Ban the hood!

Let me start by making clear that I am more than ready to accept that some young people wear hooded tops, and some engage in crime. Sometimes the two groups overlap, and youths who engage in crime wear hooded tops. However, what the Express was actually calling for was a clampdown on youth crime - but doing it by targeting a garment of clothing. The paper told us that 'Britain's streets, public transport networks and shopping centres are under siege from feral gangs of hooded youths who strike fear into decent people' almost contrasting the terms youth and decent as if the two can exist only as a direct and binary opposite.

Perhaps some young people 'the hoods' are reacting logically, to the very illiberal surveillance culture and police state that we seem to have allowed to be created around us. Formerly, it was papers like the express who have sung the praises of CCTV. Only now is it becoming apparent that any CCTV as a situational crime prevention method is underscored by a fundamental logic that assumes that likely offenders are rational and calculating individuals (hence the presence of a camera and the threat of detection will dissuade criminality).

There was always a problem with that logic, but there seemed to be little recognition of that, or the sacrifice of liberty that we faced erecting the most big brother state in Europe. We have the most CCTV cameras, but by the Expresses reasoning we also have one of the most troubling societies. Now we face being captured 300 times a day is anything better? Well no - CCTV is a spectacular failure in many cases, because it little prevents crime. The rational thing for a criminal to do when faced with a camera is either go to a place where there exists none, or wear a hoody (or a baseball cap scarf). Despite the fact that, football hooligans, for example have recognised that fact for nigh on twenty years now, it seems that it is only on Sunday that journalists at the express actually cottoned on. CCTV is a great example of how in this country, when faced with a problem there seem to be two solutions, one is increased control and monitoring - the second is to demand action in the form of a ban. Both are often apparent, both have done us little good. It is also a great example of how clampdowns such as that the express are calling for are superficial asides that are peripheral to the real issue of preventing and dealing with youth crime. Perhaps if the Express had reflected a little more they might have asked an important question before engaging in their vitriolic campaign

Would a ban on the hood work?

Well no, of course it wouldn't.

Why not?

Well for a whole array of reasons, but we might start out noting that it is not the 'hood' that is the problem.

The chorus of 'ban it' is the laziest and easiest means of taking a stance when faced with any inconvenient social problem. It's one that we seem to like a lot in this country at the moment. Reading a little deeper it seems that the express would quite like to ban children.

I for one am fairly sure that in some inner cities there are problems with some young people and that some young people commit crime and can be nasty and vicious. But I am not quite yet ready to accept the Sunday Expresses view that we stand on the precipice of disaster. Yes young people commit crime; they do it for an array of reasons, because they are bored, because it can be exciting and fun, because they do not think, because they do not care, because they chose to, in some cases because they are just nasty. But never, in my experience have I come across anyone, young or old who said 'I did it because I was wearing a hooded top'. If we really want to sort out the problems of youth crime - which is the expresses real concern, we have a huge amount that needs to be done. But seriously should dealing with hooded garments really to be our first concern?

And finally, can I just once again make the point that a lot of kids wearing hoods are not knife wielding thugs. But does anybody care? I would really like to know what happened to make the relationship between youth and adult in some quarters of this country so strained. What is it that leads some quarters of our society to be so disregarding of so many of the decent young people in this country and so keen to cast them as thugs? And finally do we really want to have the Sunday Express as our 'fashion police'?