How Community Safety Initiatives are Undermining the Active Individual and Reducing 'Social Capital'

Stuart Waiton

Introduction

The Child Safety Initiative (CSI), commonly known as the Hamilton Curfew, was launched in October 1997 and was to run for a trial six month period, ending in April 1998. (1) Three working class areas within Hamilton in South Lanarkshire were chosen for this pilot project - Whitehill, Fairhill and Hillhouse. The aim of the CSI or curfew (both terms will be used in this book) was to move any under 16 year old off the streets if they were out 'after dark' and could not give 'a reasonable excuse' as to why they were out. While not specifying a strict curfew time, the CSI was clearly aimed at encourage young people to stop hanging around the streets at night and put the onus on them to justify their public presence. Although 'after dark' was the time at which the police stated they would start to act in Hillhouse, most of the young people spoken to in the area believed the police started picking people up around 9pm.

The curfew in Hamilton is described by the police and politicians as a 'community' safety initiative and is one of many that have been introduced across the UK. Significantly the various initiatives are not seen as being simply about law and order, but it is argued, initiatives like the curfew help to support and develop a sense of community.

However this paper will argue that community safety initiatives damage communities because they encourage people to act as passive victims rather than active citizens. In the process they actually reduce the contact between young and old and between young people themselves. They help foster an image of public space as dangerous and they can potentially undermine informal local networks and reduce responsibility amongst adults.

Ultimately, despite the intention of many of these community safety initiatives, to tackle antisocial behaviour, the result is in fact the creation of a more antisocial community.

Community safety initiatives have emerged at a time when a wider trend within society has developed, one where relationships between people have been problematised and there is an increasing attempt to regulate the informal relationships and networks that people have which are so important for individual and community development.

The work for this paper is based on research into the impact of the Hamilton curfew and the book 'Scared of the kids?'; research in Airdrie looking at the impact of the Sarah Payne murder and media campaign (Appendix 2); PhD work into the social construction of antisocial behaviour and the authors experience as a youth and community worker.

Making Children Safe

· A culture of fear is limiting the lives of children today.

The idea that young children across the UK are running wild around estates is not backed up by a number of research projects which raise the opposite concern, that children are in fact playing out less than ever before. Parental fears are seen as key to this more restrictive upbringing for children that, as one report explained, has created a 'bedroom culture'.(1)

Most parents recognise that their children have less free unsupervised time than they had. A survey of parents by Barnardo's in 1994 found that 83% of those questioned believed children had less safe places to play today than in the past.(2) While important work by Gill Valentine, found that three out of five parents surveyed claimed to have had more freedom to play outside than their own children do.(3) Similarly, a survey by NOP which coincided with National Playday on 4 August 1999 found that 80% of parents believe their children spend less time playing than they did when they were young.(4)

From the research diary written by the children under curfew in Hamilton, and the answers to the interview questions, it was clear that the amount of free time and space available to children in this area is limited and regulated by parents, and that the introduction of the curfew has increased this regulation. Almost half of the primary school children interviewed from both Hillhouse and those living in surrounding estates had to be home earlier at night since the introduction of the curfew. Ten year old Steven from Hillhouse explained, 'Mum doesn't want me taken home by the police'. Classmate Wendy from Burnbank agreed, 'Cos if you stay out too dark the police will pick you up and take you home'.

Those children who had to come in earlier, on average lost one hours play time. Both children living in Hillhouse and those outside Hillhouse were affected. For Hillhouse children, the average 'in-time' before the curfew was 7.45pm; the average 'in-time' after the curfew was 7.10pm. For children outside Hillhouse, the average 'in-time' before the curfew was 7.20pm; the average 'in-time' after the curfew was 7.00pm. The main reason given by both sets of children for having to go home earlier, was the concern parents had about contact with the police. This may simply be a threat that parents are using to encourage their children to come home earlier now that the winter nights were coming in, but no child suggested this.

Parental Pressure

Another reason for children being told to be in earlier, may be due to the discussion, during the promotion of the CSI, about parental responsibility. Parents appear to have felt the need to change the 'in times' of their children that had been established over the years, for fear of being labelled a bad parent and having their children labelled as bad kids. The Scottish Office research found, in discussion with parents groups, that parents were now 'more aware of the dangers faced by children out late at night' and that parents were also 'stricter with their children over the time they were called in at night'.(5)

The 'parenting culture and common sense understanding of local geographies of risk', which are developed over time by parents, have here been redefined by this police initiative. Valentine explained the process of parents negotiating their children's free time in this way,

'Through the processes of setting boundaries, punishments and developing subtle care strategies, most parents walk a tightrope, wavering between being anxious that they are being overprotective and fearing that they are placing their children in danger by granting them independence.'(6)

Since the introduction of the curfew, this balancing act appears to have tipped in favour of greater protection and a certain acceptance that the police and local authority can decide the 'right' time to have children off the streets.

