An interesting AP article on the way that criminal youth gangs in London and elsewhere – the vanguard of the recent street violence and looting within Britain – have consciously emulated their transatlantic cousins from Los Angeles:
They talk in a street patois shaped by U.S. rap lyrics, use noms de guerre lifted straight from American gangster films and crime dramas, and choose such icons as Don Corleone, Al Pacino’s Scarface or Baltimore ganglord Stringer Bell of “The Wire” TV series as their avatars on social-networking sites.
“These teenage gangsters are creating their own criminal worlds, and in their minds it’s very much an Americanized world. When they talk about the police, it’s ‘the Feds,’ or ‘The 5-0,’ as in Hawaii 5-0,” said Carl Fellstrom, an expert on England’s gangs and author of a recent book on the topic, “Hoods.”
British law enforcement authorities admit that, until only a few years ago, they sought to minimize the scale and violent potential of their homegrown gangs. They promoted their preferred label of “delinquent youth groups” and billed full-blooded street gangs as an American phenomenon.
In the wake of the August riots — when gangs used text-messaging to deploy break-in artists to breach steel-shuttered shops — politicians now use the “G” word pointedly.
The PM has recruited retired LA police commander William Bratton to advice the local constabulary:
Bratton previously commanded the police in Boston and New York, where his tactics were credited with greatly reducing gang-related bloodshed. Cameron and Bratton are expected to promote ideas pioneered 15 years ago in Boston by Harvard academic-turned-crime fighter David Kennedy.
Kennedy’s “Boston strategy” seeks public meetings of police, probation workers, welfare providers, community residents, and a target audience of gang members. The discussions have been credited with delivering sharp drops in gang-related killings in Boston, Chicago and Cincinnati.
“It is now absolutely demonstrable that there is a better way to do this. There is a 15-year history in the United States in city after city after city. We don’t think that London can fix its gang problem. We know it can fix it,” Kennedy said.
Local police officers apparently are resistant to the idea of importing American counter-gang expertise, but the Boston strategy was relatively successful in Glasgow:
Karen McCluskey, a director of Scotland’s Violence Reduction Unit, in 2008 held her first Boston-style mass meeting with gang members in a Glasgow courthouse. She said gang members were shocked to learn the wealth of intelligence police held about them, appeared unaware of the range of help on offer, and were shamed by stories of how their behavior had terrified their neighborhoods.
McCluskey said her colleagues were skeptical that American anti-gang techniques could be imported meaningfully to Scotland, then watched Glasgow’s gang-related violent crimes fall 46 percent in the past three years because of them.
In other related news, David Cameron has sought means to eliminate dole payments to those caught rioting, which only seems natural on this side of the pond, but which faces both political opposition and systemic issues in the UK:
(Experts) are warning the move could be expensive and difficult to achieve. Ian Mulheirn of the Social Market Foundation said: “It is really hard to identify people and remove their benefits in an automated system. Doing that is extremely expensive, and will cost more money than it saves.”
This is not about saving money, of course, but rather executing penalties: The welfare net in Britain is really quite generous and even “automated”, which is a little chilling to read. Anyone who receives such payment while demonstrating contempt for society more broadly has implicitly violated his side of the social compact, and the British tax payer is right to question continued transfer payments from the productive class to the destructive one.
Cameron bewails a moral collapse in Britain’s underclasses, and it’s worthy of some introspection as to whether the dole itself is a root of that collapse. It’s time to ask whether a social welfare system designed to help people through rough patches has instead by time, extension and usage become the actual enabler of subcultural dysfunction: What was designed to be enough to keep out wind and water has become too much to engender any motivation for self-betterment but never enough, in a society whose national bonds of shared identity and faith have slipped, to satisfy consumerist desires.
Update: Take this little quiz to see if you’re up to speed on yours social theory.
Paying the thugs tribute seems a poor solution.
IIRC, one of Wisconsin’s governors instituted a system of welfare which he dubbed “workfare,” through which any person signed up for financial help had to work a certain number of hours to collect welfare payments. Don’t recall all the details, but it appeared to be very successful in reducing welfare payments and balancing state budgets. I’m a great believer in ‘you-do-zis-for-me-I’ll-do-zat-for-you’ as a principle in healthy relationships. Evidently Britain doesn’t. One of the rioters, a woman, said, “Well, it had to be done.” Really twisted logic there.
