Street Crime

Street Crime AW 1/22/05 6:34 pm Page 1
CRIME AND SOCIETY SERIES CRIME AND SOCIETY SERIES

Series editor: Hazel Croall
STREET CRIME
STREET CRIME STREET CRIME
SIMON HALLSWORTH
Street crime remains high on the public and political agenda, and is frequently SI MON HALLSWORTH
the subject of media attention and concern. This book aims to provide a detailed
and accessible account of the phenomenon, placing the subject in its historical,
theoretical, and political context.
The book begins by examining the history of street robbery and traces it from the
medieval period of the outlaw to the underworld of the Victorian city. It
examines the available evidence in order to consider just how serious a problem
street crime is, and considers why it has become such a contentious political
issue. The book provides an overview of contemporary theories of street crime
and provides a critical analysis of their strengths and weaknesses.
The author then develops an alternative framework to interpret street crime. This
focuses upon studying the interrelationship between three key variables: the
SIMON HALLSWORTH
production of motivated offenders, the availability and suitability of victims, and
an analysis of the limits inherent in current control strategies.
The book concludes by arguing against a social response that criminalises young
people for an offence intimately connected with the rise of a consumer society
into whose values the young are ruthlessly socialized but which denies many the
capacity to consume legitimately. The author contends that a socially just
response is not one predicated on a war against street robbers but upon a
politics designed to incorporate them.
The author
Simon Hallsworth is Director of the Centre for Social and Evaluation Research at
London Metropolitan University. He is currently involved in work studying youth
gangs and collective delinquency. He is also co-editor of The New Punitiveness
(Willan, 2005).
www.willanpublishing.co.uk
Street Crime
i
Crime and Society Series
Series editor: Hazel Croall
Published titles
Sex Crime (second edition), by Terry Thomas

Burglary, by R.I. Mawby
Armed Robbery, by Roger Matthews
Car Crime, by Claire Corbett
Street Crime, by Simon Hallsworth
ii
Street Crime
Simon Hallsworth
iii
Published by
Willan Publishing
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e-mail: [email protected]
website: www.isbs.com
© Simon Hallsworth 2005
The rights of Simon Hallsworth to be identified as the author of this book have been
asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the Publishers or a licence
permitting copying in the UK issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, 90
Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 9HE.
First published 2005
ISBN 1-84392-028-X (paperback)
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Typeset by GCS, Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, LU7 1AR

Project managed by Deer Park Productions, Tavistock, Devon
Printed and bound by T.J. International Ltd, Trecerus Industrial Estate, Padstow, Cornwall
iv
To Adam and Lucie
And England still hath bin a fruitfull Land

Of valiant thieues, that durst bid true men stand.
John Taylor, the Water Poet, 1662
v
vi
Chapter title
Contents
Introduction 1
Part 1 A Short History of Street Robbery
Chapter 1 Outlaws and highwaymen 13

Chapter 2 Street robbery in the urban context 33
Part 2 Accounting for Street Crime
Chapter 3 Interpreting the data 51

Chapter 4 The view from the right 67
Chapter 5 The view from the left 79
Chapter 6 Towards a framework of analysis 92
Part 3 Street Robbery and Contemporary Society
Chapter 7 Suitable and available victims 109

Chapter 8 The production of motivated offenders 122
Chapter 9 Deficits in social control 142
Chapter 10 Conclusion 161
Bibliography 177
Index 183
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Street Crime
viii
Introduction
Introduction
It was a cold wet Friday evening somewhere back in the winter of 1988.
That was the day I became a victim of a street robbery. I was living at the
time in Brixton and the robbery took place along one of the many small
backstreets that lead off from Brixton Hill. It happened as I was returning
home having visited a local shop where I had purchased a few goods.
These I had stored in a small rucksack.
I had almost reached Brixton Hill when I became aware of the
presence of a group of young men congregating on the pavement some 50
metres ahead of me. Though, to be fair, the idea of young men
congregating together was nothing new – this was, after all, an area with
a vibrant street culture – there was, nevertheless, something about the
behaviour of this group that caught my attention. It might have been
something about the way in which they were observing me, but I think it
was more to do with the fact that the road I was walking along was not a
place where young men typically congregated.
With alarm bells ringing away, I resolved to avoid the group by
turning into a small side street while also quickening my pace. As I
turned, however, so did the group. I ran and they ran after me – only, I’m
afraid, a lot faster. Unable to escape, I stopped and confronted them.
Unfortunately it was not the most propitious of locations – a small lane
off the main road in darkness. Things were not looking good. There were
six of them aged, I guess, between fifteen and eighteen. Two members of
the group were clearly older than the others and these were also the most
aggressive and active in what followed. One of them pulled a knife which
he held to my throat. He looking unswervingly at my face and emanated
what I can only describe as a sense of barely controlled aggression. The
1
Street Crime
other did the talking: ‘Empty yo fucking pockets … I said empty yo

fucking pockets if you don’t want to get hurt.’ I complied but had nothing
to show because I did not have what they wanted. The talker was not
impressed ‘Where’s yo fucking cash, where’s yo wallet … don’t fuck with
us.’
Despite the presence of the knife and the calculated display of
aggression, I felt strangely calm. I knew intuitively that if I said the wrong
thing or acted in the wrong way I would get hurt. They were capable of
violence. I also sensed, however, that they were not going to hurt me
unless I provoked them into doing so. I remonstrated with them that I
was a student, I had no money and that all I had was some shopping
which I needed. The holes in the pockets of the old trench coat I was
wearing provided evidential support for my case. I was not, I was trying
to suggest, a suitable target. On the contrary, I tried to suggest, and with
some honesty, that I was poor with nothing worth stealing. Convinced I
had nothing of value, they eventually left me alone and made off. They
also took my rucksack. This was, I felt, taking things too far. The bag after
all contained some beer, and one thing I knew with total certainty was
that when I finally returned home I would need a strong drink. So I
followed them and remonstrated. For some entirely obscure reason they
listened. One of the younger men grabbed my bag and left it on the road
for me to pick up.
It was only after I returned to my flat that the full impact of what had
happened began to hit home. At first I felt an overwhelming sense of joy
that nothing had been taken and that what they had taken they had
returned. This emotion was, however, quickly replaced by a far stronger
one: righteous indignation about what had occurred. The event had
shaken me up. It was not fair and I should not have been a victim. I slept
badly that night and, truth to tell, my sleeping pattern was severely
disturbed for the next few weeks. Dark murderous thoughts entered my
mind and I experienced great difficulty in displacing them. My routine
activity also changed. I became far more suspicious of all groups of
young men. I also kept wondering what I would do should I happen to
come across the group that had attacked me.
Did I call the police? I thought about it, but in the end I decided not to.
What, I rationalised to myself, was there to report? Anyway, what at the
end of the day could or would be done? I hadn’t been hurt in any physical
sense and nothing had been taken. My putative muggers had even
returned to me the goods they had taken. And then just what could I say?
I realised early on that I would not recognize my protagonists even if I
did happen to see them. Young, black and male – the usual suspects,
nothing behind or beyond the stereotype. This was Brixton after alI. My
2
Introduction
attack would not even make the grade of a recorded offence. Like so
many others, it would be left to a memory that would fade over time.
It did. I had not been injured and simply got on with my life. But I was
lucky. Many other people I knew had been a victim of street crime, and as
this book was being written many more people were becoming victims of
what the media was representing as an unprecedented increase in this
crime category. Muggers, the papers appeared to suggest, were once
more on the move and the good society was once again under threat.
Ominously, the spectre of the black mugger reappeared and Brixton once
again hit the news as the capital’s street-crime hot spot.
Following tracks already beaten out by previous Conservative
administrations, the Labour government under Tony Blair responded by
readying itself for war. The chief of the Law Lords, Justice Woolf,
demanded yet more imprisonment for street robbers, most of whom
were already being jailed when caught anyway. This was an intervention
that slipped seamlessly into the clarion call for ‘zero tolerance’ routinely
made by a tabloid media that had worked itself into a frenzy of moral
indignation and rage.
It was against this background, the latest in a long line of moral panics
about street robbery, that I found myself commissioned by Government
Office for London to study rising street crime in the area where it
appeared to be the highest. Ironically, this was in Brixton, my one-time
home and the place where my own victimisation had occurred many
years before. This book came out of that experience.
Given the prominence of robbery in urban street life and the social
attention routinely brought to bear upon it by the media and populist
politicians, it came as something of a surprise to find that, as an offence,
little had been written about it and the people who were or who had been
perpetrating it. Indeed, with the exception of Stuart Hall et al.’s seminal
work on ‘mugging’ written in the 1970s, almost nothing had been
substantively written about the subject. And even taking into account
Hall et al.’s work, Policing the Crisis was principally written as a critical
exercise in documenting the social response to street robbery – not
attending to the task of explaining it. This absence of discussion,
particularly on the part of more critical traditions in criminology helped
frame the principal themes of this book. These will be directed at
providing a historical context in which to situate contemporary concerns
about street robbery; reviewing how different traditions in criminology
have sought to account for the problem; and by developing a framework
of analysis I will subsequently apply to explain street crime’s con-
temporary rise in British society.
In the remainder of this introduction I have two aims. First, to define
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Street Crime
more specifically the objective of this enquiry: what is street crime and
how for the purpose of analysis should we define it? Second, to examine
how I will approach this objective by describing the structure of the book
as well as indicating the broad parameters of my argument.
At first sight, the term ‘street crime’ appears a relatively obvious and
straightforward crime category. One that, taken at face value, should
embrace all crimes perpetrated in publicly shared space. And it is true
that in some cases this omnibus meaning of the word is indeed deployed
by various policy makers – not to say academics. For example, in recent
Home Office advice circulated to local crime-reduction partnerships in
London, the term street crime is used in ways that include street robbery
but which also make reference to gun crime. In a far more systematic
attempt to get to grips with the meaning of ‘street crime’, Les Johnson has
produced a comprehensive analysis of the various offences that could be
included in the term (Johnson 1998). This omnibus use of the term,
however, is not the way it is deployed by the police, who code it in ways
that impose a far more prescriptive meaning. As an offence, street crime
is used to:
describe the offences of robbery, attempted robbery and snatch theft

from the person irrespective of location. ‘Snatch thefts’ refer to
those incidents where an offender snatches property away from the
victim, the force being applied to the property as opposed to the
person, and the victim being immediately aware of what has
happened (Smith 2003).
What unifies all forms of street robbery is that it occurs in public space
and involves the illegal appropriation of the goods or property a victim
or group of victims may be carrying. Other offences that may occur on the
street, for instance public disorder offences such as assault, are coded in
different offence categories and are not labelled as street robbery despite
occurring in the context of the street. While this may appear an arbitrary
way of coding reality, there is, in effect, a kind of rationale to it. All the
offences that fall within the remit of its official police definition of street
crime have an exclusive focus on a form of acquisitive crime conducted in
a street context. While violence or the threat of violence may well be used,
it is worth noting that this may not be the case as, for example, with
pickpocketing.
Official definitions, it must be emphasized, do not exhaust the
meanings associated with the term street crime. In public and in
particular media parlance, street crime is often associated with the term
‘mugging’, which is not a formal offence category. Nor is it a term
4
Introduction
routinely deployed by crime-prevention agencies, not least because of

the highly racialized context in which it has been traditionally evoked by
elements in the mass media.1 Finally, while ‘mugging’ might well be the
term preferred by the mass media, it should be noted that it is not the
term used on the street by young people actively involved in street
robbery. In this context, what the police refer to as street crime is most
often termed ‘jacking’. For the purpose of this analysis, ‘street robbery’
will be my preferred term. This choice is determined not only because it
facilitates analysis, but also because it avoids other unfortunate
connotations with which the term is too often associated by using the
more generic expression ‘street crime’, which is far broader and looser.
While individuals may well perpetrate street robbery alone, this
offence is often conducted in the context of a group. Roles within the
group can also be distinguished, with some engaging directly in the task
of robbery itself while other members stand guard as sentinels, ever
vigilant for law-enforcement activity. Even in the context of a collective
attack, it could also be noted (as I observed from my own experience) that
different people may play different roles. One person, for example, may
work to distract the victim, while someone else carries out the actual
robbery. Weight of numbers may also be used to produce the requisite
level of intimidation necessary to persuade victims to give up their
material possessions.
While some groups may exhibit multiple skills in the art and craft of
street robbery, this is unlikely usually to be the case. Street crime is rather
a job in which specialisms are more likely to be the norm. Different
groups, in other words, will typically hone their robbery skills within one
of the forms identified above. While the media often implicitly identify
street robbery as a crime that can only be perpetrated by inherently
vicious individuals designed that way by nature, what this image
obscures is just how skilled an art successful street crime actually is. To
put the message bluntly, to do it well you have to go through a learning
process – it is not something that just happens. A pickpocket, for example,
to be successful (i.e. undetected) must be able to master the sleight of
hand of a conjurer. In the case of more violent street robbers, the ability to
demonstrate violence as a competence is an absolute requirement.
Knowing where potential victims can be found and identified, and how
to avoid law-enforcement agencies are also essential skills. So is the
knowledge necessary that will allow for the effective disposal of the
goods acquired in and through street robbery. These are, moreover, learnt
skills and, as with any skills, there are those who are more proficient than
others. The least successful, like poor Oliver Twist, are those most likely
to be caught.
5
Street Crime
Learning requires an apprenticeship, a process by which a

nonpractitioner is equipped with skills that will enable them to become
an active motivated offender. This in turn requires the existence of a
culture where these deviant skills may be successfully transmitted and
internalized. As we shall see in our historical survey, these cultures come
in various shapes and forms. At its most basic, training can occur through
the medium of observation and imitation. In its most developed form,
training may well approximate the kind of learning environment you
would find available in any legitimate trade – only the qualifications
would be notable by their absence.
To explore the phenomenon of street crime, I have divided the book into
three sections. In the first I contextualize the problem of street robbery by
examining the history of the street robber as he has evolved and
developed in British society since the Middle Ages. The underlying
rationale informing this derives from the observation that, in our
contemporary age of amnesia, it is all too easy to forget the past and lose
sight of just how much it informs the present. The second section of the
book critically explores the theories that have been proposed to explain
the phenomenon of street robbery in recent years. In the third section I
develop and apply my own theoretical framework to explain rising street
robbery in contemporary society.
There are two chapters in the first part of the book. The first considers
the history of the street robber; first in the incarnation of the medieval
outlaw, and second as the highwayman of the seventeenth century. As
this chapter will show, while we, and often for entirely justified reasons,
view the street robber as a folk devil, this has by no means always been
the case. Historical study shows that the street robber is a figure upon
which a number of far more positive associations could also be projected,
as the Robin Hood mythology of the fifteenth century and subsequent
stories about the highwaymen of the seventeenth century testify. In the
second chapter I consider the development of street robbery in the
developing urban context. The chapter examines how the figure of the
urban robber changes from age to age. It examines the ‘canting’ language
associated with pickpocket slang, and studies the incredible variety of
forms through which street robbery expressed itself in its urban setting.
The chapter concludes by examining how, as a distinctly modern
capitalist society developed, an array of forces coalesced in ways that
would both lead to and produce the street robber as the anonymous folk
devil we know today.
The second part considers how street robbery has been studied and, on
the basis of a critique of these approaches, an alternative framework of
6
Introduction
analysis is developed. Chapter 3 begins this process of examination by

considering what we know about the street robber, his victim and recent
changes in this offence category. As this chapter will establish, unlike
most categories of crime, street robbery has risen. Though the rise has
been very sharp, it is in metropolitan areas, particularly poor areas, that
the rise has been most noticeable. Though older people can be both
victims and offenders, the majority of offenders and victims are typically
aged between 14 and 19.
In chapters 4 and 5 I examine the various theories – both academic and
non-academic – that have been propounded to explain street robbery in
the modern age. Though there are many ways of studying these accounts,
I opt for a method that involves distinguishing them by reference to the
political orientation of those who propound them. My rationale for doing
this is simple: the explanations advanced allow themselves to be easily
grouped in this way. There are, in other words, a set of common themes
that unify the kind of explanations advanced by those associated with the
political right, just as much as another set of common themes that unify
those who advance their explanations within the political framework of
the left.
In chapter 4 I consider explanations proposed by those beholden to a
conservative agenda. For commentators who write in this tradition,
street robbery is typically explained by reference to what I will define as a
deficit model of offending behaviour. According to this model, robbery
occurs because there is something defective about the offender or the
cultural group into which he or she is born. These defects may arise
because the individual is born with aberrant traits that predispose him or
her towards crime; or can occur because of problematic socialization
processes that are themselves a product of the underclass to which he or
she is alleged to belong.
In chapter 5 the views of those who offer a more critical and left-of-
centre position on street robbery are examined. Though some important
work has certainly been produced, what remains striking is that, as a
tradition, the left has been very hesitant about addressing street robbery
with the kind of attention it has given to youth subcultures or the crimes
of the powerful. When the left has examined street robbery, it has
appeared in one of two ways. First, when it has been considered as an
issue worth exploring, accounts have typically subsumed its study
within wider theories of working class involvement in crime, which
typically hinge on various conceptions of class disadvantage and its
impact. Second, rather than study why offenders perpetrate street
robbery, the onus has been placed on accounting for the social response
the street robber generates.
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Street Crime
In chapter 6 a framework for rethinking how to explain street robbery

is developed. The errors of mono-causal explanations that attempt to
define street crime by reference to one dominant factor are identified and
the case is made for developing a more complex theoretical model. This is
constructed around the epistemological assumption that street crime is a
multidimensional problem that requires a multidimensional form of
analysis; one in which a number of relevant factors need to be considered
both individually and in relation to each other. By revising the routine
activities approach developed by Felson and Cohen, a framework for
examining street robbery is developed. Street robbery, I contend, can be
explained by reference to the interrelation between three factors: (i) the
availability and suitability of victims; (ii) the production of motivated
offenders; and (iii) deficiencies inherent in the social control response.
In chapters 7, 8 and 9 this revised model is applied to account for the
contemporary rise in street crime. Chapter 7 examines the factors that
make victims both assessable and available for street robbers to prey
upon. It does this by examining changes in the nature of the objects now
routinely carried by the wider public. As this enquiry will show, in recent
years more people have become more likely to possess the objects
coveted by street robbers. This, I will show, has dramatically raised the
aggregate pool of potential targets for street robbery. Not only are there
more potential targets but the range of desirable goods possessed by
potential victims are also relatively assessable, often visible and are
characterized by low rates of inertia, all of which increase the ease with
which they may be appropriated. This, I will argue, has occurred at the
same time that the possibility of access to victims of other categories of
crime has actually decreased.
This chapter will also show how target suitability and availability is
also shaped by the kind of routine behaviours in which victims engage.
Young people, who constitute the majority of street robbery victims, are
not only more likely to carry the goods coveted by street robbers, but are
also typically located in spatially compressed areas that leave them
inherently vulnerable to victimization by motivated offenders they find
difficulty in avoiding. Because young people routinely carry goods that
can be easily appropriated, older forms of conflict in which young people
engage (such as bullying) increasingly take the form of street robbery.
This has the result, I will argue, of making it appear that young people are
engaging in an alarming new crime wave rather than doing what they
have always done in the context of a violent street culture. New patterns
of economic development in high-crime areas also create, this chapter
will show, the preconditions necessary for rising patterns of street
robbery, and do so by attracting suitable victims into areas where suitably
8
Introduction
motivated offenders are likely to dwell. This factor, I will suggest, can
explain why some areas have disproportionately higher levels of street
robbery than others.
Chapter 8 examines the forces that act to produce motivated offenders
who are both willing and able to perpetrate acts of street crime. Rather
than approach the study of offenders in terms which conceive them to be
essentially different from the law-abiding citizenry, the chapter argues
that the problem of offending is acutely bound up with the ways in which
young people have been socialized. At stake here is their successful and
ruthless socialization into the consumption norms of the free-market
capitalist society. Drawing on the work of Merton, I then indicate how
street crime occurs where the conditions for legal consumption avenues
are denied. This, I will argue, is specifically a problem for the kind of
communities over-represented among the population of offenders. In
other words, multiply disadvantaged communities.
The chapter then examines the diverse processes of differential
association that may help explain why only some disadvantaged people
resolve thwarted consumption by engaging in street robbery. This
investigation requires an examination of outlaw culture, the seductions
and benefits that can accrue from engaging in it, and the relationship
between offending behaviour and the construction of illegal opportunity
structures in particular areas.
Chapter 9 considers how deficiencies in existing social control strategy
have also worked to create a context in which street crime can flourish. It
does this by examining, in turn, five current social control strategies.
These include studying the impact of law enforcement; the role of the
judicial system; the respective impact of situational and social crime
prevention; and managerially driven attempts to improve system
performance through integrating and coordinating community safety
effect. As this chapter will show, each strategy alone and in conjunction
with others failed to confront rising street robbery rates for a variety of
reasons.
In the conclusion I develop my own political standpoint with regard to
the issues this book has sought to highlight and discuss. Here I develop
the case for seeing street robbery not as a problem society confronts and
as an outside that must be beaten back, but as a problem of the kind of
society in which we live today. A society that engineers dreams of
material consumption among a population socialized to believe that this
is what the good life must be, while simultaneously excluding vast
swathes of it from the possibility of being able to gratify such dreams
through legitimate consumption rituals. I conclude by examining the
implications of this line of reasoning for how we respond to street
9
Street Crime
robbery before offering some more general advice in relation to the

question ‘What should be done?’.
Notes
1 The British Crime Survey marks an exception to this rule as it uses the term
as a component of the BCS violence typology which it defines as ‘a popular
rather than a legal term, comprising robbery, attempted robbery, and snatch
theft from the person’. See C. Kershaw et al. (2000).
10
Outlaws and highwaymen
Part 1
A Short History of Street Robbery
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Street Crime
12
Chapter 1
Faced with incessant media reports attesting to ever-rising levels of street

crime, it is easy to imagine that the scale of the problem we face today is
so vast that British society has never seen or experienced anything like it
before. Or has it? In this and the next chapter my aim will be to situate our
current fears and anxieties about street crime within a historical context.
This I will accomplish by looking at the historical record, and by so doing
study the predecessors of the contemporary ‘mugger’ as this figure
appears in different places at different times; and by considering the
social response this archetypal folk devil has generated.
By initiating this historical survey I will aspire to make two different
and opposing points. The first will be to reinforce a lesson that has
already been made by other commentators, but which deserves
reiterating despite the lack of its novelty (see Pearson 1983; Hall et al.
1987). This will be to demonstrate that the problem of street robbery is
and remains a perennial feature of societies such as ours. It has always
been with us and this brief consideration of the historical record will
demonstrate just how intrinsic to the life of British society street crime
has always been. As this chapter will also make clear, while the robber
has always preyed upon victims, the way in which this figure has been
represented has changed considerably. If it is a history marked by
regularity in one sense, it is on the other a history in which the figure of
the robber appears in an array of names and guises. The mugger we feel
we know, but how conversant are we with the gonalph, the buzzer, the
footpad, rampsmen, the garroter and the nypper?
The second point this chapter will make will be to suggest that while
street crime remains a perennial feature of our society, the social response
13
Street Crime
it has generated by no means remains the same. While today we are

impelled to hate and look with contempt upon the figure of the robber,
this is by no means the way the street robber or indeed street robbery has
always been viewed by the public. As we shall observe, while robbery
and those who practice it have always commanded the attention of the
public, media and politicians, the attention the robber has received has
not been unequivocally negative. The robber has, and for a long period of
time, also been a figure of respect, veneration and affection as much as he
has been a figure of loathing and fear. Finally, we shall see that street
crime is a subject onto which can be projected an array of wider social
anxieties, particularly with respect to popular fears about law and order,
the moral state of society and fears about its imminent demise or
breakdown.
While there is a good case to be made for suggesting that people in
general, and men in particular, using force to appropriate the goods and
belongings of others has a long history, this overview will focus upon the
matter as it unfolds in the British context, beginning with medieval
society and considering how this offence developed thereafter. By virtue
of this arbitrarily drawn time line, the history of the robberies
perpetrated by the ancient Britons against themselves and other tribes
will not be considered. Nor for that matter will the robberies of the
Romans in Britain or indeed, and more recently, the activities of the
marauding Vikings who records attest were among the most effective
robbing fraternities in history. I will consider the story of street robbery as
it makes its appearance in two settings. In this chapter I will consider the
figure of the robber as he appears in the form of the medieval outlaw and,
later on, the highwayman of the seventeenth century. These, the
forerunners of today’s muggers, typically plied their trade on the
highways and byways that connected village with village and city with
city. In the next chapter I will consider the history of street robbery as it
unfolds more specifically within a developing urban context.
Outlaws
To understand the figure of the robber as he appears in the medieval
world, we must first use our imaginations and reconstruct in our mind’s
eye the appropriate kind of society. This is a society which was formally
ruled by kings who certainly wanted to project power throughout the
length and breadth of the land but were nevertheless limited in the
sovereignty they could exercise. There are two reasons for this. First of
all, a considerable amount of power also resided in the hands of the
warrior lords of medieval society, which effectively delimited the power
14
the sovereign could exercise. Second, in a world without a professional

law-enforcement system, the reach of the law remained inherently
limited and ineffective.
As far as most people were concerned, the law and its enforcement
resided in the figure of the medieval lord to whom they owed allegiance and
to whom most were bound by feudal ties of vassalage and bondage. In a
world characterized by a subsistence agrarian economy, the law began and
ended either where the village hamlets stopped or beyond the walls of the
then thriving medieval towns. Only in these areas could the law be upheld
and, more than that, meaningfully enforced. The power of the sovereign or
his medieval lords to aspire to a more unitary state of affairs would not
occur for a few hundred years. Unlike the kind of society we live in today,
there was no standing army and no national police force. Most people lived
locally and travelled little in the course of their lives.
A world where the reach of the law was so delimited also implied a
world of places and people who existed outside and beyond the reach of
feudal law and its authority structures. This was the world of the outlaw,
literally ‘out-law’. It is in the world of those who lived an outlaw
existence that we may first observe the formation of the folk devil we
know today as the street robber. Indeed, it is as an outlaw that the figure
of the street robber first makes his appearance on the historical stage and
in popular consciousness.
The term ‘outlaw’, however, was a catch-all label used to classify all of
those who lived outside the law. Just as a robber could be adjudged an
outlaw, so too could vagrants and beggars, rebels and thieves. While
vagrants and beggars could avoid execution, vagrancy also commanded
punishments that included the use of the stocks, public floggings and
branding (Briggs 1996).
Just as the term outlaw could embrace an array of felonies, so too could
it include people from an array of social classes – a fact that would
distinguish the street robber of yesterday with those of today who derive
from a more uniform socio-economic position in society. The term
covered serfs who had managed to escape from the brutality of their
lords, those who wandered as beggars, and those who had been forced
from their land by others. It could also include unemployed soldiers and
various members of the medieval aristocracy.
If we consider the motives that would lead some in the direction of an
outlaw existence where the principal means of subsistence would be
obtained through robbery, a number of factors need to be considered.
Some of these factors help explain a general motive to engage in robbery.
Others, however, are more specific to the class of people whose
engagement we are trying to explain.
15
Street Crime
At the most general level, participation in forms of highway robbery

were motivated by immediate economic concerns. It was a means by
which subsistence could be gained, and engagement in this risky and
dangerous livelihood was very much determined by the fact that the
person involved either had no space within legitimate medieval society
or had been expelled by it. Though, as we have already noted, the
punishment for being an outlaw robber was severe, another motive for
engaging in robbery was the sheer ineffectiveness of the law and law
enforcement. In other words, the possibility of getting away with such
crimes was considerable. In a world where the ‘King’s Peace’ was
confined only to centres of ‘civilization’, much of the country remained a
lawless unpacified no-go area where people would only venture if well
armed and well prepared.
In the case of soldiers, their participation in robbery could be
explained in the following terms. Having returned from a war (often in
great numbers), they were often unable to find secure employment in a
legitimate occupation, and consequently turned to robbery because it
offered them the possibility of engaging in a trade they were well
equipped to engage in. While most men in medieval society were armed,
soldiers were actively trained in the use of arms, which made them
inherently more dangerous and consequently more proficient in robbery
than others (Kaspersson 2003). In a medieval lament entitled The Outlaw
Song, this motive is attributed directly to the singer’s engagement in
robbery:
I have served my lord the King in peace and war,

in Flanders, Scotland, in Gascony, his own land;
but now I do not know how to provide for myself;
all my time I’ve wasted in pleasing such a man.
[. . . ]
Whoever began this business

will never amend in his life.
I tell you the truth, there is too much sin in it,
because for fear of prison many will turn robber.
[. . .]
Some will become robbers who never used to be,

who dare not lead a peaceful life for fear of jail;
they lack what it takes to keep them alive each day.
Whoever began this business embarked on a great task
(Isabel 1953)
16
While many robbers were likely to derive from the cast of soldiers who
were forced to dwell beyond the highly limited boundaries of medieval
society, it was also a practice in which the more privileged ranks of
medieval order could engage. While this may well appear surprising, it is
worth remembering that the medieval aristocracy were by no means the
privileged domesticated class they would subsequently become under
the force of what Elias terms the ‘civilizing process’ (Elias 1978). In the
Middle Ages, they were first and foremost a violent warrior class
attached to decidedly warrior-like principles. They could and would
condone robbery and a multitude of other evils as well. This was a fact
recorded with considerable sarcasm by one anonymous Franciscan friar
in 1317, who also noted with irony not only their extensive participation
in robbery, but that involvement in such acts was obscured through the
use of less stigmatizing labels such as ‘shaveldour’ and ‘ryfelour’.
Take note that among all nations the English may return thanks to
God for a special privilege. For it is said that Ireland and Wales are
overrun with robbers, who steal their neighbours’ cows, oxen and
other cattle, on account of which they are openly called ‘robbers’.
But in England — may God be praised — this is not the case. What
do we find instead? Among us, gentlemen are called ‘shaveldours’
and ‘ryfelours’. For men of this kind break into the treasure-houses
of the great, carry off property, drive away herds, plunder
churchmen, nor does this touch their consciences; instead, they are
hugely delighted when they can plunder an abbot, a prior or
another monastic, and they say: ‘Undoubtedly it was God’s will
that such a peasant, monk or friar encountered us today.’ It seems to
them that whatever they do, they do justly and with reason. And so
they do nothing for which they do not know how to come up with
reasons that appear to be satisfactory, as a result of the lying way
they disguise them and misrepresent them. (cited in Spraggs 2001)
Fourteenth-century records identify some of these gentleman robber

fraternities by name. Among these are the notorious Folville brothers and
their compatriots the Coterals who plied their trade between 1321 and
1326. The Folville brothers were led by one Richard de Folville, rector of
Teigh in Rutland, who was, according to the historical record, ‘a wild and
daring man, and prone to acts of violence’ (Spraggs 2001). Having been
adjudged by Trailbaston Judges to be outlaws, a fact that evidently
disturbed him, Richard retaliated by taking one Richard De Willoughby,
a King’s Justice, prisoner in 1321. According to Henry of Knighton’s
Chronicle:
17
Street Crime
He was led into a nearby wood to a company of confederates and

there, under compulsion, paid a ransom for his life of ninety marks,
after swearing on oath that he would always comply with their
instructions. (Bellamy 1964)1
By the Tudor period it would appear that little had changed. As Harrison,
a commentator of the period, had occasion to note, the gentry were by no
means innocent of robbery, though he also draws attention to the fact that
it was a livelihood also engaged in by those lower down the social order.
In particular, by those who found themselves either without wages or
with wages that were too low to support them.
... Certes there is no greater mischeefe doone in England than by

robberies, the first by yoong shifting gentlemen, which oftentimes
doo beare more port than they are able to mainteine. Secondlie by
seruingmen, whose wages cannot suffice so much as to find them
breeches; wherefore they are now and then constreined, either to
keepe high waies, and breake into the wealthie mens houses with
the first sort, or else to walke vp and downe in gentlemens and rich
farmers pastures, there to see and view which horses feed best,
whereby they manie times get something, although with hard
adventure. (Spraggs 2001)
While it would appear that highway robbery was a specifically illegal act
recognized as such by most people, the reality was far more complex than
this. Armies of this period, including the ‘honourable’ crusaders of the
thirteenth century, were also engaged in the business of robbery and on a
vast scale. Indeed it is evident that it was specifically in order to obtain
plunder that would provide the second and third sons of the medieval
aristocracy with a material incentive to sign up for war in the first place.
The same motive also provided a material incentive to the foot soldiers. It
is from this practice that the term ‘freebooter’ derives.
Robbery in medieval society was therefore by no means perpetrated
by the class of outlaws alone. If we look at the complex tribal conflicts
between lords, each attempting to expand his landholding, or lay claim
to that of another on the basis of some dynastic quarrel over succession,
robbery appears as an intrinsic aspect of life at this time. Together with
violence, in a society that had by no means been pacified, robbery is a
trade in which the medieval lords excelled. Given that, there is a good
case to be made for suggesting that England’s early history was indeed
grounded in robbery and violence. Indeed, all that separated the noble
from the outlaw was not a greater or lesser capacity to engage in law-
18
abiding behaviour. It was rather the case that, in the brutal and
competitive struggle in which the medieval order engaged, some robber
bands were better equipped by force of arms to win out against others.
This would confer, not least, the power to define what the law was and
who the outlaws would be.
How, though, did the public perceive the figure of the outlaw? It is at
this point that we must note some distinct differences in the way in which
people responded to the dangers of being robbed by outlaws and the way
in which the figure of the outlaw was represented in music, folklore and
literature. When it came to the reality of dealing with the threat of being
robbed, most people took considerable steps to avoid it. For the most part
this meant travelling in company, and ideally with arms for the sake of
protection. This habit would remain until the eighteenth century, after
which time the highways became more secure as society itself became
increasingly pacified. William Harisson, a commentator on travel in early
sixteenth-century England, describes the extensive preparations that the
travelling public had to take:
… the honest traveller is now inforced to ride with a case of dags at

his sadle bow, or with some pretie short snapper, whereby he may
deale with them further off in his owne defense, before he come
within the danger of these weapons. Finallie, no man trauelleth by
the waie without his sword, or some such weapon, with us except
the minister, who commonlie weareth none at all, vnlesse it be a
dagger or hanger at his side. (cited in Spraggs 2001)
In various fictional representations, the figure of the outlaw commanded

an altogether different and far more positive response. He would become
known, in a serious of incarnations that culminate with the romances of
Robin Hood, as an altogether more noble character, forced by the evil
deeds of others into perpetrating robbery which he engaged in with
audacity and courage. As Gillian Spraggs observes:
The outlaw of legend is depicted as an innocent man, driven by

powerful enemies to live outside society. He takes refuge in the
forest, where he survives by robbery and poaching. But these
crimes are viewed as necessary and justifiable. In time, he finds a
chance to revenge himself, and vindicate his essential innocence.
Then he returns in triumph to live on the right side of the law.
(Spraggs 2001)
While early romances of the eleventh and twelfth centuries celebrated
19
Street Crime
the activities of Robin by stressing his capabilities as a successful robber

(a point to which we will have occasion to return later), the Robin Hood
of legend was not originally of noble birth. He was rather a product of the
yeoman class: a free-born man. It would not be until the fifteenth century
that Robin would find himself appropriated by the nobility and, as
Hobsbawn observed, it would only appear at this time that his motives
for robbery were in order to take from the rich to give to the poor
(Hobsbawn 2000). In his early incarnation it was his audacious exploits as
a successful robber that commanded far and away the most attention. As
Hobsbawn also notes, what the peasantry would identify with in the
figure of Robin hood was a hero who, if not committed to the creation of
a better world, at least opposed the injustice of this one and in so doing
kept alive the flame of hope for those with little.
While we tend to remember Robin and his Merry Men, we have also
lost sight of many at one time equally notorious outlaws, widely known
and celebrated and from whom the Robin Hood myths would draw
much of their material. Such myths, for example, included the Anglo-
Norman romance of Fouke le Fitz Waryn, and the Tale of Gamelyn.
Offering a later, but fascinating folk insight into the legend of the
honourable outlaw, Groce’s 1811 dictionary also refers to one ‘Jack of
Legs’, a giant said to be buried in Weston church near Baldock. This man
‘says Salmon’
… as fame goes lived in a wood here, and was a great robber, but a
generous one; for he plundered the rich to feed the poor: he
generally took bread for this purpose from the Baldock Bakers, who
catched him at an advantage, put out his eyes, and afterwards
hanged him at a knoll in Baldock field. (Harris 1971)
What these legends do attest – and this is something we shall also see
when we consider the figure of the highwayman – is that the robber
outlaw or robber per se was never considered by the wider public as an
unmitigated figure of evil. He was not in other words perceived in quite
the way in which we are now enjoined to view the figure of the street
mugger today: as an embodiment of evil we are taught to fear and hate.
Clearly the outlaw and the robber certainly possessed a folk devil status,
but folk devils do not always, as the Robin Hood legends attest, inspire
universal hatred. Thus we find in medieval society, not least in the way
the figure of the outlaw was evoked in the Elizabethan age, a
representation of the outlaw as an ultimately honourable being, and
robbery itself as by no means a dishonourable trade. At certain periods it
is evident that the robber could symbolize something entirely noble.
20
Indeed it was an occupation that could on occasions be considered akin

to a national trait that could be actively celebrated. It was in this spirit
that John Taylor the Water Poet would state in his 1622 prose poem ‘An
Arrant Thief’:
And England still hath bin a fruitfull Land

Of valiant Thieues, that durst bid true men stand.
(Taylor 1973 (1630)).
Others offered a similar refrain, reflecting the mood of a public that was
by no means supportive of the forces of law and order or indeed of
respectable society. Nor would such a world occur until the nineteenth
century, and even then its appeal was still far from universally accepted.
Up until that time the robber could be viewed as a heroic figure; an
outsider by no means considered an enemy of the people. In fact, as this
quote from Thomas Wilson in 1572 suggests, robbery could be used to
identify a national trait by no means widely condemned.
Theaft is counted so horrible amongest some nations, that men

commonly will rather sterve then steale, and here in England he
that can robbe a man by the hygh waye is called a tall felowe.
(Wilson 1925)
As the medieval ages drew to a close, the term ‘vagabond’ gradually came
into being to denote the space once occupied by the outlaw. It remained,
however, a catch-all term into which, like the term outlaw, could be
projected everyone of whom the Tudors and later the Stuarts would
disapprove (Briggs 1996). Robbery on the highway, however, still appeared
as a significant crime in Elizabethan society, though its presence was
certainly far less pronounced than crimes of theft against property. Between
the years 1559 and 1602, of all the felonies recorded in Essex by the assizes,
robbery (collated together with burglary and forcible assault) made up 18
per cent of the total number of offences. This contrasts with a figure of 66 per
cent for theft from buildings. Witchcraft, for those interested in such things,
represented 7 per cent of the total (Briggs 1996).
Just as developments in the means of production would, as Marx
would observe, drive medieval society into the age of capitalism, such
developments also changed the way in which robbery would henceforth
be accomplished. Whereas in medieval society swords and bows would
have been the tools principally used to perpetrate robbery, from the
Tudor period onwards it was a trade increasingly plied with pistols a fact
starkly recognized by the Elizabethan authorities.
21
Street Crime
… it is a common thing for the thieves to carry pistols whereby they

either murder out of hand before they rob, or else put her subjects in
such fear that they dare not resist, their lordships are requested to
take such steps as may be necessary to redress this mischief (cited in
Spraggs 2001)
By the seventeenth century the medieval outlaw existed as no more than

a folk hero celebrated in myths, song and literature. And it is in this
highly romanticized form that the legend of Robin Hood continues today
in its Hollywood incarnation. By the early seventeenth century, robbery
still remained an occupational hazard for the travelling public. Indeed,
the highways and byways of England were no safer than they had been in
the times of the Tudors, even though England was now well on the way
to becoming a more pacified society. In 1617, however, a new way of
describing the street robber had appeared. Henceforth, and up until the
late eighteenth century, this most durable of folk devils would now be
known as the highwayman.
The highwayman
As with the medieval outlaw, the highwayman likewise enters history in
an ambivalent form; as much a figure of myth and legend as a menace to
be shunned and feared by all. Like the outlaw robber, the highwayman
would also inspire poems, plays and songs testifying to his (and
occasionally her) tenacious exploits. Like the outlaw, highwaymen
would also inspire fear on the part of the travelling public on whom they
preyed and as with the outlaw, the punishment dealt out to convicted
highwaymen was harsh and brutal (Linebough 1991).
What also aligns the medieval outlaw with the seventeenth-century
highwayman is that they were both livelihoods that could be practised by
the gentry and soldiers as well as by the poor. Highway robbery, in other
words, from its medieval beginnings to its eighteenth-century
incarnation, was always an occupation that attracted adherents from
across the social spectrum. Why this is so remains an interesting
question. To an extent it is quite possible that the historical sources are
somewhat biased in their accounts. In effect, the literate class was also the
affluent class, and were therefore more likely to be fascinated with tales
of degenerate or fallen nobility than they were with a class of vagabonds
viewed as subhuman to begin with. This would certainly be the
predominant view of the robber mediated through the thriving trade in
popular crime literature of the time. This genre, or ‘cony catching’
literature as it was known, was associated closely with figures such as
22
Decker and Greene who, writing in the seventeenth century, can be

considered the founding fathers of crime writing in British social life.
The reality of life among the gentry, however, points to a world in
which matters such as a civil war, inheritance laws, debts and
extravagance did indeed create the preconditions that could lead certain
young men to engage in highway robbery. That said, in comparison with
those who were called ‘to ride the acomp’ from poorer backgrounds, the
more affluent of these robbers formed but a minority. Though the tale of
the gentleman highwayman would continue through to the end of the
eighteenth century, the gentlemanly aspect of the crime would come to be
perceived as the way in which the robbery was perpetrated, and not as a
reference to the social class of the robber. It is this fact, far more than the
class of origin, that has bequeathed to posterity the romantic image of the
gentleman highwayman.2 By the end of the eighteenth century the
highwayman would become, like the figure of the outlaw before him, no
more than a figure of legend.
From the eighteenth century onwards, street crime would figure
predominantly as a pursuit perpetrated principally by poor people who
dwelt in predominantly urban settings. Unemployed soldiers figure
prominently, as do apprentices who, bored of a life given over to
drudgery and poverty, turn to robbery for their livelihoods. In his study
of the London hanged, Linebough also noted a significant over-
representation of butchers among highwaymen (Linebough 1991). That
brief and uniquely democratic moment in British history when both rich
and poor would engage in robbery on the king’s highway thus came to an
end. Before we leave the gentleman highwayman behind, however, it is
worth noting just how powerful an impact this figure had on the public’s
imagination. Indeed, such would be the power and charisma attached to
these villains that they came to command the respect not only of the
public at large but also, as we shall see, their affluent victims.
While Dick Turpin remains far and away the most famous of the
highwaymen of the eighteenth century, his fame was largely derived
from the exploits of other memorable highwaymen who preceded him
and who engaged in the very acts for which he would subsequently be
remembered. This cast list included such figures as Gamaliel Ratsey,
Captain James Hind and Claude Du Vall – criminals well known in their
day, and whose short and brutal lives we will now consider.
The highwayman did not, of course, suddenly appear out of nowhere,
perpetrating new crimes or old crimes in new ways. The term simply
marks a change in semantic fashion: an attempt to rethink an old villain
in a way that would appeal to the contemporary audience. The term was
also only one among many others that were in popular parlance between
23
Street Crime
the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries, so the highwayman could also
appear as a High Toby or a Knight of the Road. What appears to have
cemented the term ‘highwayman’ into our historical consciousness was
the fact that it was an expression that became synonymous with the
activities of a procession of famous robbers whose notoriety derived both
from their exploits and from the way these were subsequently mediated
in literary form. In many respects they do fulfil the criteria for the role of
the social bandit, even if Hobsbawn remains adamant that the
highwayman should not be viewed this way (Hobsbawn 2000). For
many, these robbers did perform a nascent political role, which lay
precisely in their struggle with the forces of law and in their robbery of
the class of exploiters.
While it is difficult to identity any one person responsible for setting in
motion the cult of the highwayman, it is with Gamaliel Ratsey, a
gentleman soldier of the early seventeenth century, and Captain James
Hind that the myths begin to assume the form that would persist for the
next 200 years (Spraggs 2001).
Hanged in 1605, having committed a number of notorious robberies,
Ratsey’s life became the subject of a number of popular stories. These, as
Spraggs observes, would come to assume the status of models around
which later stories, subsequently attributed to other highwaymen, would
coalesce.
In terms of content, there are a number of similarities that unify these
robber narratives. All converge on the figure of a man (and very
occasionally a women) who is forced to make his living by robbery, often
as a consequence of forces beyond his control.3 Having taken to a life of
robbery, however, it is a trade which is then undertaken with honour,
decency and, not least, a sense of humour. Though capable of using
violence, it is the capacity to avoid using it and indeed a repugnance at
using it unnecessarily that renders highwaymen both folk heroes as well
as gentlemen. While many of their victims are indeed innocent, it is also
the case that some are not and that by virtue of this their victimization is
implicitly justified. Like all noble social bandits, they are generous to the
poor and chivalrous to women. Within the highwaymen narrative, there
is an implicit sense that there is a tragic moral destiny at work that will
invariably culminate in the hero being caught before being put violently
to death. The law can be avoided (and their notorious capacity to evade
capture remains a core feature of the legend) but cannot be circumvented
forever. Justice will be done and, importantly, must be seen to be done.
Inevitably the hero is caught, found guilty and sentenced to death. The
stories conclude with the hero facing execution with equanimity and
dignity, well respected and loved by all.
24
Captain Hind’s story exemplifies this narrative. Born the son of

a saddler in Chipping Norton in 1618, Hind became apprenticed to
a butcher from whose mistreatment he eventually escaped. Having
moved to London he subsequently met one Thomas Allen, a ’notorious
highwayman’, and turned to a career in robbery. When the Civil
War began, Hind sided with the Royalists and fought with them at
the Battle of Worcester. By the end of the war he had returned to a
life of crime and was eventually captured and arraigned before
Judge Warberton for killing George Sympson (who had attempted
to capture him), whereupon he was found guilty of wilful murder.
Having been condemned for high treason, he was hung, drawn
and quartered on 24 September 1652 at Worcester. He was thirty-
four years old. In his final speech he declared (in mitigation) that
his crimes had been perpetrated against Cromwell’s Republican Party.
The Newgate Calender (1779) records that ‘nothing troubled him so much
as to die before he saw his Royal master established on his throne, from
which he was most unjustly and illegally excluded by a rebellious and
disloyal crew, who deserved hanging more than him’ (Newgate Calender
1779). His head was subsequently displayed at Bridge Gate over the
River Severn, while the rest of his remains were dispersed to other gates
in the city.
If these are the bare facts of his life, it is in the manner in which he is
alleged to have committed his robberies that his fame largely rests. That
he could be positioned as an enemy of Cromwell and his Puritan
followers also played decisively in his favour in the age of the restoration.
In this sense he was not only honourable but a patriot as well, a point
affirmed by a contemporary poem:
Our English Hero sought no Crown,

