers’, not young women, and overtime it was this group who
provided ongoing practical support to bereaved families with some ‘Soldiers’ taking
over the family responsibilities of their dead peers, for example ‘Soldiers’ took family
members to hospital appointments, decorated unfinished rooms and weeded gardens.
It is contended here that such strategies not only present a challenge to the notion
that young people lack ‘respect’ and/or a sense of ‘community’ but are an example of
the active role played by young people in community life, one adapted to their lived
experience and which values and recognises the needs of those around them. More
specifically, the role of young men in these circumstances provide an alternative
perspective to those presented by authors such as Campbell (1993) who argues that
young men destroy ‘community’ whilst women build it.
Two more young people, one was 16 years of age and one was 18 prompted an
additional interview with the CST manager that was focused on the bereavement
experiences that were so central to this research. In stark contrast to the activity shown
by the community of ‘Kiddies’ and ‘Soldiers’ in these circumstances what emerged was
a lack of genuine awareness (or interest in) such events, as this exchange illustrates:
INT: ‘I’m sure you’re aware that two young people from the estate have recently losttheir lives. What do you think the role of Community Safety is in thesecircumstances?
CSTM: ‘Yes I’m aware of it and of course we all feel for the families involved but thesekinds of tragic accidents could happen anywhere. They don’t just happen onestates so it’s not our job to respond to it. There’s very little we [the CST] coulddo about it anyway’.
INT: ‘I understand that tragedies happen in all communities, of course, but a wholelist of young people from Hillview have died through accidents of one form oranother or have been murdered over the past few years. Has the CommunitySafety team recognised this or attempted to do anything about it over this time?
CSTM: ‘Has there? I wasn’t aware of that . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [long pause]. There aretypes of behaviour that happen more in places like Hillview and we must beaware of that. There’s more binge drinking and drug abuse among the youngand accidents are perhaps more likely to happen in these circumstances’.
As this shows the CST manager did not consider premature death as being relevant
to the community safety work undertaken on the estate. When notified, explanations
that prioritised individual behaviour were used to explain these events in a way that
further pathologised young people and mirrored those operated at the NCPF. This
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again excluded alternative discourses, such as the role of structural disadvantage in
the concentration of social and criminal harm, and highlights the chasm between
‘official’ knowledge of an area and the lived experiences of those who live there.
Conclusion
At the heart of the concept of community safety is the notion that formal attempts to
create ‘safer’ neighbourhoods must be driven by the views, experiences and concerns
of ‘the community’. This research shows that young people were well acquainted with
the things that made them feel unsafe, and, that these were connected very directly to
their lived experiences. Young people who participated in this research expressed
feelings of quite profound and deep rooted insecurity and fear that stemmed fromtheir very real experiences of multiple peer bereavement. Losses that started prior to
the establishment of the CST and continued throughout the period that community
safety policies and strategies that target youth ASB were deployed in the neighbour-
hood. In the absence of formal support young people responded actively both
individually and collectively to ameliorate the harm caused by these experiences
through deploying a range of informal, but highly organised, community safety
strategies of their own design. Fundraising events, memorial tattoos and public
displays of respect were unable, however, to change the structural inequalities anddeprivations from which these premature deaths sprung. As a consequence young men
continued to fear for their own lives and young women feared for the lives of their male
partners, brothers, cousins and friends. Such feelings did not dissipate over time.
Instead they had a tangible impact upon how young people felt about themselves and
their community and constituted an additional process of social exclusion.
Unfortunately, the absence of young people’s voices in local consultation
processes meant that such experiences went unacknowledged. This highlights one
of the key tensions for policy approaches that are underpinned by any notion ofactive community involvement, namely that all sections of the community must be
heard. As this research clearly shows a failure to ensure this can leave already
vulnerable populations alone and doubly exposed to criminal victimisation and
social harms that have significant psycho-social impacts. Furthermore this can create
a gulf between formal and informal understandings of what does, and does not,
compromise feelings of safety and security in a neighbourhood and lead to the
problematisation of a section of the residential population.
Nevertheless, it is clear that contrary to the notion offered in policy and politicalcircles, namely that young people are disengaged from attempts to make their
communities better places, this research has clearly shown that they were actively
involved in the creation and deployment of informal strategies to try to make their
community ‘safer’, often in the face of great adversity. This undermines the ‘common
sense’ notion that ‘deprived’ young people are ‘out of control’ but shows how, often
despite their best efforts, they are unable to control the structural circumstances that
shape their lives.
Notes
1. Civil orders granted by the courts to pose contractual restrictions upon the adjudged‘anti-social’ elements of an individual’s behaviour.
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2. ‘Written agreements between a young person, the local housing office or registered sociallandlord and the local police in which the person agrees to not carry out a series ofidentifiable behaviours which have been defined as anti-social’ (Bullock and Jones 2004,p. 4).
3. A dispersal order provides the police with additional powers to disperse groups of two ormore people where the officer has reasonable grounds for believing that their presence orbehaviour has resulted in, or is likely to result, in a member of the public being harassed,intimidated, alarmed or distressed.
4. Defined by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 s1 as acting ‘in a manner that caused or waslikely to cause harassment, alarm or distress to one or more persons not of the samehousehold as himself’.
5. To protect the confidentiality of participants Hillview is a pseudonym.6. In contrast to other research (Pitts 2008, Young and Hallsworth 2010) which has shown
this term to be one used by young people in inner city areas involved in gang activity.7. A monthly forum meeting held in Hillview that focused on crime and disorder issues and
was attended by members of the local CST, other local community safety partners andresidents.
8. In 1930 the Slum Clearance Act was passed by the British government. This gave morepower to Local Authorities to compulsorily purchase housing in designated slumclearance areas and rehouse the mostly poor families who occupied them. This legislationalso gave Local Authorities the right to build and let new homes to families moved out ofthe slums (Goodchild 2008).
9. References are omitted to protect the anonymity of the area.10. A General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) is an academic qualification taken
in a specific subject by children in England and Wales between the ages of 14 and 16 years.11. Social housing tenants can, within quite strict guidelines, swap houses with other social
housing tenants and advertisements for moves, which often include details of the house,any financial incentives on offer and desirable areas, can be found in the local paper,Free-Ad magazine, and at local housing offices.
12. New Deal for Communities was an area based regeneration initiative designed totransform 39 socially and economically deprived areas in England by achieving change inthree place-related outcomes: crime, community and housing and the physical environ-ment, and three people-related outcome: education, health and worklessness (SEU 2000).
13. A group of practitioners responsible for the implementation and development of policiesaimed at reducing crime and disorder and promoting the safety of the community.
14. Launched by the Neighbourhood Policing Programme in 2005 Safer NeighbourhoodPolicing Teams are a team of police officers responsible for the policing of a designatedgeographical area and a key part of the reassurance policing agenda developed by NewLabour (Quinton and Morris 2008).
15. Court orders that forbid a person or member of a household from carrying out identified‘anti-social’ acts. Failure to comply with the order can result in eviction.
16. An initiative that seeks to engage young people between the ages of 8 and 13 who havebeen identified as ‘at risk’ of offending.
17. For more information see http://www.t2a.org.uk/alliance
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