Marianne
That would be Tommy Thompson, who seems to be thinking of running for Mr. Kohl’s seat in the Senate.
Straight A’s on the test. A first for sure.
We’re starting to see more of the thuggish behavior here in the U.S., according to news reports. There has to be a backlash at some point and I fear things will become brutal. Time to move back to the less populated areas, I suppose.
RE; The Quiz/
LAMAO! Unfortunately, one could see in the British press that the BBC (which, until the last day were STILL calling the rioters “protesters.”) the vast majority of the political “establishment” on both sides and the left part of the British press were still doing the “root cause” number as explanatory power, complaining that projected (but not yet implemented) cuts in the rate of increase of benefits in the welfare system were all to blame for such visible societal break-down, rather than the welfare system itself, i.e., the vast majority of the aforementioned types undoubtedly electing ans “B” or “C” if pressed.
I could fill up the page w. links to those pointing out the sad fact of the worst of it all being the MORAL BREAKDOWN the welfare system has caused among those raised in the last 50 years, but three will suffice as a representative sampler: 1) Theo Dalrymple in 10 Aug City Journal “British Degeneracy on Parade” (Lex has City Journal linked on blogroll–a must read)
2) Melanie Phillips in the 11 Aug Daily Mail “Britain’s liberal intelligentsia has smashed every social value”@ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2024690/UK-riots-2011 (link is bad but click on it anyway as the article it connects to is also a great one about “gansta” culture–but be sure once on site to look up “Mad Mel”s article)
3) A staff editorial in the 15 Aug Telegraph@ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/8698227/A-palpable-change-inthenational-mood.html
Please, please, algo-trolls, I PROMISE to be good!
We’ve all heard that story before Virgil. The Gnomes just don’t seem to be convinced.
One thing that just popped into my mind, VX. I think the eeeeevil Lex probably gets some entertainment out of watching us rave about the server gnomes putting us in time out.
I probably would
It’s not me, multiple URLs in a single post flags the spam filter, since that’s common behavior from pr0n sites, or sites masquerading as pr0n sites for to attack to your Windoze machines.
And that’s your story and your sticking to it
The welfare net in Britain is really quite generous…
That is an understatement when you read things like this:
A family of asylum seekers has moved into a £2million home in one of the country’s most exclusive neighbourhoods at taxpayers’ expense. Unemployed Saeed Khaliif is being handed almost £8,000 a month to pay the rent on his house, one of the most expensive ever to be funded by housing benefit. The Somali refugee, 49, demanded to be moved to the six-bedroom property in West Hampstead, North-West London, with his wife Sayida and their children after deciding their previous accommodation was inadequate.
Did you catch that – demanded to be moved because the 1,000 pound/month home prior was not adequate.
Unemployed. Making demands. And getting what they want. And they aren’t even British citizens.
It is to weep.
Flit’s reply to this post ought to be absolutely hilarious.
Paul
“Delinquent youth groups” indeed! That’s simply nonsense on stilts.
You can’t correct a problem unless you name it.
What the 1942 Beveridge social welfare plan did for England, is what the LBJ style Great Society has done for the United States. We have morally destroyed two generations of urban “yoots” and the lower middle class but socially cohesive black families. And the rot has spread beyond those groups.
I frankly have no idea how to solve the problem. We have this large group of people in our midst who have moral cancer, who are not disciplined or inclined to work, and who are not suited for the jobs that do exist. When you couple that with the fact that there are large numbers of people who are disciplined, inclined and able to work, but who can’t find jobs, you’ve got big troubles as a society.
I know people from Flit’s side of the political spectrum will have some nostrums to offer, but more cowbell isn’t going to solve the problem.
Once you pay the Danegeld…
Weep indeed…..for we are headed the same direction. Families here that have been on the dole for three generations and have decided they can get more of the ‘Obama Money’, as that ‘lady’ was heard to claim during the last stimulus program, than they might make actually working. You know….all those ‘jobs Americans won’t do’…..unemployment payments for 99 months. I’m guessing that many of them would do more of those ‘jobs Americans won’t do’ if they weren’t given handouts by the freaking Liberals to buy votes for the next election.