Promoting Paedophiles

· The number and amount of campaigns and initiatives to make us all safe has grown exponentially over the 1990's.

· Indeed at a time of few if any traditional moral certainties, a new moral absolute has emerged around the issue of safety and in particular child safety.

· Both national and local campaigns around child safety run the risk of exaggerating the problem and increasing fear and distrust within communities.

Here the starkest example of the 'paedo panic' is looked at.

In promoting the Hamilton Child Safety Initiative, Chief Constable John Orr raised the issue of paedophile court cases hitting the headlines and questioned parents who allowed their children to play out unsupervised. A year later, at a press conference to announce the success of the curfew, he explained that child safety was a concern for the police who had the unenviable job of informing parents when their children were killed. Yet there is no evidence of a paedophile threat in the Hillhouse area, indeed the chances of a child being killed by a stranger across the UK is little more than one in a million. Nor is their evidence that parents and children are not already well aware of these potential dangers.

Throughout the 1990s, stranger danger awareness has been raised not only by the police, but also by the media and child care professionals who have focused on the danger of paedophiles. Children's organisations and charities have also promoted this danger, the latest of these campaigns being launched by the NSPCC with their 'Safe Open Spaces Initiative' in August 1999. This campaign aimed to ensure that children and young people 'use open spaces confidently and without fear'.(7) However there is a growing recognition by other child and family organisations that these 'awareness' campaigns are actually fuelling parents' fears and subsequently reducing children's free time.(8) A survey by Barnardo's in 1994 recognised that parental anxiety was becoming a problem for both parent and child.(9)

The level of 'awareness' surrounding the issue of paedophiles was demonstrated with the amount of media attention and the anti-paedophile campaigns set up after the murder of Sarah Payne. The findings of a research project in Airdrie (10) found that concerns generated by the murder of Sarah Payne had resulted in half of the 8-12 year olds questioned having their 'time and distance allowed to play' reduced by worried parents.

Clearly stranger danger is not the only risk that parents consider when deciding on their child's free time, traffic is often a key issue as well. However the exaggerated sense of risk from strangers and abductions is a useful example to indicate the extent to which children's play is being increasingly regulated not because of any increase in the dangers that children face, but because of an inflated sense of risk felt by parents and encouraged by voluntary organisations and local authorities who constantly promote the child safety message. But as Moorcock points out,

'Children can be forgiven fears about bogeymen and invisible threats hiding in the shadows. Adults need to show them how "getting a grip" is done.'(11)

The importance of challenging the 'paedo panic' and the child safety morality relates not only to the freedom allowed to children - but also to the relationships developed between 'strange' adults and children within communities.

It appears that elderly adults and indeed men generally are becoming increasingly sensitive to the potentially negative interpretation of their involvement with young children. While some - especially the younger elderly see these new concerns as a necessary precaution in more dangerous times. Other adults - often the octogenarians, are more bewildered by the lack of trust expressed by adults towards one another. Both these sentiments of bewilderment or acceptance of the need to keep one's distance from children are undermining further the confidence of these adults in dealing with children and young people.

The need for unsupervised relationships

Youniss argues that unlike the adult child relationship which is dominated by the adult, the very 'structure' of the child-peer and especially child-friend relationship is one that necessarily encourages children to learn to become 'interpersonally sensitive', to 'handle intimacy' and to achieve 'mutual understanding'.(12) Not knowing what the rules of order are when dealing with peers and friends, children must learn to create their own rules through interacting with others.

Children actively develop their relationship with others, as Youniss explains, 'The child's perception of the self as creator of reality,' when dealing with adults, 'will be restricted and his or her opportunities for mutual understanding in relation with others will be limited.' But in relation to other children, 'When self and other are equal agents and recipients, meaning and order depend on co-operation which, in turn, leads to a different understanding of interpersonal relationship, one marked by the potential for mutuality.'(13)

The child, in taking a more active role in relation to peers comes to see itself as being able to construct order with peers rather than through adults. Adults may have laid down the 'rights and wrongs', but children must learn to recreate these rules between themselves often through play. Children can learn to discover themselves as individuals, but only fully by relating to their friends and peers. Self interest must be co-operatively negotiated and situated within these relationships with others, not because peers know better than adults, but because of the very structure of the relationships developed by peers that encourages mutual understanding and intimacy.

The distinctive nature and structure of child-peer and child-friend relationships, Youniss argues, makes these relationships a major and positive force in a child's development. Peer relations are as important as adult relations while also having a distinct function. Without free unsupervised peer relations being developed by children, many social and developmental processes would therefore be lost.

In conclusion, the promotion of child safety within communities appears to have helped create a culture of fear and distrust where children are more regulated by fearful parents and relationships between 'strange' adults and children have become problematised and undermined.

