Long-term solutions to anti-social behaviour
| |
At a recent meeting in Dublin, Lisburn Sinn Féin councillor
Michael Ferguson described how anti-social behaviour can be
tackled to mobilise a community against inequality and
discrimination, the very causes of conflict. He spoke to ROISIN
DE ROSA about the experience of Lisburn in tackling this problem
in the absence of an acceptable policing service.
|
``People talk of anti-social behaviour as a new problem. It is
not. It just appears new because it is currently the focus of
attention. In fact, anti-social behaviour arises from the same
causes that gave rise to the conflict, and remain unresolved. But
such behaviour has the potential to tear our communities apart.
What the Brits and RUC have failed to do in 30 years - the
destruction of the structure, the fabric, the integrity of our
community - we weren't going to let happen now, in the new
Some 30,000 people live in Poleglass, Twinbrook and Laganmore,
representing one third of the constituency of West Belfast.
Poleglass was built in line with British General Frank Kitson's
counter-insurgency strategy, with one way in and one way out,
each estate sporting colour coded roofs for easy identification
by spotter planes. It was designed to break down community
strength.
Its 10,000 inhabitants are drawn largely from those displaced
people driven out of their old communities through shortage of
houses. They came in desperation often into half built houses,
just to get somewhere to live. They came from Ballymurphy or the
Short Strand, people who had grown up together in an environment
with a strong community spirit.
In Poleglass this was absent and had to be built. Bit by bit,
community strength was built through solidarity, protest, active
support of neighbours in the face of daily house raids and
incursions. Bit by bit, as community strength grew, it became
more difficult to raid houses, arrest people or intimidate them.
But poverty and discrimination was and is rife, with anti-social
behaviour a continuous undercurrent.
Poleglass is peripheral in every sense. It is excluded and
marginalised under the strongly loyalist-dominated Lisburn
Council area. 57% of the people are under 18, yet there is not
one playground in the area. Lisburn Council has a budget of £3.5
million. Only £500 is spent in this constituency because there is
nothing to maintain.
``Anti-social behaviour mushroomed out of the marginalisation,
discrimination and inequality in our community. It was a problem
for all of us.
Our first objective was to get all the people, local groups and
agencies within the community to take responsibility, to generate
a collective ownership of the problem and its solution. Instead
of dumping the whole issue into the lap of the IRA, all the
community sectors had to recognise that they were part of the
problem, in that each had failed in their obligations to provide
for youth, and had therefore to be a part of the solution.
We brought every sector together, the Catholic Church, the
business sector, education and youth services, health, welfare,
elderly people, disabled people and so on, and asked them to
`brainstorm' in group meetings and come back with what they were
going to do. Out of this came a community strategy to confront
the problems. All the groups were involved in this partnership
which, ultimately, was going to have to confront inequality and
discrimination against our commmunity.
Then we built a street campaign to turn the negative images of
the area to positive, mobilising people to take ownership of
their community and to put out to young people a positive
message. This came to be called the `Pride of Poleglass'. We had
clean-ups, wiping off the graffiti, planting trees and flowers,
getting the burnt out stolen cars removed, helping each other, as
we'd done on the raids, to repair damage to property. If the
flower beds were destroyed then people put them back again: when
the graffiti went up again, then we removed it. It was something
everyone could be involved in.
Through simple easy steps, people were taking control of their
community, and building a positive mindset out of the negative
horror of continuous and fearful attack from the alienated and
violent bands of often quite young people armed with cars.
At the same time, in partnerships with the `responsible'
agencies, we put a ``care package'' around the kids who were
involved in ``anti-social activity'', which involved the family,
the youth, education, training and social welfare agencies. The
people who worked in Community Restorative Justice (CRJ), who
come from the community themselves, were often the key link
between agencies and family. They were the conduit of the
programme.
The problem of anti-social youth is rarely a simple isolated
problem of a child who is disruptive and uncontrollable. Its
solution concerned all the agencies, not just those responsible
for youth. The 15-year-old kid who was bored, didn't go to
school, slept all day and went out to destroy all night, who was
uncontrollable, invariably came from a family which itself was
the victim of aspects of social disadvantage. These problems
included unemployment, poverty, alcoholism, health problems,
abusive family relations, and denial.
In some few cases, we could not achieve co-operation within the
care package and anti-social behaviour persisted. In such
situations, the community itself, confident and positive,
ostracised them. The irreconcilables were ostracised by the
community. 6' by 4' posters went up. There were marches to their
doors. No one would serve them; the shops, the pubs, the people
ostracised them. People combined to made life intolerable for
those who had made it intolerable for the community.
d the media got the right priorities. That lobby that attempts
to exploit anti-social behaviour to isolate republicans from the
community never got a look in. For once, we, as a community, were
seen as the victims.
We now had a partnership between agencies and different sectors,
including business and community, to deliver a youth provision.
This gave us a framework to confront the central issue of
inequality and the social deprivation of the area. We need youth
resources, jobs and skill training, projects that will build
capacity in a alienated community.
The Good Friday Agreement promises to address discrimination and
inequality. Section 75 of the Local Government Act of 1998
requires that every statutory agency and local government provide
equality schemes. Lisburn Council, like all councils, is required
to target social need (TSN). We need to demand the peace dividend
we are due and secure an equitable distribution of mainstream
government funding and European Peace II funding.
But this won't happen unless the community fights for it. Where
the council does not meet its TSN obligations, we need to take it
to court, to protest on the streets. The partnership structure
that involves the whole community in Poleglass needs to win the
peace to make peace become a reality.
The struggle remains the same. It is to empower communities to
take ownership, to work to achieve equality, and to build the
programmes needed to address the social problems which arise from
inequality.
It's a long term problem requiring long term solutions. There are
no quick fixes.
Lift
ti-social behaviour mushroomed out of the marginalisation,
discrimination and inequality in our community. It was a problem
for all of us
![[An Phoblacht]](http://republican-news.org/graphics/title_gifs/aprn.gif)