ABSTRACT
When Millie et al. (2005) asked for people's views on the causes of anti-social behaviour, the answers fell into three categories: two of them assumed that the problem was getting worse because of social and moral decline and/or increasing disengagement from mainstream society of a significant minority of youths and families; the third version was simply that youths have always misbehaved but the context is changing and therefore people get more upset. This chapter looks in some detail at factors contributing to these perceptions. The three main themes are communities, youth, and substance abuse. The discussion opens with the growth of social and economic polarisation and how this has impacted on certain neighbourhoods and the families living in them. It looks at the ‘youth’ question from different angles, such as the changes in society that have had particularly adverse effects on the young; the lifestyle and spatial clashes involved in the ‘youths hanging about’ complaint; and the increase in certain behaviour-related characteristics — such as mental health problems, drinking and drug-taking — as background to a possible growth in anti-social behaviour.