Making Adults Safe

While the promotion and implementation of many safety initiatives like the Hamilton Curfew have come from politicians and the police, it would be a mistake to think that this is not something that has received support from the public. Indeed it is often complaints by adults about the behaviour of those young people around them that kick-start many of these initiatives.

Whether crime rates are rising or falling, there is a constant and growing fear of and concern about crime across society. The British Crime Survey notes that the level of concern by adults about crime is increasing and so is the level and types of crime reported to the police. Britain is fast becoming a surveillance society with more cameras per head than any other. These CCTV schemes have developed and extended beyond private establishments into the public realm and are now moving into estates with the general support of the people living in these areas. At the same time, the number of phone calls to the police about young people's 'nuisance behaviour' is rising and there is a demand for new laws and bodies to deal with antisocial behaviour.

For those people moving into their pensionable years, security appears more of a concern than ever before. A number of police forces across the UK have reported an increasing take-up of security measures in the home among the newer generation of elderly and, according to Age Concern, the generation now in their eighties is the last generation to prefer leaving their back door open and in some cases indiscriminately welcoming the company of youngsters.

Schemes aimed at helping adults to feel safer and so cope with their neighbours - like neighbourhood wardens and secure accommodation - while intended to bridge the gap between old and young, often appear to simply assist the growing distance between these generations and replace community contact with third party mediation. As Hillhouse community council chairman Joe Parfery noted, by giving elderly adults more security locks and peep holes it has simply made them more worried about what lies outside.

Working with tenants groups who live in secured accommodation I have found that once security fences, guards etc. are established, they not only secure the building but become a further barrier between people within communities. One particular group who live in a tower block with a concierge system and security fencing spent a number of months putting pressure on their local councillor to build a safe play park within their compound. Yet by the time the council decided to look at the possibility of building the play park the group had changed their mind. On consideration, they realised that a safe play area would attract other children living outside their security fence compound. This was seen as a potential problem - as with children comes 'noise, graffiti and a lot of hassle'. The park was never built, while a play area half a mile away was dismantled after complains by adults over looking it about the noise and misbehaviour of local children.

Rather than dealing with the noisy children who came to play in the park, both groups of tenants - despite their concern for the young people in their area - saw this as something that was simply 'not worth the risk'. Indeed the creation of 'secure accommodation' appears to have institutionalised the sense of risk associated with people outside the perimeter fence.

While the concierge security system around these flats, which included a number of CCTV cameras, was originally intended to ensure that no undesirable members of the community living outside the compound got access to the new flats. Increasingly, the tenants association has demanded the cameras be turned inwards so that the antisocial tenants and their children can be identified and dealt with by the security guards.

Elsewhere in the UK, plans are being drawn up for US-style retirement villages, where the problem of children's nuisance behaviour is resolved by simply not having any children in these villages.

By moving these young people, it is hoped that this fear will decline. However, Hillhouse community activist Joe Parfery believes more security measures in Hillhouse may be creating more insecurity - especially amongst the elderly.

'We keep having these initiatives for new locks or peephole on your front door, but you just get people worrying even more about why they need these new locks in the first place and whether they'll be strong enough.'

Similarly, there is a danger that the high profile CSI introduced on the Hillhouse estate will only have confirmed the suspicion that many adults have that young people on their streets are a danger to be avoided. It may also result in even more adults avoiding the teenagers they have until now dealt with themselves. Indeed the Scottish Office research into the impact of the curfew, found that fear of 'groups of young people' had increased among adults, and the number of adults who said they would now avoid certain areas also increased.(14)

Talking to sixty year old George who lives in Hillhouse, I found that he and a number of his neighbours felt safer now that the young people who had been drinking in his street at the weekend were no longer there. George had not had any trouble off these young people, but had been worried about what they may do when he walked past them at night. George has had no contact with these teenagers, and given the changes taking place many more adults will become strangers to the young people they still fear in areas such as Hillhouse.

The most recent community safety development is to introduce community wardens onto estates across the UK to deal with a social problem constructed in the 1990's, namely 'antisocial behaviour'. With this development relations between adults and young people take a further step apart and the potential for adults to relate to and deal with 'other' people on their estate - especially young people - is reduced further. An active citizen has in a sense become someone who relates to their local warden or police force.

Making Youth Safe

Young people hanging around the streets are increasingly seen today as not only villains but victims as well. Victims not only from strangers and other 'gangs' but also potential victims from their friends and peer pressure. Part of the justification for the Hamilton Child Safety Initiative was that it would allow the police to prevent peer pressure that could get young people into trouble.

In fact activities that would have been seen in the context of a 'rite of passage' for young people are increasingly seen as and interpreted within the framework of risk and danger.

