A young offender on a supervision programme is sitting by an indoor tennis court somewhere in Greater Manchester, eating a breakfast of biscuits, crisps and Coke. He discards his litter around him while spitting on the floor.
Winston Smith, one of the youth service workers supervising the lad, asks him once and then twice to clear up his mess.
The youth ignores both requests. And when Winston asks, more pointedly, a third time, a fellow youth worker chides Winston: “Don’t start”. He is left in no doubt by his colleague – it’s not worth the hassle.
It is one in a litany of heart-sinking anecdotes Winston can tell about his career in youth services, working in supported housing in the south of England and in youth offending in Manchester. His frustration became a blog – Winston Smith: Working With The Underclass – which won the Orwell prize last year, and now the blog has become a book, Generation F.
“We’re supposed to be helping these young people and guiding them, and we’re not giving them the boundaries because you avoid confrontation at all costs,” says Winston.
“There are staff calling young people ‘mate’ and trying to be ‘down with the youth’. There needs to be a clearer division: we are the staff, you are the criminals.”
Winston’s nom de plume pays homage to the character in Orwell’s 1984.
“I thought there is an aspect of 1984 in this whole sector because there’s a certain way of thinking and a certain view you’re supposed to have, and if you challenge them too vociferously, you get people coming down on you.”
So far only one sympathetic colleague has realised the true identity of Winston Smith but the author seems fatalistic about being outed.
Winston is especially disparaging about his experience of the ‘intensive supervision and surveillance programme’, the most rigorous non-custodial sentence a young offender can get.
“When I was working with the youth offending service in Manchester, the ISSP – the worst punishment without going to a youth detention centre – consisted mostly of activities anybody else would consider fun.
“Every day we would take the lads out to gyms, wall-climbing, playing pool in a youth club, playing Wii video games and all this.
“They do get some community work attached to their ISSP, but it’s a very small amount. It doesn’t even make up a full day in every week of their order. In certain areas of Manchester I know that the community work side of it is barely in place. But you can be guaranteed their football and their gym and their trips to the youth club with the DJ course are all set up and running.”
If this regime was made any more punitive a colleague told Winston: “We’d be setting them up to fail because they just wouldn’t engage”.
Equalling depressing are Winston’s tales of working in supported housing, set up to accommodate 16 to 25-year-olds who are at risk of homelessness.
Generation F tells of youngsters too feckless to fill in a form to get housing benefit to pay for their accommodation, or – after getting a social worker to fill in the form for them – too shiftless to even walk a short distance to drop it off at the relevant office.
Rent arrears mount up. Well-equipped flats in supported housing are routinely wrecked by the youngsters.
Benefits get spent on fast food, booze and drugs.
When Winston asks for a copy of the house rules, he is told there isn’t one because the housing association running the project feels that the word ‘rule’ is unhelpful.
As he interviews a young burglar, Winston is forced to use a script which entails asking the lad how he would like the support staff to speak to him if he is angry.
“As I say the words, I can’t quite believe they are coming out of my mouth,” he writes. “More to the point, I can’t believe someone is being paid to sit in an office somewhere and dream up this lunatic rubbish.”
Another example of the ‘politically correct’ mindset came when Winston was working in Manchester, and a colleague expressed revulsion at a recent vandalism attack in Wythenshawe Park in which 18 birds were beheaded.
“One of the managers said: “What you have to remember is those offenders are victims too”. I thought this is crazy. They are not the victims here.
“Up until just after the Second World War this was a very authoritarian country. Changes needed to be made. But what happened in the ’60s is that the idea of authority in general became anathema to a lot of people.
“Over time, we’ve thrown the baby out with the bathwater.”
» Generation F by Winston Smith is published by Monday Books at £8.99. To see his blog, go to winstonsmith33.blogspot.com
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Kids who have never been trouble with the police and worked hard at school dont get any aid or 'rehabilitation' days out.
My advice to these kids is, go and mug someone and make sure you get caught. your life will be easier and you'll get help with housing, and training for work for free.
We need more people like Winston.
The Guardian and the BBC should pay him to teach them about the real world, not their idealistic one.
The problem with Winston Smith’s blog is that it’s focussed on the ineptitude of individual staff and the failings of the young people he is working with. Of course it’s not acceptable for workers to refer to offenders as “mate” or to allow them to litter the streets, but no policies, guidance or research say it is. Like all professions you get good staff and bad ones. Winston seems to feel he has the right idea, but his blog never offers any insight into how to tackle youth crime other than advocating for a more authoritarian and punitive system. People have been saying that for years and the point is facile in the extreme.
Winston demonstrates a very limited understanding of the structural inadequacies of system he works in and consequently is unable to critique it in any meaningful way. His tirades against “delinquents” and “teenage rogues” appeal only to badly informed reactionaries. This is evident in numerous comments the blog receives.
With regards to some of the comments posted here - yes there are good and bad staff in any organisation that is a given! Having worked in this sector myself I do agree with Winston's sense of frustration, and I strongly agree that there is a culture of confrontation-avoidance and soft-pedalling on bad behaviour in the Youth Offending Service that helps no one (in fairness I am sure this is consistent across the UK). I don't think that Winston is advocating a knee-jerk, 100% punitive response to the question of: what do we do with youth offenders etc?.... but instead a zero tolerance on general bad behaviour, a more professional staff/youth offender relationship with defined boundaries, and a stronger focus on reparation work.
I think a lot of the problems in dealing with 'challenging' people are to do with the privatisation of the services. By privatisation I also mean so-called charities, who don't show a profit but instead pay their top staff big wages. Many of these agencies exist, not to help anybody, but to make money. To keep the money coming in they need customers. Customers are generated by e.g. letting challenging people know they can do what they like once they are the customer of the agency, and keeping the money coming in by keeping the customer happy. For 11 years I looked after a challenging foster child who had a fantastic life but was well managed and kept under control. I have reams of evidence to prove how successful I was. Yet the teenager was enticed away from me by a private commercial business operating as a 'care' home in collusion with the council. The council was, in actual fact, champing at the bit to get him/her there, so make of that what you will. The care home staff told the teenager that all that mattered was his/her happiness and he/she could have anything and do anything at all that he/she liked if he/she went to live there. The teenager couldn't get there fast enough and couldn't spend the money I'd put in his/her bank account for years fast enough. The aggressive, anti-social behaviour worsened but was laughed off and complaints from victims dismissed. The teenager was seen wandering the streets at nights. I am uncertain of the exact cost of this care home but it was at least £2000 per week paid for by the council. The council incidentally refused to pay me £135 per week to continue caring for the teenager and also participated in persecuting me for criticising another agency the council does business with. I am not kidding when I say it was like dealing with the mafia. These vulnerable people are treated as commercial commodities. No wonder they get worse.