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Shopping center profits from hoodies ban

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Shopping center profits from hoodies ban

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The number of shoppers at the Bluewater centre in Kent has risen by more than a fifth since it banned gangs of youths wearing hoods and baseball caps.

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The number of shoppers at the Bluewater centre in Kent has risen by more than a fifth since it banned gangs of youths wearing hoods and baseball caps.

The centre, near Dartford, says that 22 per cent more shoppers passed through its doors last weekend than during the corresponding period in 2004.

Days earlier it had announced a zero tolerance policy on face-obscuring "hoodies", baseball caps and swearing. The ban, part of a new code of conduct on anti-social behaviour, followed complaints about gangs intimidating shoppers.

The move won backing from Tony Blair and John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, but was criticised by youth organisations for "confusing fashion with behaviour".

Mathew Clements, of Bluewater, stressed that the ban covered only groups acting in an aggressive or intimidating way who were using hoods or baseball caps to hide their identities. Individuals walking through the centre in a hooded sweatshirt were unlikely to be asked to expose their faces for the benefit of security cameras.

He said the publicity surrounding the hood ban had been "extraordinary" and had contributed to the "abnormal" rise in visitor numbers.

But he added: "Footfall is notoriously fickle, and affected by a variety of factors including weather, the economic climate and marketing activities."

The Elephant and Castle shopping centre in south London announced yesterday that it too was introducing a ban on hooded clothing. The centre houses several large chains including Tesco, Woolworths, WH Smith and Iceland.

Mike Knell, the manager, said: "When you look at how the general public view these youths with hoods on they are quite intimidated. The ban on hoods has been introduced to make people a bit more at ease so they feel safer when they are doing their shopping here.

"We have CCTV installed throughout the shopping centre and the ban on hoods will make the cameras much more effective in identifying any troublemakers. Since we introduced the ban we have noticed the malls are a lot quieter as we have not got so many gangs of youths simply hanging around.''

Despite the publicity given to the Bluewater ban, only a handful of other centres are cracking down on hooded tops. The Trafford Centre has been operating a similar ban since it opened in Manchester seven years ago, while a shopping centre in Middleton, north Manchester, also bans hoods.

However, the Metro Centre in Gateshead, Britain's largest shopping and leisure centre, said it had no plans to introduce a ban. The Queen's Arcade in Cardiff and the Meadowhall Centre in Sheffield are not banning hoods.

The Children's Society described the Bluewater ban on hoods "blatant discrimination based on stereotypes and prejudices". However, Bluewater insists that the ban is not "children-specific".

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By David Derbyshire, Consumer Affairs Editor

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The number of shoppers at the Bluewater centre in Kent has risen by more than a fifth since it banned gangs of youths wearing hoods and baseball caps. The centre, near Dartford, says that 22 per cent more shoppers passed through its doors last weekend than during the corresponding period in 2004.

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Hooded tops, baseball caps and swearing have been outlawed at Bluewater shopping centre in Kent as part of a crackdown on anti-social behaviour.

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Bluewater has set out standards of expected behaviour

Hooded tops, baseball caps and swearing have been outlawed at Bluewater shopping centre in Kent as part of a crackdown on anti-social behaviour.
The retail and leisure complex is bringing in a zero-tolerance approach to intimidating conduct.

The move has been backed by Kent Police which has a dedicated on-site team.

Bluewater property manager Helen Smith said the decision was taken because there had been "issues" in the centre "at certain times of the week".

Baseball caps banned

Managers have drawn up a code of conduct for the centre and people contravening it will be asked to leave the complex.

The rules outline the standard of behaviour expected, including not smoking, leafleting, or canvassing on site.

We're very concerned that some of our guests don't feel at all comfortable in what really is a family environment

Bluewater property manager Helen Smith

Guidelines say intimidating behaviour by groups or individuals, anti-social behaviour including swearing, and wearing clothing which deliberately obscures the face such as hooded tops and baseball caps, will not be allowed.

Ms Smith said: "We're very concerned that some of our guests don't feel at all comfortable in what really is a family environment.

"That's feedback from retailers, our own staff and from our on site police force."

Brits can survive the Blitz but find hoods intimidating?

She said there were nearly 400 CCTV cameras at Bluewater which were being constantly monitored.

North Kent Supt Martin Hewitt said: "By clearly setting acceptable standards of behaviour, this code will allow staff and police officers to work together in maintaining the quality of experience for guests."

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BBC NEWS | UK | England | Kent | Mall bans shoppers' hooded tops

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Bluewater has set out standards of expected behaviour Hooded tops, baseball caps and swearing have been outlawed at Bluewater shopping centre in Kent as part of a crackdown on anti-social behaviour. The retail and leisure complex is bringing in a zero-tolerance approach to intimidating conduct.

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BBC report on Leah Betts' death. Leah dead after taking ecstasy on her 18's birthday. Reports of her death were understood as 'overreacted'.

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1995: Ecstasy pill puts party girl in coma
An 18-year-old student is on a life-support machine after taking an ecstasy tablet at her 18th birthday party.
Leah Betts from Latchingdon in Essex collapsed four hours after swallowing the pill which police believe may have been contaminated.

