- LONDON -- Watch out for "happy
slapping," the latest youth craze to sweep Britain.
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- It's not a new dance step or even a new designer drug.
It's a criminal assault.
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- Groups of teenagers approach an unsuspecting person and
begin punching and kicking him or her while capturing it all on their mobile
camera phones. The images are later uploaded and shared on the Internet.
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- The victims can be young or old, male or female. Bus
stops, tube stations and parks are considered prime venues. In most cases,
the injuries are minor. But on Saturday, British newspapers reported that
an 11-year-old London girl had been raped by a gang of happy slappers,
and Scotland Yard confirmed that three 14-year-old boys had been arrested.
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- The craze apparently started in London late last year
but has spread across the country. British Transport Police say they have
investigated about 200 attacks in London alone since the beginning of the
year, but they acknowledge that most go unreported.
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- Happy slapping is the latest manifestation of what Britons
call "yob culture." The word "yob" dates to the 19th
Century--it likely derives from "boy" spelled backward--and it
denotes a kind of loutish, anti-social behavior associated with working-class
youth in Britain's urban centers. The British soccer hooligan is the quintessential
yob.
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- "I happyslap people," explained "Huni
bo" from Sleaford on a popular yob blog. "I dnt see nowt wrong
wit it tho, ima good person! Its well funni tho!!"
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- "It's not funny," replied Spartanette from
Swansea. "If it's just among mates and you actually know the person,
then it's harmless, but when you do it to someone you don't even know,
you deserve a beating."
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- "So I deserve a beatin yeh?" replied Huni bo.
"Wes onli do it ppl lyk are age ish, say from 15 -- 19 or 20. summats,
wunt do it to an old man, even though they keep avin a go at us, an it
dus are heds in!"
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- Violent anti-social behavior is hardly news in Britain--it
was common in Charles Dickens' time and was made iconic by the 1971 film
and Anthony Burgess' 1962 novel, "A Clockwork Orange"--but a
particularly vicious attack last month once again focused national attention
on the problem.
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- Phil Carroll, 49, a father of four from Salford, a modest,
middle-class suburb of Manchester, confronted three youths from a nearby
housing project after they threw a stone at his car. Suddenly, he was set
upon by a larger group. The attackers left him bleeding and unconscious
in the street. He remained in a coma for two weeks before waking.
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- But it wasn't the attack that drew headlines. It was
Manchester Police Chief Supt. David Baines' graphic characterization of
the attackers:
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- "They are gangs of feral youths who are under no
control from adults, parents or anyone else," he said. "They
are not concerned about respect or their responsibilities. The criminal
justice system holds no fear for them. This is a national problem. Today
it is Salford. Tomorrow, it will be somewhere else."
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- `Culture of respect'
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- A week later, Prime Minister Tony Blair pledged to create
"a culture of respect" in Britain. He used the annual Queen's
Speech, in which the government sets out its legislative agenda for the
year, to declare war on yob culture.
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- "It's time to reclaim the streets for the decent
majority," Blair told Parliament. "People are rightly fed up
with street corner and shopping center thugs ... [and] binge drinking that
makes our town centers no-go areas for respectable citizens."
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- One new tactic that will be tried this summer is "dispersal
zones," designated areas in cities where police have powers to impose
curfews, ban groups of two or more youths from congregating and send those
younger than 16 home to their parents. Those who defy the police risk large
fines.
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- The government also floated the idea of forcing young
offenders serving community service sentences to wear bright orange jumpsuits
as a means of shaming them.
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- Hazel Blears, the Home Office's minister for anti-social
behavior, told the Observer newspaper that she didn't want young people
"breaking rocks" in chain gangs but that the public needed to
see that offenders were being punished.
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- Experts dismiss humiliation
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- Juvenile crime experts were doubtful, and the idea appears
to have been scuttled.
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- "In my experience there is no benefit gained from
humiliating offenders in public," said Rod Morgan, the government's
chief adviser on juvenile crime.
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- Last month, a large shopping mall near London banned
teenagers wearing hooded sweatshirts and baseball caps, an adolescent fashion
that in Britain is associated with anti-social behavior. The justification
was that the hoods and caps obscured faces from the mall's ubiquitous security
cameras.
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- Politicians and the public have applauded the ban. Owners
of the mall say they have seen a 22 percent increase in shoppers since
they began enforcing it. But many ordinary law-abiding teens also dress
in that style, and critics said the ban tarred all youngsters with the
same brush.
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- "It grabs media attention," said Bob Ashford,
a specialist in prevention programs with the Youth Justice Board, an advisory
and monitoring panel.
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- "Our view is we don't want to demonize kids. Lots
of kids wear this clothing. It's a fashion statement. To label a person
as criminal or dangerous because of what he is wearing . . . is not a solution,"
he said.
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- The government's main weapon against yobbery is the ASBO.
An acronym for "anti-social behavior order," it is a civil order
obtained from a court that prohibits a person from engaging in certain
narrowly defined activities that are not necessarily criminal but are clearly
anti-social.
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- A neighbor who habitually throws loud drunken parties
might be slapped with an ASBO that sharply curtails the number of guests
allowed on the premises after 9 p.m. People who violate an ASBO can be
jailed.
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- At first, the process of obtaining an ASBO was overly
bureaucratic, slow and costly. Only 600 were issued in the first three
years of the program, which began in 1998. But the process has been streamlined,
and last year 2,600 ASBOs were issued.
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- Some community activists say the targeted use of ASBOs
has been an effective crime-stopper, but others point to abuses.
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- Banned from rivers, bridges
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- In one well-publicized case earlier this year, a woman
from Bath who had tried repeatedly to commit suicide was issued an ASBO
that prohibits her from going near rivers, bridges, train lines and tall
buildings. A woman in Scotland got an ASBO to stop her from answering the
front door in her bra and panties.
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- The problem, according civil libertarians, is that ASBOs
allow people to be jailed for activities that are not crimes, such as using
foul language or answering the door in one's underwear.
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Happy Slapping assault
on mobile phone cam
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- Children as young as 10 have been ASBOed. That prompted
a warning earlier this month from Alvaro Gil-Robles, the Council of Europe's
human-rights commissioner. He said the government's policy was "criminalizing"
children, and that no child under 16 should be jailed for violating an
ASBO.
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- Morgan, the government's crime adviser, said ASBOs could
be useful in curbing juvenile crime, but only after authorities had worked
with parents and schools, issued warning letters and drawn up acceptable
behavior contracts.
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- "If you do the proper groundwork, very seldom do
you need to resort to an ASBO," he said.
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- But crime rates falling
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- Although crime rates in Britain have been dropping for
a decade, the public perception is that crime and anti-social behavior
are on the rise. There has been no shortage of tough talk from politicians.
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- In the run-up to last month's general elections, Michael
Howard, leader of the opposition Conservative Party, vowed to "make
yobs fear the police."
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- "I want policemen--and women--to have the confidence
to eyeball these characters, to invade their personal body space, just
like they are invading ours, to confront and challenge their unacceptable
behavior," he said.
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- "I don't want members of the public looking over
their shoulders. I want the yobs looking around in fear," he added.
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- Morgan said a good start would be for politicians and
the media to stop describing children as yobs and their anti-social behavior
as "feral."
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- "They didn't choose their parents or their neighborhoods,
and they can't walk away from their circumstances," he said. "I
don't think these are appropriate words if we are trying to build a culture
of respect."
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- Copyright © 2005, Chicago Tribune
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- http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0
506190250jun19,1,1220053,print.story?ctrack=1&cset=true
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