Nor that more pleasing Bait, Renown;
But just to keep off Fortune’s Frown.
Yet when his Country’s Cause invites,

See him assert a Nation’s Rights!
A Robber for a Monarch fights!
If in due Light his Deeds we scan,

As Nature points us out the Plan,
Hind was an honourable Man
(Johnson 1734).
25
Street Crime
What is interesting about Hind’s case is that he was originally of low

birth, a fact that would distinguish him, in class terms at least, from the
figure of the noble Ratsey (Spraggs 2001). What is gentlemanly about
Hind, or rather that which propels him into the select grouping of the
gentleman outlaw, is his involvement in a crime category that had been
redefined by the media at the time as itself being gentlemanly. It was not
something, in other words, he had inherited from birth; it was something
he accomplished by robbing in the right way.
While the details of his biography certainly testify to Hind’s status as a
gentleman, just as important are the audacious robberies he committed.
For it is these acts that exemplify the highwayman as a bold, honourable,
chivalrous and noble man who must therefore, by extension be a
gentleman, because these qualities embody what a gentleman is
supposed to be. A contemporary biography describes how Hind
allegedly perpetrated his first robbery under the tutelage of Allen. Hind,
having intercepted a group of gentlemen on Shooters Hill, bids them:
… Stand, and deliver such money as they had, otherwise he would

presently be their death; The Gentleman not willing to die,
presently gave him Ten pounds, which was all the Gentleman had;
Hind seeing it was all he had, said, Sir, here is forty shillings for you
to bear your Charges; in regard it is my Handsale; the Gentleman
answered, I wish you better luck with it than I have; so Hind took
his way, and came to the rest of the gang; and Allen praised him for
learning his Art so quickly, saying, did you not see, How he rob’d
him with a Grace (Fidge 1652, cited in Spraggs 2002)
In most respects the lives of subsequent highwaymen conform to the

established stereotypes observable in the way Hind’s life was
reconstructed in popular fiction. All that appears to change is the
character of the exploits themselves. Claude Du Vall, the famous French
highwayman, behaved in much the same way as Hind, but appeared, if
anything, even more gallant and debonair. His most famous exploit,
immortalised by Walter Pope in 1670, centred upon an occasion where he
was alleged to have held up a coach containing a nobleman and his lady.
Knowing that escape was impossible but not wishing to appear
frightened, the lady began to play upon a flageolet. Du Vall took out his
own and began to accompany her. Having concluded their duet, Du Vall
is then said to have complimented the nobleman on his wife’s ability and
observed that he suspected she could no doubt dance as well as she
played. Having danced with her on the heath, Du Vall escorted her back
to the carriage, where he then remarked to the noble that he had failed to
26
pay for his entertainment. In recompense the highwayman stole four

hundred pounds.
While the story is perhaps unlikely, what we do know about Du Vall is
that when he was eventually caught and tried at Newgate, Charles II
made an attempt to ask for a reprieve, but to no avail. Du Vall was
executed at Tyburn on 21 June 1670 in front of a sympathetic crowd. He
was subsequently buried at St Giles, where his epitaph was alleged to
read:
Here lies Du Vall, Reader, if male thou art,

Look to thy purse. If female, to thy heart.
Much havoc has he made of both; for all
Men he made to stand, and women he made to fall.
(Pope 1670)
While embellishment is certainly the order of the day, it is worth

observing that there was more than a grain of truth in certain exploits in
which highwaymen engaged. Though, having made this point, the task
of actually separating fact from fiction remains inherently difficult, as
Dick Turpin’s famous ride from London to York indicates. Though
credited with this astonishing feat, such a ride was never actually made
by Turpin. It was a feat subsequently attributed to him in the highly
popular novel Rookwood written by Harrison Ainsworth in 1834. It was,
however, a feat based on fact – in this case a successful attempt by another
well-known highwayman of the seventeenth century, John ‘Swift Nick’
Nevison, to produce an alibi for a robbery he had committed in Gads Hill
in Kent in 1676. Having committed the robbery, Nevison rode his bay
horse all the way to York, where he then engaged in conversation with its
Lord Mayor. When he was subsequently arrested, Nevison was able to
produce the Mayor to support his alibi that he had been in York at the
time of the robbery. York was two hundred miles from Gads Hill.
Though heavily mythologized, it is clear that the lives of the
highwaymen did not readily accord with the myths attributed to them,
even though, as a number of contemporary commentators observed,
their behaviour at the point of robbery was often quite courteous. This is
a fact attested to by a Swiss traveller of the time:
Highwaymen are generally well mounted; one of them will stop a

coach containing six or seven travellers. With one hand he will
present a pistol, with the other his hat, asking the unfortunate
passengers most politely for their purses or their lives. No one
caring to run the risk of being killed or maimed, a share of every
27
Street Crime
traveller’s money is thrown into the hat, for were one to make the
slightest attempt at self-defence the ruffian would turn bridle and
fly, but not before attempting to revenge himself by killing you. If,
on the contrary, he receives a reasonable contribution, he retires
without doing you any injury. When there are several highwaymen
together, they will search you thoroughly and leave nothing. Again,
others take only a part of what they find; but all these robbers ill-
treat only those who try to defend themselves. I have been told
that some highwaymen are quite polite and generous, begging
to be excused for being forced to rob, and leaving passengers
the wherewithal to continue their journey. (cited in Spraggs
2001)
Though Dick Turpin would, like many highwaymen before him, find his
life embroidered with the stuff of legend, at the level of cold hard reality,
what we know about his life attests to an existence by no means as
dashing and noble as it was subsequently reported. Though presented as
a lone debonair highwayman, Turpin in fact came to highway robbery
late in life. The majority of his criminal career was spent working in
association with a number of other robbers (the Essex Gang), who
specialized in attacking farmhouses in the Home Counties and who were
by no means averse to using ultra-violence to separate victims from their
possessions. It was at a later stage in his life, when working with one
‘Captain’ Tom King from a cave in Epping Forest, that Turpin began to
acquire his reputation as a highway robber. By the time he was captured
he had killed two people, while terrifying scores more. As with Hind and
Du Vall before him, Turpin’s eventual destiny was his execution, which
took place at York Racetrack in 1739. True to the myth, he went to his
death with courage, a fact recorded in a York newspaper which noted
how Turpin ‘with undaunted courage looked about him, and after
speaking a few words to the topsman, he threw himself off the ladder and
expired in about five minutes.’
What we can be fairly sure about is that until the late seventeenth
century the threat posed by highway robbery remained considerable.
British society at this time was still disorderly in ways that it would not
be in the eighteenth century. From the time of the Stuarts through to mid-
Georgian England, the reach of the law remained limited as there was no
national police agency capable of enforcing it. Such law enforcement as
did exist remained corrupt and ineffective and it is perhaps this above all
else that provided the space in which the highwayman could thrive,
largely free from the threat of detection or apprehension (Linebough
1991). At the same time, more highways were being established, the
28
coach service was in full operation and, in a growing mercantile culture,

more people were travelling between rapidly growing urban centres.
Victims, in other words, were available to be robbed, and were attractive
as victims precisely because more of them than ever before were carrying
the goods that highwaymen sought to appropriate. The opportunities for
perpetrating highway robbery were thus very obvious and robbers took
advantage.
John Evelyn, writing in 1699, commented on just how dangerous
highway robbery had become for those who sought to travel around
London and its environs. ‘This week’, he wrote, ‘robberies were
committed between the many lights that were fixed between London and
Kensington on both sides, and while coaches and travellers were passing’
(cited in Ackroyd 2001) . Certain highways became particularly notorious
as places where robbery was especially likely. In fact, what we find in the
historical records are clear associations between certain locations and the
highwaymen who plied their trade there. The roads around Hounslow
Heath in Essex, for example, were noted as especially dangerous, as was
the Great North Road. It was in the environs of Hounslow Heath that
Twysden, Bishop of Raphoe, was shot and killed while carrying out a
robbery; that James Maclaine held up Lord Eglington and accidentally
wounded Horace Walpole while attempting to rob him; and it was on this
same heath that Du Vall would dance. Turpin was known to have worked
the Great North Road, as did John ‘Swift Nick’ Nevison (1639–84), whose
gang met at the Talbot Inn at Newark and robbed travellers between York
and Huntingdon.4
While shrouded in myth and legend, it is evident that fiction was not
completely divorced from a real world in which highway robbery would
remain a by no means infrequent occurrence for the unwary traveller.
What remains to be explained however was the perpetuation of the myth
of the highwayman both in contemporary records and in later accounts
as a folk hero rather than a folk devil. What was it about robbery
throughout this period that allowed it to be represented in such a positive
light? Indeed, in such positive terms that even up to the eighteenth
century we find figures such as Mary Wollstonecraft feeling able to
commend the behaviour of the English highwayman, not only as
honourable, but as indicative of the superiority of the English over the
French:
… robberies are very rare in France, where daily frauds and sly
pilfering prove, that the lower class have as little honesty as
sincerity. Besides, murder and cruelty almost always show the
dastardly ferocity of fear in France; whilst in England, where the
29
Street Crime
spirit of liberty has prevailed, it is useful for an highwayman,

demanding your money, not only to avoid barbarity, but to behave
with humanity, and even complaisance. (Wollstonecraft 1989 (1794))
There are a number of reasons that can be cited to explain this seemingly
bizarre love affair with robbers and robbery. Before we consider these
reasons, however, it is also important to add a note of caution: while the
cult was widely celebrated, not everyone participated in its expression.
In the eyes of the law, robbery would typically be met with a death
sentence, as the tales of highwaymen in texts such as the Newgate
Calendars testify. While we have good records attesting to the many
positive responses highwaymen provoked in their affluent victims, the
reactions of more mundane and less wealthy victims typically pass by
unremarked and too often unrecorded. Indeed, as Blok has convincingly
argued in his response to Hobsbawn’s positive evocation of the social
bandit, most highwaymen were a long way from being the friend of the
peasants who constituted the majority of their victims (Blok 2001).
If we examine the popularity of the highwayman, a number of facts
need to be considered. First of all, highwaymen did not appear from
nowhere; their presence marks a continuity with older myths about the
outlaw robber. In this sense they simply reiterate older narratives, albeit
in a more contemporary form. Why tales of robbery and the exploits of
robbers were so popularly received is possibly due to a number of
features common to English society as it developed from the eleventh to
the eighteenth century. Throughout this period we witness a society
characterized by incredibly wide disparities in wealth and income. While
the rich enjoyed high standards of living the majority of the population
were barely able to survive on a subsistence level. Indeed, as Linebough
observes, poverty in the eighteenth century was so acute that
contemporary historians have yet to explain adequately how the poor
actually survived at all. To survive meant living in the context of a life
where the spectre of poverty was always close at hand and where
mundane drudgery was the order of the day. While most of the
population would have grown up aware that there was such a thing as
the King’s Peace, it was by no means evident that many trusted those
who represented it. The system was and would remain for centuries
arbitrary, ineffectual, corrupt and repressive; a brutal instrument through
which ruling-class rule was secured and continued. These background
factors therefore provide a powerful set of reasons why poorer members
of society would find themselves attracted to the figure of the robber and
also help explain why this figure could be accorded folk hero status.
Who, after all, would have too much sympathy with robbery of the rich
30
and powerful, not least when the economic order they controlled was
nakedly exploitative to begin with.
At the same time it is easy to see why the daring exploits of the robber
could be celebrated. Their ability to evade the forces of law and order,
would commend itself to those whose lives lacked such excitement and
who would often have good cause to dislike the forces of law and order to
begin with. Perhaps of more significance, particularly for the labouring
masses, was the fact that the highwayman embodied an active spirit of
resistance to the repressive order that exploited them all. Thus, ‘riding
the acompt’, while certainly a trade, was also attached to a particular
politics. In their defiance and in their bravery the highwaymen not only
challenged the law but actively demonstrated their contempt for it and
for the society it sustained. A vicarious identification, in these circum-
stances, becomes easy to understand. Why would the majority of people
actually have cause to identify with King and Country at all?
The fact that robbery was indeed robbery could also be overlooked or,
perhaps more accurately, be denied by reference to the many allegedly
positive attributes of the robber. Finally, if the scales of justice still
appeared to tilt towards the highwayman and against wider notions of
‘justice’ and just desserts, the highwayman almost without exception
was caught and executed. Their brave exit from life, usually
accompanied by (often widely distributed popular media) noble
speeches, acted to justify their election to the pantheon of heroes, even if,
ostensibly, it marked the triumph of the law over those who chose to
transgress it.
Of course, different audiences identified with the highwaymen in
different ways and for different reasons. For the bourgeoisie, what was
served up was a representation that cloaked the highwayman in
romance, and it is in this guise – as a dashing debonair hero – that he is
largely remembered. Noye’s poem the Highwayman (Noyes 1928) perhaps
best captures this highly depoliticized representation. For the working
class, however, the highwayman represented and embodied the spirit of
resistance in the face of harsh repression. And it was to celebrate this
spirit that ballads, poems, stories and plays were written. Though by no
means the only play that celebrated the highwayman, it would be Gay’s
eighteenth century classic The Beggars Opera that best captures the spirit
of the highwayman as hero (Gay 1727 (1983)).5
By the late eighteenth century, highway robbery had begun to decline
and became increasingly rare. According to Spraggs, the last recorded
highway robbery occurred in 1831 (Spraggs 2001). By then the figure of
the highwayman had already become a figure of history and the stuff of
legend. As the State developed, and the reach of the law extended with
31
Street Crime
the development of a unitary and far more effective law-enforcement

system, the opportunities for perpetrating such robberies began to wane
and would eventually disappear – though not entirely. While the
highways that linked city with city became increasingly secure, the same
could not be said for the streets of the ever-growing urban centres.
Notes
1 Translated by Spraggs (2002) from Rawson, J. (ed.) (1889). Henry of Knighton’s

Chronicle. London, HMSO. See also Stones 1957; Bellamy 1964.
2 Note the continuity with the Robin Hood legends, many of which were also
devoted to celebrating the honourable way in which his robberies were
perpetrated. Just as Robin would eventually become redefined as a
gentleman, so too would the highwayman.
3 As Rawlings observes, it is often as a consequence of a woman’s intervention
that the hero is forced to embark on a life of crime (Rawlings 1999).
4 The history of the Highwayman, http://www.stand-and-deliver.org.uk/
great_north_road.htm, 2002.
5 When Brecht and Weill produced their own classic version of The Beggar’s
Opera in 1928, Gay’s original narrative was left virtually unchanged.
32
Street robbery in the urban context
Chapter 2
Street robbery in the

urban context
The development of urban centres such as London is of crucial

significance to the developing history of street crime in British society,
precisely because urban living created an ideal setting in which highway
robbery could flourish. City life, after all, brought large numbers of
people into close proximity with each other, including those with goods
worth stealing and those who aspired to separate them from their goods.
City life in this respect provided an ideal environment in which
motivated offenders would consequently have direct access to suitable
and assessable victims. Urban centres also provided venues where
knowledge of the craft of street crime could be taught, while also
providing a ready marketplace where the goods appropriated could be
sold on and distributed to other people. The city landscape, with its
winding ways and dim-lit streets, also provided a setting in which street
robbery could thrive as an industry. City streets had ideal spaces in which
the criminal could hide in wait for a victim, as well as offering the
perpetrator an array of inaccessible spaces into which they could escape.
The grim urban squalor and rank poverty that defined the living
conditions for so many would also provide a fertile environment for
street crime in all its forms to flourish.
The development of street crime

To study the development of street crime in its urban setting, however,
we must retrace our steps and return to Elizabethan times. For it is from
this period that the multitude of offences that come within the rubric of
street crime evolve and develop, a process that proceeds hand in hand
33
Street Crime
with the expansion of the late-medieval city and its burgeoning economy.
The rapid expansion of London is of profound importance, not least
because this created the preconditions in which street crime in all its
strange complex permutations could thrive. In his social history of
London, Porter describes just how rapidly the capital grew between the
fifteenth and nineteenth centuries:
in 1600 it had housed around 200,000 inhabitants; by the Restoration

there were trice that number. In 1700 London’s population was
around 575,000, about the same as Paris. By 1750 it had hit 675,000,
while by 1880 it was 900,000, a third as large again as Paris, and
London was the world’s largest city. (Porter 1994)
As we move from the medieval period into the times of the Tudors, the
figure of the street criminal changes in terms of the way in which he is
now evoked. From a designation as ‘outlaw’ it now reappears in its most
general form as ‘vagabond’, an umbrella term used to classify all of those
‘idle and suspect persons living suspiciously’, as an Act of 1495 described
them (Briggs 1996). As with the term ‘outlaw’, into this same category
could be placed all those who offended or were thought to offend the
sensibilities of the English social order. The term ‘criminal’ did not
appear until the nineteenth century. The term ‘vagabond’ performed
instead the role the term ‘criminal’ would subsequently take.
Included within the class of vagabond were those unfortunate enough
to be poor and unemployed, and who as a consequence were forced to
beg for their living, as well as a class of more or less professional
criminals. While both groups belonged to the lowest socio-economic
groups in society, what also unified both despite their differences was
that whether they participated in crime or not, they were generally, as
Briggs et al. note, likely to be considered as part of the criminal class of
‘rogues’. It would not be until the nineteenth century that more
systematic attempts would be made to distinguish between what would
be conceived as the deserving and undeserving poor, between those who
were criminally inclined and those who were not.
The underworld
What we can observe from the Tudor period onwards is the beginning of
a process of development that would culminate in the idea of criminal
underworld. This may be regarded as a subterranean economy which,
like the formal economy, came complete with its own distinctive division
of labour. Like the formal economy, the underworld was also character-
ized by an array of different trades. Finally, just as trades in the formal
34
economy develop their own specialist language, this process can also be
observed in what would become the growing criminal underworld of
urban centres such as London.
Though elite representations of crime would systematically overstate
the degree to which the underworld was organized, by the seventeenth
century there clearly existed in London a distinct and professional
criminal class for whom street crime was a way of life.
The language and practice of street robbery

At the top of the criminal ladder were those who had mastered special
skills that enabled them to perpetrate specific street crimes. This category
would include horse thieves (the priggers of prancers), card-sharps, and
burglars of one form or another, otherwise known as ‘hookers’ or
‘anglers’. The ‘angler’ was someone whose livelihood was derived by
using poles (or ‘filches’1) to which hooks were attached to thieve goods
from shops and houses. The pickpocket also appeared first as a ‘cutpurse’
or nypper. The term was derived from the fact that purses (or bynges as
they were known) were carried at the girdle in Elizabethan England, and
to be apprehended required being ‘nypped’ or cut. To ‘nypp a bynge’
meant literally to cut a purse. While this practice has roots that no doubt
stretch back into antiquity, the first record we have of it being perpetrated
in a systematic way dates from the Elizabethan period. As it was during
the Tudor era that pockets in garments were first introduced, it is within
this period that the pickpocket also first appears.
In his 1811 Dictionary, Groce identifies the genesis of the term ‘nypper’
with an alehouse keeper called Wotton who ‘in the year 1585 allegedly
kept an academy for the education and perfection of cut-purses near
Billingsgate in London’. Groce cites the testimony of one Maitland from
Stow, who provides the following fascinating account of this particular
den of thieves. Having fallen on what could be termed hard times,
Wotton:
… reared up a new trade in life, and in the said house he procured

all the cut-purses about the city, to repair to his house: there was a
school house set up to learn young boys to cut purses: two devices
were hung up; one was a pocket and the other was a purse; the
pocket had in it certain counters, and was hung about with hawks
bells, and over the top did hang a little sacring bell. The purse had
silver in it; and he that could take out a counter, without noise of any
of the bells was adjudged a judicial nypper: according to the terms
of their art, a foyster was a pick-pocket; a nypper was a pick-pocket
or cut-purse. (Harris 1971)
35
Street Crime
While young cutpurses would no doubt have appeared low down in the
hierarchy of crime, by virtue of the skills they possessed, they did,
specifically if reared to the art from an early age, belong to the pro-
fessional fraternity of criminals. Below this category and comprising the
lowest orders in the fraternity of vagabonds came the beggars. Finally,
reflecting the low status of women in society more generally, there were
the prostitutes. Together, as Briggs et al. note, the beggars and the
prostitutes constituted the peasantry of crime (Briggs 1996).
The development of cities provided an ideal environment in which
street robbery in its various forms could take root and thrive. Just as
fashions in clothing would change, so too would the descriptive labels
applied by the public and by the street criminals themselves to describe
the art of robbery. While the semantics changed, however, the grammar
remained consistent. Street crime was, as it remains today, a fact of urban
existence; a perennial feature of urban life and living in deeply
inequitable societies.
By the eighteenth century the term ‘nypper’ had largely disappeared
and given way to an array of new descriptive terms, including ‘gonalph’
and ‘buzzer’ (Ackroyd 2001). The ‘footpad’, also known as ‘the
gentleman of the pad’, came by the nineteenth century to designate the
street mugger of the Georgian and later Victorian period. They typically
operated from spaces within urban centres, with their target the unwary
or undefended traveller.
But even these terms, unanchored in legal discourse, are free-floating
and at times become interchangeable. In the eighteenth century, a
footpad was also known as a Low Toby, while the highwayman became,
by logical extension, the High Toby. What compounds matters further is
that the terms that were used were themselves products of the class of
thieves who had evolved their own rich and deeply textured vocabulary
to describe their world.
This language, known as ‘flash’ or ‘flash lingo’, was fortunately (for us
and for posterity) collated with loving care and attention by Captain
Groce (with, it is claimed, subsequent additions by ‘Hellfire Dick’) and
reproduced in his inestimable 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (Harris
1971). Otherwise known as a ‘Dictionary of Buckish Slang, University
Wit and Pickpocket Eloquence’, this wonderful text defines the various
terms by which the criminal underworld depicted themselves to
themselves. It also provides detailed descriptions of the different forms
of street crime and the manner in which they were perpetrated.
Thus, we find that by the eighteenth century a pickpocket could also
be known as a ‘File’, ‘File Cloy’, a ‘Foyst’ or ‘Fork’, while the expert of the
breed could also be termed a ‘Rum Diver’. A pickpocket who specialized
36
in stealing handkerchiefs could be known as a ‘Wiper Drawer’, while a

street robber who made a living by stealing the cloaks from passers-by,
was known as a ‘Cloak Twitcher’. It was as ‘wiper drawers’ that Fagin’s
youthful gang of pickpockets thrived, while ‘diving’ was the craft they
practised. Not only could the pickpocket be named in relation to what
they stole, but there were also terms used to describe those unfortunate
enough to have been caught. In what could only be considered a
wonderful expression of gallows humour, thieves who had been caught
and punished by being half-drowned (a common punishment) could be
termed ‘Dunkerers’ or by extension ‘Anabaptists’.
A highwayman might be termed a ‘Land Pirate’, ‘Toby’, ‘Toby Man’,
‘High Toby or ‘Scamp’. ‘To go out upon the pad’ meant to look for victims
to rob, while robbery in its street form could also be known as the
‘Highway Service’. As footpads typically used their feet rather than
horses, they were referred to as ‘Low Tobys’, or the ‘gentlemen of the
pad’ where they were involved in the art of the ‘recruiting service’
(highway robbery). As the preferred method of robbing victims was
often accompanied by the threat or application of force, the robber
could also be known as a ‘rampsman’, a term derived from the word
rampage.
The term ’mugger’ is typically attributed to America, where it was an
expression used both by criminals and law-enforcement agencies to
designate a type of street robbery that included the threat or use of force.
In effect, the term came to mean what the English had once referred to as
‘ramping’. According to Hall et al., (1987) the history of mugging in
Britain only really began in the 1970s when the term was imported from
America, where it was used by the police and media to describe what was
then presented as a new kind of crime (Hall et al. 1987). It is more likely,
however, that the term was a late nineteenth-century English invention
which was subsequently exported to the US, where it evidently took hold
and flourished while disappearing from its place of origin. In a little-
known novel entitled A Child of the Jago written by Arthur Morrison in
1896, its hero, a young thief called Dicky Perrott, picks his first gold
pocket watch at the tender age of nine. He brings the watch back with
pride to his parents who then beat him and sell it. In what we would
subsequently consider a classic technique in neutralization, Dicky
remonstrates with his mother: ‘It’s the mugs what got took, and quoddin
ain’t so bad … S’pose father’ll be smugged some day, eh Mother?’
(Morrison 1894) This evidence is not perhaps quite as compelling as we
might like, but the idea of street robbery (quoddin) as an act perpetrated
against ‘mugs’ who are ‘smugged’ does suggest that the term mugger has
decidedly English roots. That there was also a play entitled The Mug
37
Street Crime
produced locally in Bethnal Green close to the Jago in the 1870s, also adds
weight to this interpretation. The tale of mugger’s re-importation
however is something that will not concern us here.
Just as more legal and legitimate professions develop their own
technical language to describe their activities, the same can also be
observed to happen with regard to the criminal underworld. Crime, after
all, is by no means something that can be perpetrated without recourse to
the right skills, and to perpetrate successfully entailed some under-
standing of the various techniques through which crimes could be
committed. At the same time, in a world where punishments were
severe, being able to communicate without allowing others to
understand what was being described was also an important con-
sideration. Last and by no means least, in the language of street crime we
can also observe a semantic creativity astonishing in the level of wit and
humour it was able to attain.2 To ‘fib the cove’s quarron in the rumpad for
the lour in his bung’ meant literally to beat a victim in the highway for the
money in his purse, while ‘the cull has rum rigging, let’s ding him and
mill him and pike’ meant that the fellow has good clothes, let’s knock him
down, rob him and flee. To rob someone would be ‘to do them over’, an
expression that remains with us today, while to ‘frisk the dummee of his
sceens’ meant to take the banknotes out of his wallet.
Just as the canting language defined the art of robbery, so too would it
designate its variations. A ‘flying porter’, for example, was a robber who
specialized in a racket that involved making victims believe that in return
for money he could remonstrate with the robbers (whom of course he
would claim to know) and return their stolen property. Needless to say,
such an eventuality would not occur, as he would simply take the money
and run. This, by the way, is precisely what happened when the intrepid
(albeit rather idiotic) investigative reporter Donal Macintyre attempted
to have himself ‘mugged’ in Brixton in 2002. Having successfully
managed (after three days of trying!) to have his phone stolen he was
approached by someone who claimed to know where the robbers lived
and who, in return for money, would retrieve his stolen goods. Though
money was exchanged (twice!), this did not happen. The crime was by no
means new, the art of the ‘flying porter’ having a long history.
Street robbery was also an art that could be perpetrated in different
ways, and different people would specialize in the art of targeting
different victims. To ‘fork’ someone, for example, would involve a
pickpocket thrusting his fingers ‘strait, stiff open and very quick, into the
pocket and so closing them hook what can be held between them’. ‘To go
out on the drag’ meant following a cart or wagon with the intention of
robbing it, while the ‘drag lay’ involved waiting in the streets in order to
38
wait and rob someone. Unsurprisingly, the ‘kid lay’ involved robbing
young people or apprentices, while a ‘bug hunter’ was someone who
preyed upon drunks.
Given the importance of snow to the lives of Eskimos, it is un-
surprising that they have developed a far more elaborate and extended
array of terms to describe it than can be found in the language of other
peoples. For the same reason, when we consider the criminal under-
world, what we can also observe is a highly developed vocabulary in
respect of the various forms of punishment on offer. We also find, un-
surprisingly perhaps, a similar level of semantic creativity at work to
describe the apparatus of the law delegated with the task of administer-
ing it. Growing up in the shadow of the gallows clearly fuelled the
development of a vast array of terms to describe it. Thus it could be
referred to as ‘the old evergreen’, the ‘triple tree’, the ‘Norway
Neckcloth’, the ‘topping cheat’, ‘Jack Ketch’ (named after a notorious
hangman) or the ‘drop’; while ‘to be stretched’ meant to be hanged. The
pillory, also a regular punishment, was referred to as ‘the stoop’, while
‘babies in the wood’ referred to those who had been placed in the stocks.
Even the final journey to the gallows had its own description as in ‘to ride
backwards up Holborn Hill’ which meant to go to the gallows at
Newgate. Finally, to prove that some things just never change, policemen
were referred to as ‘pigs’.
The social response to street crime

If, in the medieval period, the space of the outlaw had been confined to
areas beyond the city walls, it is clear that by the seventeenth century the
outlaw and the outlaw zone had migrated into the ever-expanding city,
which would itself have the ability to inspire fear and anxiety in its
inhabitants. Though evidence suggests that the Tudors and Stuarts were
well aware of the problems posed by street crime in the developing
metropolis, there was by no means the sense of fear attached to it that
would begin to surface in the seventeenth century and continue to
develop into the nineteenth. For the Tudors and the Stuarts, street crime
was recognized as a real problem but it was to all intents and purposes
largely contained and peripheral to their consciousness. Though life was
dangerous and men travelled armed, there was no sense then of the city
of vice that we see emerge by the nineteenth century.
The idea of an organized criminal underworld did however clearly
fascinate the reading public, as the rise of the cony-catching literature
popularized by the likes of Decker and Greene indicates. And it is from
this period, about the sixteenth century onwards, that the myths of a
criminal underworld, or, in the language of the vernacular, the ‘canting
39
Street Crime
crew’, begin to proliferate. At the heart of these representations are

images of a criminal underworld populated not only by a cadre of
professionals but by professionals who organize themselves in ways that
parallel the vertical structure we can observe in more legitimate
organizations. Thus at the top of the canting crew is the ‘uprightman’ (or
Dimber Dambler) who, in effect, runs the rackets and who receives the
best of the booty and free access to the women who are then mutually
shared by the rest of his gang. Below him, the chain of command moves
down through various subordinate criminal trades to terminate with
prostitutes and beggars.
While there is little doubt that a criminal underworld of a kind existed
in places like London, there is little evidence to show that its organization
ever matched its fictional representation. The myths of canting that
abounded from Tudor times (and which, in different ways, have
persisted to the present day) reflect dominant class ideas about criminal
organization – not its reality (Shore 1999). By crediting criminal activity
with a high degree of organization, commentators were, in effect,
projecting their own interpretations onto a field that was far more
disorganized and fragmented than they wanted to recognize (Davis
1980). By equating the problem of street crime with a skilled, motivated
fraternity who chose a criminal career, so it became easy to lose sight of
the terrible social conditions that drove most to participate in crime. It
also sanctioned a vision of crime as freely chosen by free agents who
would consequently deserve the harsh punishments meted out to those
who made the wrong choices.
By the seventeenth century fears and worries about how crime was
organized became attached to broader concerns about the kind of places
in which crime and criminals appeared. Some areas in London and
indeed specific streets have always had a reputation as places it would be
unwise to visit for fear of becoming a victim of street crime. Areas such as
Southwark and the dockland area of Ratcliffe were always notorious as
criminal havens, as were the neighbourhood of Chick Lane and Field
Lane in Clerkenwell (Ackroyd 2001). These zones became the no-go areas
of the expanding metropolis. Places the law abiding would avoid at all
costs and where law enforcement was noticeable only by its absence. By
the age of Mayhew these areas had expanded to include Whitechapel and
the slum area of Saint Giles. These and other impoverished areas would
become known by the Victorian period as the ‘rookeries’ of outcast
London.
Edward Walton, a contemporary commentator, catches well the fear
that such areas induced in the minds of the bourgeoisie in his
melodramatic description of life in St Giles: ‘None else have any business
40
here and if they had they would find it to their interest to get out of it as
soon as possible’ (Ackroyd 2001). This was a sentiment that would be
widely reported by a growing army of urban missionaries who, by the
Victorian age, found themselves drawn towards yet repelled by the
squalor of life in London’s poorest areas.
Just as the highwaymen of the eighteenth century could find
themselves projected into folk hero status, we can observe a similar
process occurring in the seventeenth century with respect to certain
urban criminals who, like the celebrated robber and escapologist Dick
Sheppard, captured the imagination of the public. As we move into the
nineteenth century, however, the processes that facilitated such
identification between the public and the criminal would begin to fade
away and eventually disappear entirely. While Mayhew observed in the
nineteenth century the customary respect conferred by poor coster-
mongers for those who eked out a living through crime, and though
Sheppard was considered a hero among the young thieves he
interviewed, this was, in many respects, the last audience who were
moved in this way (Mayhew 1861 (1985)).
From about the eighteenth century, the romantic idea of the highway
robber immortalized, for example, in John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera,
would disappear (Gay 1727 (1983)). Henceforth, the street robber would
be reconsidered in an altogether less positive light. From the folk hero of
legend, the street criminal had by the Victorian age become a folk devil
who remains with us today. So, from the romanticized hero Macheath of
Gay’s opera, we move by the 1840s in the direction of Bill Sykes and
Fagin in Charles Dickens’s novel Oliver Twist (Dickens 1837–9 (1994)).
From a character the public is invited to identify with, we move instead
in the direction of villains represented as so evil that no one could
possibly identify with them.3 England’s long and noble history of
identifying with its robbers had finally changed.
The making of a folk devil

By the late nineteenth century the street criminal – no longer a figure that
could be vicariously identified with as a social bandit – had finally
become relegated to the status of a predatory anonymous outsider. When
the street criminal was now evoked it was as a folk devil with no personal
or humane qualities to distinguish it, known only for the danger it
represented. In this, a demonic incarnation, the street criminal was a
person to be feared and loathed in equal measure, which, of course, is
how we are now still enjoined to perceive them today.
This sea change in public opinion reflects less the fickleness of the
public than an array of wider changes in society and in street crime itself.
41
Street Crime
From a perennial but by no means invariably serious problem in the early

seventeenth century, street crime had, by the nineteenth century, come
to be perceived as a major social problem. It was a problem, moreover,
that was seen to pose serious risks, not only to the travelling public
but to society itself, whose normative order was perceived to be under
threat.
The rapid unplanned expansion and development of the industrial
city did indeed create an ideal environment where social factors that
would sustain rising street crime could and did flourish. In a world
where there was no safety net to rescue someone from poverty, and
where jobs for the poor were by their nature grim and barely paid well
enough to support a family, street crime in its various forms prospered as
an alternative career option. In areas characterized by limited legitimate
opportunity structures, illegitimate criminally based opportunity
structures will emerge. In the case of London’s East End, for example, the
legacy of boys ‘doing the business’ (Hobbs 1988) is indeed a feature of
economic entrepreneurial activity in the area, even if the image of the
cockney criminal is heavily overstated in the myths that attest to it. In
areas characterized by stark poverty there will also be a ready market for
disposing of the goods appropriated through such crime, and this
economy in stolen goods would be facilitated by an array of middlemen.
These would fence the goods and move them on via pawn shops, second-
hand shops and street markets.
In her careful and systematic review of the factors that drove young
people into crime in Victorian London, Shore identifies a range of
common biographical features and life experiences (Shore 1999). The
endemic poverty in which they lived, the chaotic family life that many
endured, and the limited employment possibilities available to them all
created the preconditions for the development of a vibrant street life in
which various forms of delinquency such as thieving, pilfering and
fighting would become commonplace. In the context of this street
culture, pursuing acts to which risks and dangers were attached was part
and parcel of everyday leisure activity. Involvement in certain forms of
delinquency (then as today) is something young men did. While such
cultures could tolerate crime, when it occurred it typically did so as an
episodic event. It rarely marked a fully fledged apprenticeship into a
criminal career.
The continued failure of the agencies charged with preventing street
crime to apprehend street criminals also contributed to its expansion, as
did the fact that London’s growing economic prosperity ensured a ready
stock of suitable and assessable victims. It is evident that from the
42
eighteenth century street crime was beginning to be recognized as a

problem, while by the time of the Victorians it was perceived as a threat
to the very survival of society itself.
Though rising street crime was certainly a powerful motive that can
help explain the rising public anxiety, this was aided and abetted by a
growing and ever-more prevalent sense that there were dark satanic
forces at play in modern urban development. This perception was
articulated clearly in various evocations of the metropolis as a
threatening space in which crime and vice in all their forms would thrive.
Fielding, for example, believed that the urban fabric itself was in some
ominous respect deeply criminogenic:
Who so ever indeed considers the cities of London and

Westminster, with the late vast Addition of their suburbs, the great
Irregularity of their Buildings, the immense number of Lanes,
Alleys, Courts, and Bye-places must think that, had they been
intended for the very Purpose of Concealment, they could scarce
have been better contrived. Upon such a View, the whole appears as
a vast Wood or Forest, in which a Thief may harbour with as great
Security, as Wild Beasts do in the Deserts of Africa or Arabia.
(Fielding 1751; Porter 1994)
Not only could the evolving metropolis be considered a jungle in which

dark forces could gather and disappear with ease, but also as a space in
which the possibility of redemption was subverted by the ease with
which evil habits could be so readily disseminated among the
‘undeserving’ and feckless poor. This was testified to by a growing army
of urban missionaries, each of whom found themselves staring into the
very abyss of human nature and into the very eyes of the fallen.
There is a youthful population in the Metropolis devoted to crime,

trained to it from infancy, adhering to it from Education and
Circumstances, whose connections prevent the possibility of
reformation, and whom no Punishment can deter; a race ‘sui generis’,
different from the rest of Society, not only in thoughts, habits and
manners, but even in appearance. (Miles 1839; Shore 1999)
This is a sentiment also expressed by Thomas Beggs who, writing in

