Vulnerability and Young People: Care and Social Control in Policy and Practice by Kate Brown

Author:Kate Brown [Brown, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, Public Policy, Social Services & Welfare, Social Policy, Social Science, Criminology, Social Work
ISBN: 9781447318187
Google: nrOPDQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Policy Press
Published: 2016-12-14T02:51:01+00:00

Relationships between vulnerability and transgression

Attention to lived experiences of vulnerability highlighted that binary understandings of young people as ‘vulnerable victims’ or ‘dangerous wrong-doers’ (see Fionda, 2005; Such and Walker, 2005; Muncie, 2006) seemed ill-matched with the complexities of the young people’s lives. Complex relationships between patterns or instances of transgression and the presence of ‘vulnerabilities’ or multiple disadvantages were often apparent in the narratives:

In 2009, I was abused by my Dad and that was when I got my social worker. They tried to get me a foster home, but because I didn’t want to stay there, my behaviour got bad. That’s when I was selling sex. (Jess, F, 15)

When I was home I’d get stressed out a lot ’cos I just I’d be either cleaning or babysitting. And it used – I used to get annoyed and that with myself and then I’d take it out in school. My temper out in school and that…. (Stephanie, F, 16)

If taken as an independent subject of study, young people’s stories of ‘bad’ behaviour could be alarming, casting the story tellers as delinquent. Yet seen in the context of a young person’s life story, accounts of transgressions might be understood differently. Sixteen-year-old Alicia had been prosecuted for shoplifting, been involved in selling sex and had been a heroin user in the past. She discussed how she had got involved in some of these transgressions: “My Mum took heroin so I wanted to know what was so good about it.” Keith (M, 16) had spent time in a ‘secure unit’ (a form of youth offending institution) for offences related to his heavy cocaine use and theft. He explained how his life started to move towards behaviours considered ‘antisocial’: “Because [Dad] were an alcoholic, he were beating me up every day, well not every day but it were like every time he didn’t have a drink. So obviously I were roaming the streets ’cos he were drinking all the time.” Rather than ‘vulnerability’ and ‘deviance’ being mutually exclusive states, vulnerability in the context of young people’s lives might in many cases be best understood as symbiotically and intrinsically linked with transgression.

Scott’s case seemed to illustrate this interrelationship particularly vividly. Scott (M, 18) reported the greatest range of difficulties or ‘vulnerabilities’ in his childhood out of all the young people in the study (see Table 5.1), but he was also the young person with the most prolific offending history. He had become involved in selling heroin at nine years old, had recently assaulted a general practitioner while intoxicated on the drug mephedrone (or ‘MCAT’), had repeatedly burgled houses, committed street robberies, and also reported that while using steroids heavily he had assaulted a man “...proper nearly killed him and everything”. He made it clear in the interview that he continues to “work” or “go out making money” (illegally) on the streets. At the age of 18, he had already been incarcerated twice. Alongside such transgressions he reported physical abuse from his parents, serious mental health issues

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