Ahhhhh…..we are saved! I just heard on the news that our dear Jug-eared Leader has just floated the idea of establishing a Department of Jobs. That’ll fix it. More Government in the job market. How could that go wrong?
Zip,
I read your comment about a Department of Jobs and immediately wondered why we would need that when we already have a Department of Labor.
A quick search found the DOL website http://www.dol.gov/ and I had my answer. Viewing a few pages I came away convinced that it’s primary function is to make life difficult for employers.
Perhaps the Department of Jobs that was mentioned referred to getting more people working at Apple. But that would require education, talent, and dedication. I’m puzzled how that would help the dependency crowd.
Mick
Anthony Burgess nailed it.
Oh, yeah. A “Department of Jobs”. Interesting.
The idea is to find ways to increase the number of available jobs and hopefully thereby to increase employment. Seems to me that this should fall under the ambit of the Department of Labor. But our current DoL sees it’s main purpose as advocating for labor unions, which hurts employment by making labor more expensive. What I’m wondering is -
Did Pres. Obama not put the job in the Department of Labor because he knows it’s the direct antithesis of what the DoL is trying to do? Or is it simply that he doesn’t understand that there should be a natural connection between increasing the number of jobs and benefiting labor?
Ron,
Guess I should have read your comment before responding to Zip, above, as you had already made most of my point.
Sorry,
Mick
The problem in this country (and in Britain to an ever greater extent) is not just that there are so many people unemployed. No, one of the major issues is that there are so many people who are unemployable. An improvement in the economy will help the former, but will bring no help to the latter.
I answered mostly “A”. Not only that, but as I believe I’ve mentioned here, I think I have a touch of the “A”, and large groups of human monkeys just creep me right out, even when they are not being violently loony.
There is a reason why armies have all of those drills and regulations and sergeants screaming at people. You get a bunch of young guys together, you pretty much have to do that to keep them from just chimping out on everybody, and each other.
We already know you are just a reactionary enemy of the people. One of the oppressors that we will have to send to the wall when the good people take over.
Your name is now marked. Expect “the knock” at any time.
I can manage six rounds of .45 Colt (NOT ACP), no more, in that event. I have no idea what happened to my speedloaders.
That’s OK, we’ll be coming to get you with a M-16 Gun Motor Carrige.
Sir, you have a very low sense of humor. Comes with the badge, I reckon.
Have you never noticed that Badgers live very low relative to the ground surface?
Also,
http://icanhascheezburger.com/2011/07/26/funny-pictures-i-am-smiling-badger/#comments
There is a certain irony in our being so low slung. Seagrave, maker of the top of the food chain fire ladder trucks, are made by badgers, in Clintonville, WI.
So, we are not just cuddly, we are useful, as well.
This just reminded me of a great movie, “Ordinary Decent Criminal” with Kevin Spacey. Good fun movie but warning for kids, lots of f-word usage. It’s Irish but the dole aspects are the same. Such as where he and one of his men are discussing how it the dole sometimes meant eating or not but after getting their payments, they went outside, changed shirts, and robbed the office. Or how he got the mayor to promise him and his two wives free housing for life as the cost of their protest against tearing down their housing project.
You quickly realize the only free person in the whole movie is the ordinary decent criminal.
This just reminded me of a great movie, “Ordinary Decent Criminal” with Kevin Spacey. Good fun movie but warning for kids, lots of f-word usage. It’s Irish but the dole aspects are the same. Such as where he and one of his men are discussing how it the dole sometimes meant eating or not but after getting their payments, they went outside, changed shirts, and robbed the office. Or how he got the mayor to promise him and his two wives free housing for life as the cost of their protest against tearing down their housing project.
You quickly realize the only free person in the whole movie is <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91wGPQe3-HM"the ordinary decent criminal.
I don’t like that kind of thing. I don’t believe in taking other peoples’ stuff, except maybe when one has some bad hunger, and it really is a life and death situation. Let us pray and hope that that kind of thing will not happen where we live.