1849, found himself observing a race of people who were in every shape
and form made essentially different by virtue of the depraved conditions
in which they lived:
43
Street Crime
A large part of the population were found to be grovelling in the

veriest debasement, yielding obedience only to the animal instincts;
brooding in spiritual darkness in a day of gospel light, and much
shut off from participation in the blessings of Christian privilege as
if they had been the inhabitants of another hemisphere. (Beggs 1849;
Shore 1999).
It is a powerful cocktail of images that we are dealing with here. Each

articulates with the other and each in conjunction mutually reinforces the
idea that street crime is perpetrated by a class of criminals that can no
longer be identified with. The authors describe real fears about a crime
that certainly remained prevalent in urban life and which consequently
posed real risks for the urban traveller. Such fears could and certainly
were also mobilized by sensationalist reporting of crime in the popular
media. Not only did such reporting typically overemphasize the dangers
to the public posed by street robbery, but it also began to create the
illusion that robbery was so dangerous a phenomenon that it represented
a terminal threat to the wellbeing of all, a point explored by Davis in her
examination of the moral panic that surfaced in the 1840s to 1860s in
response to a perceived epidemic of ‘garrotting’ (Davis 1980).
Garrotting itself referred to a mode of attack perpetrated by certain
Rampsmen. It involved literally grabbing a victim by the neck. While this
form of robbery was already known, it was only by the 1840s that we find
a huge public reaction to it, which directly followed sustained media
coverage about garrotting across England. As with the media response to
mugging today, the coverage was sensational and hysterical in equal
measure. In the Cornhill Magazine of 1863, an editorial read: ‘Once more
the streets of London are unsafe by day or by night. The public dread has
become almost a panic.’ In the ensuing crackdown, those found guilty
were either flogged or hanged.4
If we return to the world of elite representations of the criminal
underclass, much is made of the kind of places the criminal fraternity
would frequent. Not only is it to be found in certain areas but in specific
buildings and places that in effect become the very spaces where criminal
tendencies are produced and reproduced. Thus we find vivid
descriptions of the ‘flash-houses’ where criminals were supposed to
gather, or of the boarding houses where the young were supposed to be
schooled in crime. Last but not least, we also find lurid descriptions of
working-class entertainments viewed as immoral by the sober middle-
class urban missionaries appalled at what they saw. Mayhew’s
description of a visit to a ‘penny gaff’, a popular form of working-class
44
theatre, brings forcibly home the tenor of such accounts. Having watched
with heady disdain the antics of a young dancer, he finds himself
appalled by the popular reception accorded to ‘a funny gentleman’
who clearly offended every moral standard he believed himself to
uphold.
The most obscene thoughts, the most disgusting scenes were coolly
described, making a poor child near me wipe away the tears that
rolled down her eyes with the enjoyment of the poison. There were
three or four of these songs sung in the course of the evening, each
one being encored and then changed. One written about Pine–
Apple Rock was the great treat of the night, and offered greater
scope to the rhyming powers of the author than any of the others. In
this not a single chance had been missed; ingenuity had been
exerted to its utmost lest an obscene thought should be passed by,
and it was absolutely awful to behold the relish with which these
young ones jumped to the hideous meaning of the verses. (Mayhew
1985)
What these different narratives work to produce is a representation of the

robber as somebody who is essentially different from the normal law-
abiding public, and as pathologically dangerous in their difference. What
such narratives of essentualizing difference accomplish is an eviction of
anything that might once have framed a point of identification between
the public and the street robber. Denied all humanity, the robber is
positioned simply as a vehicle onto which can be projected public
anxiety, fear and hatred, and from whom anything approaching pity is
removed.
Changes in social control must also be understood as playing a
significant role in transforming the figure of the street robber from folk
hero to folk devil. From a repressive system that relied for its deterrent
effect upon the maiming and destruction of bodies in public spaces, we
move by the nineteenth century towards an order in which punishment
would centre on what Foucault would term an ‘economy of suspended
rights’ (Foucault 1977). Where once the gallows at Tyburn performed the
exemplary role of protecting the good society from its lawless outside
(Spierenburg 1998), this space would soon become home to a new symbol
of modernity, the penitentiary. What is important in this change is that by
moving punishment ‘backstage’ and out of sight of a public audience, the
many points of contact that would once have facilitated the identification
between the robber and his class of origin disappeared. Where the
45
Street Crime
spectacle of the scaffold would once have provided a point where crowds
could gather to hear the condemned bear testimony to the inequitable
order that would kill him, this was no longer possible in a modern order
which actively suppressed not only the possibility of physical contact but
also eliminated the literary industries that would actively connect the
convict with a wider audience. From a pre-modern order in which the
testimonies of the condemned would be widely circulated in the form of
the ‘Ordinary’, a pamphlet which published proceedings from the trials
at Newgate (Linebough 1991), we see the gradual development of more
censorship concerning the material to be made available.
Cumulatively over time, this politics of distance would act decisively
to separate the condemned from their public. At the same time, in an era
characterized by the rise of a mass media whose political affiliations
reflected dominant and elite representations about crime, so the public at
large would only find mediated to them a discourse in which crime and
the criminal were reproduced in pathological terms. While the rise of
criminology as a discipline might suggest a new way of humanizing the
deviant, it is evident that in its earlier biological reductionist forms it
simply helped criminalize the criminal further, by suggesting that their
difference owed less to the social conditions in which they lived and
more to symptoms of atavistic degeneracy that were held to drive the
criminal to crime in the first place.
Against a background characterized by real worries about an offence
that has a long prehistory, we can see projected on to street crime and the
street criminal fears and anxieties that were also attached to series of
entirely dubious normative assumptions. What these work to accomplish
is to represent the problem of street crime in ways that move it away from
its point of experiential origin and reconstruct it as indicative of things
greater and more threatening than itself.
At the heart of the emerging constellation of representations are three
related representations of street crime and street criminals. The first
centres on notions of essentialized difference, the second on conceptions
of dangerousness, the third around ideas of pollution. As we have
observed in the descriptions of the criminal class, what we are presented
with are ideas of people who are by nature, appetite and inclination
profoundly different from the normal law-abiding citizen. It is in this
sense that they are in Miles’s term a sui generic species of humanity. The
symbols of their otherness are evident in such matters as their biology,
their appearance, their dress and, last but not least, by virtue of the fact
that they have their own language.
Not only is this an alien species, but it is also at the same time a
dangerous class, a class that threatens the law-abiding population not
46
only because it is addicted to a depravity it endlessly reproduces among

itself, but because this depravity threatens to exceed its points of origin. If
the criminal class is a dark force it is a force that threatens to overreach the
dark areas in which it dwells (the rookeries of outcast London) and in so
doing erupt into the mainstream of social life which it threatens to
destroy. Street robbery in effect is its chosen vehicle for injury. This brings
us to its third dimension: the idea that it is a source of pollution and
contamination. Like a virus, its contamination can spread, and in its
dispersal the body of society as a whole may find itself terminally
harmed.
By the twentieth century and thereafter, there would only be one
representation available by which to describe the highway robber: that
disseminated by dominant elites along with populist journalists writing
in the expanding news media. This would be as folk devil and as evil
incarnate, a figure familiar to us today but not that much different from
the kind of representation that already existed by the end of Victoria’s
reign. The criminal classes had arrived as much invented as an endemic
feature of social life (Shore 2003).
While Hobsbawn is correct in his observation that modern
urban society does not create the conditions of existence that could
sustain the reality of the social bandit, what is interesting is that it
continues to sustain its myth (Hobsbawn 2000). Not only in the contrived
world of Hollywood with its perpetual reconstruction and appropriation
of the Robin Hood myth, but perhaps more authentically in the work
of those who, like Brecht and Weill, were more attuned to perceive
the political force of the robber in deeply divided and inequitable
societies.
Notes
1 Which, etymologically, is where the term ‘filching’, as in the verb ‘to steal’,
derives.
2 Which well justifies Max Harris’s observation that in relation to the ‘feeble
colourless dry products’ of the aristocracy, the language of the criminal
underworld was indeed a ‘miracle of quick witted creative invention’. See
Harris 1971.
3 Though, that said, Dickens painted an entirely sympathetic picture of the
Artful Dodger, indicating the appeal of the older outlaw narratives had by no
means disappeared entirely.
4 For an examination of other Victorian moral panics around street crime, see
Pearson, G. (1983). Hooligan: a History of Respectable Fears. London: Routledge.
For a consideration of an eighteenth-century predecessor in Chelsmford, see
47
Street Crime
King, P. (1987). ‘Newspaper reporting, prosecution practice and perceptions

of urban crime: the Colchester crime wave of 1765,’ Continuity and change 2:
pp. 423–54.
48
Interpreting the data
Part 2
Accounting for Street Crime
49
Street Crime
50
Chapter 3
Before we consider street robbery theoretically, we need to understand

the phenomena under investigation. We need to know, in other words,
the ‘facts’ of the matter in order to know what it is we are attempting to
explain. This may profitably be considered in relation to what the
statistical evidence about street crime reveals, and this will constitute the
aim of this chapter.
What an analysis of the available data also allows us to do is to place
street crime more firmly in its context. In a media-dominated world
where hard facts about street crime are too often lost or obscured in an all
-too-successful attempt to sensationalize the offence, what a more sober
appraisal of the evidence can accomplish is the task of showing just how
extensive and pervasive street crime is.
Before we consider what the evidence shows, however, it is important
to draw attention to the limits and limitations that are inherent in using
such material. Methodologically it is inadvisable to proceed with any
investigation of empirical ‘facts’ without noting a number of issues
pertaining to the way in which they are constructed and recorded. No
single research tool is infallible and we consequently need to be aware of
what we can justifiably claim on the basis of the research methods
selected, as well as the terms we use to describe often-complex events
such as those embraced by the label street crime.
First of all, it is important to remember that the term street crime is
itself a reification. It does not, as we have already noted, classify any
single crime perpetrated on the streets, nor does it signify all crimes
committed in a street context. It rather refers selectively to a few, namely
those that involve separating victims from their goods or their money in
51
Street Crime
one of three specific ways. These refer to direct robbery where violence is
threatened, to snatch, and to pickpocketing. Though most media
attention typically focuses on the former – the category that constitutes
what the public and media like to term ‘mugging’ and street youth
‘jacking’ – it is worth noting that this may in fact form only a small part of
the overall street crime picture.
Crimes appear on police statistics if they have been reported and
recorded. The problem, though, is that not all street crimes are reported,
and it is by no means evident that on all occasions the way they are
reported represents the correct offence category. The offences that do get
reported may also have intrinsic to them a certain set of biases that can
obscure the reality they will, as statistical evidence, be used to represent.
If the goods stolen in an act of robbery are relatively inexpensive, a
victim may well choose not to report them missing. If the victim is young
and lives in close proximity to the perpetrators, who are likely to be
older, they may be afraid to report their victimization. If for some reason
you distrust the forces of law and order, and this could be the case among
some sections of the black population (Bowling 2002), you may not
report your victimization anyway. Where, for example, someone is
victimized either through having their pockets picked or their bags
snatched, research indicates that there is a tendency on the part of
victims to assume that their assailant is black, even though they may not
have the visual evidence to support that assumption. Momentary
encounters, in other words, do not provide the visual evidence needed to
make an accurate ethnic distinction. Finally, not all street crime offences
that are reported may be accurate. There may well be a number that are
bogus in so far as they involve callers who claim to have had goods such
as mobile phones stolen when they have not. By reporting the event,
however, a crime number is given and a crime event is constructed. This
can then be used for the purposes of an insurance claim. What
subsequently appears in the police statistics, as a reported street crime,
may thus be nothing of the sort. What we have instead is an exercise in
insurance fraud.
Given the limits and limitations of police statistics, victim surveys are
now regularly used to establish a more accurate picture of crime. Using
structured questionnaires which respondents either self-complete or
complete with the aid of an interviewer, these surveys seek to establish
the reality of crime by directly engaging with a randomly selected
sample of the population. The scope of victim surveys may change to
reflect policy preferences, but in general what such surveys provide a
direct and unmediated access into individual perceptions and
experiences of crime and its social and material impact.
52
In the UK the most important of these victim surveys is the British

Crime Survey, which is now conducted on a bi-annual basis. Designed
to estimate the extent of victimization in the previous year among
the population of England and Wales, the survey was conducted on
a randomly selected population. In the case of the 2000 survey,
20,000 households were selected and an individual randomly
selected from each household was then interviewed. In selecting
the sample population, care was taken to ensure that it was
representative of the population as a whole. In this sense, care was taken
to ensure that issues around ethnicity, gender, geographical area and
forms of housing tenure were taken into account. From the responses
given, an aggregate representation of crime patterns in British society
was then grossed up by generalizing the findings of the survey to the
population as a whole.
Though this survey provides a better insight into crime patterns than
police statistics – which is why the findings from the last survey will
be considered below – it also worth noting that even this research
tool has its limitations. Not everyone selected in the sampling frame
may respond, and the responses they give may not in all cases be
accurate. As with police statistics, what is included is what people
choose to report. In the case of issues such as domestic violence or fights
that are not deemed by respondents to be particularly ‘criminal’, these
may not always be recorded. One consequence of problems such as this
is that the BCS may well underestimate the true level of crime. In relation
to street crime, this is a real problem. Not least is that the survey only
addresses a population that is over 16. As many victims of street robbery
are likely to be under this age, this is a real drawback with potentially
serious implications.1
Despite these limitations, the British Crime Survey and other reports
produced, for example, by the Home Office and the Youth Justice Board,
provide sources of very useful information. They provide an important
set of tools that can enable us to identify many aspects of the street crime
problem that any explanation worthy of its name must be able to account
for. With this in mind, in what follows I will consider what such surveys
have to tell us about contemporary street robbery. To accomplish this I
will examine in turn:
• Contemporary trends in street robbery.

• The extent of street robbery relative to other offences.
• The profile of the offending population.
• The profile of the victim population.
• The geographical distribution of street crime.
53
Street Crime
Street robbery in a comparative context

In the context of a society which, in the space of the last two years, has
found itself engaged in the throes of a moral panic about rising street
crime, one important question that needs to be considered is the
evidential basis for this belief. Using data collated from the last four
British Crime Surveys, the authors of the 2000 survey examined
changing trends in crime between the years 1981 and 2000 (Kershaw
2000). Their findings are presented in Figure 3.1 below, which
summarizes changes over time between a number of offence categories.
The table presents what may be regarded as a generally positive
picture with regard to crime trends. With two exceptions the level of
victimization appears to have decreased over time, and the level of
decrease appears to be significant in most cases. The main exception is
robbery, which shows a dramatic increase of 14 per cent between 1981
and 2000.
Percentage change
Bicycle theft –27
Burglary –21
Other thefts of
personal property –21
All vehicle-related –15

thefts
Wounding –11
ALL BCS OFFENCES –10
Other household
theft –7
Common assault –3
Vandalism –2
Theft from the

person 4
Robbery 14
–30 –20 –10 0 10 20
Figure 3.1: Changes in selected offence categories between 1981 and 2000
Source: Kershaw 2000.
54
According to BCS estimates, in 1999 there were around 406,000

‘muggings’ in England and Wales. Mugging is defined by the BCS as a
composite offence category that includes robbery, attempted robbery,
and snatch theft from the person. It is a constituent component of the BCS
violence typology. This constitutes, it needs emphasizing, their best
estimate. At the highest they estimated a figure of 521,000, and a lowest
figure of 240,000 cases per year. As the BCS does not record offences
perpetrated against under-16s, even the best-fit figure is likely to
underestimate the scale of the problem, as many under-16’s are very
likely to be included in the victim category. Evidence attesting to this can
be seen if the 16-year-old population of respondents are removed from
the figures. As the BCS researchers note, a direct consequence of this
would be to lower significantly the registered rate of victimization from 7
per cent to 4 per cent. While street crime certainly is a problem that has
grown over recent years, what these figures suggest is that it is a problem
concentrated among the young, not the old. This is a fact rarely reported
by the tabloid media, who have typically presented rising street robbery
as a threat to the wellbeing of all.
Though street crime has certainly been rising in recent years, it still
represents only a small percentage of the total number of crimes
registered by the BCS, as Figure 3.2 indicates.
Figure 3.2. Number of Crimes estimated by the BCS in 1989

Source: BCS.
55
Street Crime
Burglary, vandalism and vehicle-related thefts all constitute a

significantly higher percentage of the total crime figure than mugging,
which makes up only 2 per cent of all crimes registered. Indeed, as the
diagram above makes clear, street crime remains one of the smallest of
the crime categories, even though paradoxically it is among the offences
that command most public political and media attention.
Profiling offenders
According to BCS statistics, perpetrators of street crime are typically
concentrated among younger age groups. The survey indicated that
children of school age committed 7 per cent of muggings, while 56 per
cent were aged between 16 and 24 and 33 per cent were older. Below the
age of 14 and above the age of 19, the rate of participation in street crime
decreases fairly rapidly. Evidence also shows that the age of those who
engage as perpetrators of street robbery has changed quite dramatically
in recent years. Smith’s Home Office study of street robbery showed that
the involvement of younger age groups in street robbery has increased
significantly as a proportion of the total population of offenders (Smith
2003). Whereas the 11–20 age group made up only 56 per cent of the
population of offenders in 1993, by 2000 this figure had risen to 78 per
cent. As Smith observes:
Much of this change can be attributed to the growth of offenders

aged 11–15 years, which accounted for 36 per cent of suspects
charged in 2000 compared to 15 per cent in 1993. The number of 11–
15 year-olds charged with an offence of personal robbery has
increased fivefold (by 483%) since 1993. The latest year (2000)
witnessed the largest increase in the number of 11–15 year-olds
charged with personal robbery. (Smith 2003)
As Smith’s study also shows, the growing participation of young people

in robbery is not paralleled by the growing involvement of young people
in other offence categories such as violence against the person or
burglary. As he notes, only 8 per cent of those charged with robbery were
aged over 31 years, compared to 32 per cent and 40 per cent respectively
for burglary and violence against the person.
Police statistics do not record the socio-economic status either of
offenders or of victims. From a detailed factor analysis of aggregate street
crime figures collated from different London boroughs in 2002, however,
Fitzgerald et al. found that a positive correlation existed between
deprivation levels and recorded street crime rates (Fitzgerald et al. 2002).
Though the relationship was often uneven, what their work demon-
56
strated was that street crime levels within each borough were likely to
account for a far higher proportion of total crime as the level of
deprivation increased. The deprivation indicators Fitzgerald et al.
identified as most significant in explaining and predicting levels of street
robbery were the presence of pockets of deprivation evidenced
specifically by high levels of unemployment and a concentration of
youth poverty. What these results indicate is that class disadvantage is a
factor in street robbery.
Though females also perpetrate street robbery, the overwhelming
majority of offenders are male. According to the BCS, males committed
91 per cent of street robbery offences, women 7 per cent and both sexes 2
per cent (Kershaw et al. 2000). Though predominantly a masculine
pursuit, the scale of male offending tends to obscure the steep increase in
recent years among young women now engaged in street crime. As
Fitzgerald et al. note:
… the numbers of young women involved appears to have

increased at least as much. Females accounted for 5.7 per cent of all
descriptions of suspects in recorded cases of street crime in 1998/9
and this London-wide average rose to 6.1 per cent by 2000/01, but
masks a range from 4 per cent to over 9 per cent in different
boroughs. In more than half of the 32 London boroughs in 2000/01
the rate of increase was actually higher than that for males.
(Fitzgerald et al. 2002)
According to the BCS, the population of offenders across England and

Wales is predominantly white, a finding that reflects the demography of
these countries more generally (Kershaw et al. 2001). However, the
representation of different ethnic groups among the population of
offenders changes when different areas are studied. The reason for this is
that different areas have different demographic profiles and this fact will
be reproduced in the profile of the offending population. In the cases of
Lambeth borough and Bristol city centre, Smith found that the
population of offenders included significant numbers of those coded as
Afro-Caribbean/black (Smith 2003). These areas, however, also had
significant representation of black and minority ethnic groups in their
residential populations. In the case of more ethnically homogeneous
areas such as Blackpool and Preston, however, the population of
offenders is almost universally white; a factor that again reflects local
demography. As Smith’s analysis of police case data indicated, the level
of representation between different ethnic groups in street crime did
vary considerably. In some cases the rate of representation of a particular
57
Street Crime
ethnic group did appear to reflect local demography. In the case of his
sample from Birmingham, Smith found that the representation of Asians
among the population of offenders reflected the representation of the
Asian community among the population of the city quite closely. In the
case of Lambeth however the representation of the black population
among the population of offenders appeared significantly dispropor-
tional to its representation in the local population even accepting that the
area has a large black community.
As Smith makes clear – and this point needs emphasizing – figures
pertaining to the differential involvement of different ethnic groups in
street robbery does need to be treated with extreme caution. The
available street population within an area might not reflect the profile of
its residential population, a finding also confirmed in recent surveys of
stop and search patterns (see Stenson and Waddington 2004; Hallsworth
and MaGuire 2004). It is also worth noting that in the case of police data,
not all victims report their victimization and this may well skew the
reported and recorded figures. Finally, given that reported rates of street
robbery only provide details of the ethnic characteristics of offenders,
they cannot reveal anything about the ethnic profile of the offender
population because such figures do not take cognizance of repeat
offending. It could be the case that a small number of offenders are
responsible for a disproportionate number of robbery offences.
While recognizing these health warnings, it would appear to be the
case that different ethnic groups do become involved in different crimes,
and this cultural factor needs to be taken into consideration when
examining the differential involvement of different groups in street
crime. Fitzgerald et al. found that across the UK, young black males
account for a significantly higher proportion of offenders being
supervised by Youth Offending Teams (YOTs) for robbery than would be
expected given the pattern of their representation in the national
population: whereas they constitute 27 per cent of the offending
population, they make up only 10 per cent of the national population. In
their examination of the involvement of different ethnic groups in
different offence categories in a YOT located in London, Fitzgerald et al.
discovered significant differences in the offences perpetrated by
different groups. Nearly a quarter of all white young people supervised
by the YOT had been found guilty of motoring offences; and this was
true of nearly a third of the young offenders from minority ethnic groups
with the exception of black people. On the other hand, black young people
were more than three times as likely as whites to have been found guilty
of robbery, but half as likely to have been convicted of burglary. As
Fitzgerald et al. observe, what this indicates is that black communities
58
have been disproportionately affected by rising street robbery

(Fitzgerald et al. 2002).
Profiling victims
If the profile of those engaged as offenders derives from a restricted
sector of the population, the same cannot be said of the class of victims,
who are drawn from a far wider selection of the resident population.
Among the population of victims, however, young people appear over-
represented. Just as the population of offenders are predominantly male,
so too are the population of victims who comprise 76 per cent according
to Smith’s research. The specifically masculine aspect of street robbery is
also brought home by statistics that indicate that 71 per cent of robberies
involve male victims being victimized by male offenders. The precise
proportion of males victimized did, Smith found, vary across the
different districts he studied.
Just as offenders were disproportionately drawn from lower age
groups, this trend was also reflected in the population of victims. Thus,
just as most offenders were in the 11–20 age range, 45 per cent of the
victim population fell into the same age range. Among the population of
victims in 2002, according to Metropolitan Police statistics, 25 per cent
were aged between 11 and 15, while those aged between 16 and 22
composed 22 per cent. Unlike the population of offenders, however, the
population of victims does include significant numbers of people who
fall outside the 11–20 age range, though, as with the offender population,
this population tails off in older age groups and among the very young.
What this suggests is that there remain significant numbers of very
young and very old people who are victims of street crime.
The police data collated by Smith shows that the population of victims
has become both younger over time and also greater in number –
something it shares with the population of offenders. As Smith notes,
this also distinguishes trends in street crime from trends in other offences
such as burglary or assault, which remain more static over time when
assessed in terms of the profile of their victims. According to
Metropolitan Police data, the number of people aged between 11 and 20
who were victims has increased by a factor of three between 1993 and
2002. Among the population of 11–15 year-olds the rate of increase over
this period was a staggering figure of 320 per cent, while for the
population of 16–20 year-olds the rate of increase was 296 per cent.
According to Smith’s study, the rate of increase was most dramatic from
1998. In 1993, for example, only 12 per cent of the victim population was
aged between 11 and 15. By 2002, it had increased to 22 per cent.
59
Street Crime
Studies of the ethnic profile of victims indicate that across the UK

most victims of street robbery appear to be coded as ‘white’. Visible
ethnic minorities among the population of victims appear relatively
small, though Smith’s study did suggest that, as with offenders, the
nature of representation varied between areas. Smith’s research also
suggests that visible ethnic minorities are significantly over-represented
in the population of robbery victims. The Metropolitan Police have also
witnessed a significant increase in the number of victims of robbery from
minority ethnic groups.
The modus operandi of street robbery

According to the BCS 30 per cent of assailants perpetrated street robbery
alone, in 41 per cent of cases two offenders were involved, in 11 per cent
three were involved, and in 17 per cent more than three assailants were
involved. What this suggests is that street crime is overwhelmingly
perpetrated by young people operating in small groups. In terms of
assessing victim/offender relationships, the BCS findings indicated that
68 per cent of muggings were perpetrated by a stranger. In 13 per cent of
cases the offender was slightly known to the victim, while in 19 per cent
of cases they were likely to be well known to their victim. Young people
were far more likely to know their assailants than older people.
When asked whether they believed the perpetrators of robbery were
under the influence of drugs or drink at the time of the offence,
respondents overwhelmingly did not believe this to be the case. Only 17
per cent reported the offender to be under the influence of drink and 19
per cent under the influence of illegal drugs. This finding, it could be
observed, runs directly contrary to much media reporting, not least the
pronouncements of politicians such as the Home Secretary who ascribe
drug use as a primary driver of rising street robbery.
Just as the rate of street crime varies across months and years (see
above) so too does it vary through the day. By studying crime reports and
witness statements, Smith’s study of street robbery found that most
street crime offences typically occurred at night. Over half (51 per cent)
occurred between 6.00pm and 2.00am, while a quarter occurred in the
afternoon between 2.00pm and 6.00pm. The rate of street robberies was
also much higher at the weekend; 49 per cent occurred during this
period.
Different populations, however, were selected for victimization at
different times. According to Smith’s study, young people were more
likely to be victimized during the afternoon, as were old and retired
people. Students, the employed or unemployed were more likely to be
targeted at night. In the case of the employed, 74 per cent of the sample
60
had been robbed at night, with one-third robbed between 10.00pm and
2.00am. The rate of victimization at night, however, was also contingent
upon factors specific to the area concerned. Of specific significance in
this respect was the presence or absence of a night-time economy. Where
this was present, not only was the rate of victimization higher than in
areas where it was not present, but also victimization unsurprisingly
rose during the evening period.
Though streets constitute the principal location where street robbery
occurs (accounting for 51 per cent in Smith’s study), other open spaces
such as subways, parks, footpaths, alleyways, footbridges and commons
account for a significant 11 per cent of the total. 16 per cent of robberies
occur around a range of commercial premises such as banks, pubs, off-
licences and building societies, while 12 per cent occur while people use
either their own private transport (4 per cent) or public forms of
transport (8 per cent).
Street robbery is an offence that can be perpetrated in a number of
ways. Different offenders will consequently adopt the method they find
most suitable to rob the particular class of victim they aspire to target. In
terms of the different approaches, street robbers can adopt an approach
that involves a relatively long contact between offender and victim or
one where the nature of the interaction is relatively short. Robberies that
occur when victims are lulled into a false sense of security prior to being
robbed exemplify the former, while forms of snatch where, for example,
a bag or phone is literally ripped out of the hands of a victim, exemplify
the latter. In his study of the robbery event, Smith identifies five principal
approaches, and these are summarized in Table 3.1 below.
A characteristic feature of all the approaches is that they rely upon a
high degree of physical activity to perpetrate. If the assailant engages in a
snatch, then he must be able both to take the object and escape with it.
While the ability to outrun and outwit those who may wish to intercept a
street robber is also a required skill, this ability must also be supplemen-
ted by the capacity and will either to threaten a victim with violence or
use violence as a first resort.
Smith’s study indicated significant differences between different
groups of victims and the kind of approach adopted to rob them. Males
were, he found, more likely to be targeted using confrontation and con
techniques, while women were more likely to be targeted using snatch.
Both groups were equally likely to be targeted using a blitz technique.
Smith’s study also indicated that the age of a victim affected how they
were typically targeted. Younger age groups, he found, were far more
likely to be victims of confrontation and con robberies, while victims of
blitz and snatch robberies were typically older (Smith 2003).
61
Street Crime
Table 3.1. Approaches to Street Robbery
Blitz. Violence is used to overwhelm, stun or control the victim prior to the
removal of any property or prior to any demands to hand over property.
Violence is the first point of contact between the victim and the suspect. There is
no prior verbal exchange between victim and offender, though threats and abuse
may follow the initial assault.
Confrontation. A demand for property or possessions is the initial point of

contact between the victim and offender, e.g. ‘Give me your money and your
mobile phone.’ This may be followed through with threats and, on occasion with
force.
Con. The suspect ‘cons’ the victim into some form of interaction. This typically
takes the form of some spurious conversation, e.g. ‘Have you got a light/the
time mate?’ This is the initial approach to the victim, regardless of how the
robbery subsequently develops.
Snatch. Property is grabbed from the victim without prior demand, threats or
physical force. This is the initial contact between the victim and the suspect.
Physical force is used to snatch property from the victim, which is nearly always
on display, e.g. handbag. There is no physical search of the victim by the suspect.
Victim-initiated. The victim initiates contact with the suspect and becomes the
victim of a robbery, e.g. a drug deal, procuring sex, etc.
Source: Smith 2003.
The costs of street crime

Crime occasions material, physical and psychological damage to victims.
The material costs of street crime can be assessed in terms of the goods
taken in the offence. The physical damage occasioned by street robbery
pertains to the nature of the injuries sustained as a consequence of an
assault. By psychological damage is meant the fear and anxiety that can
be induced in victims. In this section we consider these costs.
Though offenders perpetrate street robbery for reasons that cannot
simply be reduced to the desire for material goods, this nevertheless
remains an important and in many cases decisive motive. In his analysis
of the goods stolen through personal robbery, Smith found that money
and mobile phones were most regularly taken, though other objects such
as debit and credit cards, bags, watches, jewellery and personal
documentation could also be removed. Table 3.2 below provides a
summary of the percentage of goods removed from his sample.
62
Table 3.2. Goods stolen in Personal Robberies
Item No. %
Cash 986 25
Mobile phone 694 18
Debit, credit, cash cards 337 9
Purse, wallet 327 8
Personal accessories 312 8
Handbag, rucksack, briefcase 241 6
Personal documentation 226 6
Jewellery and watches 224 6
Other 610 15
All property 3957 100
Source: Smith 2003.
Table 3.3. British Crime Survey estimates of mobile phone thefts (those aged
16 or more)
1995 1997 1999 2000
Mobile phones stolen* 160,000 270,000 400,000 470,000

% of all thefts 1.1% 2.6% 4.0% 5.5%
*Based on risk figures grossed up to the population of England and Wales aged
16 or more. The risks relate to incidents in which a phone was stolen or an
attempt was made.
Source: BSC (cited in Harrington 2001).
As Home Office research confirms, mobile phone theft has seen a

steep rise in recent years. From an analysis of the BCS data, the rate of
mobile phone theft increased dramatically over the period of the last four
sweeps. Whereas in 1995 the estimated figure for mobile phone theft
stood at 160,000, or 1.1 per cent of all recorded thefts, by 2000 the figure
had risen to 470,000, or 5.5 per cent of the total (Harrington 2001).
Weapons were regularly used in the conduct of many street robberies
but were used principally for the purpose of ensuring the compliance of
the victim in the robbery act. Actual assaults are relatively rare, and in
most cases the weapon is displayed to the victim in order to instil the
requisite degree of fear (Smith 2003). Smith’s study indicated that
weapons were typically used in a third of all robberies (33 per cent) and
were particularly evident when a confrontation approach was adopted.
63
Street Crime
Knives were by far the weapon of choice for most street robbers, and
were used in one in five robberies. The use of blunt instruments such as
coshes, baseball bats and hammers was relatively rare, and these were
used in only 3 per cent of cases. Men were far more likely to be
threatened with a weapon than a woman, but women were also far more
likely to be a victim of a snatch during which weapons are rarely used.
Though men were more likely to be confronted by robbers bearing
weapons, they were far less likely to suffer a physical injury than women
(Smith 2003). The reason for this is probably that when presented with a
demonstration of overwhelming force (i.e. being shown a knife), men are
far more likely to cooperate with their attacker. A snatch is, however, an
abrupt and sudden act, and may lead the victim to resist their assailant.
Women, Smith found, were far more likely to do so than men. By its
nature, a blitz style of approach almost always resulted in some form of
injury.
If we compare the injuries sustained by victims of street robbery with
injuries sustained by victims of domestic violence, however, an
interesting pattern emerges, as was observed in the BCS (Kershaw 2001).
Though weapons were far more likely to be used in street robbery than in
domestic violence, the rate of injury among those subject to domestic
violence was significantly higher. According to the BCS, whereas 70 per
cent of victims of domestic violence reported an injury, the figure for
what the BCS recorded as ‘mugging’ was 28 per cent. Though it is a crime
in which violence figures prominently, it is not a crime where most
victims are injured as recurrently as domestic violence. One lesson that
we might bear in mind as we consider these factors is that while street
robbery occasions a lot of fear and considerable media attention, its
damage is far less pervasive than that occasioned by less sensationalized
offences such as domestic violence.
Finally, in relation to the wider social costs accumulated by street
crime it is particularly informative to consider these in relation to other
crimes in order to put them in context. In a careful and diligent attempt
to compare the respective costs of corporate crime and street crime in the
US, Winslow estimates that the cost of corporate crime to the economy
came to $1–2 trillion per year and estimated that $18 billion were spent
each year by the federal government of the US in confronting it.
However, the amount dedicated to confronting street robbery in the US
was $147 billion (Winslow 2003). Its social consequence is a mass
incarceration system that now routinely imprisons over 2 million of the
US’s poorest citizens, many for street crime offences. As street-level
homicide in the US was estimated to cause 15,500 deaths, this may seem
appropriate to some. However, it is worth noting that the financial costs
64
of street crime are only 5 per cent of those accumulated by corporate

crime (Snider 1993). The number of deaths occasioned by corporate
crime was also significantly higher than for street crime.
Among the costs of corporate crimes, Winslow identified workplace
injuries and accidents cost ($141.6 billion), deaths from workplace cancer
($274.7 billion), price-fixing monopolies and deceptive advertising
$1,116.1 billion), cigarettes and other product injuries (£18.4 billion),
environmental costs ($307.8 billion), and defence contracts overcharging
($25.8 billion); and income tax fraud ($2.9 billion). These are yearly costs.
In terms of the deaths occasioned by corporate crime, these include
100,000 miners killed by exposure to coal dust, while 267,000 have been
disabled. Exposure to carcinogens in the workplace accounts for 150,000
deaths annually.
Despite the fact that, in relative terms, street crime would appear to
prove far less hazardous to the public than corporate crime, it is worth
noting that (a) it is street robbery that commands more public attention;
and (b) when prosecuted it is street robbers who go to jail, not the
powerful and lethal sponsors of corporate crime.
Conclusion
What this brief survey of the available data indicates is that street crime
is an offence typically concentrated around young urban males, typically
those living in poorer socio-economic conditions. Though the over-
representation of minority ethnic groups in street robbery is certainly a
factor in some areas – notably Lambeth in London – it is not a consistent
feature of street robbery across the UK as a whole. Just as young people
appear over-represented among the population of offenders, so too do
they appear over-represented among the population of victims, though a
significant number also come from older age groups.
The data also indicates that while most other offence categories have
decreased in recent years, street robbery remains an exception to this
general trend in that it has risen, and risen sharply. That said, it
comprises a relatively small percentage of the total crime figure.
Evidence suggests that cash and mobile phones are the objects most
often obtained in street robbery. The dramatic rise in mobile phone theft
in recent years is a characteristic feature of the recent surge in street
robbery more generally. Though street crime can be perpetrated without
the use of violence, violence is a recurrent feature of the offence.
Weapons are often used in the perpetration of street robbery and injuries
are commonplace, specifically among women, who are also more likely
to find themselves a target of a snatch than males. In relation to the
65
Street Crime
crimes of the powerful, street crime occasions far less material and social
cost though disproportionate media and political attention.
Having considered as it were the hard facts about street robbery, let us
now consider how different commentators have sought to explain
precisely why certain groups engage in street robbery, and explain why
street robbery appears to have risen in recent years.
Note
1 Indeed it is a drawback with interesting and sinister implications, as Marian

Fitzgerald observed (in communication with the author). Given that the
government uses the BCS as its privileged source about crime trends, the
failure to include young respondents has allowed it to underestimate
significantly the real level of street crime, and overstate the success of
government initiatives in confronting it.
66
The view from the right
Chapter 4
There are, potentially, a number of ways in which we can examine the

attempts that have been made to explain street robbery. One way would
be to consider the issue within different theoretical traditions. Another
possibility would be to consider the history of attempts to explain and
account for it, while another would involve grouping explanations by
reference to the political persuasion of their advocates. Though each of
these approaches is potentially plausible, for the purpose of this chapter
I will opt for the latter. I do this because there are a number of similarities
between explanations posed within right of centre and left of centre
accounts that facilitate such analysis.
I will begin this task by examining the explanations that have been
proposed to explain street robbery developed by commentators of the
political right. The next chapter examines the position of those who
operate within a more critical and left of centre framework of analysis.
What unifies the approaches that could be grouped under the banner
of the right is that they typically view street robbery as the result of
defective individuals born into a culture/community itself considered
defective in many ways. This deficiency derives, they argue, from
pathological traits identified within the host culture/group/population
into which the street robber is born, and this failure is itself attributed to
the failure of society to regulate and control the behaviour of the
individual and his host culture through appropriate means. What also
unifies commentators of the right is that they typically view street
robbery as a serious problem that requires urgent attention – a
proposition by no means universally accepted (as we shall see) by the
left.
67
Street Crime
Although it is useful to use labels such as a ‘right of centre’

perspective on street crime, it is worth emphasizing that within this all-
encompassing label can be clustered a multitude of different and by no
means well-connected or theoretically consistent approaches. Nor – and
this also needs emphasizing – are the approaches that fall under this
label the product of academics operating within academic establish-
ments. On the contrary, many of the approaches developed within this
tradition are non-academic, specifically those produced within the
populist traditions of the tabloid media. Though non-scientific, it is still
important to consider such approaches, because in their public exposure
they also claim truth-value. At the level of popular beliefs about street
crime and crime in general, such views also prevail as dominant
narratives.
The deficit theory of street robbery

At the heart of right of centre approaches we typically find a
representation of the street robber as someone characterized either by an
absence of something that normal law-abiding people possess, or by an
accretion of traits that law-abiding people do not have. Considered this
way, the street robber is someone who is both different and abnormal in
one or more respects, and it is this that promotes their engagement in
street robbery. If we study this deficit approach in more detail, what
emerges is a representation of the street robber as someone whose
capacity to engage in street robbery is made possible because of various
pathological occurrences that are believed to have happened to them in
the course of their lives.
Offering far and away the most reductionist explanation of criminal
motivation, there are accounts such as that produced by Herrenstein and
Murray predicated on the view that the robber is born into a population
that is biologically different from that of the law-abiding, and which
contains latent traits that might predispose its members to engage in
crime. Much of this debate has raged over issues of imputed intelligence
and its relation to crime. The inference typically drawn is that minority
ethnic groups/the working class (i.e. the class of origin for most street
robbers) are over-represented among the population of robbers precisely
because their intelligence quotient is smaller than that found in more
affluent classes/ethnic groups. This ‘fact’ is then used to explain their
disproportionate involvement in crime.1
Though biological reductionist accounts figure significantly in the
work of the right, these are also supplemented by more sociologically
based accounts. These typically consider the involvement of individuals
in street robbery as a product of their having been born into and raised
68
among a pathological community characterized by a range of cultural

deficits that predispose its young towards criminal behaviour. This
explanation is at the heart of various versions of the underclass thesis, of
which the work of Charles Murray remains, though highly criticized, the
most important (Murray 1990).
As Murray’s thesis is grounded upon a number of key assumptions
about what an appropriate and healthy society is supposed to be, to
understand his work it is necessary to consider what these are. In what may
be regarded as an expression of a conventional conservative position,
Murray idealizes the conventional heterosexual nuclear married family as
the keystone around which healthy communities are established. This he
considers the ideal family form, and he thinks this way because he believes
that only this family unit can ensure the effective transmission of
appropriate norms to its young. Though its role as a healthy socializing
force is an important attribute of the success of the nuclear family, it is also
functionally superior to other forms because it helps shape the personality
structure of the adults within it in positive and productive law-abiding
ways. Men, he believes, unless pacified and domesticated through
marriage into such a family form, are likely to degenerate into something
approaching a primal savage nature. As he argues:
Just as work is more important than merely making a living, getting

married and raising a family are more than just a way to pass the
time. Supporting a family is a central means for a man to prove to
himself that he is a ‘mensch’. Men who do not support families find
other ways to prove that they are men, which tend to take various
destructive forms. As many have commentated through the
centuries, young males are essentially barbarians for whom
marriage – meaning not just the wedding vows, but the act of
taking responsibility for a wife and children – is an indispensable
civilising force. (Murray 1990)
A healthy and crime-free culture for Murray is one where the nuclear
family form prevails as the norm and from which other family forms –
particularly single-parent families – are noticeable by their absence.
The young in such a context are socialized appropriately, not only
because there are two parents available to socialize them, but also
because the process of socialization requires the presence of a male role
model. As far as Murray is concerned, this is a figure that can only be
provided by the male head of the nuclear family. In other words, an on-
site male parent. Women by implication, he argues, cannot provide the
support young men require to fulfil this socialization role. Unless
69
Street Crime
attached to a father, they remain an altogether inadequate agent of

socialization.
Just as their involvement in families produces a healthy individual, so
too does the involvement of males in paid work. It is a force of good in
the world because, for Murray, it guarantees a stable adult personality. It
provides males in particular with a sense of satisfaction in the world. It
keeps them away from trouble, while also providing them with the
material wealth they require in order to invest in hearth and home.
Though celebrating the importance of paid work, Murray however
appears to believe that it is the work ethic itself that is more important. In
other words, a commitment to work is more significant than actually
having it.
For a fully healthy culture to be sustained, a community must be
constructed around a stable array of nuclear families to which their
members are committed. This commitment is not only evidenced
through belief in such things as the sanctity of marriage, but also by a
sense of collectively felt disgust expressed by members towards more
deviant family forms. These factors, acting in conjunction with a strong
commitment to a work ethic, will lead men to undertake the work
necessary to meet the material needs of their kith and kin. Finally,
because the good community is made up of active fathers who are also
around to support their young, a community of living role models is at
hand to inspire their male offspring.
The problem with our present, at least according to Murray, is that the
conditions that have traditionally led to the construction of orderly law-
abiding communities have been systematically undermined by liberal
welfare policy. This trend in social policy, evident above all in the rise of
the postwar welfare state and its promulgation of a permissive social
agenda, has, Murray contends, fatal consequences for the way in which
social life for poor communities has evolved and developed.
With the rise of the permissive society, a commitment to the nuclear
family has declined, while an acceptance of family types that depart from
it has become widely accepted. No longer experiencing the shame that
once discouraged permissive behaviour, young women engage in casual
sex outside of marriage and sometimes do so in order to secure social
housing for themselves and their illegitimate offspring. Excessive
welfare, though directed with the aim of helping the urban poor, comes
to betray its benevolent goal by producing a dependency culture while
simultaneously eroding the work ethic. Left with no other goal in life,
young men gather in the streets, thus setting in motion a process that
leads to their mal-socialization into the skills that will equip them for
involvement in crimes such as street robbery.
70
Instead of looking to support their families, young men engage in

casual sex with permissive women and move on to repeat the same
process with others. Unable to provide an adequate socializing force in a
world where male fathers are no longer part of nuclear families, young
women bring into the world an underclass of young males devoid of the
moral consciousness that proper socialization provides. Lacking access
to necessary role models, they are thus perfectly tailored, Murray argues,
for a life of crime. Like their feckless parents, young men and women
grow up in a world with the expectation that welfare provides all. Not
having to bother with work, the young simply live off welfare provision.
Having no goal in life, their turn to crime, at least for Murray, is a
foregone conclusion.
In order to avoid the critique that his work simply criminalizes the
poor, Murray – drawing upon an older Victorian tradition –
distinguishes the working class into respectable and non-respectable
elements. The former, while poor, at least marry into and remain
committed to the nuclear family, while also manifesting a respectable
orientation towards the Protestant work ethic. The latter do not, which
justifies their designation as ‘underclass’. While distinguishing the
decent from the immoral poor, Murray’s work not only provides an
explanation of street crime in general, but also provides, controversially,
an account of why young black males are disproportionately involved in
offences such as street robbery. This follows logically from his conception
of the single parent family as pathological. It so happens that within the
black community a far higher number of single parent families can be
found. The social equation for Murray is clear: absence of the father
figure added to single mothers equals illegitimate offspring.
Though the effects of poor parenting feature significantly in new right
of centre accounts of street robbery, the corrupting influences of illegal
drug use and mass culture are also evoked to explain the production of
the street robber.
Underpinning the first of these arguments is the assumption that the
effects of drug use or the reality of addiction weaken moral constraints,
leaving the individual concerned at the mercy of more primitive drives.
This explanation considers involvement in acts such as street robbery to
have occurred because the body is overwhelmed by too many of the
wrong kind of chemicals, or as a result of the body’s anguish at being
denied the chemicals the addiction demands. Put more simply, the
robber robs either because their drug of choice drives them to commit
crime – because that is what drugs do, or in order to obtain the resources
to sustain an addiction that cannot be paid for in any other way. Melanie
Phillips puts the case in stark terms (though not by providing much in
71
Street Crime
the way of hard evidence) in her consideration of the effects of marijuana

use on the young:
Several studies have found it can cause impulsively violent

behaviour, and is associated with violent death. One study found a
far higher mortality rate among cannabis users with a very high
proportion of violent deaths. Out of 268 New Yorkers sent to prison
in 1984 for murder, 73 were under the influence of cannabis at the
time of their crime. (Phillips 2002)
The second corrupting influence often identified by the right concerns

the individual’s exposure to what is believed to be a degenerate and
corrupting mass culture that sanctifies violence and which has appeared
to have abandoned any commitment to traditional moral verities.2 In
their attempt to identify the culprits responsible for the production of
this morally repugnant culture, the right have identified a number of
suitable enemies. These include a Hollywood industry responsible for
producing hyper-violent movies; TV channels (like Channel 4) which the
right castigate for their alleged permissiveness; and, last but not least,
popular music such as rap that consciously repudiates every moral
standard the right believed a good society should embody. Melanie
Phillips, again, summarizes this position well. Young poor men, she
concludes, are:
Increasingly unable to distinguish fantasy from reality, they are all

too vulnerable to the popular culture of violence and sadism –
murderous computer games, or ‘gangsta rap’ with its glamorising
of guns, violence and hatred. (Phillips 2003)
That these corrupting forces are allowed to exist without serious censure
presupposes – at least for the right – that there are a number of things
wrong with the society that has encouraged such developments. For
clearly and self-evidently, something had to be wrong with society for a
situation to occur in which young people were being exposed to such a
corrupting set of influences. In their attempt to identify the deeper
causes of street robbery, the right have typically identified as a principal
determinant the failure of existing informal and formal social control
measures. To establish the precise relation of this causal factor to street
robbery, this argument suggests that acts like robbery are encouraged
because there is a surfeit of the wrong kind of control and a deficit in the
forms of control and regulation that might prevent it. Who then is to
blame for this state of affairs?
72
On this matter, commentators of the right have identified a number of

