Demonising young people for votes is no laughing matter - Matthew Flinders

Nitrous oxide is highlighted as the increasing drug of choice for 16-24 year olds and will be banned. Nobody wants ‘intimidating gangs’ of giggling youths marauding around the streets or loafing in local parks at night. Those responsible ‘will be quickly and visibly punished’ – possibly even forced to wash police cars - as the government moves to ‘stamp out these crimes once and for all’.

The government’s sudden shift to a very hard stance appears almost designed to promote a moral panic with young people framed very much in terms of contemporary ‘folk devils’.

But what it lacks is any evidence-based understanding of young people today.

The young people the government is now targeting with its ‘crackdown’ are the very same generation whose opportunities to be young were ravaged by Covid. The impact of lockdown – the scarring effects – are only just beginning to be understood. Add to this the fact that this is a generation who has lived through austerity, faces precarious employment as the new normal, and a future that sees their living standards fall below those of previous generations.

And yet this is not a lost generation but is in fact a resilient generation.

The 2021 Prince’s Trust Tesco Youth Index discovered that almost three-quarters of the 16-25 year olds surveyed were positive that ‘theirs is the generation that can change the future for the better.’ The Talk Together project also concluded – having engaged with almost 160,000 people from right across the UK - that an upsurge in community spirit exists and needs to be cultivated and channelled. Even during Covid it was young people that generally swelled the massed ranks of initiatives including the NHS Volunteer Responders scheme and the RSPCA’s volunteer network.

It’s difficult to understand the central logic of government thinking. One minute there is an ‘ambitious plans to level up activities for young people’, which is almost immediately followed by a youth-focused ‘action plan to crack down on anti-social behaviour’. The very next day the message is all about youth facilities being ‘transformed with new investment’.

When reading the government’s action plan on anti-social behaviour I could not stop thinking of Keith Dowding’s book It’s the Government Stupid and its central argument that governments often like to blame citizens for their policies. I live in an inner-city social housing estate in Sheffield. Its labyrinthine design, concrete stair wells and poor lighting provide spaces for young people to congregate. They are the target in the government’s sights. But to blame them completely overlooks the way in which public spending on youth services had declined by nearly 70 per cent in the past decade. Against this backdrop of long-term decline the £378m Youth Investment Fund is undoubtedly a welcome measure but it is not ‘transformational’.

This is not an excuse for anti-social behaviour. It’s a statement of reality. Young people who lack access to basic support services will find things to do. The teenagers on my stairwells may look a little threatening but I’ve also seen them look after older residents and engage in other forms of prosocial behaviour.

If the government wants to ‘rebuild social capital and self-reliance' across the country then it might start by listening to local communities and young people.

The government will say it has listened. The 2022 Youth Review led to the launch of the government’s new National Youth Guarantee. But the review was not youth-led or even co-produced.

The ‘guarantee’ is therefore narrow – the rebuilding of youth clubs (mentioned above), increased access to the National Citizen Service, and support for the Duke of Edinburgh’s Scheme and other non-military uniformed youth groups.

This latest ‘crackdown’ on anti-social behaviour was – if we are honest - to some extent a theatrical performance. It was the pre-election chest thumping of a government that wants to be seen as ‘tough on crime’ in order to bolster its position amongst those older voters who are generally enraged by anti-social behaviour.

As a result a government who ‘hugged the experts’ during Covid now goes directly against the experts when it comes to banning laughing gas.

The problem is that demonising young people for votes really is no laughing matter.

Matthew Flinders is a professor of politics at the University of Sheffield.