Quote:
By Tom Hundley Tribune foreign correspondent
Sun Jun 19, 9:40 AM ET
Watch out for "happy slapping," the latest youth craze to sweep Britain.
It's not a new dance step or even a new designer drug. It's a criminal assault.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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!!"
"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."
"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!"
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.
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.
But it wasn't the attack that drew headlines. It was Manchester Police Chief Supt. David Baines' graphic characterization of the attackers:
"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."
`Culture of respect'
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.
"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."
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.
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.
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.
Experts dismiss humiliation
Juvenile crime experts were doubtful, and the idea appears to have been scuttled.
"In my experience there is no benefit gained from humiliating offenders in public," said Rod Morgan, the government's chief adviser on juvenile crime.
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.
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.
"It grabs media attention," said Bob Ashford, a specialist in prevention programs with the Youth Justice Board, an advisory and monitoring panel.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
Some community activists say the targeted use of ASBOs has been an effective crime-stopper, but others point to abuses.
Banned from rivers, bridges
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.
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.
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.
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.
"If you do the proper groundwork, very seldom do you need to resort to an ASBO," he said.
But crime rates falling
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.
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."
"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.
"I don't want members of the public looking over their shoulders. I want the yobs looking around in fear," he added.
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."
"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."
__________________