internal enemies. These include a liberal/left intelligentsia they consider
responsible for promulgating and encouraging a destructive permissive
approach to life, and those who, by creating a liberal welfare state,
ensured that these destructive ideas were then translated into social
policy – a critique at the heart of Murray’s underclass thesis. These
forces, they suggest, are guilty precisely because they have encouraged
ways of life that directly undermine the moral fabric of the good society,
while emasculating the kind of robust controls that might have
prevented this moral lapse to begin with. By encouraging a lax moral
culture, so the preconditions have been created for the emergence of
young men tailor-made for a life of crime. At the same time, by failing to
ensure that appropriate social controls are supported, so the good society
is left exposed to the criminals that an immoral culture would produce.
In response to this state of affairs, the right have called for much more
severe punishment, more imprisonment and a reorientation of the
criminal justice system in ways that will offer more benefits to the victim
and to the victimized public.
Critique
So far we have considered the various factors that right of centre
commentators have adduced to explain why certain people turn to street
robbery. In what follows I will present a critical overview of this position.
Is it a fair and accurate representation of the factors that lead to street
crime, and if it is not, in which respects is it wrong? In developing this
critique, I will address not so much the work of particular theorists, so
much as the general propositions that underpin right of centre thinking
as a whole. In so doing my aim will be to answer the following questions,
each of which problematizes a fundamental plank in the argument
developed by the right:
1 Does the deficit model of the street robber accord with what we
know about street robbers?
2 How pathological is the parent culture that is typically held
responsible for producing the street robber as a motivated offender?
3 Is liberalism really to blame for encouraging the pathological
developments within poor communities that give birth to the street
robber?
The first point to be made when considering the deficit model of the
criminal articulated by the right is that it is by no means a new way of
73
Street Crime
looking at what is, after all, an old problem. If we return to the historical
record and consider, for example, how the Victorians considered their
own street robbers then one conclusion that can be reached with some
certainty is that not much has changed between then and now. Writing in
1839, W.A. Miles had no problem connecting rising crime in London (as
we saw in chapter 2) with what he identified as a criminal underclass he
depicted graphically as ‘a race sui generis. A race, he claimed, that was
‘different from the rest of society not only in thoughts, habits and
manners, but even in appearance’ (Miles 1839). Writing in the same vein
in 1849, Thomas Beggs also had no problem identifying the criminal
classes with ‘veriest debasement’. They yielded, he argued, ‘obedience
only to the animal instincts; brooding in the spiritual darkness in a day of
gospel light’ (Beggs 1849). The tone may be different from that deployed
by Murray, but the idea of a criminal fraternity constructed in terms of
essentualized difference is very much the same.
Just as populist commentators on the right today highlight the
contaminating impact of violent mass culture upon the street criminal, so
too did the Victorians who, like Mayhew, believed terrible moral
consequences would befall those exposed to it. Remarking on the
debilitating impact of the halfpenny romances on the London poor,
Mayhew indignantly observed: ‘One of the worst of the newest ones is
denominated “Charley Wagg, or the New Jack Shepherd, a history of the
most successful thief in London.” To say that they are not incentives to
lust, theft and crime is to cherish a fallacy’ (Mayhew 1861 (1985)).
But what status ought we to concede to this kind of explanation. Is the
robber really as different as the right suggest. To answer this question we
need as a precursor to attend to what offenders actually have to say. This,
it could be pointed out, is not something that many commentators on the
right have chosen to do. Under the dead weight of presumption,
offenders’ testimonies are largely absent from consideration.
As part of the interview research I conducted among young street
robbers in Lambeth, I sought to rectify this deficit by asking them a series
of questions designed to see just how aware they were of the moral status
of the offences they had committed. I did so to test the claim we find
inherent in the deficit approach to the offender which suggests that what
we are dealing with is a hardened predator devoid of moral
consciousness. To examine this issue I asked the offenders whether they
viewed what they had done as wrong. The first point that could be made
was that all of them recognized clearly that they had broken rules and
that what they had done was morally reprehensible. They could, in other
words, tell right from wrong. What their testimonies indicated was not
only that most had internalized a moral consciousness, but also that it
74
was a well-developed one. As one interviewee put it: ‘I know I was a bad
boy’.
All accepted that the police were right to have apprehended them and
they also accepted, albeit with a sense of pragmatic acquiescence, the
right of society to punish them for what they had done. To this extent it
was evident that they had internalized a series of dominant norms that
condemned rule-breaking. When pushed further, it was also evident that
most possessed some sense of a moral universe. In form, this moral world-
view often approximated a version of Kantianism. This was reflected in the
belief often echoed by the offenders interviewed of their desire to live in a
world in which the moral imperative of doing unto others as you would
have them do unto you should hold sway and prosper.
The capacity of street robbers actively to identify with many of the
values of the dominant society they prey upon, in particular its
materialist culture, also supports the idea that they are not simply a
predatory outsider totally devoid of what law-abiding people possess.
Indeed, as Sykes and Matza observed many years ago: ‘While
supposedly thoroughly committed to the deviant system of the
delinquent subculture, he [the deviant] would appear to recognise the
moral validity of the dominant normative system in many instances’
(Sykes 1957). Returning to the research conducted with young offenders,
the truth of this observation came through repeatedly. None saw
themselves as career criminals and most had a future exit strategy that
typically involved passing exams and getting a job. While they had
clearly ‘drifted’ into crime in Matza’s sense of this term, all saw their
future in the formal economy. What I took from this was the observation
that, for most of the street robbers I interviewed, street robbery was not a
place they wished to remain, but was simply another temporary and
unstable job in a world where good jobs were largely absent.
As we saw above, integral to the conservative conception of the street

robber was an individual conceived as in effect out of control, at the
mercy of primary drives and seemingly unshackled from the benevolent
impact of civilizing forces. While this representation of the robber
corresponds well to a conventional common-sense view of the criminal
as a dangerous other, there is little evidence from the research conducted
with offenders that this conception has any basis in reality. This is
particularly evident if we consider the thesis that robbery was being
perpetrated because those involved had a drug problem. This
hypothesis, circulated widely by the right-wing media, and accepted by
many police commentators and, not least, by government ministers,
presents a potent image of the robber as essentially someone out of
75
Street Crime
control and at the mercy of more primary drives. If true, this hypothesis
would apparently explain a lot. Drugs, after all, do strange things to
people, and those with an addiction are driven by it to commit all kinds
of unspeakable acts … aren’t they? Well not in the case of the street
robber.
Again, from the interviews I conducted with young street robbers –
and this is replicated in other research (Kershaw 2001; Fitzgerald et al.
2002) – there is no evidence at all to suggest either that drug use
stimulates the desire to rob or that growing drug use explains the recent
rise in street robbery. Indeed, when I brought this issue up in interviews
conducted with young offenders, one common reaction was outright
incredulity in the face of the suggestion. These young men, aged
between 15 and 19, were very conscious of their bodies and had clearly
bought into the myth of the body beautiful. Their physical prowess
evident both in the ability to be able to handle themselves in the event of
trouble and not least avoid what they viewed as the lumpen efforts of
overweight police officers to catch them, was very important to their self-
image as virile males. This did not mean that they did not use drugs, but
what it did mean was that what they did use was for recreational
purposes and was not directly connected with street crime. To this
extent, like many young people in British society, they were part of a
generation who had been well and truly socialized into a society where
drug use had become normalized. Marijuana appeared in most cases to
be their preferred drug of choice. When I asked them what they thought
of heavy drug users such as heroin addicts, what I discovered was that
for these young men this was by far their most despised category of
being. They were, in their estimation, a category they considered the
lowest of the low. As one young man stated when I asked him whether
he (and other street robbers he knew) used crack he was adamant that
‘it’s not us’. He went on: ‘the people what uses it are like tramps and so
forth’.
The fallacy of this kind of ‘explanation’ is also well illustrated by the
application of common sense. To perpetrate street robbery well you have
to have your wits about you. You have to move quickly and think on
your feet. Being ‘stoned’, ‘out of your box’, or addled on crack cocaine or
heroin does not kit you out well for this role. Street robbers are well
aware of this. So indeed are heroin addicts, which is one reason they
rarely engage in street robbery.
In summary, it could be said that while it is evident that young people
who commit street robbery are certainly individuals who commit
immoral acts, their engagement in street robbery does not follow on from
the idea that they have no moral sensibilities. Nor are they at the mercy
76
of primitive drives because they are in some respect ‘out of control’

because of their drug use.
Let us now turn to the next two planks in the argument proposed by the
right and consider, firstly, just how pathological the parent culture is into
which the street robber is allegedly born, and secondly, assess how far its
pathologies are created by liberal tendencies at work in the welfare state.
To begin with, what evidence is there to suggest that people who
perpetrate street robbery do so because they have been mal-socialized as
a consequence of their exposure to workshy parents mired in
permissiveness and addicted to a dependency culture?
If we consider what other studies of crime among working-class
communities have to tell us, a number of serious objections could be
directed against this line of argument.
In a recent attempt to study the social background of those who
engage in street robbery, Fitzgerald et al. found little evidence to suggest
that robbers were the products of a malformed and maladjusted
underclass (Fitzgerald et al. 2002). What their work indicates is a
background culture characterized by what they liken to serious patterns
of social disorganization. What their study brought to light was a world
of highly stressed individuals, particularly single parents, attempting to
do right in a hostile social and economic context. It is poor living
conditions acting in conjunction with a highly restricted access to the
labour market that, they argue, produces the conditions that foster the
kind of street life and street culture that can and will result in street
robbery.
This analysis, it must be emphasized, does not deny the fact that
certain young people will indeed find themselves – as the right argue –
mixing with street cultures that can encourage involvement in street
robbery. Where this analysis departs radically from the right, however, is
by suggesting that the social forces that create the preconditions for this
do not emanate from cultural failings among working-class populations
but from the socio-economic failings of free-market capitalism. The
problem for writers such as Murray is that they do not want to recognize
the fundamental importance of these issues. The role of unemployment
and underemployment, for example, have no explanatory status in
Murray’s account, nor does he adequately attend to the changing
economy of British society, even though it has changed significantly and
with profound consequences on issues such as street robbery – a point I
will pick up on in the next chapter.
With regards to the claim that society is too lenient and that there are
no effective deterrents available to discourage young people from crime,
77
Street Crime
three points can be made against it. To begin with, it is important to note
that the overwhelming majority of those aged 19 or over successfully
convicted of a street robbery offence will receive a custodial sentence. If
you are black and live in areas like Brixton, this percentage is higher than
if you are a white street robber. Sentences are also routinely meted out
even if the robbery was a first-time offence. Indeed, from evidence
collated from Lambeth (Hallsworth and Richie 2002) you were more
likely to receive a harsher sentence for robbery than you would for
assault. The idea that Britain is ‘soft’ in relation to the way it deals with
street robbers is one of those ongoing myths the right habitually seeks to
sustain – despite the availability of evidence proving the contrary.
Having examined the arguments that right of centre commentators
have adduced to explain street robbery, it is clear that they offer
explanations that can be criticized on many fronts. The evidential basis
remains weak and the deficit model of crime at the heart of right thinking
remains highly problematic. Shorn of hard evidence, what we find is less
an appropriate account of street robbery, and more a series of
persecution texts directed at blaming poor communities for the crime
that bedevils social life within them. If the right fails to address the
problem of street robbery, however, can commentators of the political left
fare any better?
Notes
1 For examples of this see Jenson, A. (1969). ‘How Much Can we Boost IQ
and Scholastic Achievement?’ Harvard Educational Review 39: 1–123.A.;
Herrenstein, R. and Murray, C. (1994) The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class
Structure in American Life. New York and London: Free Press. For a
contemporary critique, see Bowling, B. and Phillips, C. (2002) Racism, Crime
and Justice. London: Longman.
2 See Wartella, B. (1995) ‘Media and Problem Behaviours in Young People’ in
Psychological Disorders in Young People, D.S.M. Rutter. London: Wiley:
296–323. For an overview of this literature, see Reiner, R. (1997) ‘Media Made
Criminality’ in Oxford Handbook of Criminology, R.M.M. Maguire and
R. Reiner. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
78
The view from the left
Chapter 5
While commentators on the political right have exhibited little hesitation

in identifying the factors they believe explain street crime, the left has
demonstrated little appetite for engaging in the hunt for causal
explanations in quite the same way. Indeed, if we consider how the left
has addressed the problem of street robbery, it could be observed that,
while it has produced highly sophisticated accounts of corporate crime
and youth subculture, the same cannot be said of its approach to this
perennial offence category. Three reasons can be cited to explain this
sorry state of affairs. Firstly, as an offence that typically involves poor
people preying on other poor people, the street robber has not provided
the left with much that could sanction any meaningful politics of
recognition. Secondly, when robbery has been considered worthy of
analysis, explanations for it typically appear subsumed within more
general theories of working-class crime. Finally, instead of explaining
why certain populations become engaged in robbery, the left has often
preferred to study the disproportionate social response this offence
provokes. As this hesitation on the part of the left is itself of interest to
this study, I will examine these factors in more detail. Though the tenor
of this examination will remain critical, I will also suggest that, despite
its hesitation, the left has made a number of important observations
about street robbery that any comprehensive theory worthy of its name
will need to accept and build upon.
The first reason that may be cited to explain the hesitation on the part
of the left to engage with street robbery can be attributed to the fact that it
did not constitute an offence that the left could portray at all
sympathetically. It was and remains an offence disproportionately
79
Street Crime
perpetrated by poor people and, by and large, the population of victims

are also poor. As Young observes:
Street crime is the only form of serious crime where the victim is in
the same social category as the offender. It is lower working class
against lower working class, black against black and neighbour
against neighbour. Much of it represents the ultimate in anti-social
behaviour and unites all sections of the population against a
common enemy. (Young 1979)
Unlike the array of flamboyant subcultures that emerged in postwar

Britain – held up by the left as exemplifying resistance to a deeply
inequitable and class-divided society – it is difficult to categorize street
crime in quite the same way (Hebdige 1979). For a tradition whose
political standpoint was forged through an attempt to resist the
criminalizing tendencies of the state, the modern street robber would not
provide much that would sanction any meaningful politics of
recognition. Indeed, for a tradition that had traditionally sought, as
Cohen describes it, to ‘humanise the deviant’ (Cohen 1981), the street
robber did not constitute a deviant that many found worthy of
‘humanising’.
This reluctance to endorse the street robber, it could be noted, is by no
means new. Indeed, it represents a standpoint whose genesis can be
traced back to the nineteenth century, where it is writ large in the work of
Marx and Engels. For them the street robber was simply a member of the
lumpen proletariat; an ‘underclass’ that existed by preying parasitically
upon other disadvantaged working-class people (Engels). Far from
conceiving the robber as a ‘social bandit’, as Marxist historians have
sought to do (Hobsbawn 2000), the left has preferred instead to conceive
in this figure an unfortunate and condensed expression of the barbarities
capitalist society invariably induces (Platt 1978).
If anger and embarrassment may be cited as an important reason why
the left has failed to study street robbery, it has been compounded in
recent years by another. At stake here is the contentious issue of race,
and, in particular, the way the political right has seized upon what it
claims amounts to black over-representation in street robbery. Though
the left has never denied the fact that minority ethnic groups have been
involved in crime, many remain convinced – for reasons we shall
examine in more detail below – that the coverage given to their
involvement remains vastly disproportionate to the threat allegedly
identified. Indeed, far from engaging in an objective reporting of ‘facts’,
what really underlies such reporting, Gilroy argues, is no more than a
80
racist agenda set upon proving that the black population is inherently
criminogenic and poses by its presence a serious threat to the white
population and the British way of life.
As critical criminology emerged, not least to resist the racializing
agenda of the right, it was from the beginning unprepared to endorse a
research agenda that would appear to concede legitimacy to what Gilroy
would term the ‘myth’ of black criminality (Gilroy 1987). To do so, it was
felt, would be to reproduce the dangerous reification of ‘black crime’
while also marking out the black population as a suspect community for
yet more coercive regulation and control. This standpoint, it could be
noted, has become something of orthodoxy for the critical left, and its
sway still remains intact – up to the present day1 – a point I will return to
below.
The left’s failure to address street robbery with the kind of panache it
reserved for youth subcultures also follows through from the perception
that, all things considered, it was not a particularly complicated offence
or one that required its own unique theory to explain. As far as offences
go, it remains, after all, on the lowest rung of any hierarchy of crime;
while, as a crime perpetrated by the poor, its persistence in capitalist
societies was held to be unproblematically connected with the
disadvantages the poor confront. Considered this way, street robbery has
been traditionally conceived as simply an emergent feature of the
structural inequalities always present within a capitalist mode of
production (Platt 1978). Capitalism, after all, invariably produces
disadvantage, and disadvantage in capitalism will invariably provoke
adaptations that lead to offences such as street crime. The seemingly
straightforward obviousness of this equation, I would suggest, has
resulted in a tradition that has not really felt the need to enquire
comprehensively into street robbery as an offence. What it has sought to
do instead, is either to prove statistically the relation between inequality,
deprivation and involvement in crime, and to demonstrate that rising
crime among the urban poor is connected to changes in the social
structure of capitalist society in the postwar period. Fitzgerald et al.’s
(2002) work on the social conditions behind contemporary street robbery
which we considered in the previous chapter exemplify this kind of
research tradition. The problem is either one of deprivation, poverty or
exclusion (Box 1987), or rising patterns of relative deprivation (Young
1984).
The final reason that can be adduced to explain why the left has failed
to provide detailed accounts of street robbery follows through from the
assumption that the social attention directed towards this offence is not
justified by its seriousness. When compared, for example, with the
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Street Crime
crimes of the powerful, street robbery occasions far less material harm to
society, a fact powerfully illustrated in a study conducted by Snider who
estimated that while the annual cost of street crime in the USA came to a
figure of some $4 billion, this was less than 5 per cent of the amount lost
through corporate crime (Winslow 2003). Despite the social and material
costs posed to society by crimes perpetrated by the powerful, however, it
is also evident that their acts receive less attention and certainly far less
censure than the crimes committed by the poor. At the same time, it is
also evident that, while they occasion far less harm, offences like street
robbery receive a disproportionate amount of media and political
attention.
Given the costs of corporate crime but the silence that surrounds it,
and given the saturation coverage accorded to working-class crime
despite the relatively low scale of harm it occasions, critical crimino-
logists have responded in two very different ways. On the one hand, a
growing number have begun to rectify this research deficit by drawing
attention back to the crimes of the powerful and away from the
traditional focus of criminology upon working-class crime (Croall 1992).
Others, however, have begun to examine in far greater detail precisely
why relatively low-status offences such as street crime came to assume
such a significant role on the public agenda.
Though the left has not conceded to the study of street robbery the
same kind of attention it has reserved for other forms of crime, it is
nevertheless the case that the single most influential text on street
robbery in postwar criminology was composed within this tradition. The
text in question was Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, Law and Order,
written in 1978 by Stuart Hall, Chas Critcher, Tony Jefferson, John Clarke
and Brian Roberts of the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies. As this
text exemplifies a conventional left position on street robbery, in what
follows I will consider its central arguments before subjecting the
position of the left as a whole to critique.
Policing the Crisis
Policing the Crisis was written as a critical analysis of street robbery and,
in particular, the moral panic that surrounded it during 1970–72 in the
UK, a period during which the urban black ‘mugger’ first made his
appearance in Britain. The text begins with an examination and then a
critical demolition of the evidential basis that the media deployed to
justify the selective and sensational attention they gave to street crime
during this period. The newsworthiness of street crime, Hall et al.
82
argued, could not be explained in terms of a sharp and unexpected rise in

this crime category, because the empirical evidence simply did not
support this interpretation. Street crime, they argued, was an old offence
whose rate and incidence had not changed significantly over time. Nor
could media and political interest in street crime be explained in terms of
an old crime now being perpetrated in new ways. The expression
‘mugging’, which the media quickly latched upon to describe street
crime during this period, was not, Hall et al. argued, a statutory offence;
and, far from describing a new offence or offender (Phillips 2003),
was simply a new label for an existing array of offences. The response
to street crime did not, as a consequence, appear warranted by the
reality.
In their attempt to make sense of the sensational reporting street
robbery received at the hands of the media, Hall et al. drew upon a
concept first developed by Cohen in his influential study of the social
response to Mods and Rockers in the 1960s (Cohen 1980). What the
media had generated, they argued, was a ‘moral panic’.
When the official reaction to a person, groups of persons or series of

events is out of all proportion to the actual threat offered, when
‘experts’ in the form of police chiefs, the judiciary, politicians and
editors perceive the threat in all but identical terms and appear to
talk with one voice of rates, diagnosis, prognosis and solutions,
when the media representations universally stress ‘sudden and
dramatic increases’ (in numbers involved or events) and ‘novelty’
above and beyond what a sober, realistic appraisal could sustain,
then we believe it appropriate to speak of the beginnings of a moral
panic. (Hall et al. 1978)
What they then sought to explain was how and why this moral panic
around mugging had appeared when the facts did not by ‘sober, realistic
appraisal’ justify the attention it had received. As empirical facts about
street robbery could not provide them with an answer to this question,
their focus shifted towards accounting for the social response itself. From
looking at the deviant act – the conventional focus of criminological
enquiry – they refocussed instead upon ‘the relation between the deviant
act and the reaction of the public and control agencies to the act’ (Hall et
al. 1978).
To accomplish this task, they began by assiduously studying the
genesis of the moral panic, paying particular attention to the way in
which the mugging label came into popular usage during this period
and was then subsequently applied. As their research demonstrated,
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Street Crime
prior to the 1970s the term mugging had no history of use in postwar
Britain. It was, however, a term routinely used by commentators in the
US to describe street robbery. What the British media had done, Hall et al.
argued, was to adopt this term to describe what they then claimed was in
the process of happening on Britain’s inner-city streets.
What was imported, however, was far more than a new description of
an old offence. For in this American import, what was being
appropriated was a label to which an assemblage of already existing
references and associations were attached. The mugging label thus came
contextualized and racialized when the media began to apply it in a
‘scene-setting’ manner to help to explain events in a British context. As
Hall et al. note:
‘Mugging’ comes to Britain first as an American phenomenon, but

fully thematised and contextualised. It is embedded in a number of
linked frames: the race conflict, the urban crisis, rising crime, the
breakdown of law and order; the liberal conspiracy and the white
backlash. It is no mere fact about crime that is reported. It connotes
a whole historical construction about the nature and dilemmas of
American society. (Hall et al. 1978)
When the British media began to deploy the term mugging to define
what they claimed was happening on the streets of Britain, they did
so against a background characterized by economic decline, and not
least the breakdown of the postwar welfare state settlement. It was at
this moment that the black community, already one of the poorest
and most economically marginalized populations in British society,
found itself singled out for special treatment. This revealed itself, Hall et
al. argue, in a movement that would see black communities in general
and young black males in particular subjected to an undeclared urban
war by the police, the active agents of a deeply repressive and racist
state.
By the time the moral panic over rising street crime had begun, Hall et
al. argued, this urban war was already well under way. Young black
males were finding themselves subject to racialized targeting by the
police, while the areas in which they lived were subject to highly
intensive and coercive policing. It is in this context that an articulation
between police activity, media coverage and street crime activity began
to be forged. The robbers provided the facts; well-reported police arrests
confirmed them; and both street crime and the response towards it
provided a context the media then began to interpret by reference to the
mugging label it had imported from the US.
84
A robbery initiated in Handsworth by three black youths on an elderly

white victim was widely reported in the mass media during this period.
This provided the focal point around which events on the ground and its
discursive representation would coalesce. The robbery was used to
suggest, not only that there was a crisis of law and order in the UK, but
also that Britain was sliding inexorably in the same direction as America.
By ‘cashing in on Handsworth’, the media were also able to highlight
and identify the population that would henceforth be identified as the
principal perpetrators behind the crisis: young black males living in
inner-city areas. The Handsworth case was also used to confirm the
identity of the victims: a defenceless white society.
As the moral panic subsequently unfolded, the primary definers of
the crisis – which now included politicians and members of the judiciary,
as well as police sources and journalists – began to accept the terms
implied by the mugging label. By so doing, they came to speak with one
voice about what was represented as a law and order crisis accepted as
having a common cause. Such convergence, however, did not require a
conspiracy for it to be accomplished. All the participants simply quoted
each other and used the testimony of others to reinforce their own
position. The press used police statistics, and quoted from judges and
politicians whose understanding of the street crime problem was also
informed by the media. And so the moral panic escalated.
In creating the definitional space, a number of key themes gradually
coalesced in the way that the mugging ‘crisis’ was being constructed.
Under the impact of the label, crime in general and street robbery in
particular became racialized in a new and sinister way. The street robber
would henceforth always now be considered to have a black face, just as
the victim population would invariably be presented as white. In the face
of such attention, crime became racialized while the black population
found itself and its culture further criminalized. It came to be seen, in
effect, as a dangerous predator that posed by its presence a direct threat,
not only to white victims, but also to a British way of life represented as
essentially law-abiding. Mugging, was something new, something that
was morally reprehensible, and, as such, un-English and intolerable.
The alleged escalation in mugging was also deployed as a critique of
current social control mechanisms. In this context, conservative
commentators used it to draw attention to what was presented as the
bankruptcy of liberal, welfare-state solutions to crime. This was
demonstrated both by the failure of the system to curtail the crisis of
escalating violence, and by its complicity in creating the conditions of
lawless promiscuity that allowed it to thrive. From this definition of the
mugging problem, advocating hard-line repressive law and order
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Street Crime
solutions followed logically as the only suitable solution to the crisis. It

was specifically within this definitional consensus that the government
of the time began to initiate the steps necessary to defend what the media
had construed as a defenceless society. Police powers were increased;
more resources were targeted towards policing lawless inner-city areas;
and the judiciary played its part by handing down disproportionately
harsh punitive sentences to street robbers.
For Hall et al. it was not rising rates of street robbery that provoked the
social response it received in any causally direct way. On the contrary, the
sensational media attention it received had to be understood in terms of
the political economy of postwar British society and the power relations
that defined it. The concluding sections of the book seek to establish this
connection.
By the 1970s Britain’s postwar boom economy had tilted into
recession, heralding a process of sustained decline. One consequence of
this would be to demonstrate visibly Britain’s diminished status as an
imperial world power. In the face of a burgeoning economic crisis that
would see mass industrial unrest, three-day weeks and eventually the
destruction of vast sections of primary manufacturing industries, the
class consensus that had been established in the postwar period was in
the process of collapsing. The extension of workers’ rights, the formation
of a welfare state and attempts to initiate corporatist solutions to
industrial problems – all of which had underpinned the postwar welfare
settlement – no longer worked to secure ruling-class power and thus
ensure its domination or ‘hegemony’, as Hall et al. (drawing upon the
work of the Italian Marxist Gramsci) defined it. What resulted was what
they termed an ‘organic crisis of the state’. This term defined a situation
characterized by the failure of the ruling class to ensure the reproduction
of the conditions of their rule through imposing intellectual and moral
domination.
It is precisely at this point in time – when hegemony was failing – that
the moral panic around mugging began to surface. The conjunction was
by no means accidental. What it would facilitate would be a way of
resolving the organic crisis of the state both by helping forge a new social
consensus and, by so doing, help reconstruct hegemonic equilibrium in
British society. It would function this way because in its identification of
the black mugger, a convenient folk devil was identified upon which the
collected fury of British society could be mobilized and projected.
Different classes might well be opposed in every other respect, but in the
face of the mugging crime wave a common point of consensus would be
reached. The mugger, in other words, could and would provide a point
of negative identification around which a consensus could be
86
established. A disunited society would become united in their hatred

and condemnation of the mugger, and all classes would accept the law
and order solutions proposed by the state as a just and necessary
‘solution’ to the crisis.
In a world where adult fears about unruly youth already had
currency, and where a legacy of institutionalized racism already existed,
the young black urban male appeared tailor-made for the scapegoating
role he would now be expected to perform. What the moral panic was
able to achieve was a reconstruction of Britain’s economic and political
crisis as essentially a crisis of law and order, seemingly solvable only
through the judicious advocation of law and order solutions. In this
scapegoating process, the black mugger was positioned not only as a folk
devil upon which society’s fury could be projected, but also as a
functional prop that could be deployed to help the state ‘police the crisis’
in ways that prevented the real economic causes from becoming visible.
This it would achieve by, in effect, displacing attention from the
economic base (the real cause of the crisis) and relocating it directly onto
the ideological superstructure, where it was discursively constructed as
a crisis of law and order. In this act of ideological displacement, the
foundations were laid for what would become a new hegemonic
equilibrium that would itself involve the genesis of a new state form.
What it would permit would be the formation of what, following
Poulantzas, Hall et al. would identify as an exceptional ‘authoritarian
state’ and the forward ‘drift’ into what Hall would subsequently
describe as the formation of a ‘law and order society’ (Hall 1980). This,
then, is what the politics of street crime was really about – the
manufacture of consent in class-divided societies by authoritarian
means.
Though Policing the Crisis was written principally as an attempt to
study the relation between the deviant act (mugging) and the social
response it produced, the text does contain, specifically towards its end,
an account of the deviant act itself which it also seeks to explain. Though
this explanation is posed very much as a supplementary narrative which
by no means sits easily with the initial research focus, it is worth
considering because it does express a typical conception of street crime
and the street criminal as conceived within Marxist criminology.
Whereas Marx and Engels (as we have seen) considered the ‘criminal
classes’ within capitalist society as a depoliticized ‘lumpen proletariat’,
this view is not the one adopted by the authors of Policing the Crisis. Far
from being external to the working class, the black urban street robber
came from and belonged to its most hyper-exploited faction. Forced into
a situation of wagelessness and consequently unemployment and
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Street Crime
underemployment, the black population endured systematic expulsion

from productive labour. This pattern of economic marginalization was
also reinforced, Hall et al. argue, by spatial compression into the ghetto
and by the endemic racism the black population confront at every level
in British society.
Given their harsh and brutal location within British society, the
preconditions were established for the emergence of a number of
different survival strategies on the part of this hyper-exploited
population. To meet their material needs, some young men embraced
‘hustling cultures’ or turned towards crime, while others dramatized
their exclusion through embracing subcultures of resistance such as
reggae and Rastafarianism. Though different in form, what unified these
cultural adaptations was a common recognition that the destiny of the
black population in Britain was not to fulfil the role capital had ascribed
to them as a reserve army of labour. A population, that is, to be drawn on
for low-grade productive work in times of economic upturn; or as a
population whose unemployment could be productively deployed to
keep wages low.
The involvement of young black males in street crime, while a
negative adaptation to their situation, is at the same time an act which is
also entirely comprehensible, as it is rooted in the material reality in
which many members of the black population are forced to exist. In other
words, street crime arises not only because of economic want, but because
there is a political refusal on the part of many young blacks to become
deskilled labour consigned to a life of doing ‘white man’s shit work’. The
causal factors at play here are therefore both economic and ideological in
form (Hall et al. 1978). The turn to crime, while comprehensible and
understandable, nevertheless produces the conditions necessary for the
reconstruction of hegemony and the formation of a ‘law and order
society’. For in responding to their plight through street robbery, the
black sub-proletariat implicitly sanctions the state with the justification it
requires for engaging in its punitive turn. By engaging in crime as a
rational response to its predicament, the black population justified its
reconstruction as an internal enemy that would require the coercive
regulation and control meted out to it.
Critique
Having studied how the left has approached the issues posed by street
robbery, what lessons can be learnt? To answer this question I will begin
by reconsidering the reasons why left of centre commentators have often
proved hesitant to study street robbery. This is necessary because, as I
will argue, their silence remains a problem. I will then consider the status
88
of the explanations that critical criminologists have adduced to explain

street robbery and the social response it has provoked. Despite
their hesitation to study street robbery, the left offers, I will suggest, a far
more plausible account of street robbery than the deficit models of the
right.
As we observed above, the left’s hesitation to engage in street robbery
was motivated by what appear to be at first sight a number of seemingly
admirable reasons. If an admirable set of intentions informs this position
there remain, however, a number of serious problems with this
standpoint that also need to be recognized.
The first criticism was made a number of years ago by Young, when he
argued that by not attending to the crimes of the poor the left had
literally conceded the law and order agenda to the right, who had no
trouble engaging in such debates (Young 1997). Working-class people,
after all, do commit crime and their victims are also drawn from the
working-class communities upon whom they prey. Surveys on fear of
crime, moreover, also suggest that street robbery is perceived as a serious
problem by local communities. Indeed, when asked to list which
problem they considered most acute in the area where they lived, the
respondents to a community safety survey conducted in Lambeth in 2002
overwhelmingly selected street crime. Nor can this be considered a
choice made in bad faith or because the population was in some way
ideologically mystified. Given the high prevalence of this offence in
Lambeth, it could be remarked that their choice was by no means an
irrational one.
While commentators like Gilroy and Keith are right to highlight the
criminalizing logic that often accompanies the way in which the black
population has been treated, their argument that studies of black
involvement in crime invariably reproduce the myth of black crime is
itself a myth that left of centre politics would do well to disregard. While
accepting that the coverage of black crime is often informed by a
racialized agenda, it does not follow that all explanations of black
people’s involvement in crime are invariably racist. Nor should
arguments about the potentially racist way in which explanations of
black involvement in crime could be used justify not examining this
issue. Surely at stake here is the explanatory power of the research
initiated, and not least its integrity. Moreover, by not studying issues of
criminal involvement by some members in the black community, I
would suggest that minority ethnic groups are themselves dealt a
disservice by those who claim to represent them. In a world where some
young black men do become involved in street robbery, and in the
context of a state that is all too ready to distribute disproportionate
89
Street Crime
punishment to them, knowing why these young men become involved is

surely of great significance.
While the reluctance of the left to engage fully with the issues raised
by street robbery is indeed a problem, this has not prevented the left
from making an important series of contributions to the study of this
offence. In contrast to the deficit model of criminal involvement
promoted by the right (considered in the previous chapter), those
promoted by the left do offer the basis of a more sophisticated approach
for making sense of street robbery. There are four positive lessons in
particular that any explanation that claims comprehensiveness must
bear in mind.
To begin with, the left is right to draw attention to the relationship
between social class, class disadvantage and involvement in street
robbery. Second, theorists of the left are also correct in suggesting that
street robbery is a form of adaptation to the experience of deprivation in
a class-divided society. Third, in arguing this case they are also correct in
suggesting that to understand street robbery it is important to situate its
analysis within a wider consideration of the political economy of the
capitalist society in which it occurs. Street robbery, in other words,
cannot simply be considered as a product of mal-socialized individuals,
as underclass thinking imagines. On the contrary, its roots lie within the
way society is itself organized. Finally, as Hall et al.’s work demonstrates,
the social response to street robbery is never simply conditioned by the
scale of its seriousness. There is always a politics at play in the attention it
receives that needs to be recognized.
While the focus on disadvantage and its relation to street robbery is
important, it is nevertheless also important to recognize that the relation
between disadvantage and involvement in street robbery is by no means
direct. Many, after all, are disadvantaged but do not engage in street
robbery. To explain why some people and not others become involved in
street robbery requires a theoretical approach that needs to move beyond
stark notions of adaptations such as ‘political refusal’. It not least
requires articulating Mertonian ideas of adaptation with notions of what
Sutherland terms ‘differential association’ in order to make sense of the
complex mediations involved in the movement from an objective
experience of deprivation (absolute or relative) and the decision to
become involved in street robbery.
As we saw in our consideration of the deficit models of the right,
integral to such accounts was a consideration of street robbers (both as
individuals and as members of an underclass) as people fundamentally
lacking what normal people were thought to possess. A similar kind of
critique could also be made in relation to those who, like Hall et al., also
90
appear to consider the street robber as utterly excluded from mainstream

society. For what left-orientated notions of exclusion posed in this
manner often fail to see is precisely how far the street robber is also a
product of the society whose members they attempt to rob. They are not
essentially different even and despite their exclusion. As I will
demonstrate in the chapters that follow, much of what motivates
engagement in street robbery occurs not because street robbers are
excluded from society but, on the contrary, from their successful
internalization of its value system. In particular, the need to have and
possess desirable material goods.
Finally, where the kind of explanation advanced by Hall et al. remains
limited is in its focus on criminal involvement from the perspective of an
analysis that considers the principal relationship to be between the street
robber (and his political refusal) and the capitalist state that does the
excluding. What such a position overlooks is a truth articulated well by
proponents of control theory (Cohen 1979; Clarke 1980), which is to show
that criminal involvement is also always about opportunity and issues of
guardianship. After all, if the social controls directed to ensure the
prevention of criminal behaviour were successful, it follows that street
robbers would not continue to rob given the overwhelming likelihood of
detection and prosecution. The lesson to be taken from this observation
is that while control structures directed by the state to prevent robbery
may indeed and often are repressive, this does not mean they are
necessarily successful. It is consequently important to assess their
deficiencies if we are to understand why street robbery occurs and at
times rises.
Having considered in the previous two chapters the ways in which
both right and left have addressed the issue of street robbery, the next
chapter examines, on the basis of the critique developed in these
chapters, how a more fully social theory of this offence can be con-
structed.
Note
1 For a recent example in this genre, see Bowling, B. and Phillips, C. (2002)
Racism, Crime and Justice. London: Longman.
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Street Crime
Chapter 6
Towards a framework of analysis
In Chapter 3 I considered the empirical data on street robbery in order to

identify, as it were, the ‘facts’ of street robbery: who precisely is doing
what to whom and where. In chapters 4 and 5 I considered how different
theoretical traditions sought to account for these facts. In this chapter my
aim will be to develop a framework for an analysis of contemporary
street robbery that will build upon the critique developed in these
chapters. The three chapters that follow will make an attempt to apply
this framework to understand street crime in its contemporary context.
As we saw in the previous two chapters, there is no single agreed
approach that can be adduced to explain why some people engage in
street robbery. The world is rather characterized by a number of often
mutually incompatible criminological approaches. The question such
diversity poses is which approach do we adopt? To help answer this
there are, I would suggest, three criteria we can apply to adjudicate upon
the various categories of explanation on offer. First, the approach
selected must be able to accommodate and explain all the trends
identified in Chapter 3. Second, it must also be confirmed by reference to
the available evidence. Third, it must recognize the complexity of the
events it is trying to describe and explain. By applying this rule to the
approaches considered in the previous two chapters, it is evident that
many fail either because they are speculations which are not supported
by empirical evidence, or involve conjectures that misinterpret the
available evidence in important ways.
Those that fall foul of these criteria include accounts that explain
robbery by reference to some notion of an inherent deficiency on the part
of offenders, or which attribute its rise to variables such as drug use, or
92
an underclass. Such accounts fail because the evidence does not support
the conjecture advanced to explain the problem. Nor does the available
evidence support a more radical interpretation of the street robber as
someone who has been excluded from society. As we have seen, the
desire of the street criminal for the very goods society itself classifies as
desirable suggests a level of incorporation incommensurate with this
perspective.
Even when the focus of analysis does offer some insight into why
street crime occurs, such accounts are methodologically limited in terms
of the explanations they advance because the focus of enquiry is too
narrow and in its restriction it ignores the complexity of what it is trying
to explain. The problem here is that the complexity of the world is lost in
accounts which seek to advance an explanation premised upon the
search for a single monolithic cause – be this the pathological
implications of a dependency culture, or the hyper-exploitation inherent
in late-modern racialized capitalist societies.
Rather than identify a monolithic cause and assert that this explains
everything, in what follows I will begin with the assumption that street
robbery (like all crime) is a multidimensional problem that requires, as
Young et al. have argued, a multidimensional framework of analysis to
interpret it (Young 1986). The framework should be one in which a
number of relevant factors need to be considered both individually and
in relation to each other if we are to reach an explanation we might want
to consider comprehensive.
In their own attempt to think through what a comprehensive social
explanation of crime would entail, ‘Left Realists’ such as Lea and Young
have identified what they term ‘the square of crime’ as a heuristic to
facilitate the task of analysis (Young 1984). Crime, they assert, is indeed a
multidimensional phenomenon, and to understand it requires ex-
amining four distinct though interrelated elements which constitute
collectively the social relations of crime (see Diagram 6.1 below).
As Young explains:
The form (the square) consists of two dyads, a victim and an

offender, and of actions and reactions: of crime and its control. This
deconstruction gives us four definitional elements of crime: a
victim, an offender, formal control and informal control. Realism
then points to a square of crime involving the interaction between
police and other agencies of social control, the public, the offender
and the victim. Crime rates are generated not only by the interplay
of these four factors but as social relationships between each point in
the square. It is the relationship between the police and the public
93
Street Crime
Police Offender
The public Victim
Diagram 6.1 The Square of Crime
that determines the efficacy of policing, the relationship between

the victim and the offender which determines the impact of crime,
and the relationship between the state and the offender which is a
major factor in recidivism; it is the burgled public which creates the
informal economy which sustains burglary, or the police who
create, through illegalities, a moral climate which spurs
delinquents into crime. (Young 1997)
Given that heuristics are supposed to facilitate the task of analysis by

rendering complex reality thinkable, it could be argued that the square of
crime is by no means a particularly self-evident or an easy heuristic to
grasp – even if I remain sympathetic to the motives that inform it. The
victim and offender dyad is clearly relevant, as is the reference to social
control mechanisms. I fail, though, to understand why the state and
society constitute an opposed dyad, not least because the term society is
itself a reification that defies easy definition. What precisely, for example,
does it mean to suggest that society demands or wants anything? And
why impose a label called the state and multiagency partnerships? Surely
there is just social control both in its formal (statutory) form, along with
an array of non-statutory to informal mechanisms, and these would
certainly go further than ‘multiagency partnerships’. One could think
here, for example, of parenting patterns and, not least, environmental
design as both involving an element of social control that would have a
94
bearing on crime patterns in significant ways. Where, though, do they fit

on the square? If the answer is somewhere between the state and society,
then this does not suggest a particularly coherent solution.
The routine activities approach to crime developed by Cohen and
Felson (1979) offers a different and altogether more comprehensible
approach to examining crime, even if, as we shall see, there is a need to
develop the model in ways that move beyond the (conservative and
constraining) limits of routine activity theory itself. Drawing upon
ecological traditions within criminology, and applied specifically to
account for direct-contact predatory victimizations, Cohen and Felson
argue that for a criminal event to occur there must be a convergence
within time and space of three key variables – a motivated offender, a
suitable target, and an absence of capable guardians. Collectively, these
factors represent the key elements that must be present for any criminal
act to occur:
(a) There must be a motivated offender available to commit an offence for

a crime to occur at all.
(b) A motivated offender, though, does not engage in crime unless there
are suitable targets available.
(c) Crime does not occur in an institutional vacuum but always in the
context of a world of capable guardians who have chosen to define the
act as a crime and who have initiated attempts to control and prevent
it.
If one or more of these key ingredients are missing then, Cohen and
Felson contend, a crime will not occur. People, for example, may well
aspire to commit criminal acts but unless they are motivated in the sense
of possessing an inclination to offend and the ability to carry through
their inclination, they will not perpetrate an offence. Nor will a crime
event occur if targets are neither available nor suitable to victimize. If
people, for example, do not carry desirable and valuable goods, they are
unlikely to be robbed in the way those that do are. For the same reason, if
suitable targets are not present in vicinities that motivated offenders
inhabit, then again a crime is unlikely to occur. Finally, if capable
guardians impose regimes of control that make a crime either highly
likely to be detected or which ensure that suitable targets are heavily
defended, motivated offenders are unlikely to be deterred from crime.
Assuming that criminal motivation is a given attribute of all offenders,
what routine activity theorists seek to study is ‘the manner in which the
spatio-temporal organisation of human activities creates opportunities
that help people translate criminal inclination into action’ (Cohen 1980).
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Street Crime
In effect, their hypothesis suggests that, to understand and explain crime

it is necessary to examine the factors that act both to facilitate or hinder
the convergence in time and space of the three components they identify
as integral to the criminal act. What they choose to study in order to
account for these is what they identify as routine activity. This they
define as the daily activities or lifestyle in which people routinely engage
and which on occasion can act to place them either at a greater or lesser
risk of crime. Caywood summarizes the position aptly:
As Cohen and Felson (1979) note, many daily activities separate

people from those that they trust and the property they value.
Routine activities also bring together at various times of the day or
night people of different backgrounds, sometimes in the presence
of facilities, tools or weapons that influence the commission or
avoidance of illegal acts. Hence the timing of when one engages in
work, schooling, leisure, and other routine activities may be of
central importance in explaining crime rates. (Caywood 1998)
While the identification of routine activities as key variables in

explaining why crime events occur remains important, it is not my
intention here to look in more detail at routine activity theory per se or
suggest that it provides or can provide a compelling account of street
crime. Leaving aside a number of key weaknesses inherent in this
approach (which are beyond the scope of this enquiry), what I want to
focus upon is the strength of the framework that Cohen and Felson have
developed to explain crime. This, I would suggest, is both plausible and
constitutes a more convincing heuristic approach to street crime than the
Left Realist idea of a square of crime. It works, I suggest, precisely
because it is both easy to grasp (as all good heuristics must be); because it
accounts for the essential three variables at play in any crime event; and,
not least, because it provides the framework for a comprehensive social
theory of crime. As with the idea of a square of crime, it suggests that any
explanation must be able to account for all of the key variables –
motivated offenders, targets and the absence of suitable guardians – and
explain the interrelation between them. It avoids, however, extraneous
variables such as ‘society’, which are not particularly helpful, as we have
noted.
As opposed to a heuristic conceptualized as two dyads coming
together in the form of a square composed of four elements, I will begin
with the model derived from routine activity theory premised upon a
triangular relation between three variables. Collectively these three
variables can be reproduced in the form of a triangle such as the one
96
represented in Diagram 6.2 below. If we use this model as the basis for
explaining street crime, then the aim of a comprehensive explanation
must be to account for each of these three elements and their
interrelation with the other two.
Premised as it is upon a rational choice theory of human nature,
routine activity theory (like control theories more generally) simply
accepts that humans will, in the right circumstances, be motivated to
perpetrate crime, but crucially without questioning precisely why a
particular group of people as opposed to others actually become
offenders. Though this a priori assumption about human nature does, as
routine activity theories demonstrate, allow for an interesting and in
some ways penetrating analysis of crime events, it is nevertheless too
delimiting. If our aim is to explain street robbery in a comprehensive and
fully social way, then clearly the forces that act to produce motivated
offenders also need to be accommodated. To do this means shifting
decisively beyond the substantive limits of routine activity theory, which
simply takes motivation as given.
But this begs the question: How do we think through these causal
forces and their interrelation? For the purpose of the analysis that will be
subsequently developed, the question of offending will be addressed
through studying the production of motivated offenders via an analysis
of the array of social forces that produce them. To establish this, we need
to ask why street robbers want what they seek to acquire through street
robbery so much that they will break rules and engage in highly risky
behaviour to get it. This invites an explanation that requires us to
examine three issues.
Social
Offender Victims
Diagram 6.2 The Aetiology of Crime
97
Street Crime
(i) First, it is necessary to examine the nature of the aspirations and

needs of street robbers as they define them. What is it they want and
why do they want these particular things so urgently that they will
commit crime in order to acquire them? This issue, it could be
emphasized, is all about socialization. It is about the social
constitution of the desires that people hold about their world and
their place in it. To put this another way, if people did not possess the
aspiration to accumulate the kind of thing that street robbery
provides, it is unlikely that street crime would in fact occur.
(ii) Second, any attempt to explain the production of motivated
offenders must then explain why these socially induced aspirations
and needs cannot be satisfied through legitimate, i.e. law-abiding,
means. Society after all sanctions an array of socially acceptable
routes by which social aspirations can be met, and the taboos and
sanctions that it imposes to ensure that people do not deviate from
these are considerable.
(iii) Finally, it is necessary to examine why only some groups (as opposed
to all) turn to street robbery in order to gratify their (frustrated)
needs and desires. What factors act to ensure that the decision to
perpetrate crime is in fact made? This in turn requires an
investigation of the incentives both positive and negative that
provoke the decision on the part of an individual or groups to
perpetrate crime.
To address these issues I will deploy an approach that derives from two
theoretical traditions in criminology: the strain theory of Robert Merton,
and a theory of differential association derived from Edmund Sutherland.
Merton’s approach suggests that crime is an adaptive response to a
situation where socially induced desires cannot be satisfied because the
social structure of society does not universalize the means that allow this
to occur (Merton 1953). In the modern state most people, whatever their
social background, are socialized into a way of life that holds out certain
things as desirable. In western societies, material success is one
important aspect of this dominant system of values. The problem,
though, is that only some groups are placed by virtue of privilege of birth
in a situation that provides them with the life chances and thus the
means to gratify these desires through socially legitimate avenues, i.e.
getting a good job and progressing up the occupational hierarchy. Those
that lack these life chances (the lower working class or minority ethnic
groups) consequently experience the contradiction between what they
have been taught to desire and the limited options available by which
they can be gratified as a form of strain. This anomic situation may then
98
provoke a response that may reveal itself in what Merton termed a