Peer pressure

While young people continue to hang about the streets at night with friends, there is a growing perception and concern which has been adopted and promoted by the police and politicians about the dangers of peer pressure. Discussions about peers and relations between teenagers are today largely focused on the negative potential of these relationships and the impact they have encouraging others to take drugs or commit crimes. It is rare to read the word peer in a newspaper without the word pressure following close behind. The assumption here is that this pressure is a negative force, never positive. That some friends may be a positive influence on others is rarely recognised; similarly the element of choice and decision making by young people - through the discussion of 'peer pressure' is ignored; finally the basic fact that young people need to learn to deal with different pressures and influences in their lives as they grow up is also disregarded.

While parental concern about who their children are hanging about with has always existed, the idea about dangerous peer pressure has been given weight by the elevated concern about 'peer abuse'. Children fighting and calling each other names has over the last decade been categorised as and is seen within the framework of 'bullying'. Within this discussion, many aspects of childhood conflicts are seen as abusive and something that could permanently damage a child. In the journal Aggressive Behaviour, the most recent bullying theory suggests that most children are involved in the 'group process' of bullying.(15) As Blatchford points out, the negative view of young people's peer relations is one of the key reasons that school break times are being reduced.(16) Through this debate children and young people are increasingly seen as potential abusers and victims of one another. In his book on Childhood for example, Chris Jenks explains that,

'An emerging body of work from the USA indicates that most child abuse, sexual, physical and psychological, is, in fact, peer abuse'.(17)

In a Home Office study on young people and crime, the influence of peers was identified as a key factor in offending. Quoting from a report looking at car crime, it notes that the splintering of peer groups reduces pressure to be involved in crime.(18) Breaking up peer groups which can push young people into criminal activities is one of the aims of the Hamilton Curfew. However, the Home Office research also noted in passing that young people who desisted from criminal activities after leaving their delinquent peers, may have left these friends in a conscious effort to stop offending. In other words, it was not the act of being with peers that led to criminal activities, rather individuals chose to be part of a group because they wanted to be involved in such activities.

Interviewed on Sky Scottish, South Lanarkshire Council leader Tom McCabe, explained that the CSI helped young people who were out on the streets at night, as the police could now intervene to protecting them from peer pressure. The assumption made by McCabe is that it is peer pressure that is forcing many young people to take drugs, fight or even get involved in criminal activities at night. Peers, or friends, here become something that young people need protection from. Whether this is something the police could ever actually achieve appears unlikely. But in this way the police can justify breaking up groups of young people on the assumption that they may be applying negative pressure upon one another.

In Hamilton, Inspector McKenzie informed me while discussing the dangers faced by teenagers in Hillhouse, that if a 13 year old boy was seen hanging about with a group of 18 year olds, this was a clear sign of potential danger to the youngster, and a situation that would have to be resolved. That the spontaneous assumption from Inspector McKenzie about the older teenagers is that they are a danger to the 13 year old, perhaps tells us more about his attitude to young people than it does about any necessary threat posed by them.

The young people interviewed in Hillhouse had had no 'serious bother' with older teenagers and when there was trouble it was usually with their own age group - but not with the friends they hung about with. Nobody mentioned peer pressure, or trouble caused by friends. Rather, it was 'other' teenagers who they did not know very well that were seen as potential trouble makers.

In Hillhouse, teenagers were not under constant adult supervision, and it appears they do have the freedom to develop relations with their peers. However, to what extent the police were intervening to 'protect' these young people from their peers was unclear, but it is an issue that is becoming more prominent in police and council attitudes towards teenagers. The desire to protect young people from their peers, backed-up by police safety initiatives could in the long term be detrimental to the development of these young people who they aim to protect.

Learning to relate to peers and older teenagers is part of growing, and indeed without it young people would have a less all rounded social framework. Traditionally parents felt more comfortable about allowing their children to play out when there were older children around because it was assumed that they would look after them if anything serious happened. Today through initiatives like the curfew, councils and police forces are projecting the opposite image - other young people are to be feared.

More victims less community

Contact and interaction between people within communities is a basis for them to be communities. Shimamura and Snell looking at a working class estate in Hull, recognised that children mixing freely with other sections of the community was a key way that children and adults got to know one another.(19) Similarly for children and young people, the experiences they have with their friends and with other groups of young people - free from adult supervision - are very important for their socialisation. There is a concern today that 'battery-reared'(20) children and young people who are not allowed or encouraged to be independent and take more responsibility for dealing with other people and situations within their communities will grow up unable to cope with life. 'Danger,' as Tim William's explained, 'is part of the human condition and the child protected from everything is protected against nothing.'(21) Moira Gibb, chairperson of the children and families committee of the Association of Directors of Social Services, while criticising the 'decimation' of the youth service and questioning the usefulness of the Hamilton Curfew, explained that, 'I spent my childhood on the streets and there is great working class tradition of hanging out and socialising with your peers. It would be a crime to prevent that.'(22)

