Andrew

Here’s an extract:

“Even before the riots, the streets were dangerous places for young people to be. Young people at Leeside talked of community support officers and police prowling the streets, assuming they were up to no good. The community support officer who came to Leeside was part of a local partnership initiate…. One evening, as we were standing in the back-lobby of the youth club, he justified his role to me through stories of moving young people on from street corners and stairwells. They were not actually causing trouble, he told me; rather, they were thinking about it. …

“The young people I worked with, by virtue of interacting in public space, were criminalised before they had done anything wrong. If you’re aged between 12 and 21 it’s this threat of criminalisation that is the real urban terror.”