‘deviant adaptation’. In effect, they accept the social values they have
been socialized to accept, but have innovated on the social means by
which these may be gratified.
It is my contention that this approach still provides the most appropriate
way of addressing points (i) and (ii), precisely because it invites an
examination of the sources of desire while also helping to explain precisely
why these are not pursued through socially acceptable means.
Though this structural explanation provides the theoretical purchase
to understand why a particular group may turn to crime as an adaptive
strategy, it does not explain why only particular groups within a
population that experience the same strains adapt by turning to crime
while others do not. For this we need a method that facilitates an
understanding of process. It is for this reason that an account of
differential association is also required in any attempt to explain the
production of motivated offenders.
For Sutherland (Sutherland 1979) people become criminal only if
exposed to an excess of definitions favourable to the violation of the law
over definitions unfavourable to the violation of the law. This process he
defined as one of differential association. The capacity to commit crime is
dependent upon a process of learning, which implies interactions with
other people, in a process of communication. In relation to the study of
street robbery, this approach is very important because it facilitates an
analysis of the precise array of factors that provoke someone to embrace
such crime as an adaptive strategy. What is positive about this approach
is that it rests upon a conception of crime as a product of human praxis
and a consequence of processes that evolve over time and in space. In
recognizing these features, this framework invites a criminology which,
while aware of structural determinants, avoids reification and by
association an over-socialized view of the individual. It accomplishes
this by locating an understanding of deviance in relation to an array of
micro social processes at play between an individual and the cultural
environment in which he or she is located.
If we now consider the kind of micro processes at play, a number of
factors need to be considered. These include the study of the routine
activities of offender populations; the relation between would-be
offenders and those who already offend; the seductions and pleasures
attached to participating in street crime; and a consideration of how
deviant identities are consequently stabilized and reproduced. As we
will have cause to note, the analysis of these areas also invites
consideration of other research traditions, from labelling theory to
phenomenology to subcultural theory.
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Street Crime
In support of what might be viewed as an exercise in untoward

eclecticism, this approach can be justified on the following grounds.
First, a complex problem requires a complex analysis. Second, while
many theories of crime are often presented as mutually antithetical to
one another, this conflictual reading of theory ignores an important
truth: though each theory will fail if we imagine that it can provide a
comprehensive explanation of crime alone, each does touch upon and
explain an important part of crime and criminal behaviour. The lesson I
derive from this is that any comprehensive explanation of crime must
draw upon the insights of many theories, rather than find truth in the
application of one theory alone. What unifies them in the context in
which I will subsequently deploy these approaches is that each
contributes to the function of helping to establish the incentive
structures, or as Glaster aptly describes it, the ‘tipping points’ that ‘shift
the predominant stakes of individuals from conformity to non-
conformity’ (Glaster, quoted in Braithwaite 1993).
For any crime to occur there must be present not only a motivated
offender but, as Cohen and Felson observe, a suitable target. This term
embraces people and the goods they carry, both of which can be the
objects of a criminal offence. A fully social theory of street crime must
explain precisely why certain groups come to be selected as suitable
targets, as well as accounting for why certain populations become
motivated offenders.
In their own attempt to think through the dynamics of target
suitability, Felson and Cohen argue that there are four issues that require
analysis (Cohen 1979). First, there are issues that pertain to the target’s
potential value. This could either be a target’s material or symbolic value,
each of which will affect its desirability for motivated offenders. Second,
there are factors that bear on the target’s visibility. This pertains to the
potential risk of its discovery by motivated offenders. Targets that are
invisible in the sense of well hidden will be less likely to be apprehended
than those that are not. The third factor pertains to the target’s
accessibility. Is the target in a place or space that enables a criminal
violation while also permitting the possibility of an escape? The final
variable pertains to the target’s inertia. This refers to the array of factors
that make it difficult to overcome for the purpose of a criminal violation.
In this sense, a product that is light, indistinguishable and easily
transported will be less inert than goods that are heavy, branded and
difficult to transport away and sell on.
To study street crime comprehensively it will be necessary to consider
all of these factors in relation to the population of victims. We will need
to explain why some groups are over-represented in the victim
100
population, and what it is about such groups or the goods they carry that
marks them out as suitable and assessable targets.
The third variable in Cohen and Felson’s model pertains – as we have
seen – to what they term the absence of suitable guardians. Evidently
crime is perpetrated in the context of a world that has (a) defined it as
such; and (b) initiated an array of efforts to prevent it. While keeping
faith with the idea that guardianship is something we need to consider,
my intention in what follows will be to substitute the term guardianship
with the more nebulous but inclusive term ‘social control’. In
justification for this I would suggest that one problem that follows
through from referring only to the absence of suitable guardians is that
guardianship itself refers only to a limited domain of the control efforts
that can have a bearing on crime. It typically signifies the presence or
absence of defences, and while this is certainly a relevant consideration,
it is not a sufficient one. It fails because it does not embrace the totality of
controls that society imposes to prevent crime and deviance. The term, I
would accept, does include ideas of situational defence and law-
enforcement activity. It does not, however, include control mechanisms
such as deterrent punishments, or indeed an array of proactive
interventions that we might also want to consider important for
preventing particular crimes. Where, for example, do social crime
prevention methods such as educational programmes or rehabilitation
programmes figure?
My answer to this would be to suggest that such control systems do
not fall within the remit of capable guardianship. These limitations
justify, therefore, the semantic shift from an analysis of guardianship to
an analysis of social control, or more specifically deficits in social control,
because that is what we need to study in order to account for street
robbery. Again and self-evidently, if the array of social control systems
society initiated to prevent street crime was successful, there would be
no crime as it would be impossible to perpetrate.
To study the deficits in social control raises the issue of defining what
social control is for the purpose of analysis. By way of a provisional
definition I will define social control as the array of interventions that is
imposed to prevent an offence from being committed. These include
interventions that can be viewed as statutory and formal, as well as those
which are non-statutory and informal. The array of interventions that fall
within the remit of this definition would include responses that are
reactive (that respond to an offence after it has been committed) or
proactive (which are designed to prevent the likelihood of an offence
being committed).
While recognizing that there are different ways to examine social
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Street Crime
control, for the purpose of this investigation I will approach its study by
investigating what I will suggest constitute the four dominant
approaches that we, as a western society, currently impose to prevent
crime. In this respect and in this order I will examine:
• Law enforcement.
• Deterrence and punishment.
• Situational crime prevention.
• Social crime prevention.
• The integration and coordination of social control effort.
These general approaches encompass both statutory and non-statutory

bodies involved either directly or indirectly in crime prevention, as well
as proactive and reactive responses they may be responsible for
initiating.
The term law enforcement includes the activities of those organizations
which, like the police, have a direct role to play in preventing crime and
detecting and apprehending offenders. In relation to the study of street
crime, the analysis of law-enforcement activity will focus on the
strategies the police deploy to prevent crime, as well as the array of
practices they initiate on the basis of the strategies they follow. How, we
will need to ask, do law-enforcement agencies collate the intelligence
they need in order to plan their interventions? What precise tactics do
they initiate to prevent robberies from occurring and what do they do to
apprehend and prosecute offenders? In studying these factors we need
to be aware why, either singly or in relation to each other, such initiatives
fail to prevent street crime, and the reasons that may help to explain this
need to be identified.
While the police are typically considered the single most important
agency in the fight against crime, they are by no means the only
organization whose role it is to dissuade potential criminals from
engaging in criminal acts. The criminal justice system also includes an
array of other organizations that play an important role in attempting to
prevent crime. Important among these are those which, like the court
system, exist to process and prosecute offenders, along with those parts
of the penal system which exist to punish and rehabilitate them. In a
society which views the successful prosecution, punishment and
rehabilitation of offenders as a key element in its own war against crime,
examining the impact of this institutional apparatus in relation to street
crime remains very important. How successful is the prosecution
service? Does prison really work to deter street criminals? And just how
rehabilitated are those subjected to its administrations?
102
The term ‘situational crime prevention’ refers to what remains one of

the fastest growing and, for the government and its champions, most
successful crime-reduction programmes in the world. Championed by
the British Home Office in the 1980s, situational crime prevention rejects
the traditional focus of positivistic criminology on the study of criminal
dispositions in favour of a rational choice approach that understands the
criminal as a rational agent (Clarke 1980). That is, as someone who
commits crime on the basis of a rational assumption that the benefits of
doing so outweigh the costs. Arguing that the search for ambitious social
solutions to crime is at best misguided and at worst a failed paradigm,
situational crime prevention approaches issues around crime prevention
in a way that seeks an effective and evidence-based approach to
establishing what works and what can be done. This approach involves a
process that combines the study of the opportunities that permit
different crimes to occur with an analysis of the interventions that can be
made to reduce them. Typically, situational crime prevention operates on
the principle of seeking to manipulate the environment in ways that act
to reduce the opportunity for crime and by so doing raise the social costs
that would accrue from engaging in it. Or at least raising the social costs
to a level that the criminal would perceive as outweighing any benefits.
Designing-out principles may be applied from redesigning material
goods in order to reduce the possibility of their becoming targets for
motivated offenders, through to the modification and design of entire
areas. An example of the former would include the kind of design feature
now regularly seen on contemporary cars such as immobilizers and
alarms, both of which have had a significant effect in reducing the
number of cars stolen. Examples of the latter can include the way
modern estates or shopping malls are now regularly designed. This can
include ensuring that the building is constructed in ways that facilitate
natural surveillance, and ensuring that adequate defences, such as
secure door and window locks and the installation of sophisticated
surveillance systems such as CCTV, are in-built to prevent crime.
Like other crime-prevention approaches, social crime prevention
includes interventions that are designed to reduce crime and provoke
law-abiding behaviour. What distinguishes the interventions that fall
within a social crime-prevention remit from the other approaches
considered above is that they aspire to address the problem of crime
through the promulgation of measures that are non-repressive and
proactive. They are often also unified by their desire to tackle the deep
causes that give rise to crime. In this sense, and unlike situational crime
prevention, these kind of interventions aspire to address the motives and
dispositions of offenders through seeking to modify them in ways that
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Street Crime
prevent engagement in criminal behaviour. Social approaches to crime

prevention, however, can also include more ambitious social policies
designed to reduce crime through re-engineering the socio-economic
situation of the populations from which offenders are drawn.
Interventions that fall within the remit of social crime prevention can
be include:
• Attempts to warn and inform young people about the dangers and
moral consequences of rule breaking.
• The provision of activities designed to allow potential criminals to
sublimate their urges in more socially benevolent ways.
• Modifying the life chances of different populations in ways that
reduce the social factors that are held to constitute the structural basis
of crime.
Social attempts to prevent crime can take more ostensibly criminological

forms in so far as they are characterized by a conscious attempt to reduce
criminal behaviour through a particular policy. They may also be non-
criminological in design but nevertheless play a key crime-reduction
role. Attempts to provide information to young people about crime, for
example, would be an instance of the former, while using funding to
regenerate high-crime run-down inner-city areas might be considered an
example of the latter.
The final control strategy I will include in the study of social control
responses I will generically term the coordination and integration of
community safety effort. This I consider a social control strategy because
at the present it is viewed as such by the government, which has devoted
considerable effort and resources to develop it (Home Office 2003). In a
world where crime is now supposed to be confronted by ‘joined-up
thinking’ based on ‘evidence-based policy’, and where promulgating
holistic solutions is the desired objective, it is clearly important to see
how much of this was around as street robbery soared. Just how far were
these principles consistent with practice on the ground?
In considering the integration of community safety effort, it will be
necessary to examine whether community safety and crime reduction
effort in relation to street crime are appropriately located within each of
the categories of crime prevention discussed above. Are resources
adequately allocated or are we as a society locating effort dis-
proportionately in some areas of intervention at the expense of others?
Another issue relevant to matters of integration is whether effort is
located in ways that demonstrate an adequate balance between reactive
104
approaches to the problem and more proactive ones. Are resources being
channelled in ways that typically address the problem only by looking at
the symptoms of its expression (a street crime epidemic), or are adequate
steps also being taken to resource the interventions that might have a
bearing on addressing its causes?
In today’s mixed economy of crime prevention and community safety
effort, the issue of how the various players within any locality are
brought together in ways that ensure a coordinated effort also needs to
be considered. How, we will need to enquire, are the diverse partners in
crime control (such as the police, youth workers and probation officers)
brought together in ways that ensure each organisation performs its
function to promote a holistic solution to the problem? In considering
this issue, it will be necessary to examine the kinds of strategic thinking
that different crime-prevention partnerships engage in. Are the right
players making the right decisions, and do all the players that need to be
involved actually involve themselves in community safety effort?
Finally, in a world governed by a managerialist culture characterized by
the production of strategic plans, and where progress is charted in
relation to specified benchmarks, how relevant has this culture been to
ensuring that street crime has been confronted effectively?
By examining the forces that produce motivated offenders,
suitable victims and deficits in social control, it is possible, I would
suggest, to provide a comprehensive explanation of street crime and
its contemporary rise in British society. This will also prove to be one
that can explain the observable trends in street crime identified in
Chapter 3.
To apply this framework of analysis, my aim will be to study each of
the three strands discussed above in turn, drawing attention to the
relationships between each of the constituent variables. I will begin in
Chapter 7 by examining the forces that act to produce suitable victims.
This will then be followed by chapters dealing respectively with the
production of motivated offenders, and the consideration of deficits in
the social control response.
Street crime, as we saw in the previous chapter, occurs at different
rates in different times and places. While the task of explaining it must
draw attention to factors that are common to all street crime, analysis
must also be susceptible to a range of variant factors that explain why
street crime rates not only change over time but in relation to place. In
order to accomplish this task, my aim will be to draw where appropriate
upon recent and relevant research conducted by others. I will also,
however, draw directly upon the research I conducted in Lambeth
between 2001 and 2002 on rising street robbery in the area.
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Street Crime
As a research laboratory for studying street robbery, Lambeth is quite

unique. For those unfamiliar with the area, it is a multiply deprived
borough located in southeast London, which in recent years has
achieved the unenviable reputation of having the highest rate of street
crime in London, and one of the highest rates in the UK. The research
was undertaken in 2002, at the height of what would become an intense
moral panic around the issue. The research was funded by Government
Office for London and involved a number of research methods. These
included conducting interviews with young offenders, community
safety practitioners, police officers and the heads of local statutory
services. The research also involved an analysis of available police data
on street crime, and drew upon a range of socio-economic and
demographic data produced by the local authority. By using Lambeth as
a case study, I believe it is possible to examine the problem of street
robbery in contemporary society. In the chapters that follow, the results
of this research will be referred to on a regular basis.
106
Suitable and available victims
Part 3
Street Robbery and
Contemporary Society
107
Street Crime
108
Chapter 7
Just as bakers need grain and construction workers bricks, so street

robbers require victims to rob. To understand the phenomenon of street
crime, it is therefore important to study a range of interrelated factors
connected with becoming both a suitable and available victim for a street
robbery. First, we need to establish why more people appear in recent
years more suitable as victims than was previously the case. Second, we
need to understand the factors that leave more people vulnerable to
attack than previously. Finally, we need to examine these factors in
relation to the availability of victims to motivated offenders.
To begin with, I will argue that more people are more likely to possess
the objects coveted by street robbers than was hitherto the case, a factor
which has dramatically increased the population of potential targets for
street robbery. I will then argue that not only are there more potential
targets, but that the desirable goods possessed by potential victims are
relatively assessable, often visible and are characterized by low rates of
inertia, all of which raise the likelihood of victimization. This, I will
argue, has occurred at the same time as the possibility of access to victims
of other categories of crime has actually decreased. Finally, I will suggest
that increasing target suitability is also accompanied by a net increase in
patterns of victim accessibility to motivated offenders.
Young people, who are the fastest-growing population of street
robbery victims, are not only more likely to carry the goods coveted by
street robbers, but they are also typically located in spatially compressed
areas that leave them inherently vulnerable to victimization by
motivated offenders they find difficulty in avoiding. New patterns in
economic development, however, also create the preconditions
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Street Crime
necessary for rising patterns of victimization by attracting suitable

victims into areas where motivated offenders are likely to dwell. This
factor, I will suggest, can explain why areas such as Lambeth have
disproportionately higher levels of street robbery than other areas. I will
consider each of these arguments in turn.
For a population to find themselves a target they must possess at the
least an array of desirable goods that distinguish them as suitable
victims. They must possess items that are not only coveted and con-
sequently desired by motivated offenders, but coveted and desired to the
extent that offenders will break the law and risk serious punishment in
order to obtain them.
As we saw in Chapter 3, the kind of goods desired by street robbers
include cash, jewellery and, increasingly, mobile phones. Indeed, as
Home Office figures attest, mobile phone theft remains one of the
striking features of the recent surge in street robbery more generally.
Recorded mobile phone thefts, these figures show, have at least doubled
between 1998 and 2001, while the growth in phone robberies over the last
three years that involve only a phone, as opposed to a phone and other
goods, have also increased dramatically (Harrington 2001). In 2001,
330,000 offences involving mobile phones were recorded by the police,
constituting 6 per cent of all recorded crime. Indeed, if mobile phone
theft perpetrated specifically by young people were taken out of the
figures for street robbery, then the surge in street crime in recent years
would not have occasioned the surprise it subsequently generated.
While affluent populations have always carried goods such as money,
jewellery and credit cards, the development of mobile phone technology
and its associated market penetration have created a situation where
such goods are also routinely and regularly carried by large numbers of
the population. Not only, therefore, is it the case that the wider
population carries the very things that street robbers covet, but it is also
the case that more people than ever before are now carrying these
objects.
As the statistics testify, the growth in mobile phone possession in the
last ten years has been phenomenal. As Table 7.1, taken from a Mori
Tracker Survey, indicates, whereas in January 2000 46 per cent of adults
living in the UK possessed a mobile phone, by February 2002 that figure
had risen to 73 per cent, a rise of more than 50 per cent in a period of only
25 months (Oftel 2003). Figures produced by Mori also indicate that
growth is greatest among the population most likely to figure as a victim
of street robbery, i.e. the 15–35 age group. Within this age category, over
80 per cent of the population is an owner or possessor of a mobile phone
(Oftel 2002). Mobile phone use by younger people has also been the
110
fastest-growing sector of the market. As we saw earlier, this population

also figures as the largest and fastest-growing population for street
robberies in general and mobile phone thefts in particular. Cumulatively,
the consequences of such growth have been to ensure that the potential
number of victims has increased significantly. This helps to answer the
question, ‘Why is street crime rising more generally across the UK?’ The
answer to this is that more people are now carrying the disposable goods
street criminals have been taught to covet and desire.
The suitability of these consumer goods as objects of desire on the part
of street robbers has increased not only because these goods possess a
symbolic and material value to motivated offenders, but because they
are also very vulnerable to attack. They are certainly more vulnerable to
attack than acquiring desirable goods through perpetrating other kinds
of acquisitive crime such as burglary.
In a street robbery event, the victim is typically confronted with
overwhelming force. This is used specifically to appropriate goods that
are typically small and which are relatively easily obtained from the
victim, either through a snatch, through violence or by the threat of
violence. Though, as we will see in more detail in the next chapter, the act
of street robbery does take some courage to perpetrate and some skill to
perpetrate well, it is an event that is relatively easy to learn, particularly
if the teachers are able and the potential offender is fit and fleet of foot.
Table 7.1: Mobile growth – % UK adults who have/use a mobile phone

Source: Oftel 2002.
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Street Crime
As a street robbery typically takes a very small amount of time to

perpetrate and remains relatively invisible to other users of public space,
despite its public nature, it is unlikely to set in motion an event that will
easily attract wider attention and intervention. Even if it is witnessed, as
in the case of a snatch, it might well be too late to intervene because the
perpetrator has already made good his escape. If a blitz-style assault is
used, what psychologists term ‘the bystander effect’ will often take over.
This refers to a general unwillingness to intervene when faced with
problematic situations that do not involve the person concerned. Given
that a witness is often likely to be physically weaker than an assailant, or
is confronted by a number of assailants, standing by could well be read
as an exercise in pragmatic self-preservation. It does not necessarily
mean indifference to the plight of a victim. Given that victims of street
crime are also unlikely to carry weapons themselves, and are chosen
precisely because of their vulnerability anyway, this also makes them
eminently suitable as potential targets. Street robbery, then, remains a
popular crime not only because people carry what street robbers desire,
but also because these goods can be fairly easily removed from victims,
who anyway are selected because they are vulnerable.
The attractiveness of the goods desired by street robbers is contingent
not only on its direct monetary or symbolic value, but also on whether or
not such goods can be distributed with relative ease to illegal grey
markets where they are exchanged for hard currency or reused. Money,
of course, is the most useful of the goods appropriated through street
robbery, as it can be used directly by the robbers involved. This is why
many robbers prefer money. Other goods acquired through street
robbery require more effort to valorize, as they must be disposed of
through more complex channels. That noted, it is also evident that there
is a ready market for goods such as jewellery, cameras and laptop com-
puters, as the street robbers I interviewed confirmed. At its most
disorganized and informal, the illegal market into which stolen goods
could be distributed includes friends and acquaintances. At its most
organized it could involve well-organized criminal fraternities. These
networks operate both by providing motivated offenders with specific
requests for particular items (this style of phone with this specification),
while also supplying the robber with access to those who would
undertake to sell the stolen goods on.
Mobile phones clearly play a prominent role in this illegal economy,
not only because there are lots of people who would be prepared to steal
them, but also because many others would be prepared to purchase
stolen ones. They could also, at least until recently, be manipulated in
ways that allowed them to be reused once stolen, not least by having
112
their sim cards replaced. The failure of mobile phone producers to

immobilize stolen phones, and the subsequent failure of the government
to compel the producers to do so, also enhanced the relative value of
mobile phones as objects of choice on the black economy, a point to
which I will return. Cumulatively, the irresponsibility attached to this
failure to act has helped to fan the flames of the subsequent crime
harvest. As young men testified, in a demand-led economy there was a
ready market for the goods that street crime delivered.
The likelihood of becoming a victim, as we saw above, is contingent
upon factors that relate not only to the goods that victims carry, but also
to factors specific and peculiar to the targeted individual. As young men
involved in street robbery explained, there are factors specific to victims
they would take cognisance of prior to planning an attack. First, they
would select a place where they thought suitable victims would
congregate. Second, they would plan potential escape routes. Third, they
would, where possible, ensure that those they did target were relatively
vulnerable. For this reason women were often selected. Men would be as
well, but when this occurred it often involved a number of perpetrators.
In the case of young people, the pattern of victimization was always
characterized by a noticeable power relation. The strong attack the weak,
the older the younger, many against one, and so on. The decision to
target a specific individual was also determined by the things they
would do. Talking on a mobile phone ensured that a potential victim
would be distracted and therefore unaware they were being targeted.
Such behaviour also signified to the street robber that this was a person
worth targeting, while the obvious visibility of the object made it easy to
appropriate, specifically in the context of a snatch.
Perpetrators also demonstrated a sharp awareness of the routine
activities of victims. They would know, for example, when specific indi-
viduals would congregate in areas amenable to robbery. The more
professional among them would also know the time and days when they
would have been paid. The kinds of streetwise knowledge perpetrators
were able to demonstrate also extended to an understanding of routine
behaviours victims might engage in at specific places. They would know
that businessmen often stop outside tube stations to check for messages
on their mobile phones. Street crime, it could be observed, is an act by no
means perpetrated by mindless or stupid people. Like many things in
life, it requires considerable skill to do well.
Law-enforcement activity was also something that street robbers
would consider in selecting areas to target. This would go hand in hand
with an understanding of the locations of CCTV emplacements and areas
that should be avoided. This streetwise knowledge is best demonstrated
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Street Crime
by the effect of law-enforcement activity upon street crime in a given

area. As the police continually report, efforts to ‘crack down’ on a
particular hot spot invariably displace the problem elsewhere. In the face
of the safer streets campaign launched by the Metropolitan Police against
street robbery in 2002, one of the young men claimed that ‘no one robs in
Brixton anymore’ because ‘there are too many police vans driving up
and down’, and went on to describe how he and his friends would target
other less visibly defended areas, particularly those where ‘large
numbers of people gather and which are dark’. Gains made in one place
by community safety effort were simply offset by increases in other areas
as the street robbers moved on. In a street culture where ‘getting one
over’ on the ‘feds’ and avoiding the ‘bully-vans’ are established rules in
the game of street crime, knowing how to avoid law enforcement was a
skill young men came to acquire early in their criminal careers.
Victim selection, on the other hand, was heightened by the ignorance
of victims vis-à-vis their potential vulnerability. Walking around areas
such as Brixton carrying handbags that could easily be snatched (in ways
that wearing a small rucksack cannot), or wearing a suit and standing
outside a tube station talking on an expensive mobile phone, self-
evidently enhance potential victim status. These, after all, are precisely
the signs street robbers look out for. In other words, victims can present
themselves in ways that raise the possibility of their victimization.
Victim availability, however, is also shaped by the behaviours that
victims routinely engage in, for their routine behaviour also creates the
conditions that act to bring them into contact with motivated offenders.
To understand rising street robbery, we need to look at these routine
behaviours in the ways suggested by routine activity theory and account
for the factors that explain them. As we do this, we also need to be aware
of changing patterns of routine behaviour over time, because in some
cases this can also help to explain growing patterns of street crime in
high-crime areas.
Rather than address these issues by examining routine behaviour in
relation to the victim population in general, we need to divide the victim
population into two distinct groups for the purpose of analysis. We need
to do this because the victimization of the young and older age groups is
rather different. In what follows, therefore, I will consider the routine
behaviour of young people then the population of adult victims.
Street crime, by its name and by its nature, is an offence perpetrated in

the context of public space. As we saw in Chapter 3, this could mean
playgrounds, streets, pathways and parks (Smith 2003). To understand
why young people are so disproportionately over-represented as victims
114
of street robbery, we need to study the factors that bring them onto the
street where they can become victims. We also need to study this in
relation to the factors that have led to street crime being recorded as one
of the principal means by which young people now regularly victimize
each other. This is not an unimportant or trivial factor, for this can also
help to explain the dramatic surge in street crime we have witnessed in
recent years.
Young people in general, and young men in particular, typically
spend their day-to-day leisure lives in the context of the street. The street
provides young people not only with a place to meet and socialize, but
also with an opportunity to plan and execute different activities. It is in
the street, for example, that they commune as friends; it is on the streets
that they make their way to and from school; and it is in the context of
street life that they engage in or find themselves the victims of street
crime.
While adults often find the presence of young people gathering
together on the streets threatening, it could also be pointed out that street
life is by its nature exciting. It always has been. This is where thrills are to
be found and where the identity of young people is also forged. There
are, however, a range of other factors that act independently of the
enjoyment factor to propel young people onto the street and into the
vicinity of those who would perpetrate street robbery.
In run-down inner-city areas the presence of young people on the
street is also conditioned by other factors that pertain to the socio-
economics of the area. The first factor that may be identified pertains to
the paucity of services and facilities available to young people. In the
case of Lambeth, for example, the services available to young people
have been decimated in recent decades by regular and sustained cuts to
youth services. While youth services can and are offered through the
mechanism of the free market, much of what is on offer in Lambeth is
often too expensive for young people on poor estates to use. In my
investigation into the roots of street crime in Lambeth I discovered that
some areas of the borough were devoid of youth services altogether.
These factors, acting in conjunction with poor and often overcrowded
housing, help to propel young people onto the street because in effect
there is no alternative available to them. Being spatially compressed not
only in high-density estates, but also in other high-density environments
in which the adult world chooses to corral them, clearly raises the
probability of victimization. Such routine activity invariably raises the
likelihood of becoming a victim of street crime, precisely because these
activities place young people in a risk environment where dangers of
many kinds await them.
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Street Crime
Street life, while exciting, can also be dangerous. Unsurprisingly, it is

in the context of street life that young people can find themselves
victimized in many ways. This can include being bullied by an
individual or gang, or being harassed on the way to or from school.
While fights can be viewed as ‘fun’ by young people, they can also be
dangerous, particularly when weapons are used. Fear of being
victimized can also lead to adaptive behaviours such as self-imposed
curfews or avoiding specific places at particular times. In high-density
areas such as local council estates, where young people live in a situation
characterized by a high degree of spatial compression, avoiding such
conflict is difficult. Sheer availability entails a high possibility of
victimization, and increasingly the form in which victimization is
expressed is what is regarded as street robbery.
The motives that justify victimization may appear from the outside
relatively trivial. It could be because you are in the wrong place at the
wrong time, or because you have intruded into space ‘owned’ by another
group of young people who claim proprietorial rights to it. Disputes
could also arise because somebody may have slighted someone else’s
honour, which requires a demonstration of physical force in order to
restore respect in a world where respect is everything. Where, until
recently, such disputes would routinely have been dealt with by
reference to traditional means including threats, intimidation and
violence, what we are now witnessing, I will suggest, is a significant
change in the form of such proceedings. In addition to these existing
modes of street-level conflict, what we are now witnessing are violent
moves to separate victims from the desirable material objects they
increasingly possess, specifically mobile phones. While the growth in
mobile phone ownership among young people is a factor fuelling this, it
must be noted that this is not impacting on the incidence or prevalence of
victimization. It is more likely, I would suggest, that existing patterns of
victimization are now regularly perpetrated through alternative means.
In other words, if you bully someone you rob them. If you want to
humiliate an enemy you rob them. If you want to demonstrate control of
an area you rob someone. Robbery in effect represents a new means by
which older forms of youth conflict are now regularly fought out. It
becomes an important measure by which the power relations of the
street are routinely established and reproduced in many areas of our
cities. Robbery then, while a mechanism for acquiring desirable goods, is
also a means by which a power relation is demonstrated. It could in this
sense justifiably be viewed as a way of symbolically emasculating
someone.
Because existing patterns of street conflict among young people are
116
now increasingly attached to an act of robbery, in effect a new offence has

been created. This is what is coded within the official statistics as street
crime. Until recently, most of these low-intensity conflicts would have
gone largely unreported, either because nothing was stolen or because
these traditional forms of conflict do not tend to occasion too much adult
investigation. After all, traditionally, this is what the adult world
presupposes young men do. Because an object of value (a phone) is now
routinely stolen, the report rate will consequently tend to be far higher.
The reason for this is simple: in order to get a replacement phone, a crime
number is required by the insurance companies concerned. Rising levels
of street crime among young people can therefore be explained in terms
that need not presuppose a world of greater victimization by an ever
more predatory population of offenders, or because there are more
perpetrators on the streets. The increase occurs because a growing
number of these conflicts now involve robbery and are reported and
recorded as such.
In the case of young people who are victims, it would appear that a
number of factors could lead to their victimization, independent of the
fact that they routinely carry the kinds of goods motivated offenders
would covet. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time could certainly
be regarded as a high-risk factor. In particular, from young offenders’
testimony it would appear that straying onto someone else’s ‘manor’ or
turf could automatically lead someone to being selected for a ‘jacking’ or
indeed a stabbing. In response to such a transgression, a ‘fine’ was
imposed in the form of the disposable goods the young person carried.
Social presentation of self could also be important. ‘Holding yourself
timid’, as one young man explained, suggested that someone would be
relatively easy to target. It signified physical and, not least, mental
vulnerability. Dressing in inappropriate brand labels or, worse still, in
non-branded clothes, could also mark out a young person as a suitable
victim. ‘Low brands’, as young people term them (by which they meant
brands such as High Tech), suggest to would-be robbers that someone is
in effect a non-person. For in the hyper-real world of postmodern
consumer culture, what this act of sartorial deviance is read to intimate is
that the person is someone to whom no respect is due. As one young man
explained:
If you had someone who look like a tramp come up and try and talk
to you are you really going to want to speak? But if you is dressed
nice, and have good things, you going to take them serious.
Inappropriate consumption could single out someone who deserved to
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Street Crime
be victimized. In effect, by not according to the demand of being

appropriately attired as coded by young people (who were as much
motivated offenders as consumers), a person brings victimization upon
themself. To put this another way, by virtue of brand ignorance they
could be ‘jacked’.
A young street robber explained this to me in graphic terms as we
stood one afternoon on a street corner: ‘See that kid, he’s crying out for it.
He’s asking to be jacked.’ The kid in question was young, and was
dressed in clothes that did not approximate in shape or form to the
gangster fashion the young man I was interviewing was wearing. He
stood nervously on the street, clearly unaware of ‘holding himself timid’,
as my interviewee summarized. Again, another risk factor that marked
him out as a suitable victim. As the street robber also explained, it wasn’t
just people like this who would find themselves targeted for a ‘jacking’.
Victimization could also be attributed to the fact that someone had no
friends, either because they lacked appropriate social skills or were new
to an estate or area. In either case, they were not a somebody – a person to
whom respect could be accorded. This defined those whose failure to
have and wear the right things in the right way marked them out as
suitable victims.
Unsurprisingly, young people, not being stupid and being all too
aware of the risks posed by demonstrating inappropriate consumption
habits, often adopted an adaptive strategy of appropriate consumption
in order to minimize the risks they could expect in street life. Typically, in
order to avoid victimization, they would become – as far as possible –
mirror images of the very people who victimized them. In effect, they
looked the look, walked the walk and talked the talk of the urban street
gangster. In street parlance, they ‘thugged-up’. They tried to look and act
hard, and by so doing demonstrated in their social presentation of self
that they not suitable victims. In some cases, as we shall observe in the
chapter on offenders, victim avoidance could also include becoming a
street robber.
By no means unrelated to this, the possibility of becoming a victim
could also be related to moves on the part of local toughs to impose their
own level of street discipline, in particular over other groups of young
people who conformed to a different array of subcultural values. In an
interview conducted with young women in Brighton, they explained
how street robbery had recently entered their life. Where once they
would sit peacefully among their friends in a local park in the centre of
Brighton, they now found this increasingly difficult to do. The danger
they faced emanated from a group they identified as the ‘townies’,
violent young men dressed in designer track suits who would routinely
118
attack and rob them. Their motive would appear to be both a love of
violence and their hatred of a group which had consciously adopted a
more visible counter-culture style (they did not wear designer clothes
and favoured instead a second-hand, more ostensibly grungy look).
Though mobile phones could be and were stolen, the act of robbery often
involved taking marijuana from these young bohemians. An offence,
needless to say, which also meant that it could not and would not be
reported to law-enforcement agencies.
If these factors help explain why younger populations are victimised,
they do not explain patterns of street robbery directed at older age
groups. To study patterns of victimization among this population –
particularly in areas such as Lambeth, where a higher than average
proportion of the victim population are in the over-18 age group – we
need once again to study the changing routine activities of this
population. In particular, we need to study how such routine behaviours
have changed in relation to changes in the demography and socio-
economic profile of the area. These, as we shall observe, have also acted
to widen the potential pool of victims in an area where there are many
motivated offenders.
Following the urban disorders of the late 1970s, Lambeth underwent a
significant process of urban regeneration designed to alleviate its status
as one of London’s poorest and most multiply deprived boroughs. This
has involved a significant investment in projects designed to improve the
physical environment of the borough and to help and support local
businesses and retailers. If we examine how regeneration has impacted
on life in Lambeth, three specific developments may be observed, all of
which have implications for patterns of victimization in the area.
The first way in which the impact of urban regeneration may be
observed is via the process of ‘gentrification’ occasioned by the
movement of affluent and predominantly white populations into
Lambeth. This process of reverse colonization is common to other poor
London boroughs, and a principal motive driving it forward appears to
be access to private housing stock that is relatively more affordable than
property in more affluent boroughs. An economic regeneration strategy
implemented by the council designed to improve the physical
environment of the borough may also be important in stimulating this
demographic shift. This involved an attempt to make Lambeth more
public-friendly by renovating its decaying parks and public spaces,
particularly those on major arterial routes leading through the borough.1
Apart from the renovation of the physical environment, a con-
siderable slice of the regeneration pie was also invested in Lambeth’s
economic base. The relative success of this initiative is evident in two key
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Street Crime
developments: firstly, by the redevelopment of Brixton as a thriving

shopping complex, and secondly, by the sustained growth within
Brixton of a highly developed night-time economy (Hobbs 2002). The
first of these developments is evident in the reconstruction of Brixton
centre as a thriving retail centre that provides a large surrounding
population with access to a wide array of desirable consumer goods.
While attempts to stimulate the local economy through support for local
businesses and the use of money to improve the physical landscape
remain important determinants in the regeneration process, this has also
been fuelled by the movement of new people into the borough with
disposable incomes to spend.
The development of the night-time economy can be related to the
associated renaissance of Brixton as a cultural centre. This development
is evident particularly in an array of popular new clubs, bars and
restaurants in the area. Drawing specifically on Brixton’s rich cultural
history and not least the cachet associated with its notoriety, this
development has attracted a significant transitory population. Given the
late opening hours of this cultural complex in a 24 hour city culture, this
development acts as a magnet to a large transitory, predominantly white
and affluent population over a prolonged period of time.
The movement of this population is also facilitated by Brixton’s
proximity to central London, and the importance of the Victoria Line and
the vicinity of Lambeth to the Northern Line cannot be underestimated.
Its location in relation to major arterial roads may also be considered in
this respect.
Cumulatively, as an unintended consequence of these patterns of
regeneration, the social demographics of Lambeth in general and Brixton
in particular have altered significantly in the last 20 years. More
specifically, the consequence of these processes has been to bring new
affluent adult populations into the area, and it is these populations that
constitute a significant proportion of the victim population. One answer,
therefore, to the question ‘Why is street crime rising so fast in Lambeth?’
is that there are more available targets by virtue of its regeneration.
There are a number of reasons why this population of victims can be
considered suitable targets for street robbers. First, this is a population
which is predominantly affluent and whose routine activities place it in
close proximity to potential offenders living on the local estates. It either
lives locally, shops locally or travels to the area to pursue a range of
diverse leisure activities. Though, as we shall see in the next chapter,
socio-economic disadvantage is also a key to explaining rising street
robbery in deprived areas like Lambeth, an important point to bear in
mind is that regeneration is a major driver behind rising street robbery.
120
In conclusion, this chapter has looked at an array of factors that together

act to produce suitable and available victims for street robbers to target.
The chapter has shown how over recent years more people than ever
before are now carrying the material goods increasingly desired and
coveted by street robbers. The chapter also explored how the value of
these goods to street robbers is related both to their material value and to
the ease with which they can be appropriated from victims and disposed
of afterwards. The production of victims, as this chapter made clear, is
also contingent upon the way victims look and behave and present
themselves to the world. Finally, the chapter examined the social factors
that can, as the case of Lambeth illustrates, produce the preconditions
where street crime can rise by making more suitable victims available to
motivated offenders. In the chapter that follows, we will turn our
attention away from the situation of the victim to examine the factors
that act to produce motivated offenders.
Note
1 I was a recipient of this renovation while living in Lambeth during the 1980s.
As a local resident I found that our front gardens had been deemed in need of
renovation and that a considerable slice of public money was to be spent on
renovating and rebuilding them. As a student I was of course delighted if
somewhat disturbed by such largesse being extended to an area that was by
no means impoverished.
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Street Crime
Chapter 8
The production of motivated