However initiatives like the one in Hamilton are actively discouraging young people from learning to deal with different situations and people themselves. By promoting the idea that young people out at night are a risk to others, while being at risk themselves - and by encouraging people to treat 'nuisance' or petty activities as potentially dangerous - young people are being educated to treat other young people as not only dangerous, but too dangerous to approach or cope with by themselves. Where as in the not too distant past, getting into a fight, dealing with other young people who drank and even drinking yourself, was seen by most young people (and adults) as simply part of life, and something they would expect to cope with. Today, in Hamilton and elsewhere, it is increasingly assumed that where there is a 'risk', young people - like adults - should call on an external authority to deal with the problem. However, even with the heightened policing involved with the CSI, it is unlikely that Strathclyde police could ever make all the young people, even just in Hillhouse, safe from all possible dangers and unpleasant experiences - many of which often occur among peers (In the Stirling youth survey, 80% of the respondents said they did not believe the police protected them.(23)). And yet it is rare to find young people being encouraged to learn to look after themselves - even though in the long term this is the most effective way of becoming safe and being able to live with the rest of your community.

Through these safety initiatives, behaviour of young people, that until recently would have been seen as merely immature or childish, are being criminalised or labelled as dangerous to all those around them. The logical outcome of this process is that communities and the young people within them grow more anxious and hostile towards the 'drinkers', the 'druggies' and the 'trouble makers' - and subsequently become increasingly reliant upon the police to deal with other young people. The result is that contact between different sections of the community declines - creating even more isolation within communities.

It is clear that police and council claims before the Hamilton Curfew was introduced, that young people themselves are deeply concerned about their personal safety, are true. It could even be argued that they are more open to crime and safety initiatives than older members of the community who experienced and expected a greater level of freedom on their streets when they were young.

Experience of the curfew and of the police at night, meant that young people felt victimised. Despite this the concern felt by many teenagers, about other young people, meant that they were ultimately in favour of more policing or more regulation of other young people. That this may have an effect upon their own freedom on the streets was of concern, but not of sufficient concern to undermine their desire for public space to become more controlled.

This desire for a more controlled environment was not generated by any extreme experiences that these young people had faced while growing up in and around Hillhouse. Hillhouse itself is certainly not a ghetto, and the young people here are no more 'at risk' than other young people living in working class estates across Scotland and the UK.

However, growing up within an environment where safety issues are increasingly being promoted, appears to have created a generation of young people who perceive the streets as not only a place of freedom and independence - but increasingly as a place of potential dangers. Rather than being eager to 'break free' from adult supervision, a substantial minority of the young people in and around Hillhouse were keen to have their free time more regulated - just in case! Which raises the question - Is this the end of youth? If 'youth' is understood as a striving for freedom and independence by young people.

The impact that this will have on communities in the years to come is unclear, but already there is a greater reliance upon the police and the council to deal with others in their community, who's behaviour is often little more than petty or immature.

Conclusion

Fundamentally this paper argues that the concern about 'community' and particularly with community safety has led to a situation where adults are encouraged to be passive and young people are discouraged from becoming street wise. Both developments help undermine the spontaneous relationships essential for the development of a 'community spirit' by undermining the development of 'active' individuals.

The elevation of child safety into a moral absolute is leading to an environment where young people and especially children are being encouraged to view all 'others' as strangers and to view themselves as constantly 'at risk'. For parents this means that a good parent is today defined by how safe they make their child. This has serious implications for experiences had by young people and for their overall development.

Finally, both by promoting the idea that young people are out of control, and by encouraging adults to relate to the police whenever a young person was felt to be being antisocial, the responsibility for regulating the behaviour of young people on these estates was taken out of the hands of local people. The reduced level of contact that this resulted in between the generations is problematic for all those concerned with the development of informal social relationships and 'social capital'.

Notes

1. The Herald, 19 March 1999.
2. Barnardo's (1994) The Facts of Life: The Changing Face of Childhood (Barnardo's, London).
3. Valentine G (1997) 'Oh yes I can.' 'Oh no you can't': Children and Parents' understanding of kids' competence to negotiate public space safely, in Antipode 29:1 (p65-89).
4. Observer, 8 August 1999.
5. McGallagly J, Power K, Littlewood P and Meikle, J (1998) Evaluation of the Hamilton Child Safety Initiative, Crime and Criminal Justice Research Findings No.24, The Scottish Office Central Research Unit, p6.
6. Valentine G (1997) 'Oh yes I can.' 'Oh no you can't': Children and Parents' understanding of kids' competence to negotiate public space safely, in Antipode 29:1 (p65-89).
7. NSPCC Briefing Note, August 1999.
8. The Guardian, 2 August 1999.
9. Barnardo's (1995) Playing It Safe (London: Barnardo's) p3 and p22.
10. Waiton S (2000) Payne Pressure (www.GenerationYouthIssue.org)
11. Moorcock K, LM magazine No 122, p15.
12. Youniss J (1980) Parents and Peers in Social Development (The University of Chicago Press).
13. ibid p8.
14. McGallagly J, Power K, Littlewood P and Meikle, J (1998) Evaluation of the Hamilton Child Safety Initiative, The Scottish Office Central Research Unit, p.57.
15. Sutton J and Smith PK (1999) Aggressive Behaviour (Vol. 25 No2 p97-111).
16. Blatchford P: The state of play in schools, in Woodhead M etal (ed) Making sense of social development (1999) London, Routledge.
17. Jenks C (1996) Childhood (Routledge).
18. Home Office (1995) Young People and Crime (p5).
19. Shimamura H and Snell C (1996) They don't play out like they used to, do they? p35 (available from author).
20. Mayer Hillman (1996) quoted in 'Stuck on the school run', Scotland on Sunday, November 3.
21. The Scotsman, 3 December 1998.
22. Community Care, 23-29 April 1998.
23. Stirling Council (1997) Are you getting enough...opportunity? p106.

