ABSTRACT
The capacity of the school to resist pressures towards crime and violence coming from the neighbourhoods, and to offer young people the means to transcend their social predicament is severely limited by the knock-on effects of neighbourhood destabilisation. The crime and violence in these neighbourhoods is implosive in that it is committed by, and against, local residents. The intra-neighbourhood crime pattern is a distinguishing characteristic of high crime areas in Britain. An analysis of British Crime Survey data for the period 1981-1991 went some way to explaining this bald statistic. Not only did it reveal a substantial increase in the volume of crime and victimisation in the preceding decade, it also showed marked changes in its nature and geographical distribution. A consideration of how young, unemployed working class men from single parent, and dual parent, families express their masculinity is an important component of any explanation of the changing distribution of youth crime and victimisation in the 1980s and 1990s.