offenders
In examining how and why young people become involved in street

robbery, a number of issues need to be addressed. First, we need to
establish where the will to consume the objects street robbers wish to
appropriate through robbery comes from. Second, we need to consider
why they appropriate these objects of desire through the medium of
street robbery, as opposed to appropriating desirable goods through
more legitimate avenues. Third, we must then explain why only some
young people come to engage in street robbery as the chosen strategy of
appropriation. This, as we shall see, will mean examining the charac-
teristics of the outlaw cultures where street crime is practised and, not
least, attending to the seductions and pleasures attendant on the act of
street robbery itself.
To investigate the reasons that impel young people, and in particular
young men, to engage in street crime we must as a precursor understand
the reasons that lead them to engage initially in offending behaviour. To
do this we must understand why they wish to acquire the kinds of goods
suitable victims regularly carry, and explore why they seek to acquire
these objects through the medium of offences such as street crime. To
examine this, we must begin by looking not at issues of faulty
socialization (the focus of underclass thinking, as we saw in Chapter 4)
but at the forms of successful socialization young people are subjected to in
free-market societies.
To interpret this we must examine why young people who engage in
street robbery desire so intensely the commodities street crime provides
illegal access to. Why, we must ask, do they come to covet these objects of
desire so intensely that some will embark upon illegal acts in order to
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The production of motivated offenders
possess them? While one answer to this question might be to suggest that
such desires represent aberrant personality traits on the part of those
who hold them, this, I suggest, is the wrong way of looking at the issue. A
more productive line of enquiry involves seeing such desires not as
deviant but as a common trait evident in most young people. More to the
point, it is my contention that if we want to understand from where the
will to possess desirable objects derives, then its proximate cause is
exposure to and socialization into capitalist consumption norms
stimulated by capitalist culture industries.
Let us consider this in more detail. What I am proposing is that young
offenders are products of a society in which the consumption of material
goods is an integral aspect of their lives. As such, it is a universally
distributed desire. It is something acquired, moreover, via a range of
sources. It is a message they see mediated through the medium of
advertising which targets them directly; it is something they learn to
acquire through direct involvement in consumption rituals, either as
observers or as active consumers themselves. As we shall now see, the
impact of being produced as consuming beings in free-market societies
has important implications for how young people live and perceive the
world around them.
In their exposure to the consumer society, young people learn from a
very early age that wellbeing and success in life are contingent upon the
possession of desirable goods. In particular, branded goods marketed to
them by the culture industries. They are also taught, and from a very
early age are given to understand, that through the possession of these
desirable objects – the right trousers, trainers and accessories such as
mobile phones – other desirable things follow, including self-respect and
the respect of others. In and through mass consumption, identities are
produced and reproduced. In consumption, a lifestyle is simultaneously
lived and constructed. To ‘be’ is literally to be in a world defined by the
possession of these desirable goods. Possession defines the bearer, not
only as a possessor of what everyone desires, but as a viable and
sovereign agent in his or her own right.
In the possession of desired goods, things are not simply appropriated
– identities are also produced and reproduced. By and through processes
of cultural appropriation, a sense of who and what you are is constructed
while, in the competitive order of the young, a sense of distinction
relative to other people is forged. The consequences of this process are
stark. Your status relative to others is marked out and defined by the
kind of phone you possess, the trousers you wear, and the way you wear
them. Possession of desired goods also provides a visible marker that
defines where you stand relative to others in the world around you. Non-
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Street Crime
possession conversely entails an absence of these values. It is a world of

non-being, of not being part of the in-group. You stand by virtue of non-
consumption or ineffective consumption as a non-person, someone to
whom respect is not conceded in a world in which respect is everything.
In the words of one young man, it meant ‘not being on the level’. As he
then put it, ‘You’re like a no one.’ This, translated literally, meant being
outside the circle of being and belonging. It rendered you someone to
whom no status in the world could be conceded; it could define you – as
we saw in the last chapter – as a victim.
The culture industries consciously accentuate these trends through
the way they brand and market their goods. Maintaining high prices
stimulates the market for exclusive goods that confer high status among
young people. At the same time, the corporations, by drawing heavily
and parasitically on street culture (the hip-hop gangster look, for
example) reproduce it in a commodified form. This is then sold back as a
lifestyle option other young people are invited to emulate. The rise and
fall of various consumer fads, the advent of new technologies and the
constant succession of new models accentuate these trends further.
Excessive profiteering by the corporations promoting desirable branded
goods also exacerbates the problem because it makes the brands that are
most desired impossible to obtain within the financial constraints poor
populations face. The in-built obsolescence of desirable consumer goods
also feeds this problem because it forges an incessant desire among
young people for next years’ model, which means socially generated
needs can never be finally realized anyway. In effect, the consumer
society produces a world of always unrealized and ultimately
unrealizable desires. The trousers you are obligated to want this year are
obsolete in fashion terms by the next, while this mobile phone will be
replaced by the next model, and so on. At the dark heart of this
consumption revolution can be found a process with sinister implica-
tions: As Cote and Allahar aptly describe it, ‘What lies at the heart of this
activity, however, is the fact that the media can sell young people some
element of an identity they have been taught to crave’ (Cote and Allahar
1996).
Though the transformation of young people into effective consumers
has always been important to capitalist societies – at least since young
people were first identified as conspicuous consumers in the postwar
period (Miles 2000) – the nature of youth consumption has changed
significantly in recent decades. From an exercise directed at purchasing
the good life in the context of rising affluence under conditions of
postwar welfare state capitalism it had become by the 1990s a rite of
passage into everyday ‘normal’ life in a free-market, neo-liberal society.
124
As Miles explains: ‘By the 1980s it was almost as if consumerism had

emerged as a way of life for young people. Not only did it represent a
valuable means of self-expression, but it provided a resource for the
construction of their everyday life’ (Miles 2000). What he means by this is
that they represent the vanguard of a social movement that has
witnessed not only the decline of a society in which identities were
constructed through solidarity with other peer groups (such as your
class of origin), but the advent of an era in which identity is now forged
in and through consumption alone.
Not only has the social meaning of consumption changed for young
people, but it has also changed in relation to the growing intensity of
their exposure to it. They are now not only engaged in the rites of
consumption from an early age, but are also subject to an advertising
industry that ruthlessly targets them in ever more sophisticated ways
(Klein 2001). At the heart of the crime problem as it unfolds across the
UK, we consequently find an extreme form of commodity fetishism at
play. My thesis is that this particular form of fetishism brings with it the
desires that stimulate the insatiable demand for objects that are
subsequently apprehended in the act of street robbery.
While the will to consume is a universal disposition into which all young
people are socialized, the free-market society is not an economic order
that universalizes the means necessary to ensure that all young people
can appropriate the social goods that they have been taught to desire
legitimately. In a free-market capitalist society that both produces and
tolerates wide and growing inequalities, what we find is a socio-
economic reality in which certain populations are accorded the means to
gratify their consumption desires, while others are located in socio-
economic conditions that effectively prohibit consumption. What
distinguishes these two populations is their differential access to life
chances. These include labour market opportunities and established
wealth that allows consumption desires to be socially realized in
legitimate ways.
The differential distribution of life chances can be starkly observed if
we consider once again the case of Lambeth, and the socio-economic
characteristics of the area. While the borough is home, as we have seen,
to a predominantly white affluent population, well-equipped with the
resources that will allow it to consume easily and legitimately, the same
cannot be said for more deprived communities, including Lambeth’s
black population, which also produce the majority of its offenders. For
while Lambeth has witnessed a significant process of economic and
social regeneration over the last two decades, the effects of regeneration
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Street Crime
have been very uneven and not everyone can be considered winners in
the process. The socio-economic position of young working-class people
– particularly young black people on the estates – remains desperately
poor, as deprivation indicators for the area testify. Unemployment, for
example, remains at around 40 per cent on the estates in the area. This is
far higher than the average unemployment rates for London and the UK
as a whole. To this must be added a range of factors which enhance
deprivation and social exclusion more generally. These would include
the impact of institutional and overt discrimination towards the black
community, particularly young black males, that limits entry into the
labour market. One young man explained graphically why robbery
became for him and his friends a career choice:
Some of them do it, yes, for the money, but most of them can’t get
money from their parents most times. And then most don’t work.
And some of my friends don’t have homes so they have to be
hustling. They have to make money somehow.
Benefits for poorer populations are also harder to obtain, given the
governmental response to what has been represented as a ‘culture of
dependency’. For the same reasons, young people under 18 are now
unable to claim any benefits at all. If we consider the impact of receiving
low rates of benefit in conjunction with living in the most expensive city
in the UK, it is evident that poor populations in Lambeth find it
extraordinarily hard to sustain a minimal lifestyle, let alone gratify overt
consumption desires they have been taught to regard as normal. As one
young man expressed this:
I don’t want to blame it all on Britain … but living in Brixton is hard.
Significant patterns of change in the postwar economy have also

reinforced the entrenched deprivation. In particular, the decline of the
manufacturing sector in the last three decades has had the effect of
removing labour market opportunities from many working-class areas.
This has two knock-on effects: first, it acts to sustain mass unemploy-
ment among young people and thus their exclusion from participating in
legitimate consumption; and second, exclusion from the labour market
prolongs the state of adolescence and disrupts an orderly transition into
adulthood on the part of young people in this situation. It does this by
removing from them the rituals, interdependencies and security that
secure jobs once provided, and which in their possession would once
have confirmed an adult identity. One consequence of these changes has
126
been to compress young men together for large parts of their day-to-day
lives on local streets. Another, as noted by Rutherford, has been to
increase pressure on already highly pressurized families, many of whom
are also welfare-dependent (Rutherford 1997). This in turn produces a
pattern of routine activity that creates the space in which street robbery
becomes a distinct possibility. To escape from over-crowded and often
highly pressurized family units, young men congregate in the streets.
There, the conditions are created both for meeting and having to deal
with outlaw cultures that practise street robbery, while also placing
young men in proximity to populations of assessable and suitable
victims. In other words, into conjunction with more affluent populations
who, as we have seen, carry the very goods poorer sections of the
community cannot readily appropriate legitimately. Economic change,
then, itself helps to sustain an environment that is highly conducive to
crime.
The situation in poor inner-city areas like Lambeth is consequently
characterized by patterns of real deprivation and poverty among certain
sections of its population. Like the affluent society around them,
however, these populations also share the dream of a good life defined in
material terms. This is thus a population characterized not only by real
deprivation, but also by intensifying levels of relative deprivation as
well. Together, these factors have created what criminologists such as
Lea and Young (Young 1984) would consider to be a highly criminogenic
environment. In effect, it is my premise that by failing to universalize the
conditions by which desirable goods may be universally appropriated,
the free-market society has created a situation in which some young
people have ‘innovated’ in their consumption. They do so by becoming
involved in cultures that sanction rule-breaking. Unable to consume
legitimately, many have come to develop innovative consumption
strategies, one of which is street crime.
The turn towards street crime can therefore be viewed as a practical
and rational resolution of the contradiction of being socialized into a
world which shapes you to aspire to the consistent consumption of
material goods and being located in a socio-economic reality that does not
universalize the legitimate avenues by which such goods can be appro-
priated. In making this statement, it must be emphasized that such a
resolution is by no means inevitable. Only a few young people respond to
the predicament of unrealized and unrealizable consumption in the same
way. Many poor people struggle through legitimate avenues such as
education to accumulate the life chances that will allow them to become,
as it were, ‘normal consumers’. There are also other patterns of
adaptation available to young people faced with this contradiction. Drug-
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Street Crime
taking and radical political mobilization, for example, represent other life
opportunities that might not necessitate participation in street crime.
So far we have studied why young people wish to consume, and we have
examined why alternative and illegal consumption strategies might be
pursued. What we now need to consider is why some young people, and
indeed a growing number of them, have chosen to drift in the direction of
a consumption strategy that resolves itself into street crime. Why, we
must ask, have they chosen to become flawed consumers? To accomplish
this we must move from a consideration of structure towards an
examination of process, in particular the diverse processes characteristic
of what terms ‘differential association’ (Sutherland and Cressay 1979).
We need to attend, in particular, to the social process by which allegiance
to norms stressing adherence to rule-abiding behaviour become aban-
doned in favour of an alternative value system which encourages rule-
breaking that embraces street crime.
I will argue that there are five factors we need to examine in order to
explain how this process works.
• Though aware of condemnatory messages stigmatizing street crime,

the messages young people receive are not consistent and can readily
be ignored or circumvented.
• Proximity to and engagement with those who already break rules not
only encourages this behaviour, but also sanctions participation in an
outlaw culture that can actively celebrate and justify deviant values as
a way of life.
• Street crime as an activity carries with it an array of seductions and
benefits.
• Once engaged in street crime, young people can find it difficult to exit.
• There is a readily available stock of legitimations that permit rule-
breaking to be excused or validated by bystanders and by
participants.
Young people in Lambeth, like young people in British society, are

products of an order that not only stigmatizes forms of rule-breaking
such as street crime, but also imposes harsh penalties for those caught
engaging in it. In the case of street crime, for example, a custodial
sentence is a likely occurrence, and this can last for up to three years or
more. Life is the maximum permitted tariff. Condemnation certainly
exists, and condemnation is supported by an array of sanctions. And
128
these, it should be emphasized, are almost always deployed against

perpetrators apprehended through law-enforcement activity.
To understand why some young people turn to street crime as an
adaptive strategy, we need to examine why they refuse to heed, or
choose to ignore, wider messages of condemnation attached to this
activity. To examine this issue, young offenders were asked an array of
questions directed at ascertaining whether in fact they were aware of
these condemnatory messages, and which also explored their moral
perceptions more generally. In asking these questions, a number of
subsidiary themes were also pursued. These related to the consistency of
the messages of condemnation young people received; the appropriate-
ness of the means by which they were mediated; how the messages were
appropriated by the target audience; and how such messages related to
the weight of non-condemnation they might receive from other
bystanders.
While the young people evidently knew that street crime was wrong
and was morally reprehensible, it was also evident that the messages
they had received about crime were mixed and variable. The issue of
street crime was rarely raised and discussed by parents, many of whom
were surprised and upset when they subsequently found that their child
had become involved as a perpetrator. All the young people interviewed
claimed that schools did not provide much, if anything, in the way of
information about street crime. Indeed, upon subsequent investigation,
there was and remains no credible policy in schools on this issue.1 Most
of the young offenders had never been told much about how the criminal
justice system worked, nor about what it would do to them if they were
subsequently processed by it. Indeed, the only information about street
crime they heard in the course of their schooling was that often provided
through a single visit by a police officer. Time and again the words ‘not
knowing the consequences’ or ‘not thinking through the consequences’
of acts were noted as a primary cause for involvement in robbery.
Though local community safety providers had embarked upon a
media campaign, part of which was directed at warning young offenders
about the consequences of offending, it was clearly lost upon its target
audience. To a point this occurred because the message was not tested
beforehand on those who were supposed to consume it. There was also
the problem that no clear and consistent message was being delivered by
anyone. What this vacuum has created, I will suggest, is a space in which
other messages, specifically those that can come to sanction rule-
breaking, can and have prospered.
With regard to the exposure of young people to messages that would
encourage rule-abiding, as opposed to rule-breaking, behaviour, it was
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Street Crime
by no means evident that there was too much of this around. The role of
organizations such as churches was entirely limited, given the secular
and materialistic character of the world in which young people tend to
live. While the free market can certainly encourage the will to consume –
itself part of the problem – it must be emphasized that it offers no
alternative morality or vision of the good life beyond the will to consume
more. It is, in effect, an amoral entity. The pronouncements of other self-
professed moral entrepreneurs such as politicians had no impact on the
lives of these young men. They were perceived to embody a world that
was distant and irrelevant to their lives. Nor could what they said be
trusted. As with many forces of authority in their lives, such figures
could easily be viewed as the enemy. Nor did political ideologies have
much if any impact upon the conduct of these young men. To this extent
they were certainly products of a postmodern depoliticized culture that
had well and truly separated itself from older and more benevolent
narratives of progress. Nor were there many remnants left of older
working-class patterns of solidarity that might have induced their young
into showing more respect for older traditional values. Capitalism’s
triumph at the ‘end of history’, as Fuketyama characterized the process,
had successfully eliminated even these (Fuketyama 1992). In the era of
unfettered competitive individualism, celebrated as a virtue in the free
market, belt-and-braces socialism was well and truly starved of the
oxygen that might once have nurtured it.
While much has been made by the media about the need for
appropriate role models in young people’s lives, what the interviews
with young offenders revealed was that these young men tended to have
none. If they did then it was often their parents, and in particular their
mothers, which was itself an interesting insight because it clearly
demonstrated how attached they were to traditional notions of family
life. Leaving aside the arrogant assumption on the part of the adult
world that youth should respect it more, it could also be remarked here
that even if a positive role model could be identified, so too could plenty
of others that wider society would not view in such terms. Among these,
as we shall see, could be those who were successful practitioners of street
crime and crime more generally.
For young people to become involved in street crime it is not enough
that the voices that might condemn such behaviour go unheeded.
Involvement in such activity is also contingent on being in contact with
or in close proximity to what I will generically term outlaw groups who
not only engage in rule-breaking, but who also inhabit a culture that
justifies such activity and actively encourages it. As indicated above,
while all young people are socialized to become active consumers of
130
material goods, not all resolve problems of thwarted consumption by

engagement in street crime. If we attend to those who do traverse this
path, then it appears that at the very least they must:
• have witnessed street crime practised successfully by others around

them;
• live in proximity to or actively socialize with those who practise it;
• have over time become active and confirmed members of these
groups;
• have come to appreciate, as a consequence of successful engagement
in street crime, the benefits such activity can deliver to their
lives.
To engage in offences such as street crime, a person typically has to come

into contact with those who already have some experience in its practice.
It is not an activity that just occurs or simply happens. Like any other
social activity, it requires skill and dexterity to practise well. It is an
activity which is, I would argue in most cases, socially learnt. It also
requires a certain social presentation of self, and a certain amount of
planning and teamwork to accomplish. Successful practitioners must be
competent in their capacity to demonstrate aggression and violence.
They must be able to use violence if violence is required. Speed and
agility are also prerequisites for initiating a successful robbery, as are the
ability to plan escape routes and identify suitable target areas. In
addition to the above, those who practise street crime must be able to
inhabit a world where they can live easily with themselves.
The way in which contact with already offending groups was
established differed in terms of its intensity. For some young people it
could be that they had witnessed others successfully prosecuting street
crime, who lived within the context of a culture whose values excused it,
and who consequently sought to emulate such activity. Given the sheer
volume of street crime in areas like Lambeth, it could be surmised that
due to its prevalence most young people were placed in this situation.
For the same reason, most would also be aware of successful street
robbers around them, especially as many would openly flaunt the
rewards of their enterprise and initiative. Most would also be familiar
with and live in proximity to a cultural order in which street crime was
perceived as an inescapable feature of social life. As one man said, ‘Yes
I’ve seen people getting robbed. I’ve seen my friends being robbed.
There is lots of bad stuff around here.’
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Street Crime
In conjunction with boredom (a regularly cited feature of some young

people’s lives), unrequited consumption desires and living with poverty,
this conjunction of circumstance could on occasion provoke street crime
as an adaptive opportunist strategy. One man explained how he became
attracted to street robbery:
When I was young I would say to my mum something like ‘Can I

have a pair of trainers?’ and because my mum didn’t work and was
like on social security she could hardly put food on the table. And
when I was young I would look at that and I would see other
people making money, driving around in the latest cars and I
would think ‘There must be an easier way’.
As interviews with young offenders showed, the most likely gateway

into street robbery lay not only in being part of a group that had observed
it or living in a cultural milieu that excused it, but rather participation
occurred through intensive exposure to outlaw groups that practised it.
Just as Oliver Twist became an apprentice to Fagin and his gang, so too
do putative street robbers require access to those who already possess
the necessary skills, craft and experience. Not only is the proximity to
actual offenders a necessary condition but, such proximity also functions
as an alternative space in which deviant values and necessary criminal
skills can be learnt, internalized and developed.
Again, the route-way into contact with such outlaw cultures could
differ. It could occur because you grew up with people who belonged to
outlaw groups, such as neighbours, friends or family members. It could
occur because you moved into an area where members of such groups
congregated or lived. It could also occur because you became friends
with group members or wished to become accepted by them in a relation
of friendship in order to achieve respect in their eyes or – and this could
be important – to avoid the possibility of victimization at their hands.
Contact could therefore arise as a consequence of a defensive strategy.
While it might be tempting to view the decision to become involved with
such groups in terms of an active choice made consciously, this would be
to overstate a reality where the choices available are highly constrained.
Spatially compressed into estates from which there were no realistic exit
strategies, proximity and contact were, for most young offenders,
inescapable features of their lives. As such, an important question many
young people tended to face was not how to avoid contact with such
groups, but how to do the kinds of things that would earn their respect.
As we shall see, this could involve street crime.
132
One of the young men explained how he was initiated. He had, he

explained, recently moved to Brixton, where he found himself some-
thing of a stranger on the local estate and in the proximity of an older
group of boys who did street robbery and who put pressure on him to
become involved. I asked him about the kind of pressure they placed on
him.
Like they would say, ‘Are you coming out there?’ and if you like
said no, then they say ‘You going to come along with us’ and I
would say no so they say ‘You a pussy, you going to have to come
with us’.
Another young man cited his exposure to a gang of older men (aged 19–
21), all of whom were involved in illegal activity, specifically robbery and
selling drugs. In his words:
I started hanging round with some people in Brixton. I would see

them everyday. I was with my friend and his older brother used to
always do crime. And I would hang out with my friend and he
would always try and be like his older brother and we would hang
out with the gang as well and do stuff. And that’s when we thought
we would try it [robbery].
The element of peer pressure to engage in robbery was intense as the

young man explained in relation to his first street robbery committed
against an older man in Clapham.
They (the older gang) were gerrying me on like to make sure I did
it. Then after I did do it like they said ‘He’s one of us now’ and after
that they didn’t say so much.
Where the analogy with Fagin ends is that the groups of offenders who
inhabit these outlaw cultures do not approximate the Fagin model of an
organized criminal gang. What we are often looking at here are looser
associations, specifically composed of young men, all of whom will have
offended and who consider offending behaviour to be an obligation. At
the heart of these associations will be certain people who are more
proficient and more motivated to offend than others. They are often
likely to be older than the people around them, and many will have had
their criminal status conferred by having been ‘successfully’ processed at
some time or other by the criminal justice system. In the words of the
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Street Crime
young offenders interviewed for the purpose of this research, these were
the ‘bad-boys’: an already existing population of highly motivated
offenders, many of whom would already have served custodial
sentences. There was, said one young man, ‘no leadership thing’. These
men are those who have already been labelled criminal by the wider
society, and who have, as designated criminals, consequently
internalized the label and accorded to it a number of positive con-
notations. In effect, as a consequence of successful labelling processes
conferred by the criminal justice system, there now exist a number of
young men who quite happily accept and celebrate their outlaw status.
They live the life, they walk the walk and they talk the talk. This came
through powerfully in a conversation with a young man in his early 20s
who had recently been released after serving a prison sentence for
robbery. In response to how he felt he was perceived by those around
him, he characterized their response as, ‘Yes, it’s a kind of respect in a
way. Now, no matter what I do, even if I choose not to do crime, they
respect me because I earned their respect by doing crime.’ When I asked
him about the friends he grew up with on the street, he laughed and
admitted, ‘Yes, most are in jail.’
Though quantifying precise numbers remains inherently difficult, it
could be surmised that these outlaw associations are widespread, and
are specifically active when legitimate employment avenues are blocked.
As my research in Lambeth suggested, many were well-established on
many estates. Group membership is often conferred by point of origin or
proximity to a particular territory and by virtue of the fact that most of
those who are involved in such associations have grown up together.
They would have gone to the same schools and have the same friends.
Interviews also indicated that the more confirmed members of these
groups were those who were the oldest and who were also involved in a
range of other illegal activities. In particular, they were likely to be
connected with grey and illegal markets. They would know, for example,
where to buy drugs to deal and who to market them to. They would also
know who to fence stolen goods to and were often in contact with those
who would commission them to appropriate certain objects: 20 mobile
phones, for example, with this particular specification. When I asked one
young man about these networks he said:
Yes there are a lot of people who do stuff. It’s like you with a friend
and you met people and they maybe sell heroin and you’re with
someone else who knows someone else who knows someone else
whose selling something.
134
The most accomplished of the ‘bad-boys’ also knew precisely what make
to take and were very selective about what they chose to target. As one
young man commented, ‘He don’t steal anything less than a 32-10. He
wouldn’t steal that. It’s the newer phones. You don’t steal anything less
than you can sell for £200.’
What acted to reinforce the involvement of young men who found
themselves in proximity to such associations was the way in which the
focal concerns of the group often came to predominate over other more
legal and legitimate attachments young people might have, such as their
families. As one man explained, ‘All you know about is your friends. You
forget your family. Friends are all that matter.’
And another: ‘It’s like your friends are all there is and you don’t think
of the consequences.’
And another: ‘When you got a set of friends and someone fights, you
got to fight with them.’
And when they find themselves together, for example at a youth club:
‘There you meet people and … someone suggests “Let’s do this”, and
that’s how things [crime] begin.’
Group membership also brings other positive benefits, specifically
security in a dangerous world: ‘When I’m with them no one like tries to
trouble you. But when I am by myself then they would try and trouble
me.’
In terms of the values celebrated within these outlaw groups, what we
can observe is a hybrid subculture which is forged out of a symbiosis
between activities celebrated in the wider society and those condemned
by it. Where it joins with the wider order is in its celebration of
conspicuous consumption, and the linking of acquisitive materialism
with notions of status and standing, distinction and respect. Where it
departs is in its pursuit of socially sanctioned consumption norms by
illicit means that sanction violence and rule-breaking as a way of life.
This orientation also goes hand in hand with a celebration of a world that
is specifically gendered in its form. Typically, what we can observe here
is a world in which a particular vision of masculinity is celebrated. This is
one in which the capacity to practise violence is validated and where
being tough commands respect. This is also a cultural order in which the
capacity to assert physical self is celebrated as a valid marker of being a
man. It is a social currency that commands respect and begets for its
holder social distinction and honour. For the young men I interviewed,
fighting was a recurrent feature of life in a world considered violent and
dangerous. ‘Yes, you have to fight all the time’, said one young man,
while another noted ruefully that even though he knew many people in
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Street Crime
Brixton, ‘There are still people out there you got to be careful of.’ This
vision of masculinity, moreover, reaches into the detail of life. It is there
in the physical presentation of self to the world: it is evident in the
clothes, in the language, in the walk, and in speech itself. It is evident in
acts and deeds, in what is spoken about, and what is celebrated in
speech.
The gendered character of this world-view is evident not only in what
it selects as worthy of celebration, but also in what it has to deny in the
process of its own becoming. The vision of purified masculinity that it
celebrates is often brought about at the cost of disavowing much of what
wider society has chosen to endorse. This can include the idea that
worldly success can be established through hard work at school, or that
self-respect can be accomplished through entry into the legitimate job
market. Often the way in which this disavowal is socially demonstrated
is by coding such activity as explicitly feminized behaviour. Working
hard at school or demonstrating intellectual effort are perceived as
unmanly, as something that real men do not do. This could lead some
young men actively to preclude themselves from mainstream society
and work in the formal economy (Willis 1977). As one young man
observed: ‘They don’t want it [work]. They ain’t looking for it.’
This gendered perception is also associated with a disavowal of what
society itself codes as feminine: this can include being overtly emotional,
intimating care and evincing compassion for others. Unsurprisingly, the
kind of culture this produces and the kind of individual it sanctions is not
well equipped to interact with society on its preferred terms. What it
sanctions is a form of ‘lawless masculinity’ (Cambell 1993), evident in
males unable to resolve conflict without recourse to aggression, and who
are often homophobic and sexist in their behaviour. This kind of
individual is, however, well-equipped and motivated to practise street
crime and engage in criminal behaviour more generally. Such
individuals, once confirmed within the rituals of outlaw culture, not
only reproduce it, but can actively induct other young people into it as
well.
The culture of aggressive masculinity discussed above is not unique to
Lambeth or indeed to any specific ethnic group. Criminologists have
explored variations of it in different countries and between different
groups (Willis 1977; Cambell 1993). In content it remains quite consistent
over time and between states. It does, however, manifest itself via a
number of stylistic variations which distinguish various outlaw cultures
from each other. The social rituals it practices may vary, as might its
stylistic expression, for instance through the style of clothes, music etc.
136
In the case of its instantiation in Lambeth, the social conditions

described above have created an ideal environment in which such
outlaw cultures can thrive. In terms of the way it is grounded in the
culture of street criminals, particularly among certain young black
males, it is evident in the social presentation to the world that borrows
heavily from the hip-hop, gangster rap culture of the United States. This
influence is particularly evident in physical presentation of self to the
world. It is evident in the aggressive assertion of self that can often be
observed in the way young men move. It is there in the loose-fitting
trousers worn as if hanging off the crotch; it is there in the way they
express themselves in their body language and through the sign
language they use to communicate. Unsurprisingly, many of these
stylistic features had their origin in the penitentiary culture associated
with the US punitive mass incarceration policy. Baggy trousers and
unlaced shoes, for example, derive from prison uniforms, while the sign
language evolved as a mode of communication among inmates in an
institutional context in which silence was often policy.2
As subcultural theorists observe, the social rituals attached to outlaw
cultures are both complex and highly creative (Hebdige 1979; Hall 1976).
In effect, they produce and reproduce a culture that consciously aspires
to define itself away from a dominant order, which it confronts in a
stance of hostility and often aggression. Such cultures work, however,
precisely because they confer many benefits on their members. Against a
society which provides them with little in the way of life chances, it
provides an alternative and parallel set of opportunities to appropriate
what the wider society holds out as desirable but simultaneously denies.
Against an order that provides little by way of market opportunity, it
offers the possibility of work – though of an illegal kind. Like the formal
economy, it also offers on-site training. Against an emerging economy
where the work provided is often menial, low-paid and of a nine-to-five
variety, it offers work opportunities which can gain you peer respect,
while providing you with the means to gratify material desires in a much
quicker time frame than the formal job market allows. As a number of
young men pointed out, in an economy that paid only £3.50 per hour,
street crime was an entirely rational career move. It could generate over
£150 for less than an hour’s work. As one man put it, ‘When you is young
and you realize that you can make over a thousand and ten pounds in
half an hour, you going to do the half hour.’ And another: ‘It’s easy
money’.
Finally, if in the low-wage ‘mac-economy’, where the only work
available was likely to be dull, repetitious, monotonous and boring, that
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Street Crime
provided by the counterculture stressed values celebrated by many

young people, including the possibility of risk, thrills and danger.
What also sustains these cultures as viable enterprises is that they can
individually and collectively help sustain alternative economies in areas
characterized by high levels of deprivation and poverty. In effect, street
crime can be viewed as an economic enterprise that is itself part of a large
black-market economy (Sutton 1995). In the case of Lambeth, this market
included drugs, people and, not least, the proceeds of street crime. Like
all successful economies, this economy possesses a complex division of
labour. Some participated within it as primary suppliers of goods and
services that other consumers, such as drug-users, or those looking to
make cheap purchases off the back of the proverbial lorry, would then
buy. There are also a lot of middlemen engaged in this industry,
including those who help purchase stolen goods and provide retail
outlets through which these goods can be moved on. According to the
testimony of offenders, a number of shops and stores in Lambeth
performed this role. Offenders also mentioned shadowy figures that
would commission illegal acts. The more confirmed young people
became in various outlaw cultures, the more knowledge they would
accumulate about how the illegal market economy operated. With this in
mind, I would suggest that if we want to offer another reason why
Lambeth has such a high crime rate, then this can in part be explained by
reference to the size, strength and vitality of this economy. Street crime, it
might be said, not only flourishes because the formal economy cannot
universalize the means to consume legally, but it also rises because there
is already an alternative economy to sustain it.
If we now look at what Katz (Katz 1988) refers to as the ‘seductions of
being evil’, then the pleasures attendant on being involved in street
crime and the subculture that sanctions it become more obvious. In the
act of street robbery, a power relation is forged between the violent
aggressor and the victim. In the assertion of power through violence, a
form of pleasure can also be accessed on the part of the perpetrator:
specifically, the pleasure in power. For those who typically inhabit a
social order that confers little of this, this is by no means a minor issue. If
we examine the phenomenology of street crime more closely, other
pleasures can also be observed. Though for the wider society the act
might well look like a form of cowardice, from the standpoint of
perpetrators the act can have other connotations. To knowingly break
rules that command severe penalties if caught can take courage. Not
least, a certain existential abyss has to be crossed. Can you make the
grade? Do you have what it takes? Then there is the status and respect
that you can accrue in participating in the act. The respect that will be
138
accorded to you by others, specifically those already engaged in street

crime and other offences: your direct peer group. This fact came through
recurrently in the way involvement in street robbery was represented in
interview as a kind of initiation ceremony; a right of passage into the
outlaw culture wherein you become a (mostly) man of respect in a world
where respect is everything and where being ‘a pussy’, as one man put it,
was unthinkable.
As contact with victims was often very fleeting, the act of street crime
was characterized by a social distance between victim and perpetrator
which meant that the latter would have little opportunity to think of the
victim in anything approaching human terms. Street crime, it could be
observed, is a very dehumanizing act. Finally, having successfully
prosecuted street crime, you could then openly display to others the
results of your labour. Many apparently do. Given a cultural order of
street values beholden to a norm that holds you never inform to the
police, it is easy to see how this tendency can flourish. The active threat of
violence that would invariably be directed at those who violate this
principle also reinforces it.
As a number of young offenders interviewed for this project testified,
the peer pressure they faced to commit street crime was intense. In effect,
it became a rite of passage for many into the order of the outlaw culture
on whose fringes they may have found themselves for reasons explained
earlier. In participation you received the respect of your peers and also –
and this was significant – lowered the likelihood of being coded as a
victim: as someone, that is, who could be judged as a target either of
robbery or of violence. In the act your status as a man was in effect
socially demonstrated and validated in action. In street crime there was
also a sense expressed that you were getting one over on ‘them’, the
wider society, and not least the police whose efforts to catch you, you
were able to avoid. This fact was attested to a number of times in the
interviews. Often the terms of this discussion were polarized in terms of
the perceived fitness, agility and cunning of the street robber, and the
unfit, pondering and dull reflexes of law-enforcement officers. That
young men who had actually been caught were responsible for this
testimony was rather ironic, not least because it was clear that their thesis
had been disconfirmed in the act of their arrest.
In street crime, young men were also accorded the means to achieve
an autonomy and self-reliance they otherwise found it difficult to obtain,
given their limited capacity to enter the formal labour market. Often
acutely aware that their families could not afford to provide them with
the material goods they had been taught to covet, a number considered
such activity in cold instrumental terms as a viable means by which they
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Street Crime
could provide for themselves. In a state of prolonged adolescence

provided by limited market opportunities and mass youth unemploy-
ment, such independence could be viewed as providing a gateway to
adulthood more generally.
Finally, in street crime another benefit can also be observed which
raises it above participating in other forms of offence such as burglary.
For those who had acquired the right skills, it was easy to commit and the
risk of being apprehended was slight. In relation to other possible illegal
activities, street crime also conferred more advantages which have
cumulatively acted to make it the most favoured form of crime. To
commit financial ‘scams’ required equipment and expertise most young
people did not have access to. For similar reasons, the gateway to more
lucrative forms of white-collar crime was also denied to these pre-
dominantly young working-class men. Exclusions from the formal
labour market, it could be observed, are also reproduced in the illegal
market. Given that most developments in ‘community crime control’ in
the last two decades have concentrated on situational prevention
measures evident in target-hardening of fixed targets such as shops,
homes and cars (Clarke 1980), the effect of this has been to render such
targets harder to attack. Such enhanced defences also make detection
more likely. The turn to street crime can thus be seen as an entirely
rational response to an overall reduction in target availability. If we now
connect this observation with the rise of populations of suitable victims,
then it is self-evident why street crime has been such a growth industry.
An important phase in the process of differential association lay in the
difficulties that people who have become engaged as perpetrators in
street crime face in returning to a law-abiding existence. First, in
acquiring the skills to commit street crime – not least the capacity to
demonstrate physical aggression – young men, in particular, confirm the
drift towards a form of aggressive masculinity that can further confirm
their participation in an outlaw culture. The problem here is that in
becoming such a male they have to purify themselves through disavowal
of other qualities that permit alternative and positive associations with
the wider society. They can also assume a fully outlaw status and this can
become integral to their identity.
If they get caught and are processed by the criminal justice system,
though this might well be the preferred vehicle through which societal
displeasure is evidenced, the process can also have the effect of
confirming their criminal status by formally conferring on them a
criminal label. Being processed in this way, it might be added, has a
number of other consequences. Firstly, being processed through
custodial institutions does not carry a street stigma on the part of those
140
who have been processed this way. It can and often is worn as a marker
of respect. Second, it is also a process in which young men can and do
acquire an enhanced set of criminal skills. Thirdly, when young men are
released back into society their life chances are so reduced that
participation in crime becomes their only viable option. As a research
project conducted by the local probation service in Lambeth found, the
living conditions for many offenders could only be described as chaotic.
The final factor that is important in sustaining a culture conducive to
the production of motivated offenders ready and willing to commit
street crime is that the desire to break rules in this way can easily be
sanctioned. This can happen both by those who break them and by
onlookers as well. As the work of Sykes (1957) and more recently Cohen
(Cohen 2001) has shown, one reason why people break rules and
continue to do so is that they can deploy various techniques of
neutralization to justify what they do. These techniques can take a
number of forms, and involve the creation of plausible narratives that
can act to justify rule-breaking or inaction in confronting it. In Lambeth,
one such narrative was that young people were engaged in a kind of
Robin Hood existence: stealing from the rich and giving to the poor.
Another was that in street crime young black people were engaged in
‘resistance’ to white racist culture.
In conclusion, in our consideration of the production of motivated

offenders we have examined the background structural factors that
create the underlying causes that produce the will to offend. In exploring
this issue we have examined why young people have come to covet and
desire the goods that are stolen. We have also examined why general
socio-economic conditions conspire to produce a situation in which a
number of young people will come to choose illegal as opposed to legal
consumption strategies. Finally, we have traced a number of more
proximate factors whose conjunction favours a drift into an outlaw
existence in which street crime can be sanctioned as legitimate.
Notes
1 Which was strangely ironic, because in the meetings I convened with them
the headteachers were adamant that the environments they provided for
young people were bastions of morality and good citizenship.
2 The relation between the gangster hip-hop look and US penitentiary culture
was explained to the author by D. Brotherton.
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Street Crime
Chapter 9
Deficits in social control
As with any other offence, street robbery is perpetrated in the context of

attempts by various control agents to prevent it. To study why an offence
such as street robbery has risen in recent years, it is therefore important
to study why the range of interventions that society imposes to prevent
this offence have not worked. In addition to studying the dyad between
offenders and victims – examined in the previous two chapters – we
must also consider the various deficits in social control which have not
prevented motivated offenders from preying on their victims.
As the discussion in Chapter 6 indicated, there are potentially a
number of ways to address this issue. For the purpose of this analysis,
however, I will cut the control cake into four slices, the failures of which
I will address in turn. I will begin by examining the role of the police, the
front-line agency most people logically assume to play the single most
important role in confronting offences like street robbery. I will then
consider the judicial response to street robbery, and will do so by
examining the effectiveness of the various sanctions and interventions
society has chosen to deliver to those offenders apprehended by the
police. I will then examine the performance of those who have embraced
situational crime prevention as a crime control strategy, a perspective that
has in recent decades come to assume an ever more important role in the
prevention of crime more generally in free-market societies. Finally, I
will consider the impact of what I will loosely term social crime-prevention
initiatives, a general expression for attempts to prevent crime by
rectifying the social conditions that are held to give rise to it.
Collectively these interventions include reactive responses geared to
intervening to address the problem of street crime after it has occurred,
142
as well as more proactive interventions that may be understood to

perform a role in preventing the problem. Typically, the former are more
likely to include the efforts of law-enforcement agencies and the judicial
interventions mediated through the activities of the criminal justice
system. The latter embody a range of social strategies that, while not
specifically crime-related, can also impact on crime by preventing young
people from becoming motivated offenders.
In addition to examining these four crime-prevention control
strategies, I will also look at the way in which this control effort is
coordinated and integrated. I will examine in this sense the management
of crime prevention, in addition to studying the performance of control
agents pursuing different control strategies. A consideration of this issue
is essential for two reasons. Firstly, because increasing the efficiency of
crime-control agents through subjugating them to managerialist
imperatives is now seen in itself as an important crime-prevention
strategy. Secondly, and on a more obvious note, self-evidently the ways
in which ‘responsible authorities’ coordinate and direct community
safety at the local level can be considered to perform an important role in
confronting street robbery.
Policing
When the media and politicians debate the street crime problem, it is
typically to the police that they and everyone else tend to look for solu-
tions and, not least, quick results. As the police have also traditionally
been more than happy to accept this role, this has only managed to
confirm such expectations in everyone’s minds. An inevitable con-
sequence of this is that it places the police under immense pressure to
deliver results and to deliver them quickly. Which is all very well if
(a) they are prepared and (b) they can respond quickly to the problem.
Faced with a real and sharp escalation in street robbery in the late 1990s,
however, it was clear that they were neither prepared nor were able to
respond rapidly and convincingly to address the problem. In fact, it
would not be an underestimation to suggest that they were totally
unprepared for the rise in street robbery with the consequence that, as
media coverage intensified, they found themselves the subject of an
intense critique from both the media and the government.
To account for their own failure, the police originally blamed the
sharp and sudden escalation in street robbery on the aftereffects of the
September 11 atrocities in the US. In the face of the terror threat, security
had to be considerably enhanced, with the result that resources that were
usually deployed on the streets were used instead for anti-terrorism
purposes. At the centre of this argument was the contention that street
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Street Crime
robbery rates only increased because suitable guardians were not in

place to defend the good society. As Fitzgerald et al. argue, however,
there are two key problems with this argument. Firstly, the rise in street
robbery preceded the events of September 11; secondly, if police stop-
and-search over this period can be read as an index of police activity on
the streets, then this did not change over the period where it was claimed
police resources were being redirected. In effect, the argument simply
does not stand up to close inspection (Fitzgerald et al. 2002).
Two important conclusions follow through from this. The first is that
street robbery actually increased at a time when there were no real
changes in the methods the police typically deployed to confront it, and,
secondly, at a time when the resources used to confront it remained
largely the same. One implication of this is that police activity as such
was not that important a driver in accounting for rising street robbery
which has, as we have seen in previous chapters, other social causes. This
does not, however, mean that police activity is insignificant or un-
important. I would suggest that what rising street robbery indicated was
that the resources deployed to confront the problem were incapable of
addressing the sudden escalation, while the tactics traditionally used
were not particularly successful in preventing it. These limitations,
however, did not begin to become apparent until the rise in street
robbery actually occurred.
If we now consider the limits of policing as a street robbery prevention
strategy, a number of points could be made. To begin with, given
inherently finite human resources, and, in the case of high-crime
boroughs such as Lambeth, significantly overstretched resources, the
police cannot be everywhere at once and consequently cannot provide a
comprehensive security canopy. They cannot, in other words, police
every street on a 24 hour basis, given that they do not have the capability
to do so. As street crime rises typically from 3.00pm onwards, so do other
calls on police time. This reduces the human resources available to
address street crime effectively at the very point when more resources
are required. In addition to these structural constraints, the police also
face the inherently difficult task of trying to be in the right place at the
right time in a world where the people they are doing their best to
apprehend are also doing their best to avoid them.
While police presence, particularly in high-crime areas, can act as a
visual deterrent as well as providing symbolic reassurance to the public,
it also produces as a consequence a corresponding rise in street crime
elsewhere, as street robbers, heedful of the control effort, move their
activities to other areas. This could either be in the form of spatial or
temporal displacement patterns, and both have been regularly observed
144
in areas like Lambeth. As the police have also found, if effort is