Appendix 1

The following recommendations are reprinted from 'Scared of the kids? Curfews crime and the regulation of young people'.

Recommendations

The main problem the research in Hamilton tried to address, is the fragmenting and increasingly distant relationships developing within and across generations. As such, the following recommendations are seen as a way of countering this trend and encouraging a more trusting and also more active individual within communities.

In effect we must attempt to make public space more public - for young and old; encourage local people to resolve local problems; and ultimately foster an environment within which individuals within communities feel able to relate to one another without recourse to a third party.

Public Space

There needs to be a recognition that safety initiatives within communities are helping to create an environment that suggests 'we are under siege'. There must be an end to - CCTV in communities, fenced-in concierge flats and caged-in schools - all of which reinforce the exaggerated sense of risk within areas and foster a sense of us and them.

Similarly, in developing play areas for children - the label 'safe' should be dropped from all future developments - as this again elevates the issue of child safety, and encourages the idea that these are in fact the only places children should be allowed to play.

Children should be encouraged to use public space more freely - rather than simply having set designated areas set aside for them. Children being street-wise should also be encouraged as part of their social development - a by-product of which will be safer children.

Areas should be developed for play, away from houses, for ball games and other activities - but should not be somewhere children and young people are corralled into.

Planners should be conscious of issues of noise and cars when developing estates - but should attempt to design estates that build children and young people into public space, rather than push them out of it.

Policing

Police safety initiatives, from safety advice tapes for pensioners to curfews for children, encourage the sense of fear that already exists within communities and should be stopped.

Initiatives like the curfew and the stop and search campaigns carried out by Strathclyde police - the most recent of which, up to August 2000, has resulted in 100,000 people being searched - specifically undermine young people's rights and should be stopped. These initiatives add to the sense of young people being out of control, but also degrade young people's sense of themselves.

The police focus should be on law and catching criminals rather than enforcing order and preventing crime happening. The latter often does not stop crime and also leads to the criminalisation of many non-criminal young people.

Nuisance behaviour of children should be differentiated from more serious criminal activities that threaten life or property and the police should play a less active role in regulating this type of behaviour.

Ultimately, the police need to develop policies that accept that public space is an acceptable place for children and young people to be.

Adult-child relations

Contact and relations between adults and children need to be promoted. Significantly this means creating an atmosphere that accepts and indeed encourages other adults to relate to children and young people within the community.

Within schools, 'stranger danger' campaigns which foster mistrust should be stopped, or replaced by initiatives that inform children about particular 'strange adults' who do 'strange things'. Strangers per say should not be presented as dangerous people to be avoided.

Schools should encourage local adults to 'pass on their skills' (something the Hillhouse Citizens' Jury promoted). This could include actively pursuing a community development approach within primary schools that involves adults helping in class activities - story telling, sports days etc.

More contact between young and old should be encouraged and helped by involving children in community support initiatives helping elderly people with shopping, gardening etc.

Child's Play and Youth Provision

Local authorities should encourage play and youth provision to focus on activities that develop the experiences of young people, rather than focusing on issues of safety and risk.

Play areas and the equipment in them, should be developed to encourage adventurous play. The benefits for child development of unsupervised play should be promoted by local play schemes. And local adults should be encouraged to help out with special play days within these play areas.

These initiatives should be promoted as positive, fun facilities - there for the enjoyment and development of children and young people - rather than as initiatives aimed at making young people safe, keeping them off the street or helping to reduce crime and drug taking.

Freedom and Responsibility

The government and local authorities should encourage freedom ahead of regulation within communities - thus encouraging local people to take more responsibility for their actions and those of others within their area. Greater freedom will encourage adults to take a more active role in regulating public space and the activities of children and young people - making adults themselves more streetwise - and communities safer.

Finally, rules governing petty 'antisocial' behaviour should be scrapped thus providing a space within which more genuine communities and community relations can be established between people - issues of concern being resolved face to face rather through state agencies.

Notes

1. Moorcock K (1998) Swings and Roundabouts (Sheffield Hallum University).
2. Springham K (1998) Time to go Home Says Who? (Scottish Human Rights Centre) p5.
3. Stirling Council (1997) Are you getting enough...opportunity?
4. System 3 (1996) South Lanarkshire Community Survey: Executive Summary, p4.
5. South Lanarkshire Council (1998) Access to Leisure and Entertainment: Findings from a Citizen's Jury.

Appendix 2

Payne Pressure

Introduction

In August 2000 a pilot research project was set up in a working class area of Lanarkshire to look at the generational changes of parental fears for children. It was found that despite national concerns about 'irresponsible parents' who let their children 'run around wild', judging by the respondents to this research, children are 'running around wild' far less than just one generation ago. Children are involved in more organised activities, they spend more time in the home and spent less time playing out on the streets than their parents did.

It was found that the level and number of concerns these parents had for their children's safety was almost double that of their own parents. This greater 'risk awareness' of today's parents could, in part, explain the more limited freedom given to children today.

More specifically it was found that the high profile media coverage of the Sarah Payne murder meant that every child questioned had heard about the murder, and half of them had subsequently had new restrictions placed on them when they were out playing.

The research

Questionnaires were sent out to 45 parents whose children had used a local play scheme. Thirty two parents (71%) returned the questionnaires. These parents were asked to compare their play time activities during the summer holidays to their own children's activities. They were then asked about what their parents worried about when they played out and also asked about their own fears for their own children.

Following this, 22 children who attended the summer playscheme, aged 8-13yrs, were interviewed about their 'free time'. These interviews were based on a structured questionnaire, allowing for statistical information to be gathered. However where answers needed further clarification children were encouraged to explain their answers more fully thus providing more qualitative information.

Research findings

Wild things?

Generally it was found that children play out in the streets and parks near their homes less than their parents did when they were children. They attend more organised play/ sports activities, are members of more clubs and play in the house a lot more than their parents used to. Children were slightly less mobile (in terms of distance allowed away from home) than their parents used to be. While similarly, more parent said that their children's 'in time' was earlier than their own 'in time' when they were children.

This suggests that compared with one generation ago, the number of children and amount of time spent by these children simply playing in the streets and parks, is far less today than it was just 20 years ago.

In answering the questions on this questionnaire, the parents were told to think back to the summer holidays when they were children.

(Like any retrospective questioning, the answers to these questions may lack accuracy and possibly reflect 'a golden age' that parents never really had, although the answers given in percentage terms were relatively significant).

They were asked:-

1. Did you play out more or less than your child does?

The options were - much more, a little more, about the same, a bit less and a lot less.

Sixty seven per cent said they played out more than their own children compared to 15% who played out less, with 58% saying they played out 'a lot more' than their children.

2. Did you go to more or less organised play/sports/club activities than your child does?

Seventy three per cent said they went to fewer organised activities than their own children compared to 15% who said they went to more, with 54% saying they went to 'a lot fewer' organised activities than their children.

3. Were you a member of more or fewer clubs than your child?

Sixty seven per cent were members of fewer clubs than their children compared to 19% who were in more clubs, with 48% saying they were members of 'a lot fewer' clubs than their children.

4. Did you play in the house more or less when you were a child, than your child does?

Sixty three per cent of parents said they played in the house less than their own children compared to 21% who said they played in the house more, with 51% saying they were in the house 'a lot less' than their children are today.

Question 5 asked parents if they were allowed to travel further from home than their children do, with 44% saying they travelled further and 35% saying they travelled less far than their own children.

Question 6 asked whether or not they were allowed to stay out later than their own children are allowed to today. Given a straight yes and no answer 58% said they did stay out later when they were young.

If this sample is representative of all the parents and children in the area, then the often raised concern that 'there's nothing for the weans to do' would appear to be incorrect. Indeed it would appear that there are far more organised activities for children today than in the past. While children having more things to do and places to go is a positive development, part of the reason for parents opting for this type of activity could be, as research by Gill Valentine(1997) found, that parents were using organised activities more today - in part - because of their desire for a safe environment for their children. In other words, fears for their children's safety could be the motivating factor for more regulated play environments, rather than other benefits these activities may offer.

(It should be noted that this sample may be biased towards children who use organised activities as the sample was based on parents whose children were attending a local play scheme).

Irresponsible?

The concern that parents are more irresponsible today and don't know where their kids are when they are playing out was contradicted by these parents. More than four fifths of these parents said they knew where their children were some of the time or all of the time. This compared with the parents belief that only two thirds of their parents knew where they were all of the time or some of the time when they were young.