subsequently scaled back within a targeted zone, in order, for example,
to target new and emerging hot spots, then the problem of street crime
also has a habit of returning.
Most crimes that are solved by the police typically follow from
information provided by the public (Lea and Young 1984). Though the
police do receive useful intelligence from the public that enables them to
detect those involved in street crime, there are a number of factors that
clearly limit the quality and quantity of the information they receive.
First, insensitive policing styles in the past have acted to create a
situation characterized by poor police/community relations. In many
areas where street robbery is high, this legacy still lingers among certain
sections of the local community despite changes in policing styles. As a
recent community safety survey in Lambeth indicated, while most local
residents showed a high degree of trust in police performance overall,
the black population of respondents were less likely to trust the
police than other population groups (Hallsworth and MaGuire 2002). Of
the populations that had actually used the police services black victims
were far less likely than other population groups to feel that they had
been treated well.
Young people also find themselves socialized into a culture in which
the police tend to be negatively perceived. As young offenders in
Lambeth intimated in interviews conducted for the purpose of this
research, it was not that they hated the police as individuals, but rather
that they had no language available to consider them in anything other
than a negative way. They were simply the ‘feds’, and their mission in life
was to drive around in ‘bully-vans’ with the purpose of harassing young
people. While police tactics such as stop-and-search certainly reinforced
this perception, it was also evident that young people in the borough are
also aware of and subject to a cultural injunction that holds that no
information should or ought to be made available to the police. This
culture of silence is also sustained and reproduced by the threat of real
violence should anyone choose to transgress this principle.
An important consequence that followed through from the failure of
existing police tactics to confront rising street robbery was that the police
and the police effort itself became quickly discredited in the eyes of
young and active street robbers. The young offenders in Lambeth, for
example, manifested a high degree of disrespect for a law-enforcement
system they viewed with contempt and which they believed they could
quite literally run rings around. Indeed, being able to escape from the
clutches of the ‘feds’ could be appropriated as a form of symbolic capital
to command respect among a peer group. The failure of the police to
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Street Crime
bring street robbery under control thus weakened the credibility of social
control agents, which in turn fuelled the rise in street crime further.
In considering the role of police performance, specifically in high-
crime areas like Lambeth, a number of other factors also need to be
considered. All inner-city areas pose more problems for the police than
rural or suburban areas. In the case of Lambeth, these problems have
been accentuated historically by a legacy of poor police/community
relations and a history of urban disorder in the 1980s (Scarman 1981).
Lambeth, according to the Metropolitan Police’s own regulatory
authority, is recognized as being among the most difficult areas to police
in western Europe. While community relations have improved
remarkably in the last few years, not least as a consequence of a range of
initiatives led by the borough’s (then) innovative police commander
Paddick, imposing the rule of law in such areas is by no means easy to
achieve. One problem concerns the form of policing that would be
considered acceptable to the wider community in an era when their
representatives are now actively consulted. As one officer observed,
while active consultation had certainly improved community relations,
it did so, at a cost to the police of not being able to deploy all the coercive
powers at their disposal. Another issue concerns the probable impact on
areas like Brixton if strong-arm tactics were to be used. Order on the
streets is always, it should be noted, a negotiated affair. Enforcing control
through coercive law and order means alone remains problematic, not
least because community memories are long and disorder remains a real
possibility. While reclaiming the streets from street robbers consequently
remains a police priority, it is evident that police attempts to accomplish
this have to occur in ways that ensure recent gains in their relationship
with the wider community are not prejudiced.
Punishment
Though the police are often seen as the key institution in the fight against
street crime, the role of the judicial system and the organizations that
support it must also be considered of fundamental importance.
Cumulatively, these bodies perform a number of important functions. In
the act of punishment dispensed to offenders, a message is sent out to the
public that they have erred and should desist from further offending. To
ensure that offenders who have been caught understand the deterrent
message they have received, they are also subjected to a range of
interventions designed to ensure that they are rehabilitated, or at least
that the risk they are held to pose is managed.
The sanctions that the state deploys to deter and punish those guilty of
street crime can range from benign forms of intervention, evident in
146
community sanctions delivered through referral orders, through to what

may be regarded as harsh and punitive custodial sentences. With the
formation of Youth Offending Teams, the New Labour government
initiated the formation of local multiagency crime-prevention bodies
whose principal aim has been to prevent offending by young people
under 18. While the aim of intervention for under-18s is towards non-
custodial solutions, detention orders are also often deployed for this age
group in the case of street crime because of its association with violence.
For those over 18 charged with street crime, the sentence is almost
always custodial and often lasts for around 3 years, a penalty no doubt
reflecting the government’s desire to be seen to be ‘tough on crime’.
Whether or not the offence was first-time made little difference to the
way offenders were treated, as we found in our research in Lambeth
using local data supplied by the probation service. Ethnicity did,
however, as 96 per cent of young black males received custodial
sentences, as opposed to 68 per cent for the white population. The
ferocity underpinning this punitive response, it could also be noted,
made the tariff for street robbery far higher in the area than that for
assault, according to the same data.
As to whether this get-tough policy is appropriate and useful, a
number of fairly critical observations could be made. First, if the aim of
the punitive response was to deter street crime, then self-evidently it has
failed, as the rising tide of street crime offences testify. Second, it is very
expensive, as the bill for incarcerating young people is over £35,000 per
year per offender, according to Home Office figures. Third, from research
conducted among young offenders, it was evident that far from
significantly reducing the will to offend on the part of those receiving
custodial sentences, prison appeared to have had the opposite effect.
Recidivism rates remain at around 60 per cent, and, according to the
testimony of young people, far from the experience acting to prevent
crime, it placed them in a context where they were able to learn a number
of new techniques to prosecute it.
If we accept, as I argued earlier, that street crime is a behaviour that is
learnt, then, as interviews with young offenders testified, many of the
people they learnt their skills from, or who they hoped to impress, were
those who had already been processed through the penal system. Far
from preventing street crime, it could be argued that the current array of
judicial solutions, in their coercive form at least, exacerbate the very
problem they are supposed to prevent, in this case by returning young
men to their community as fully confirmed career criminals. As one man
observed when I asked about how his colleagues viewed him when he
had been released, ‘Yes I say I got respect.’
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Street Crime
If the aim of the judicial interventions to which young offenders were

subjected was designed to make them rethink their criminal behaviour,
their treatment at the hands of the judiciary often made this aim difficult
to realise in practice. To begin with, the timescale involved in disposing
of offenders often meant that the distance between their arrest and their
prosecution and eventual sentencing could run into months. It could also
be characterized by a number of delays. Far from this process making
offenders question their crimes, it would often appear to generate a sense
of anger and heighten an already high level of distrust and animosity. As
street robbers quickly realize prison is their inevitable destination, their
time on remand can often be viewed as one of preparation and not least
socialization to its rituals. Given that many street criminals quickly
become aware of what the judicial system has in store for them, this also
affects the way they view the white middle-class elites who typically
dispense justice. Far from seeing them as legitimate representatives of a
law whose application they respect, the response is often simply to
extend the proverbial middle finger on the basis that everything is a
foregone conclusion anyway.
As to their time spent inside prison, from the interviews conducted it
was by no means evident that the experience was particularly
redemptive in its outcome. As a number of offenders pointed out, getting
used to prison life was not difficult, and while its rituals were not
necessarily pleasant, they did confront the often aimless world of the
incarcerated young men with routines to which they could readily adapt.
As an offender remarked, ‘You don’t have to worry about food, paying
your bills, or having to find a job. They do it for you.’ All they had to do
was mind their business and do their best to avoid the endemic violence
that often characterized these harsh and austere institutions. Learning to
conform to rituals, however, is not the same thing as becoming a
reformed individual, and rituals alone do not provide for this.
As the prisons to which these young men were sent were often a
considerable distance from their homes, and as it is common prison
practice to shift prisoners between prisons, life inside also meant
considerable separation from their families and care workers. As
offenders are often seriously alienated from mainstream society and
consequently from the web of interdependencies that characterize
normal social life, this systemically practised rite of exclusion also works
to intensify further their alienation more generally. All of which makes
the task of reclaiming these young men much more difficult. As one said,
‘Prison, it don’t teach you nothing.’ And another, ‘I was only inside four
days and I learnt more crime inside than outside.’ When pressed on this
he spoke of how he had been taught to hot-wire a car.
148
When offenders were asked to specify if they could identify a moment

when they were forced to confront the consequences of what they had
done, then almost every young person I interviewed remarked that this
occurred when they had to confront their parents, specifically their
mothers. As one young man remarked when I asked him if there was a
moment when he found himself questioning his involvement in robbery,
‘Seeing my mother in tears. I don’t want to see her that way again’. This
was a point at which guilt appeared to be real. What the judges who
sentenced them generated was less a feeling of guilt so much as fear. To
be told you face a prison sentence was registered as a powerful
existential moment in their lives. ‘To be told you are going down … that
was scary.’ As the judicial bureaucratic juggernaut to which these young
men were now attached moved inexorably forward, however, and as the
professionals took control, the potential redemptive lesson the young
could have derived from this became lost. As professionals are not
people with whom young offenders may readily identify, and as the
language and rituals of the judicial domain remain opaque to their
experience, the system offers little opportunity or space to make
offenders question their criminal activity. As to the population of people
before whom they could be placed and whose opinions they might be
more likely to respect – namely representatives from their own
community – then these have no stake in the system at all. In effect, they
remain excluded from participation in the provision of justice altogether.
Not only does this further alienate the offender, but it also acts to alienate
the public from conflicts in which they have a stake: it’s their children
after all who get prosecuted and sent to prison. Another negative
implication is that in their exclusion, local communities become further
alienated from community safety providers, which in turn propels them
to embrace, as everyone does, the myth that the police can solve the
problem of street crime alone.
Situational crime prevention

Recent decades have borne witness to the creation of a new form of
criminology. By nature it is pragmatic, rational and instrumental in
orientation. Far from seeking grand solutions to the causes of crime, it
operates instead by seeking to discover technical solutions to specific
problems by attempting to design environments or goods in ways that
minimize the threat posed by crime in their area. Championed by the
Home Office in the 1980s, this form of criminology is known as
situational crime prevention (Clarke 1980). It is currently one of the most
important crime-prevention tools used by local community safety
providers. If we examine how situational crime prevention measures
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Street Crime
impact upon street crime, we will see that its results are variable. More
specifically, I would suggest that:
• Forms of situational crime prevention used to protect fixed targets

have helped make street crime more attractive to motivated offenders.
• The form of situational crime prevention that has been widely
deployed to help prevent street crime has been largely ineffective.
• Forms of situational crime prevention that might have been applied to
‘target harden’ consumable goods targeted by street robbers have not
been developed or deployed. In other words, what might have
worked has not been initiated.
If we examine where most situational crime prevention effort has been

concentrated, then research suggests that most has been directed at
‘target hardening’ the built environment. New buildings, for example,
are designed in ways that take into account issues of situational
defence and come, as it were, already hardened. They consequently
come complete with an array of design features that are specifically
designed to render them burglar-proof. In the case of commercial
premises such as shops, this can include sophisticated alarm systems,
burglar-proof locks, camera surveillance, and steel shutters that fortify
the building when it is closed. The attempt to design out crime also
extends much further than single buildings, and can include entire built
environments such as shopping centres and corporate business districts.
The use of this approach also extends to the way products such as cars
are designed.
Cumulatively, the impact of these initiatives has been to help reduce
crime selectively by reducing the availability of lucrative targets.
Statistically, the success of this enterprise can be seen in the falling rate of
burglary and car crime, and by the relatively low level of crime identified
in intensively fortified areas. In the case of Canary Wharf, for example, a
heavily defended retail/business area in London, crime rates within its
jurisdiction are minimal.
Paradoxically, an unforeseen circumstance of this strategy, I would
suggest, has been to make offences such as street robbery far more likely,
particularly in areas such as Lambeth. The reason for this is that street
criminals are not stupid, as we have seen. They weigh up the relative
costs and benefits associated with crime and many have come to the
conclusion that street crime is less difficult to prosecute than burglary
and there is little chance of detection. In addition, being young and poor,
they are unable to accumulate, as they also pointed out in interviews, the
150
necessary resources to initiate more lucrative financial ‘scams’ or become

involved in white-collar crime more generally.
If we now consider the situational measures that have been adopted to
confront street crime, these have principally centred around installing an
intensive array of CCTV cameras. Though originally located across
shopping precincts, current moves are also afoot to extend their
deployment into many of the local housing estates. In pursuing this path,
it should be emphasized local crime prevention partnerships are
following a strategy that is not only popular across the county, but a
strategy well-supported and funded by the government and the Home
Office. As a strategy it is also an experiment in crime control that is quite
unique to the UK. Other European countries and the United States, have
not embraced CCTV to anything like the same extent.
While the use of CCTV has been proven to have some impact on crime
rates, its utility as a street crime prevention tool is by no means proven.
Motivated offenders do consider issues such as where cameras are
situated when they plan their crimes, and consequently ensure that
many of their victims are targeted outside the scan-scape of the cameras.
Cumulatively the hydraulic effect of this is once again to shift street
crime elsewhere rather than diminish its prevalence. More disturbingly,
it would appear from the testimony of the young offenders interviewed
that they had also become well aware of the limits of CCTV as a detection
device. This was tied to their observation that its quality was often so bad
that even if a crime was caught on the camera, law-enforcement agencies
would not be able to recognize anyone from the footage. As one young
man observed when he was shown pictures of a street robbery taken
with CCTV, ‘They [the police] told me it was me. But I didn’t recognize
nobody. I didn’t even recognize myself.’ Street robbers also learnt from
experience that they were so fleet of foot that they would be long gone
before the camera observers could call upon law-enforcement agencies
to intervene.
Where situational attempts to design out street crime might have
worked, these have not been initiated. If mobile phones – perhaps the
single most important object of desire to street robbers – had been
designed in ways that made them more difficult to use, then self-
evidently they would not be stolen. The corporate producers of this
technology, however, did not consider or ignored the criminogenic
consequences of their technology, and this error was compounded in
turn by government failure to regulate the industry. This might be
considered odd, because the lessons of failing adequately to consider
such issues have been well-known for a long time to the Home Office, as
the case of car crime indicates.
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Social crime prevention

The responses to street crime considered so far relate to attempts to
address the problem either by preventing already motivated offenders
from going about their unlawful business or by dealing with them once
they have offended and have been caught. In this section I am going to
consider various social attempts to prevent young people from be-
coming motivated offenders in the first place. The kind of strategies that
would fall within this form of intervention would include:
• Attempts to warn and inform young people about the dangers and
moral consequences of rule-breaking.
• Providing activities so that young people can sublimate their urges in
more socially benevolent ways.
• Increasing the life chances of young people and their families in ways
that reduce the forms of exclusion and deprivation that constitute the
structural basis of street crime as an adaptive strategy.
Social attempts to prevent crime can take more ostensibly criminological

forms in so far as they are characterized by a conscious attempt to reduce
criminal behaviour through a particular policy. They may also be non-
criminological in design but nevertheless play a key crime-reduction
role. Attempts to provide information to young people about crime, for
example, would be an instance of the former, while using regeneration
funding to support marginal communities might be considered an
example of the latter. In what follows, using the three broad
characterizations of social crime prevention outlined above, we will
consider how each functions to reduce offending behaviour in general
and street crime in particular. As with the earlier discussions in this
chapter, I will use the situation in Lambeth as a case study.
While young offenders claimed in interviews that they were aware
street crime was a bad thing to do, they nevertheless came to do it
anyway and growing numbers of young people appear to be making the
same choice – as rising rates of street crime testify. While they had
internalized part of the message the wider society would have wanted
them to register (that street crime was a bad thing), evidently many
young men had not received the message in a way that meant anything
substantially to the choices they made. If we examine why, then we need
to attend clearly to a number of problems evident in the content of the
messages that are mediated, how crime-prevention messages are
mediated and those responsible for mediating them.
152
If we consider what anti-street crime messages are mediated, the first

observation that can be made is that those disseminated to young people
were not mediated in a clear or consistent way. The reason for this would
appear to be that the borough, as with the wider society, had no clear or
coherent policy. To this could be added the observation that the
dissemination of such messages was considered the sole business of
parents and guardians and, in an uncoordinated and secondary role,
teachers in schools. Because there is no clear and coherent agreement
between the various stakeholders in the area about what such a strategy
should be, no consistent message or information has been provided. The
upshot of this is that each school adopts a more or less go-it-alone policy
on the issue of crime prevention, and outside periodic visits by police
officers to the schools who deign to admit them, there is no consistent
crime-prevention message.
The outcome of this is that young people are often left with little
understanding of the criminal justice system, how it operates, or what it
will do to them if they break the law and are caught. They also know little
about what happens to victims who are victimized, or what happens
when weapons are used in events like armed robbery. Though schools
certainly have anti-bullying policies, they are not consistent with one
another. Evidence from the interviews conducted with young offenders
also suggests that young people are not provided with the information
that would allow them to access the criminal justice system when they
themselves are victimized. Most young people are highly suspicious of
involving the adult world anyway, on the basis that this would provoke
more problems for the future.
While the decision motivated offenders make to target victims will
occur independently of whether or not the local authority provides an
array of more gainful activities, the provision of such services still
remains important, not least to multiply deprived and disadvantaged
young people most at risk of becoming involved in street crime. First, the
provision of a wide and comprehensive set of activities for young people
can be viewed as part of a process of social investment in young people’s
lives, independent of other reasons that might be used to justify it. They
deserve to be able to have designated safe and interesting areas in which
to play, and an array of leisure and social activities they can pursue if
they so desire. Such spaces also provide opportunities for implicit
educational messages to be mediated – including anti-crime messages.
By engaging in activities with others, including other young people and
adults, positive ties of interdependence can be encouraged that may act
to offset the alienating and anomic tendencies of the wider free-market
society.
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Street Crime
Like many boroughs in London, the state of the youth service in areas
like Lambeth and, not least, its contribution to community safety effort
remains questionable. It is certainly not able in its current form to
perform the crime-prevention role outlined above. There are a number of
reasons that may be posited to account for this. First, in common with
other boroughs, the idea of a youth service organized around the
comprehensive provision of youth clubs has been questioned and
abandoned. Second, this questioning has gone hand in hand with a series
of sustained budget cuts that have literally decimated the forms of
provision the council did operate or support. Third, in the face of
financial retrenchment, the local authority has responded by effectively
off-loading responsibility for youth provision onto a voluntary sector ill-
equipped to undertake the infrastructure support role now being foisted
upon it. Fourth, given access to inherently limited and precarious
funding regimes, those seeking to work productively with young people
are forced to engage in ‘beauty competitions’ in order to sustain often
minimal funding for their activities.
While by no means decrying the activities of those who do provide
services for young people, questions also need to be posed as to whether
the services meet the needs of all their potential consumers and fulfil
what may be considered a relevant community safety role. While
organiza-tions such as the scouts, guides, army and navy cadets and
woodcraft folk are worthy and continue to attract a population of young
people, it is by no means evident that their appeal is particularly great to
high-risk populations in deprived areas – the populations, in other
words, most at risk of becoming engaged in street crime. Though
recognizing that new spaces in place of old youth clubs need to be
constructed, there remain few bold experiments that are orientated
towards constructing such environments. Many of the kinds of activities
that high-risk groups might value such as gyms, access to studios and
electronic music equipment are either lacking or remain prohibitively
expensive – as young offenders pointed out in interviews.
If we consider street crime as an adaptive strategy to thwarted
consumption, and thwarted consumption as a function of real and rising
patterns of relative deprivation in the borough, then self-evidently an
important crime-reduction strategy must lie in reducing these factors. If
we look at the social policies that might help to achieve this pattern of
reduction, these are embraced within the general rubric of social
regeneration measures that have been deployed in the last two decades.
Though the crime-reducing aspect was not a principal aim of social
regeneration, in recent years this function has increased dramatically. In
fact, regeneration effort is often spoken of as if it were a de facto crime-
154
prevention strategy (Hancock 2003). While headline figures attest to the

inward investment of substantial sums of money to inner-city areas
where street crime is high, it is by no means clear that the way spending
priorities have been established has actually helped to reduce street
crime. Indeed, I will show how the uneven regeneration that was
attempted in Lambeth actually contributed significantly to its rising
street crime problem.
As a precursor to this, however, it is worth noting the amount of
regeneration expenditure that has flowed into the borough since the
urban disorders of the 1980s. As the partial list below indicates, the sums
involved are substantial:
• Single Regeneration Budget £250 million (1994–2007)

• Housing £169 million (1998–2002)
• Health Action Zone £25 million (1998–2005)
• Education Action Zone £3 million (1998–2002)
• New Deal for the Communities £50 million (2001–2011)
• URBAN 2 £16 million (2000–2006)1
Regeneration measures have been implemented with the best intentions,

stressing the importance of ‘partnership, sustainability, people focus,
work as a route out of poverty, connectivity, opportunity and influence’.
As the local authority and, not least, deprived communities have come to
recognize, however, the social impact of regeneration schemes has been
uneven and not everyone has benefited.
As the regeneration literature provided by the council notes, a
considerable slice of the regeneration pie has been spent on improving
the environment through physical regeneration projects, including
substantial investment in retail and the cultural industries in areas
within Lambeth, such as Brixton, as we saw earlier. To an extent the
regeneration programme has worked to make a once-notorious inner-
city area attractive both to business and to new professionals who have
moved into what is recognized as an increasingly desirable place to live.
The ‘success’ attendant upon building a successful and dynamic 24-hour
night-time economy, however, comes with significant issues attached.
The renaissance has brought into the area the kind of population which
now constitutes the majority of the victim population. As new (pre-
dominantly white) professionals have arrived, they have also pushed up
land and property prices. These are now well beyond the reach of poor
populations, who are left with no alternative but to occupy areas
characterized by highly deprived and physically denuded estates.
Neither has the regeneration effort offset the pattern of existing
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Street Crime
deprivation in the area to a significant extent, or at least to an extent to

which it might impact on rates of crime. Nor has it compensated for
economic changes that still act to produce a highly inequitable
distribution of life chances in the area.
The facts are stark. As regeneration literature provided by Lambeth
Council shows, it is the only borough in central London ‘to have
experienced a net loss of employment over the period 1991–1998’. The
report also states that the area has ‘the highest number of unemployed
claimants in the central London area across all age groups and for all
durations’. Though unemployment and deprivation remains a factor im-
pacting negatively on the health and wellbeing of all ethnic communities
in the borough, its impact has been experienced acutely by the area’s
indigenous black population, which unsurprisingly makes up the vast
majority of street crime offenders.
Let us now draw together the unintended consequences of re-
generation policy. By making Lambeth more attractive to professionals
and businesses, while doing little to improve the conditions of depri-
vation experienced by local communities, the cumulative and un-
intended effect has been to accentuate relative deprivation as opposed to
reducing it. As a strategy that might be expected to improve the social
conditions that provoke criminal adaptations, the net effect has been to
accentuate the very conditions that provoke it. Hell, as they say, is often
built on the best of intentions.
The coordination and integration of community safety

Let me now conclude this analysis of control effort by examining issues
pertinent to its coordination and integration. In the era of holistic, joined-
up policy and sustained multiagency working, just how holistic and
joined-up has community safety effort proved to be? As I will now argue
in the case of street robbery in Lambeth, an important and contributing
factor to its increase was certainly the failure to have in place a co-
ordinated and well-organized community safety strategy.
At first sight, the borough may be considered to have met most of the
terms of the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act in the organization of its com-
munity safety effort. It has a crime unit attached to the local authority, it
has constructed a Youth Offending Team and has formalized multi-
agency partnership working through the creation of a Crime and
Disorder Executive and Community Safety Partnership. It also has a
dedicated series of working groups in the field of community safety, not
least among which is a street crime strategy group.
If we consider how this control system operated and focused its effort
on confronting street crime, a number of issues can be raised regarding
156
its effectiveness. Cumulatively, as we shall see, the various bodies act to

subvert the aim of confronting street crime in an effective and concerted
way.
First, while multiagency working was a feature of the borough, not all
relevant agencies were represented. Education and Youth Services
tended to avoid contact with community safety providers, even though
both might well be regarded as being of fundamental importance in
helping to develop policies to confront offences like street robbery. This
absence could be considered a product of three factors. First, ignorance
of the implications of section 17 of the Crime and Disorder Act meant
that many key authorities did not believe that crime was anything to do
with them at all. This was certainly the case with local schools. Second,
most parts of the local council operated under the illusion that the
council’s crime-reduction role was solely the responsibility of its
appallingly under-funded Crime Unit. Third – and importantly – the
autonomy conceded to local schools in order to ‘free’ them from local
authority control meant that they had no obligation to become involved
in collective efforts to confront crime. Many, it could be observed,
decided not to. Nor for that matter did local political elites who, in the
face of rising crime figures, appeared unwilling to associate themselves
with community safety providers in a context where efforts to confront
street crime did not appear to be working. In fact, political elites in the
area had until 2002 favoured maintaining a complete distance from law-
enforcement agencies altogether. Practically, this resolved itself in non-
attendance at multiagency partnership boards and, in the case of the then
ruling party (a New Labour administration), a consistent unwillingness
to meet with the Metropolitan Police commander, even when this was
requested. Local politics and crime were therefore never meaningfully
connected in Lambeth, even though high rates of street crime in the
borough were perceived both locally and nationally as a serious issue.
When finally the New Labour administration did get around to
addressing the scale of the problem (after visits from Home office
ministers and not least the reality check posed by local elections), their
intervention was less than impressive. Despite being a nominally left-of-
centre administration, they had no hesitation in adopting a hard-line
punitive strategy. If elected they claimed they would create a ‘multi-
agency zero-tolerance hit squad’. They were not re-elected.
Though community safety is a term often used in criminological
literature to describe local crime effort, in many respects if the term is
used to define a holistic approach to the problems posed by street crime,
it is hard to suggest that this can be observed in practice. Government-
established priorities have typically focused on situational prevention,
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Street Crime
not least through the provision of significant sums of money that local
authorities are then obligated to bid for (Hughes 2002). As for more
proactive measures then, as we have seen above, those who might be
expected to be involved in these either absent themselves from the
policy-making table, or are so autonomous that they are not obligated to
sit at the table at all. The sheer proliferation of funding streams and the
orientation towards short-term funding also subverts ideas of collective
effort or effort that works towards securing long-term goals. The number
of strings typically attached to projects funded by government, working
as they do in conjunction with systemic biases that favour situational
prevention, also prevent a wider and more holistic agenda being pur-
sued, because the necessary autonomy local partnerships require to plan
in this way is effectively subverted. What these constraints result in, I
would suggest, is the construction of a climate in which developing a
fully holistic and comprehensive solution to street robbery is always
likely to be subverted from the beginning. This has certainly been the
case in Lambeth, as its rising robbery rate suggests.
The inherent disorganization in community safety practice itself fuels
this fragmentation, not least because it provokes the development of
more managerialist solutions to wider social problems that are then
imposed by government to ensure more joined-up thinking, better
partnership working, etc. in a policy context that already subverts such
outcomes to begin with. Lambeth was an interesting case study into the
nature and often futility of such measures. Let me explain.
In the face of the street robbery epidemic in Lambeth, the government
(after seeking to blame everyone else for the problem) decided to initiate
firm action. Deputations of the powerful were despatched to Lambeth
with orders to ‘knock heads together’,2 while advisory bodies such as
Government Office for London (itself under pressure from the govern-
ment) unleashed a stream of managerial directives designed to integrate
and coordinate community safety effort more effectively. At its best this
pressure would eventually lead to a more integrated structure of pro-
vision within the borough. It would certainly lead the council to place
crime control far more at the centre of its agenda than had hitherto been
the case. Managerialism, however, has its limits and any consideration of
deficits in control has to address these.
The chosen vehicle by which the government and its advisors chose to
improve the system of delivery in Lambeth (as well as other high street
crime boroughs) lay in making local crime-prevention teams develop a
barrage of strategies designed to address the problem. Many of these
involved serious duplication with other strategies. Thus, in addition to
having to deliver a Crime and Disorder Audit along with an associated
158
Local Crime Reduction Strategy (in line with statutory responsibilities

under the terms of the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act), ‘high crime’
boroughs such as Lambeth were also obligated to produce Youth Crime
Reduction Strategies as well. These required the production of action
plans and were, not least, supposed to link directly with the wider crime-
reduction strategy. Without even pausing to consider whether or not the
wider strategy already contained a street crime reduction element (it
did), under government pressure inner-city London boroughs were
directed to prepare a street crime reduction strategy as well as and in
addition to the others.
Only this time, things were going to be different. For far from a
strategy giving rise to an action plan – with a panoply of bench marks
and milestones so favoured by British society – the government
instructed local crime-prevention boards to reverse the process and
produce their action plans before the strategy. Yes, before the strategy
itself had been formulated, and therefore a procedure that eliminated
any rationality that actually remained in the system to begin with.
Needless to say, this all required a considerable effort, and was also
exacerbated by the injunction on local partnerships to forward the
results of all initiatives that might have a bearing on street robbery on an
ongoing monthly basis in order to demonstrate how successful the
initiatives were.
While this might appear to have been a serious attempt to make errant
crime-reduction teams responsible at the local level, as someone work-
ing in the policy field this was not how it appeared to me (I was working
at that time as an advisor to the community safety partnership). What
was really going on was far less rational behaviour that made a dif-
ference, and far more an exercise in symbolic governance (this could also
be read as a serious disconfirmation of Garland’s thesis about the
inherent rationality of what he positively terms ‘the criminologies of
everyday life’ (Garland 1996).) What it involved was the production of
vast quantities of paper that reconstructed the real world in a simulation
that bore little relation to reality. It was all profoundly postmodern.
Though the barrage of government initiatives made little sense from
the standpoint of practical intervention, as Tonry has convincingly
argued, in many respects it was not the audience of practitioners the
government was seeking to appease. The real target, he suggests, was
tabloid opinion, and this New Labour sought to manipulate through
promoting symbolic initiatives designed to maintain the image of a hard-
line law-and-order government getting to grips with serious problems. A
strategy less evidence-based in its approach to the problem of street
robbery and more ‘improvisational’, to use Tonry’s term:
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Street Crime
Astonishingly at a time when both official police data and the

British Crime Survey’s victimisation data showed overall crimes
rates were declining, the government, the judiciary, and the
Metropolitan Police panicked. In January 2002 the Court of Appeal
in an opinion of Lord Justice Woolf held that a minimum 18-month
prison sentence was appropriate for street robbers ‘irrespective of
the age of the offender’ […] In February the Metropolitan Police
diverted hundreds of officers from other duties to focus on street
crime in eight London boroughs. Also in February Tony Blair
established a street crime committee and assigned 10 ministers to
oversee street crime initiatives in ten areas. In March Blair con-
vened the first of a series of multi agency meetings in Downing
Street and Blunkett initiated his Street Crime initiative in which
5,000 officers were diverted from other issues. (Tonry 2004)
Conclusion
In conclusion, while the rise of street robbery can certainly be attributed

to the problems posed by motivated offenders targeting suitable and
available targets, this is only part of the problem. As this chapter has
tried to demonstrate, any consideration of rising street robbery must also
look at the deficits in social control that rising street robbery clearly
demonstrates. As this chapter has established, rising robbery, not least in
high-crime areas such as Lambeth, was provoked by failures in the way
the problem was policed and offenders dealt with, by inappropriate
social interventions, and the irrational application of situational crime
prevention measures.
Notes
1 Source: Lambeth Regeneration and Planning Department (unpublished

report 2002).
2 On two occasions during the period of research I conducted in Lambeth, I
heard the borough described in these terms by various Home Office officials.
160
Conclusion
Chapter 10
Conclusion
Having produced a book on street robbery, it would now appear

incumbent to conclude by providing some answers to the question,
‘What is to be done to prevent it?’ This, after all, would provide a neat
closure around the issues I have been discussing, and would chime well
with the general ethos of administrative criminology which stresses the
need to develop pragmatic solutions to the problems posed by crime.
While recognizing that providing suitable solutions is what I am
supposed to be in the business of doing, I nevertheless feel obliged to
refuse the invitation – at least at this moment. This is not, I hasten to add,
because I am of the opinion that we should do nothing, or that sug-
gestions concerning what should be done about street crime are none of
my business. My problem is that I remain unconvinced that the ways we
have been enjoined to consider street robbery and intervene to prevent it
are ultimately the right ways. To begin with, I remain deeply troubled by
the interpretative grid that has been applied to make sense of street
robbery. As a society we are not, I would say, looking at the problem in
the right way. The second problem follows on from this, for if our
explanations err, then so do the policies posed as solutions. For just as
night follows day, so the one follows from the other. To put this another
way, if there are problems in our interpretation, there will be problems in
the solutions that we select on the basis of it. This is, at the same time, a
normative problem as well as a question of what works and what does
not. It is normative precisely because the solutions we apply might not
only fail, but they may also be profoundly unjust at the point of
implementation. The problem of crime, after all, is as much a problem of
control as it is of people breaking rules.
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Street Crime
Therefore, before we get to the part where questions about ‘What is to

be done?’ are resolved into a package of neat and tidy prescriptions, we
need to reconsider the way in which we have been enjoined to think
about street crime. For unless we see the world aright, we run the risk of
compounding one series of mistakes with others. With this injunction in
mind, I will present a critique of what I consider the orthodoxy on street
crime. I will then reconsider on the basis of this an alternative reading
predicated upon the analysis I have developed. I will conclude by
offering a few suggestions that follow from my prognosis.
So where are we going wrong? To answer this question, we need to re-

examine what passes for the dominant orthodoxy on street crime. For
while, as we saw earlier, there may well be a rich tapestry of explanations
for street robbery, it is worth bearing in mind that not all are accorded an
equal status in the life of society. Some come to achieve prominence and
are accorded the status of ‘truth’, and, on the basis of these, policy
decisions are made. Unfortunately the criteria of evidence and the
application of common sense count for little in deciding which inter-
pretations prevail, as we shall now observe.
Perhaps the most axiomatic and seemingly self-evident truth upon
which the emerging orthodoxy on street robbery is premised is the
pervasive assumption that street robbery is not a problem of our society,
so much as a problem that emanates from outside, whatever we imagine
this ‘outside’ to be. There is, or so this narrative imagines, an entity called
society that is essentially good. It is a place full of decent, hard-working
people doing enterprising things. Unfortunately, their capacity to do this
in recent years has been curtailed as a consequence of rising crime. It
comes in many forms and street robbery represents one of its worst
expressions. As the state has not put in place the measures necessary to
confront street robbery, so the problem has escalated – or so it is asserted.
The good society has consequently been transformed into a society of
victims.
The source of this problem is typically identified (as we have seen)
with a criminal class conceived in terms that define them as para-
digmatic outsiders. These are the street robbers: a population composed
of strangers who are strange precisely because they are alien. This alien
quality is attested to again and again through a criminology of
‘essentualised difference’ through which their outsider status is both
defined and confirmed (Garland 1996). These are folk devils whose devil
status is exemplified by their socio-economic position (as underclass); by
their familial status (the mal-socialized offspring of feckless mothers); by
their race (read ‘black mugger’); and by the deviant behaviour in which
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Conclusion
they engage (the use of illegal drugs and their love affair with casual
undiscriminating violence).
My point is this. If we begin with this interpretation and apply it to
make sense of the problem of street robbery, it is easy to see how a certain
array of solutions follows through from the prognosis it offers. For if the
problem to the inside (the good society) is that posed to it by a lawless
predatory outside (the underclass), then self-evidently the policy
response must be to defend the good society from its outside. So a
particular set of ‘solutions’ follows logically through from the prognosis
offered. One would include intensifying the defences of the good society
in order better to protect it from the enemy it confronts. Another would
be to heighten its vigilance in order better to know what its outside is
doing. These represent the kind of proactive measures that could be put
in place. There are, needless to say, more reactive responses. These
typically coalesce around the metaphor of a war. These would include
taking the appropriate steps to ensure that the outside is beaten back; or
alternatively, is taken out of circulation in ways that prevent its lethal
contagion. If this sounds too simple, let us consider just how far this
prognosis logically predicts the kinds of solutions we have seen actively
posed and proposed to the problem of street crime in recent years.
For intensifying defences read the gated community, situational
crime prevention and what Davis has identified as the pervasive
‘militarisation’ of public space that has followed through in its wake
(Davis 1990). For heightened vigilance read pervasive surveillance
evident in the rise of CCTV. As for ‘beating back’ the threat, read zero-
tolerance policing and increasing levels of stop-and-search directed at
the young and, not least, black communities. As for policies that embody
the need to remove the ‘outsider’ from circulation, read longer prison
sentences, the renaissance of incapacitation and – as an inevitable
outcome – the highest prison population in postwar British history.
The move from definition to solutions conceived in these terms
appears entirely logical and, to many, entirely just. After all, if the street
robber is an alien, and a dangerous one at that, then clearly all the policy
options outlined above must make good sense. Not only are they
workable solutions, but they are, in terms of this line of reasoning, also
socially just in that ‘just deserts’ are seen to be delivered to those for
whom harsh punishment is no more than deserved. Given the punitive
nature of our times, these policies also appear to chime well with the
needs of law and order that the public appears to demand from its
populist and authoritarian New Labour government.
My problem with this interpretation is that I do not accept the
prognosis offered and remain deeply concerned about the array of
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Street Crime
policies that are touted as its ‘logical’ solution. I oppose the prognosis on
the basis that, far from being an accurate representation of the truth of
street crime, it presents an untruth. As I will argue, street robbery, far
from being a problem society faces, is on the contrary a problem of our
society and of its contemporary organization and structure. The robber is
not an independent variable, but a dependent one. Just as I hold the
interpretation of the problem to be suspect, so I also remain deeply
worried about the kind of solutions that have been proposed to address
it, as these are shaped within and by this interpretation. My worries here
not only relate to the fact that many of the solutions are inappropriate
and consequently will not accomplish what is expected of them, but also
that they fail because it is my contention they are unjust. Finally, I remain
opposed to this orthodoxy because in its hegemony it reinforces a kind of
common sense about crime that is dangerous. In particular, it reinforces
the illusion that crime is associated with the most marginal sections of
our society, while absolving society and the powerful from their role in
creating the preconditions in which street crime flourishes.
When I argue that we need to conceive the problem of street robbery
as a problem of our society, my aim is to challenge the view that follows
from the dominant orthodoxy, which – as we have seen – is to consider
the robber as an outsider. Against this interpretative orthodoxy, I want to
restate the case for a criminology of sameness not of essentualized difference, a
criminology that recognizes the street robber as product of our society
and of the way in which our free-market capitalist society is organized.
In so doing, I want to suggest that the issue I am addressing is not a
minor squabble over semantics. On the contrary, it is fundamental to
how we perceive and ultimately engage with the problems street
robbery poses.
My disagreement with those who believe that the street robber is an
alien outsider are developed in Chapter 4, which examined and
criticized the forms of underclass thinking upon which this inter-
pretation rests. The terms of my critique were to suggest, in opposition to
such approaches, that they systematically overstated the otherness of the
street robber while losing sight of the many characteristics that unified
this figure with the society that had in effect produced him as a folk devil.
Most street robbers, as we saw, possessed moral consciousness, most did
not conceive their future in terms of a criminal career, and none of them
was driven to street robbery by the demands of a chaotic drug culture.
More to the point, as my own research confirmed, to understand why
they came to street robbery it was profoundly important to recognize
how far their need to possess the consumer objects they sought to
appropriate was a function of free-market capitalism and the cult of
164
Conclusion
compulsory consumption around which it is organized. Far from being,

as underclass thinking would categorize them, mal-socialized indi-
viduals, my research leads me to the conclusion that they are in fact
dangerously over-socialized, as their socialization is shaped by their all-
too-successful induction to capitalist consumption norms. To put the
matter bluntly, the street robbery problem in its contemporary form is a
problem of a society that induces young people to desire and covet the
very goods they have been pressurized from an early age to associate
with the good life. The kind of designer branded objects, in other words,
they have been led to desire through their exposure to the capitalist
culture industries that target them remorselessly and relentlessly. At the
same time, as we have also seen, this is a society which, while inducing a
universal desire on the part of young people to build their lifestyles and
establish their identifies through consumption, does not equip everyone
with the wherewithal to consume legitimately. Street robbers, while very
successful consumers, are nevertheless flawed consumers, and that is
their and our problem.
If this is the case, blaming young people for doing what they have
been led to understand is essential to their lives – that is, to consume
often and always – is a mistaken strategy, even if it is convenient. After
all, we have created the preconditions for the crime in which a growing
number of young people have become engaged. We have programmed
them to consume voraciously, to consume in order to manufacture their
designer brand lifestyles, and we are then surprised when they perform
in accordance with the given programme.
This is not, I recognize, a proposition many would like to
countenance. After all, maintaining the image of the street robber as
outsider is morally convenient. More than that, it makes for good denial.
Besides, if we do proceed on the basis that the robber is one of us and a
product of the social arrangements that define our society, then this line
of reasoning starts to raise a number of unpleasant implications for the
kind of society we have established for the young.
But the way the free-market society is organized is precisely the
problem, and we need to address it head-on if we are both to make sense
of street crime and consider what and how we should respond to it.
Might it be that the problem we are dealing with here is very much a
problem of a society which in its nature is inhuman and which ultimately
dehumanizes those subject to its fatal embrace? Might the street robber
be as much a victim of the free market as he is an offender that
mercilessly targets its citizens?
To examine this hypothesis, let us return once again to the facts: young
people who consume in order to construct their identities; who will even
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Street Crime
risk serious punishment if legitimate consumption routes are blocked;

and who will victimize those whose consumption is not deemed to be
appropriate.
My point is this. While it is easy to demonize the street criminal for
their inhumanity, these strange behavioural rituals are entirely con-
sistent with the seductive and spectacular world that consumer
capitalism has built and to which these young people have been so
relentlessly exposed. They are not, I am suggesting, acting against the
flow of the desires it wishes to marshal and harness in pursuit of its
profit; on the contrary, they are perfect desiring machines reproduced
exactly in its image, forged in the furnace of its being. They want what it
requires them to want – the goods produced by the culture industries.
They want this so badly that they cannot visualize life without such
things because – and this is where the machine is all-too-successful – out
of these ephemeral objects their life is established and their identities
constructed. Out of it, as we have seen, their habitat is established and,
through the rituals of possession and non-possession, distinction
achieved or denied.
It is of course an impressive achievement to have produced desiring
beings in this image. Brilliant really. Such a depth of penetration can only
be visualized as an index of the sophistication of the capitalist juggernaut
itself. It really is tantamount to what Jameson identified many years ago
as the cultural industry’s full and complete commodification of the
lifeworld and its penetration of the unconscious (Jameson 1984). Healthy
and productive however it certainly is not. In my estimation, the logic of
compulsory consumption is at least as unhealthy as the violence that
street robbers use to appropriate the goods they have been socialized
through it to desire and covet. And this is the rub. Without the one we
would not be confronting the other. Before we direct our vengeance at
the robbers for the impertinence of their flawed consumption, let us be
quite clear about the nature of the culture industry that helped produce
them as consumers. As Adorno and Horkhiemer wrote many years ago:
The culture industry perpetually cheats its consumers of what it

permanently promises. The promissory note which, with its plots
and staging, it draws on pleasure is endlessly prolonged, the
promise, which is all the spectacle consists of, is illusory: all it
actually confirms is that the real point will not be reached, that the
diner must be satisfied with the menu. (Horkhiemer and Adorno
1973)
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Conclusion
Capitalism may claim to offer everything to everyone, but what it

really offers in its free-market form is an impoverished world that
impoverishes the individuals within it. In the manner of a vacuum, it
also removes the oxygen in which other alternatives might thrive. Alter-
natives that might place limits on consumption by suggesting a vision of
the good life as something beyond or outside of the desire to consume
relentlessly. The problem of our age, though, is that commodification is
everything and everywhere. In the final analysis, it is all that there is.
As we saw when we considered the world of the offender, outside the
pull of the peer group and the commodified culture out of which it
produced itself, there really was little else available to these young men
as an alternative. Jobs for life were no longer part of what growing up
meant, because the offenders grew up in a post-full employment society.
They really were disadvantaged, as this process also blocked the
transition to adulthood that full-time work had once historically con-
ceded to working-class men. As for religion, it meant nothing to them.
And politicians? These were simply distant, irrelevant and distrusted.
Politics as such meant nothing. As for role models – they simply had
none.
They inhabited, in other words, a world where free-market capitalism
had won out over everything else. This really was a world which had
achieved the ‘end of history’ (Rukeyama 1992). A world where rampant
free-market capitalism was everything and where the mark of the market
was all there was. While their abandonment of emancipatory politics
might well be placed at the door of young people’s disenchantment with
the mendacity of politicians today, as well as the failure of faith com-
munities to speak to them in terms to which they can relate, such an
interpretation is nevertheless flawed. What it overlooks is just how
successful capitalism in its free-market form has been in eliminating
from the world any alternative to it. Seabrook draws out well the
implications of this hyper-real world and its impact on young people. ‘To
grow up under the domination of consumer capitalism is’, he argues:
to see that part of us which used to belong to society to be