This high level of knowledge about children's where abouts may reflect parents giving the 'right answer' to the question - especially at a time when 'irresponsible parents who don't know what their children are up to', are being targeted for many social problems today. The answers of these parents may also reflect a reality that parents think they know where their children are but in fact often do not know because their children have gone somewhere else without their knowledge.

Generational fears

There has been a qualitative increase in the fear that these parents feel for their children's safety compared to the worries their own parents had for them when they were children.

Today parents worry more about more things. This may be accounted for partly by changes to the local area, in particular the increase in heroin users on the estate in question. However it is unlikely that these changes can account for the overall increase in fear for the children living on this estate. It is suggested that the more negative perception that adults have about the future, the growing lack of trust that exists across society and the breakdown in social capital could help explain this growing sense of fear.

While the greatest difference between today's parents and their own parents was connected to concerns about the dangers of drugs and alcohol, the most often sighted fear by today's generation of parents was the fear of strangers.

This fear of strangers had been made worse by the high profile news coverage of the death of Sarah Payne, and half of the children asked said that their time allowed out or places they were allowed to go had been restricted since the reporting of Sarah's murder.

The fears that had increased most across the generations, from the grandparents generation to today's parents, appear to be connected to the idea of dangerous people rather than dangerous hazards that children face when out on the streets.

For example, while the fear of hazards like accidents in general or traffic accidents in particular increased from the grandparents generation to today's parents, they increased by relatively small amounts compared with categories like strangers, bullying, crime and drugs/alcohol. The number of parents concerned with strangers and bullying had doubled over the generations, concern about crime had increased four fold while fifteen times as many parents were concerned about the dangers of drugs/alcohol compared with fears their own parents had had about this.

In answering the questions of this section of the questionnaire, parents were asked to circle the issues they believed their parents were concerned about when they were children. They were then asked to circle the issues that concerned themselves today regarding their own children. The answers to these questions are shown below.

(Here the answers given may not be what the grandparents (the parent's parents) would have given, but are the fears that the parents remember their own parents having. This may lack accuracy as some fears the now grandparents had may have been forgotten by the parents questioned, fears may have been invented or reinterpreted over time and some fears may never have been mentioned by the now grandparents to their children. However, the fact that fears by parents for their children have increased over recent years has been confirmed by many recent research projects (Barnardos 94) - a trend also found with this research).

The table below lists the fears of parent's today in order of magnitude. The first per cent age figure indicates the number of parents who believe their own parents were concerned about this issue. The second figure indicates the number of parents who said that this issue concerns them today regarding their child's well being.

Parents and Grandparents fears

Issue Past Parents fears Today's Parents fears %increase

1. Strangers 55% 94% 39%

2. Drugs/Alcohol 6% 90% 84%

3. Bullying 42% 80% 38%

4. Accidents 58% 65% 7%

5.Traffic 48% 65% 17%

6. Crime 13% 59% 46%

7. Getting into trouble 36% 39% 3%

8. Sunburn 6% 19% 13%

9. No worries 3% 0% -3%

10. Other 0% 0% 0%

Where as most of the parents questioned believed that the main concern for their own parents when they were children was accidents (with traffic being the third major concern), the concern mentioned most by these parents today was the danger from strangers. Similarly concerns related to other people - druggies, drunks, bullies and even criminals were now far more of a concern than in the past.

Comparing past fears for children with today's concerns, one could argue that whereas in the past parents were worried about what children would do to themselves when they were out playing, today they are more concerned about what other people will do to their children.

Two of the top three concerns in the past are related to accidents - both general accidents and traffic accidents. Here the concern is for children being careless or simply doing what children do and subsequently having accidents. While concerns about accidents are still a concern today - and indeed a greater concern today than 20 years ago - the greatest increase in fear is in relation to other people. This fear is of both other children e.g. bullies, and also other adults e.g. strangers/druggies/drunks etc.

Whereas children in the past, who had traffic accidents and other accidents, would have benefited from 'other' people being around to help. Today's fears imply a general concern about children coming into contact with other people. This could reflect a broader decline in trust that exists across society and a sense that other people, rather than being an ally in the regulation of their children who play around the estate, are a possible danger to them.

The impact that this increasing fear about other people has on parents and children's lives is difficult to assess. However, there is a pressure upon parents today - pressure from fear and pressure from the awareness that a 'good parent' is a worried parent - which is resulting in their children being more regulated than they were in the past. The idea of childhood being the best time of your life no longer fits for many parents and is likely to impact upon children's view of themselves and those around them. With this level of fear it is questionable to what degree today's working class kids are becoming 'streetwise'.

The problem for 'other' adults in particular in terms of their ability to relate to children on their estate is also more problematic today. For example if a child is today seen playing on a dangerous road should we intervene to make that child safe or could this be misinterpreted. The very fact that this question can be asked suggests a problem with the levels of fear about other people - something that has been at least reinforced and possibly made worse by the high profile media campaign surrounding the death of Sarah Payne.