colonised, torn away from traditional allegiances, and to be
hurtled, alone and isolated into the prison of an individual’s senses.
The child tends to be stripped of all social influences but that of the
market-place; all sense of place, function and class are weakened;
the characteristics of region or clan, neighbourhood or kindred are
attenuated. The individual is denuded of everything but appetites,
desires and tastes, wrenched from any context of human obligation
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Street Crime
or commitment. It is a process of mutilation; and once this has been

achieved we are offered the consolation of reconstructing the
abbreviated humanity out of the things and the goods around us,
and the fantasies and vapours which they emit. (Seabrook 1978)
This is a good description of the world the street robber inhabits. Their
‘mutilated’ world, and ours as well. The inhumanity of free-market
capitalism is that its way of being sets in motion the logic of consumption
that establishes the basis for the consuming desire that underpins the
contemporary problem of street crime. As we have also seen, its com-
modifying logic has helped to eliminate alternatives that might negate
this desire.
What really separates the street robber from young people in general,
however, is not the will to consume or the dominance of consumption
rites in their life. All young people, it could be argued, are subject to and
subjugated by this consuming imperative. What really separates them is
access to those avenues where consumption can be gratified legitimately.
At the end of the day, it is their subjugation to consumption in addition to
being situated in a socio-economic context where consumption rites can
not be legitimately satisfied that provokes the Mertonian adaptation that
resolves itself into street robbery. In other words, by consumption
pursued through illegal means. If the free market has subjugated young
street robbers at the point of their desire, it also excludes them forcefully
from those avenues that might allow consumption desires to be sub-
limated legitimately. As it incorporates them in one way, so it system-
atically excludes them in others.
Jock Young has recently and powerfully drawn attention to this
strange kind of society (Young 2001), a society that simultaneously
expels the very beings it incorporates in other ways. His powerful
metaphor is that of bulimia and the bulimic society. This condition, he
argues, is not simply a pathology of young women whose lives revolve
around rituals characterized by eating and vomiting. This trait also
describes well the operation of the contemporary free-market society. On
the one hand, it opens its arms to all, promising a future of eternal
material bliss. On the other, its social relations systematically ensure that
many are excluded from this material dream by being denied the
opportunity through which it can be appropriated.
The street robbers I studied in Lambeth illustrate this contradiction
starkly in their lives. They want and desire the good life as it is pre-
packaged in its commodified form by the culture industries. They want
to move onwards and outwards; they can visualize exit strategies. At the
same time this life is not achievable within the terms of the class position
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Conclusion
they have been allocated, in the very areas where they are forced to
grow up.
It is this feature of late capitalism, its pathological bulimic quality, that
distinguishes it from its earlier incarnation. And it is this feature that
makes the kind of street robbery we see in areas such as Lambeth today
different from that which prevailed in earlier times. In earlier phases of
its development, capitalism simply produced a class which was totally
excluded. This is the class of poor people studied by people like
Mayhew. In such an exclusionary order, robbery was not conditioned by
the need to construct an elaborate lifestyle, but emerged as a pragmatic
response to terrible patterns of deprivation and poverty. For those with
nothing, it really did mark a survival choice. What you appropriated
could be exchanged for the bare necessities of life. It could be observed
that this is a perennial feature of poor societies. It is and remains a source
of livelihood for those who have none.
While certainly located in poorer socio-economic groups, the street
robbers of today are different because they rob not in order to provide the
means for survival but to construct through the appropriation of
desirable goods a lifestyle and through this an identity they conceive as
essential to their wellbeing. To look at this another way, you do not need
to steal mobile phones in order to eat, you do so in order to accumulate
the appropriate symbolic capital through which being – as it is defined
within consumer capitalism – is accorded meaning. Yes it is still about
questions of survival, but the terms by which survival is now registered
have changed significantly.
At this point, let me attempt to offset a criticism I can sense being
directed at this kind of analysis. This would be to suggest that I am
presenting the street robber as someone who in effect does not make
choices. My analysis, it could be claimed, denies their humanity even in
my attempt to restate it. It does so by presenting an over-socialized view
of the subject. In terms of this critique, I could be considered to have
produced a vision of an individual who has no capacity to exercise free
will, and who is simply a product of forces acting over and beyond them.
My response to this would be to return to the analysis I offered in
earlier chapters which, while attempting to understand what might be
considered the deeper structuring forces that propel young people to
crime, also examined processes of differential association as these were
also experienced. As this analysis made clear, the route-way towards
crime was by no means simple. Choices could be made. There was no
one-way street. The making of choices, however, was always, as I also
sought to establish, initiated within parameters established by the nature
of the world in which they lived and the round of their lives. These were,
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Street Crime
from the outset, also curtailed in terms of the possibilities they made
available or obviated. A particular configuration of forces, for example,
could well make the road to street crime a likely choice for a particular
young man, especially when this configuration involves finding yourself
in the proximity of already existing outlaw cultures, a highly developed
illegal and grey market, and a general cultural tolerance of street crime
among your peer group. It could well be, though, that even in the context
of such a world the choice to commit crime was not made. Maybe some
significant person could and did make a difference. Nothing, in other
words, is inevitable. Most young people, after all, do not go on to become
street criminals.
Having reconsidered the way we have often been enjoined to examine

street crime, I now feel at last able to conclude with some final thoughts
on what should be done about the problems street robbery poses. There
are, of course, a number of ways in which this game could be played out.
Before offering my final thoughts on the matter, let me briefly review the
solution society has unfortunately elected. As we saw above, this
involved seeking to raise society’s defences against the outsider, allied to
a more punitive thrust directed at waging war with them.
Now I recognize that this is certainly a popular move in the kind of
law-and-order society we unfortunately inhabit. I also recognize that by
increasing the net capacity of the repressive apparatus, at a certain point
in time it might well pay some dividends. This of course presupposes
that rates of detection dramatically improve, that blockages in the
judicial process are removed (which would lower attrition rates), and
that the government shows willing to incarcerate even more young men.
This is certainly the solution favoured by the right, and to its ongoing
detriment appears to be the solution appropriated by the New Labour
government of Blair and Blunkett. Integral to the way in which this
vision of success was presented was a call upon the government to
embrace US-style zero-tolerance policies. Before we embrace US-style
mass incarceration, however, and before we subject our police to yet
further paramilitarization, we need to be mindful of a few truths about
what is being proposed.
To accomplish this, let us consider in turn the idea that we can
(a) police our way out of street crime; (b) design our way out of it; and
(c) lock our way out of it. While zero tolerance might well be the
preferred option of many, it is worth noting that the aggressive targeting
of young men in poor areas is by no means new. On the contrary, this is
very much the kind of policing that black communities in areas such as
Brixton were already subject to in the not-too-distant past (Scarman
170
Conclusion
1981). As it was then and as it is now, such a policy is likely to provoke a

backlash far worse than the problems it wishes to solve, particularly
given that large numbers of innocent young people are likely to be on the
receiving end of the repression at the core of the ‘solution’. It was in
recognition of this that the police division in Lambeth sensibly avoided a
zero-tolerance approach more recently in its own more measured
approach to street robbery. Just as importantly, while the tabloid right
unquestioningly accepts that zero tolerance actively reduces crime, more
detailed and sober analysis of the evidence by no means supports such a
claim (Bowling 1999).
The blanket and undiscriminating side of other repressive legislation
pioneered by New Labour in recent years, such as curfew and anti-social
behaviour orders, also falls foul of a similar critique. It might appease the
right and might also send out the right electoral signal to a security-
conscious and insecure public, but at the point of implementation, such
policies are destined to failure. In and of themselves they will not stop or
terminate street robbery. They remain simply unworkable aspects of
symbolic governance in the context of a society that has well and truly
lost its way on law and order.
Locking our way out of the street crime problem remains, as we have
seen, another popular solution in the authoritarian armoury. It clearly
remains a popular project, but is one fraught, I would suggest, with
numerous risks and dangers attached. These ultimately undermine its
credibility as either an appropriate response or indeed a just one. As a
solution it entails embracing the idea that prison actually works as a
disincentive to offenders and thus constitutes an appropriate response to
the problem street robbery poses. These assumptions, however, do not
stand up to critical scrutiny, as we shall now see.
Let us begin with the question of whether or not prison actually
works. The first response to this would be to suggest that there is little
evidence to show that rehabilitation is what prison achieves, even if this
is its stated purpose. As my interviews with young offenders suggested,
the judicial ritual was not one they had much respect for, nor indeed is it
designed in ways that lead people to respect it. The language of law was
impenetrable to them, while the judiciary were simply considered as
figures of oppression that had very little to do with justice. While it
cannot be denied that some offenders came to see the error of their ways,
once subject to the dehumanizing regimes of prison life many more
clearly did not. In fact, research suggests a ‘revolving door’ system often
operates. According to the government’s own figures around 60 per cent
of offenders are destined to leave prison and offend again. Prison,
despite our endless investment in it, does not work to make bad people
171
Street Crime
better. All it typically does is brutalize better those who have already
been brutalized.
Given that the majority of street robbers are under 18, it could be
remarked that if Lord Woolf’s call to imprison these was taken at face
value, the government would not only be pushing more young people
into precisely the kind of places they need to avoid, but it would also
mean abandoning one of the few government initiatives that was
actually evidence-based. This was the truth, stated clearly in the 1998
Crime and Disorder Act, that held that locking young people away was
ultimately a counterproductive thing to do and consequently needed to
be avoided where possible. This truth was embraced in the creation of
Youth Offending Teams which had as their mission a clear commitment
to ensure that under-18s were dealt with through non-punitive measures
where at all possible. Promoting Orwellian double-think is of course
something all governments engage in, not least in pursuit of demon-
strating effective statecraft to their sceptical electorates. Quite why New
Labour should choose to abandon one of the few intelligent planks of its
penal policy, however, beggars belief. What it does suggest is just how
cravenly abject the government can be to the right-wing tabloids and
their distorted perspectives on law and order (Tonry 2004).
Next there is the vexed question of whether or not a prison sentence is
a just punishment for street robbery. Now clearly if a person is assaulted
and if serious injuries are sustained, then a good case could be made for
such a sentence. As our research in Lambeth indicated, however, a prison
sentence, far from being used as a means of last resort for the worst street
crime offenders, had become the single preferred way of addressing the
problem, specifically for those over the age of 18. Indeed, as the figures
graphically indicate, if you were black you would invariably receive a
prison sentence, even if the offence was your first (Hallsworth and Richie
2002). Indeed, a sentence of incarceration for street robbery in Lambeth
was far more likely than the possibility of receiving one for assault. This
might well be read as indicative of the success of a project built on a
politics of judicial vengeance, but from where I stand it appears sympto-
matic of a sense of reason that has gone astray.
The adherents of lock-down solutions might do well to consider the
material cost of the incarceration policies they want to sanction. A mobile
phone costs around £100. It costs over £35,000 per year to imprison an
offender for stealing one. There is no reason to suppose that a single
prison sentence will be the last for those sent to prison the first time
round. Incarceration is not, in other words, value for money or money
well spent. If private corporations operated the same way, they would
undeniably be closed down.
172
Conclusion
Finally, let us consider the implications that follow though from that
other great growth industry, situational crime prevention. Is it possible
to solve the problem of street crime by aspiring simply to design the
problem away? Though I remain sceptical of situational approaches, not
least because these are too often disarticulated from a social crime-
prevention agenda, there is certainly a case to be made for suggesting
that this approach offers a better chance of success than the repressive
measures considered above. Having made this point, it must be noted
that the success of an intervention strategy is measured not by what it
may promise but by what it concretely achieves. Despite all its talk of
identifying ‘rational’ and ‘pragmatic’ solutions to problems such as
street robbery, and despite the huge sums of money invested in
implementing such solutions in relation to it, situational crime
prevention has failed spectacularly.
As I argued in Chapter 9, the kinds of situational defences that could
have worked were never implemented, for example immobilizing
mobile phones after they had been stolen. At the same time, expensive
interventions that did not work were implemented with a recklessness
that was extraordinary. And so we find ourselves today inhabiting a
country subject to more pervasive CCTV than any other society in the
world – without any tangible evidence that this technology could and
does prevent street robbery. As with zero-tolerance policing and other
reflex strategies such as curfew, what this particular instance of
‘pragmatic’ what-works criminology represents is less a rational ‘joined-
up’ response to a particular problem and far more a symbolic, politically
motivated empty gesture with sinister overtones.
So what can be done to confront street robbery? I will begin by pre-

senting the less contentious of my conclusions. I will finish by presenting
some ideas many are likely to find less acceptable. All, as we shall see,
follow through from my reading of the problem of street robbery less as
an independent variable and more as a dependent variable, and thus as a
product of our society.
While we must always accept street robbers as a product of the kind of
society in which we live, this does not mean that things do not need to be
done actively to prevent them from perpetrating more robbery. Free-
market capitalism is a brutalizing force, but this does not obviate or
excuse the brutality of street robbery. Clearly those who engage in it need
to be stopped.
To stop them, however, we need to engage with solutions that do not
dissolve into a destructive war premised upon a politics of judicial
vengeance. To begin with, we do not require in any shape or form the
173
Street Crime
kind of reactive zero-tolerance policing the tabloid right want to see

imposed. Nor do we require a further intensification of ill-thought-out
unworkable blanket strategies such as curfews. Finally, and this is
perhaps the single most important intervention initiative I can suggest,
we do not require symbolic kneejerk political interventions designed to
play to the court of tabloid reactionary opinion. Effective solutions
require, on the contrary, implementing proportionate intelligence-led
approaches to the problem, and this is somewhat different. In fact, it
means doing precisely what the police have begun to initiate anyway in
schemes such as Safer Streets, which develop new ways of responding to
the problem of street crime where it occurs. As they have found, this
might mean placing extra police in street crime hot spots, using and
developing better intelligence, and responding faster to crimes when
they have been perpetrated. Such an approach does not preclude robust
policing, but it does delimit how it is deployed and to whom.
Though I have been critical of the way situational crime prevention
has or indeed has not been used to confront street robbery, this does not
also mean it cannot play an important role in the solution to the problems
street robbery poses. There is indeed a lot that can be accomplished. Most
significantly, though entirely belatedly, most phone companies have now
bitten the bullet and have finally introduced the means necessary to
immobilize mobile phones. It should have been forced upon them far
earlier, but better late than never. Design solutions to street robbery,
however, do not stop at the level of the mobile phone. The way that bags
are designed is also significant. You cannot, for example, grab a rucksack
in the same way as you can a handbag, and potential victims need better
education in order to ensure that they remain aware of common-sense
solutions such as this. On a positive note, victim education is now
recognized as an important variable by crime prevention partnerships,
even if it will only ever reap limited dividends.
It will by now have become evident that I am no lover of our prison
system or of the control agents that manage it. Pushing young men
through it constitutes, as I have argued above, a costly mistake. It will not
stop crime, it is a prohibitively expensive option and it does little to
confront offending behaviour among its client group. The real winners of
this particular lottery are those who always win anyway – the pro-
fessionals that thrive on crime and the harvest it reaps for them assessed
in terms of the material rewards they claim.
With this in mind, all I can do is remind the government of what its
sensible advisors have already argued: do not imprison more, imprison
less; and more than that, find better alternatives to prison as a matter of
urgency. Though it remains a solution that has yet to prove itself, the
174
Conclusion
decision to establish Youth Offending Teams was by and large a good

idea, as was the decision to use them as vehicles through which to
process young people under 18 as an alternative to gaol. If I have two
recommendations to make, the first is that it is not just the under-18s who
need saving from the judges and a prison sentence. Many young people
who are older than this arbitrary cut-off point also need to be dealt with
in a similar way, and this is something that needs to be addressed
urgently. Secondly, if street robbery has social causes, do not believe its
solution can be found in subjugating the offender to courses in ill-placed
and ill-thought-out cognitive therapy. The street crime problem is with
society, not within the individual and his or her anger.
I am far more for a system of control that places the business of
punishment back in the community. Having interviewed numerous
offenders, what often struck me was how alienated they were from the
people who typically tried them. Would it not, as a consequence, be far
better, to subjugate these young people to those whose opinions they
might just respect, rather than leave them to the world of magistrates
and judges whose opinions they do not? The kinds of people, in other
words, notoriously absent from our system of ‘justice’. While this may be
read as a support for restorative justice, this support is qualified. Using
restorative justice methods such as Restitution Orders as yet another
adjunct to the judicial response young people receive anyway appears to
me to be less ‘restorative’ and far more a second punishment – not an
alternative to the punishment they already receive. If we want to embed
restorative justice it must be instead of judicial processing not simply
another aspect of net-widening.
Using the police and the criminal justice system, though, is to deploy
‘solutions’ that are by their nature reactive, as opposed to proactive and
preemptive. They invariably presuppose the horse has already bolted.
Let me now conclude by considering what a proactive response might
look like. That is, a response that addresses causes without seeking to
devolve responsibility to the reactive forces that only deal with
symptoms.
If there is to be a solution to street robbery, it must ultimately come

through investing in the right way in poor communities. This must,
though, mean thinking through how money is spent and what it is spent
on. Lambeth, as we saw, like many other inner-city areas across the UK,
had its social infrastructure literally torn out throughout the 1980s. While
new money is certainly being pumped in through SRB, Communities
Against Drugs and initiatives like Children’s Fund, what must be
recognized is that the overall funding is still woefully small and short-
175
Street Crime
term in focus, even if headline figures look significant.1 Projects for

young people still remain terribly underfunded, while the kind of
workers who might well make an important difference to young people
and who work heroically with them (such as youth and community
workers) have found their conditions of service ever more marginalized.
The problem is that while some good work to alleviate poverty within
poor communities has been attempted, not enough has been done. Worse
still, when social-regeneration initiatives are propounded as ‘solutions’,
too often good work is compromised because the regeneration measure
in question actually creates the preconditions for rising street robbery (as
the example of Brixton’s developing 24-hour night-time economy
indicates), rather than attenuating them. The lesson for planners and
policy makers is to think through far more clearly what the crime
implications might be for the regeneration they plan. Lots of new bars in
a ‘poor’ area, for example, might well raise the profile of the local
economy, but can also create the preconditions for rising street robbery.
A further problem local communities face, as we have seen, is in
securing the autonomy to implement solutions that are right for them.
Too often, the funding available is only for what the government has
already decided communities deserve, which is less ‘government at a
distance’ so much as ‘in your face’. Lambeth, as we saw, was a case study
in twisted priorities. In 2002 it was awarded almost twice as much
money from government to develop its CCTV surveillance than had
been made available to fund its youth service. The solution to this
problem is to let autonomy mean autonomy.
With this in mind may I offer my final solution. I regard it as a form of
prudential reasoning and a form of risk management. Rather than put
even more CCTV cameras into areas already awash with them, spend the
money instead on youth services. Instead of sending young men to jails
that fail, spend the money you will save on mobile phones and give these
to young people. For one CCTV camera you can purchase a youth
worker for a year. For the cost of one year’s imprisonment, which now
stands, according to Home Office figures for 2001, at £35,939 (Home
Office 2003) two jobs could be created for young people without them,
while almost 3,000 mobile phones could be purchased and distributed. A
strange kind of economics to be sure, but then again this is a strange
society to begin with. If practised, however, it could work.
Note
1 In 2004, the New Labour government announced significant cuts to

Children’s Fund, its ‘flagship’ youth regeneration programme.
176
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Shore, H. (1999) ‘Cross coves, buzzers and general sorts of prigs: juvenile crime
and the criminal “underworld” in the early nineteenth century’, The British
Journal of Criminology, 39: 10–24.
Shore, H. (2003) ‘Inventing the juvenile delinquent in Europe’, in C.E.B. Godfrey
and G. Dunstall (eds), Comparative Histories of Crime. Cullompton: Willan
Publishing.
Smith, H.O.J. (2003) ‘The Nature of Personal Robbery’, Home Office Research
Study 254. London: Home Office.
Spierenburg, P. (1998) The Spectacle of Suffering. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Spraggs, G. (2001) Outlaws and Highwaymen: The Cult of the Robber in England from
the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century. London: Pimlico.
Sutherland, E. and Cressey, D. (1979) Principles of Criminology. Chicago:
Lippincott.
Sutton, M. (1998) Handling Stolen Goods and Theft: A Market Reduction Approach,
Home Office Research and Statistics Directorate, Research Findings No. 69,
London: HMSO.
Sykes G. and Matza, D. (1957) ‘Techniques of Neutralization: a Theory of
Delinquency’, American Sociological Review, 22: 664–70.
Taylor, J. (1973 (1630)) All the Workes of John Taylor the Water Poet. Menston,
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Penguin.
181
Street Crime
182
Index
Index
accessibility, suitable targets 100 armies

accident costs, corporate crime 65 participation in robbery 18
activities, for young people 153 see also soldiers
adaptive behaviours, fear of Asians, offender profiling 58
victimization 116 aspirations, of offenders 98
adaptive strategy, street crime as 129 assailants, assumptions about 52
adult groups, victimization 119–21 atavistic degeneracy 46
advertising, exposure to 125 authoritarian state 87
aetiology of crime 97–8 autonomy
Afro-Caribbeans, offender profiling through street crime 139–40
57 to implement solutions 176
age
of offenders 56 BCS see British Crime Surveys
of victims 59 Beggs, Thomas 44, 74
aggressive masculinity 135–6 The Beggars Opera 31, 41
agility, need for 131 benefit claims 126
alcohol use 60 bicycle theft 54, 55
alien quality, street robbers 162 biological reductionism 46, 68
alienation, prison life 148 black population
Allen, Thomas 25 assumptions of criminality 52
An Arrant Thief 21 racist agenda to prove criminality
Anabaptists 37 of 80–1, 89
anglers 35 representation in street crime 57,
anti-street crime messages 129–30, 58–9
152, 153 see also young black males
apprenticeship, street crime 6 Blair, Tony 160
aristocracy, participation in robbery blitz approach 62t, 64, 112
17 Blunkett, David 160
183
Street Crime
blunt instruments, use of 64 community sanctions 147

body language 137 community/police relations 146
bogus reports, criminal offences 52 condemnation, of street crime 128–9
boredom 132 confrontation approach 62t, 63
bourgeoisie, identification with cons 62t
highwaymen 31 consumer goods, as objects of desire
brand labels, inappropriate 117 111
British Crime Surveys consumer society, production of
importance and limitations 53 motivated offenders 123–41,
mobile phones 63 165–70
perpetrators of street crime 56, 57 consumption habits
street robbery risk of victimization 117–18
compared to other offences young people 124–5
54–6 ‘cony catching’ literature 22–3, 40
modus operandi 60 Cornhill Magazine (1863) 44
Brixton, redevelopment 120 corporate crime, costs 64, 65
bulimia metaphor 168 costs
burglary 54, 55, 56 incarceration policies 172
butchers, highwaymen 23 street crime 62–5
buzzers 36 Coterals 17
bystander effect 112 Crime and Disorder Act (1998) 156,
157, 159, 172
‘canting crew’ 40 Crime and Disorder Audit 158
capable guardians, absence of 95, 101, crime prevention
144 approaches 102–5
capitalism, robbery as emergent see also situational crime
feature of 80, 81, 166, 167–70 prevention; social crime
carcinogens, exposure to 65 prevention
CCTV cameras 151 crime rates, social relations 93–4
Charles II 27 crime reporting see media
Chick Lane 40–1 crime writing, early 22–3
A Child of the Jago 37–8 criminal justice system, crime
children, muggings by 56 prevention 102
churches, anti-street crime message criminal status, outlaw groups 133–4
130 criminogenic environments 127
cloak twitchers 37 criminology of sameness 164
coercive law and order 146 critical criminology 81
commercial premises, street robbery crusaders, participation in robbery 18
61 cultural deficits, criminal
commodity fetishism 125 involvement 68–9
common assault 54, 55 culture see mass culture; materialist
community punishment 175 culture; outlaw cultures; street
community safety culture
coordination and integration of culture of dependency 126
104–5, 156–60 culture industries
messages about street crime 129 markets for exclusive goods 124
184
Index
promissory note 166 economic development

custodial sentences 77–8, 128, 147, 172 preconditions for victimization
cutpurses 35–6 109–10
production of motivated offenders
daily activities, explaining crime 126–7
96 economic regeneration, Lambeth
dangerous class 47 119–20
dangerousness, conceptions of 46 ‘economy of suspended rights’ 45
deaths, corporate crime 65 Elizabethan society
deficit theory, street robbery 68–73 development of street crime 33–4
critique of 73–8 perception of outlaws 20–1
deprivation robbery
recorded street crime rates 56–7 statistics 21
street robbery 125–6 use of pistols 21–2
urban regeneration 156 street crime 35
design features, situational crime employed persons, victimization of
prevention 103 60–1
design solutions 174 Engels 80, 87
desirable goods 110–11 ‘essentialized difference’ 46, 162
obsolescence of 124 ethnic groups
detection, through CCTV 151 custodial sentences 147
deterrence 102 IQ and involvement in crime 68
deviant adaptation 99 representation in street crime 57–8,
Dicky Perrot 37–8 65
1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue victimization 60
20, 35, 36–7 see also black population
difference see essentialized difference Evelyn, John 29
differential association, motivation of expenditures, urban regeneration 155
offenders 90, 99, 128–41
dimber damblers 40 family form, ideal 69, 70
displacement fear of crime
ideological 87 crime reporting 44
through CCTV 151 surveys 89
through crack-downs 114 fear of victimization 116
through police presence 144–5 female offenders 57
diving 37 fictional representations
domestic violence, injuries 64 highwaymen 22
‘drag lay’ 39 outlaws 19–20
dress, and victimization 117–18 Field Lane 40–1
drug use 60, 71–2, 75–6 files 37
Du Vall, Claude 23, 26–7 financial costs, street crime 64–5
dunkerers 37 flash lingo 36–7
flash-houses 44
economic concerns, highway robbery flying porters 38
16 folk devil status
economic crisis 86 outlaws 20
185
Street Crime
street criminals 41–7, 162–3 highwaymen 22–32

folk hero status highways, likelihood of robbery 29
17th century urban criminals 41 Hind, Captain James 23, 24, 25–6
highwaymen 29, 30 Home Office study
Folville brothers 17–18 mobile phone theft 63
Folville, Richard de 17–18 modus operandi of street robbery
footpads 36, 37 60–1, 62t
forks 37 offender profiling 56, 57–8
formal economy, preclusion of self victim profiling 59, 60
from 136 homicide, street-level 64
Fouke le Fitz Waryn 20 honour, of highwaymen 24
foysts 37 honourable beings, outlaws as
free-market society 165–70 20–1
funding hookers 35
community safety initiatives 158 Hounslow Heath 29
poor communities 175–6 household theft 54, 55
human resources, policing 144
gallows 39, 45 hustling cultures 88
garrotting 44 hyper-exploited population 87–8
‘gentleman of the pad’ 36, 37
gentlemen highwaymen 23 identity, possession of desired goods
gentlemen robbers, Medieval period 123–4
17–18 illegal market
gentrification 119 outlaw cultures 138
gonalphs 36 stolen goods 112–13
goods see desirable goods; stolen incarceration policies
goods costs 172
Great North Road 29 see also mass incarceration
group context, street robbery 5 inertia, suitable targets 100
group membership, outlaw groups information, about crime 129–30, 152,
134, 135 153
guilt 149 injuries 64, 65
inner-city areas 115, 146
handkerchief pickpockets 37 integration, of community safety
Handsworth robbery 84–5 104–5
Harisson, William 19 intelligence, from public 145
healthy society, assumptions intelligence quotient, involvement in
concerning 69 crime 68
heroic figures, outlaws as 20, 21 interventions, social crime prevention
heroin addicts, robbers’ opinions of 103–4
76
heterosexual nuclear family 69, 70 Jack of Legs 20
High Toby 36, 37 jacking 5, 52
highway robbery, medieval period 16 judicial interventions 148
Highway Service 37 justice, through highway robbery 24
The Highwayman 31 justification, of victimization 116
186
Index
‘kid lay’ 39 street robberies 61

King, ‘Captain’ Tom 28 London, street crime
knives, use of 64 street reputations 40–1
knowledge, needed for street crime 5 through development and
expansion 34
labelling process, outlaw status 134 Victorian era 42–6
Lambeth see also Lambeth
black offenders 58 Low Toby 36, 37
deficits in social control 145, 146, lumpen proletarian 80, 87
150, 154, 156–60
funding 176 Macintyre, Donal 38
production of motivated offenders mal-socialization 70–1
125–6, 127, 137, 138 marijuana 71–2, 76
routine behaviours and Marx 80, 87
victimization 115, 119–21 masculinity, outlaw groups 135–6
street robbery research 106 mass culture, corrupting influence 72,
land pirates 37 74
land prices, urban regeneration 155 mass incarceration 64, 137
language, of street robbery 35–9 materialist culture, robbers’
law enforcement identification with 75
consideration in selecting targets Mayhew, H. 41, 45, 74
113–14 media
crime prevention 102 sensationalist reporting 44, 83, 86
medieval period 15, 16 street crime associated with
young offenders’ disrespect for mugging 4–5
145–6 see also tabloid opinion
law and order crisis 87 medieval society, robbery in 14–22
lawless masculinity 136 men
learning process approaches in targeting 61
capacity to commit crime 99 need for domestication 69
street crime 5, 6 percentage of robbery offences 57
left of centre, view of street crime street crime victims 59
79–91 threatened by weapons 64
left realists 93 see also women; young black
legendary status, outlaws 20 males; young men
liberal welfare policy 70, 77 Metropolitan Police 59, 60, 160
liberal/left intelligentsia 72–3 micro social processes, understanding
life chances, differential distribution of deviance 99
of 125–6 Miles, W.A. 73–4
life experiences, Victorian street crime ‘militarisation’, of public space 163
42–3 mobile phones
local crime prevention partnerships failure of producers to immobilize
151 113, 151
Local Crime Reduction Strategy 159 illegal economy 112–13
locations immobilization of 174
frequented by underclass 44–5 possession 110–11
187
Street Crime
thefts 63, 110 noble social bandits 24

money, preference for 112 non-possession, desired goods 123–4
moral consciousness, street robbers non-respectable working class 71
74–5 nuclear family form 69
moral constraints, weakening decline in commitment to 70
through drug use 71–2 ‘nypp a bynge’ 35
moral entrepreneurs 130 nyppers 35
moral panics 3, 54, 83–5, 86, 87
Mori Tracker survey 110 obsolescence, desirable goods 124
motivated offenders offenders
analysis of street crime 95, 97–9 profiling 56–9
production of 122–41 see also motivated offenders; street
motivation, highway robbery 16 robbers; young offenders
The Mug 38 Oliver Twist 41
muggers 36, 37, 38 Ordinary 46
mugging ‘organic crisis of the state’ 86
BCS definition 55 organization of crime, myths and
estimated number of crimes 55 fears about 40
history of 37 orthodox explanations, street robbery
perpetrators 56, 60 162–4
as small part of street crime 52 outlaw cultures
social response to 83–5, 87 contact with 132
street crime associated with 4–5 ‘seductions of being evil’ 138
multiagency meetings 160 social rituals 137
multiagency working, Lambeth 157 street crime as rite of passage 139
multidimensional framework, sustainability of alternative
analysing street crime 92–106 economies 138
myths transmission of deviant skills 6
black criminality 81, 89 values 138
outlaws 20 outlaw groups
criminal status 133–4
national traits, outlaws 21 group membership 134
negative perceptions, of police 145 proximity to 130–1, 132
neutralization techniques 38, 141 values celebrated by 135–6
Nevison, John (Swift Nick) 27, 29 The Outlaw Song 16
New Labour outlaws 14–22
cuts in youth regeneration oversocialization, young offenders
programme 176n 165
repressive legislation 171
symbolic governance 159 paid work, health society 70
tough on crime policy 147 parent culture, street robbery 71, 76–7
Newgate Calendar (1779) 25 parents, confrontation with 149
night-time, occurrences of robbery 60 partnerships
night-time economy local crime prevention 151
Brixton 120 urban regeneration 155
rate of victimization 61 peer pressure 133, 139
188
Index
penitentiaries 45–6 property prices, urban regeneration

see also incarceration policies; 155
prison life property thefts 54, 55
penitentiary style clothing 137 proximity, to outlaw groups 130–1,
penny gaffs 45 132
permissive society 70 psychological damage 62
personal theft 54, 55, 62, 63 public
personality traits 123 anxiety about street crime 43
physical activity, in robbery 61 opinion of street criminals 42
physical damage, street robbery 62 perception of outlaws 19–21
physical presentation, of self 137 street crime associated with
physical self, capacity to assert 135–6 mugging 4–5
pickpockets 5, 35, 37 useful intelligence from 145
pistols, use of 21–2 punishment
police deficit in social control 146–9
definition of street crime 4 moving out of public sight 45–6
statistics 52, 56, 59
policing 143–6 racialization, of street crime 85
Policing the Crisis 3, 82–7 racist agenda, against black people
political ideologies, lack of impact 130 80–1, 89
political left, view of street crime rampsmen 37, 44
79–91 Rastafarianism 88
political refusal 90, 91 Ratcliffe docklands 40
political right, view of street crime rational agents, criminals as 103
67–78 Ratsey, Gamaliel 23, 24
political role, highwaymen 24 recidivism rates 147
politics of distance 46 ‘recruiting service’ 37
politics of recognition 80 reggae 88
pollution, ideas of 46 repressive legislation 171
poor communities, investment in resistance subcultures 88
175–6 respect, from street robbery 138–9
popularity, of highwaymen 30–1 respectable working class 71
possession, of desired goods 123 restorative justice 175
poverty 42, 176 right of centre, view of street crime
prison life 67–78
alienation through 148 rite of passage, street crime as 139
brutalizing effect of 171–2 robbers see street robbers
non-redemptiveness 148 Robin Hood 19, 20
see also penitentiaries role models, lack of 130
problem solving, orthodox romantic depiction, of outlaws
explanations 163 19–20
profiling rookeries 41
offenders 56–9 Rookwood 27
victims 59–60 routine activities
projects, for young people 176 awareness of victims’ 113
promissory note, culture industry 166 possibility for street robbery 127
189
Street Crime
young people and victimization social crime prevention 103–4,

114–19 152–6
routine activities theory 95–8 social demographics, Lambeth 120
rule-breaking, justification of 141 social distance, victims and
rum divers 37 perpetrators 139
ryfelour 17 social factors, street crime 42, 44
social forces, motivated offenders
Safer Streets 174 97–9
Saint Giles 41 social presentation, of self 117–18
scamps 37 social relations, of crime 93–5
scapegoating, young black males social response, to street crime 39–41
86–7 social rituals, outlaw cultures 137
schools, anti-street crime messages socialism 130
129 socialization
‘seductions of being evil’ 138 nuclear family form 69
self see also mal-socialization;
physical assertiveness 135–6 oversocialization
physical presentation of 137 society, street robbery as a problem of
social presentation of 117–18 164–70
self-reliance, through street crime socio-economic status
139–40 involvement in street robbery 90
sensationalist media reporting 44, 83, see also deprivation; poverty
86 soldiers, participation in robbery
September 11, escalation of street 16–17
robbery blamed on 143 Southwark 40
seriousness, lack of attention given to specialisms, street crime 5, 39
street robbery 81–2 speed, need for 131
shaveldour 17 ‘the square of crime’ 93–5
Sheppard, Dick 41 status
shopping complex, Brixton 120 from street robbery 138–9
single parent families 71, 77 possession of desired goods 123–4
situational crime prevention 103, see also criminal status; folk devil
149–51, 173, 174 status; folk hero status; socio-
Smith study see Home office study economic status
snatch thefts 4, 62t, 64, 112 stocks, terminology 39
social backgrounds 77 stolen goods
social bandits 24 illegal market 112–13
social classes personal thefts 62, 63
involved in outlawry 15 strain theory 98–9
see also bourgeoisie; dangerous street conflict, young people 116–17
class; underclass; working class street crime
social control costs of 62–5
alleged escalation of mugging 85 definitions 4, 51–2
deficits in 91, 101–2, 142–60 development of 33–4
folk hero/folk devil status 45–6 eighteenth century 23
social costs, street crime 64–5 framework of analysis 92–106
190
Index
interpreting the data 51–66 suitable and available victims

meanings associated with 4–5 109–21
social response to 39–41 in the urban context 33–47
specialisms 5 victim profiling 59–60
the view from the left 79–91 streetwise knowledge 113–14
the view from the right 67–78 Stuart period, street crime 39–40
see also street robbery students, victimization of 60
Street Crime Initiative 160 stylistic features, outlaw groups 137
street criminals subcultures
age of 56 outlaw groups 135
folk devil status 41–7, 162–3 of resistance 88
street culture suitable targets 95, 100
commodified forms 124 symbolic governance 159
encouragement to commit crime Sympson, George 25
77
Victorian society 42–3 tabloid opinion, as target of
street discipline, risk of victimization government initiatives 159
118–19 Tale of Gamelyn 20
street life, young people 115–16 target hardening 150–1
street reputations 40–1 Taylor, John 21
street robbers time differences, victimization 60–1
age 56 to ‘fib the cove’s quarron’ 38
alien quality 162 to ‘fork’ 39
attention given towards 14 to ‘frisk the dummee of his sceens’
moral consciousness 74–5 38
politics of recognition 80 to ‘go out upon the pad’ 37
see also highwaymen; offenders; ‘tough on crime’ policy 147
outlaws training, in street crime 6
street robbery travellers, self-protection 19
compared to other offences 54–6 triangular model, of crime 96–8
deficit theory 68–73 Tudor society, street crime 34, 35,
critique of 73–8 39–40
deficits in social control 142–60 Turpin, Dick 23, 27, 28, 29
group context 5
historical survey 13–32 underclass 44–5, 71, 80
lack of literature on 3 underworld 34–5, 38, 39, 40
modus operandi 60–1, 62t unemployed, victimization of 60
moral panic about 3 unemployment 77, 126
offences 4 uprightmen 40
offender profiling 56–9 urban centres 33
orthodox explanations 162–4 urban context, street crime 33–47
personal experience of 1–3 urban missionaries 43, 45
as a problem of society 164–70 urban regeneration
production of motivated offenders crime prevention 154–6
122–41 preconditions for street robbery
specialisms 5, 39 176
191
Street Crime
uneven effects of 125–6 women

victim availability 119–21 approaches in targeting 61
likelihood of snatches 64
vagabonds 21, 34 see also female offenders; men
vagrancy 15 Woolf, Lord Justice 3, 160, 172
value, suitable targets 100 working class
values, outlaw groups 135, 138 distinction between 71
vandalism 54, 55, 56 identification with highwaymen
vehicle-related theft 54, 55, 56 31
victim surveys 52 immoral entertainments 45
see also British Crime Surveys; IQ and involvement in crime 68
Home Office study workplace, injuries 65
victim-initiated robbery 62t workplace cancer, deaths 65
victimization world-view, outlaw groups 135–6
decrease in level of 54 Wotton 35–6
reporting of 58 wounding 54, 55
time differences 60–1
victims young black males
education 174 custodial sentences 147
injuries sustained by 64 economic marginalization 87–8
profiling 59–60 political right explanation, street
social distance, perpetrators and robbery 71
139 scapegoating of 86–7
suitable and available 109–21 socio-economic status and street
Victorian London, street crime robbery 126
42–6 supervision by YOTs 58
violence targeting by police 84
ability to demonstrate 5, 131 young men
avoidance by highwaymen 24 influence of corrupting mass
estimated number of crimes 55 culture on 72
visibility, suitable targets 100 mal-socialization 70–1
vulnerability young offenders
to corrupting mass culture 72 disrespect for law enforcement
victims’ ignorance about 114 145–6
drug use 76
Walton, Edward 41 oversocialization 165
Warberton, Judge 25 production of motivated 122–41
weapons young people
use of 63–4 lack of benefits for under 18s 126
see also pistols mobile phone use 110–11
weekends, occurrences of robbery participation in robbery 56
60 projects for 176
Whitechapel 41 street crime terminology 5
Wilson, Thomas 21 street crime victims 109
wiper drawers 37 victimization
Wollstonecraft, Mary 29–30 over-representation 59
192
Index
reason for 114–19 Youth Justice Board 53

time differences in 60 Youth Offending Teams (YOTs) 58,
see also children 147, 156, 172, 175
young women, street robbery 57 youth services, lack of 115, 154
Youth Crime Reduction Strategies
159 zero tolerance 3
193

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Street Crime AW 1/22/05 6:34 pm Page 1

CRIME AND SOCIETY SERIES CRIME AND SOCIETY SERIES

Series editor: Hazel Croall

Sex Crime (second edition), by Terry Thomas

Published simultaneously in the USA and Canada by

© Simon Hallsworth 2005

First published 2005

ISBN 1-84392-028-X (paperback)

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Typeset by GCS, Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, LU7 1AR

And England still hath bin a fruitfull Land

John Taylor, the Water Poet, 1662

Part 1 A Short History of Street Robbery

Chapter 1 Outlaws and highwaymen 13

Part 2 Accounting for Street Crime

Chapter 3 Interpreting the data 51

Part 3 Street Robbery and Contemporary Society

Chapter 7 Suitable and available victims 109

other did the talking: ‘Empty yo fucking pockets … I said empty yo

describe the offences of robbery, attempted robbery and snatch theft

routinely deployed by crime-prevention agencies, not least because of

Learning requires an apprenticeship, a process by which a

analysis is developed. Chapter 3 begins this process of examination by

In chapter 6 a framework for rethinking how to explain street robbery

robbery before offering some more general advice in relation to the

Outlaws and highwaymen

Faced with incessant media reports attesting to ever-rising levels of street

it has generated by no means remains the same. While today we are

the sovereign could exercise. Second, in a world without a professional

At the most general level, participation in forms of highway robbery

I have served my lord the King in peace and war,

Whoever began this business

Some will become robbers who never used to be,

Fourteenth-century records identify some of these gentleman robber

He was led into a nearby wood to a company of confederates and

... Certes there is no greater mischeefe doone in England than by

… the honest traveller is now inforced to ride with a case of dags at

In various fictional representations, the figure of the outlaw commanded

The outlaw of legend is depicted as an innocent man, driven by

While early romances of the eleventh and twelfth centuries celebrated

the activities of Robin by stressing his capabilities as a successful robber

Indeed it was an occupation that could on occasions be considered akin

And England still hath bin a fruitfull Land

Theaft is counted so horrible amongest some nations, that men

… it is a common thing for the thieves to carry pistols whereby they

By the seventeenth century the medieval outlaw existed as no more than

Decker and Greene who, writing in the seventeenth century, can be

Captain Hind’s story exemplifies this narrative. Born the son of

Our English Hero sought no Crown,

Yet when his Country’s Cause invites,

If in due Light his Deeds we scan,

What is interesting about Hind’s case is that he was originally of low

… Stand, and deliver such money as they had, otherwise he would

In most respects the lives of subsequent highwaymen conform to the

pay for his entertainment. In recompense the highwayman stole four

Here lies Du Vall, Reader, if male thou art,

While embellishment is certainly the order of the day, it is worth

Highwaymen are generally well mounted; one of them will stop a

coach service was in full operation and, in a growing mercantile culture,

spirit of liberty has prevailed, it is useful for an highwayman,

the development of a unitary and far more effective law-enforcement

1 Translated by Spraggs (2002) from Rawson, J. (ed.) (1889). Henry of Knighton’s

Street robbery in the

The development of urban centres such as London is of crucial