Ms Betts' mother, Janet, found her slumped in the bathroom and gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation after she stopped breathing.

Hospital tests later showed the teenager's brain had swollen after taking the drug and doctors said her condition was critical.

Both her parents had remained in the house during the party specifically for the purpose of stopping any drug taking.

Mrs Betts is a nurse, whose job involves warning schoolchildren about the dangers of drugs.

Mr Betts, a retired Metropolitan policeman, said they had warned their daughter repeatedly about the dangers of drugs.

"If people could only see my daughter - just look at this pretty 18-year-old who is flat on her back and can't even breathe - they would never take a drug again."

Four teenagers have been arrested in connection with the incident.

Police warned the tablet was probably one of a contaminated batch which Leah bought at a nightclub in Basildon on Saturday.

Detective Constable Ian Shead said: "There's a dealer out there selling poison. We suggest someone shops him before someone else ends up in hospital or dead."

The tablets have a distinctive apple motif and are an off-white colour.

Ecstasy has already been blamed for the deaths of more than 50 young people in the UK.

The last victim was 17-year-old Daniel Ashton, who died after buying a tablet during a night out in Blackpool in September.

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BBC ON THIS DAY | 13 | 1995: Ecstasy pill puts party girl in coma

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1995: Ecstasy pill puts party girl in coma An 18-year-old student is on a life-support machine after taking an ecstasy tablet at her 18th birthday party. Leah Betts from Latchingdon in Essex collapsed four hours after swallowing the pill which police believe may have been contaminated.

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sky new:youth view of reason he's looting

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sky new:youth view of reason he's looting

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people were shocked as this group of 'chavs' swearing on Sky News Live. This could be a good example of the way mass media (Sky) representing teens. It provides negative images of youth(swearing, being stupid, riots) to the public.

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Pillock on Sky News swears and gives reasons as to why he's looting

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Taken from Sky News' LIVE broadcast on Tuesday night at 10:20pm in Manchester. No copyright infringement intended.

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The rise and fall of the teenager in the UK. It demonstrates public's view on youth nowadays. As well as the views of youth themselves.

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Fashion Promotion and Communications video. British youth culture- the rise and fall of the teenager. 2nd year university project

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moral panics over youth culture in the UK(ecstasy)

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moral panics over youth culture in the UK(ecstasy)

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mass media (overreacted to the rise of ecstasy, raves and the death of Leah Betts. Sociologists claim this is the classic case of moral panic.

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OU Learning Zone - Moral Panics 3/3 (Ecstasy)

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Section of a very interesting OU prog about moral panics over youth culture in the UK. This bit concerns how society and the mass media (over)reacted to the rise of ecstasy, raves and the death of Leah Betts. The other segments will be uploaded later.

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This malaise is nothing new; it was a general current of feeling in the 1920s and 30s. Then, as now, these sentiments were linked directly to problems of crime and criminal justice. In addition to common allegations that the family, community and authority were in disrepair, a key cause of crime was seen as American gangster movies that incited "copycat" crime and immorality.

The King George's Jubilee Trust report of 1939, The Needs of Youth, summed up a catalogue of complaint that is uncannily familiar: "Relaxation of parental control, decay of religious influence, and the transplantation of masses of young persons to housing estates where there is little scope for recreation and plenty for mischief ... The problem is a serious challenge, the difficulty of which is intensified by the extension of freedom which, for better or worse, has been given to youth in the last generation."

These complaints from the inter-war years seem like a carbon copy of our own, and those who voiced them were often to be found looking back to happier times "before the war". But this was not a picture of itself that late Victorian England would always have found recognisable.

Submitting evidence in 1898 to the Howard Association on the subject of juvenile offenders, CG Heathcote, the stipendiary magistrate for Brighton, explained that "the manners of children are deteriorating" and that "the child of today is coarser, more vulgar, less refined than his parents were". It was during the hot summer of 1898 that the word "hooligan" made an abrupt entrance into the English language, in the wake of a rowdy August bank holiday celebration in London when hundreds of people appeared before the courts on charges of assault and drunkenness.

London's original hooligans emerged as what we would nowadays call a "youth culture", having adopted a uniform dress code of peaked caps, neck scarves, bell-bottom trousers, and a hairstyle cropped close to the scalp, with a "donkey fringe" over the forehead.

It was commonly reported that the hooligans engaged in pitched battles between rival gangs, armed with iron bars, knives, powerful catapults, and even pistols and revolvers. They patrolled their neighbourhoods shouting obscenities, playing mouth organs and pushing people down.

What are we to make of these stubborn continuities between past and present that disturb our accustomed ways of relating to youth crime and disorder? We are in the midst of a "moral panic" concerning hoodies, knife attacks, gangsta rap, gun culture, antisocial behaviour orders, "chavs" and "bling". That is not to say that nothing is going on: in some neighbourhoods residents do live in fear of youth gangs and the use of knives and guns is a worrying problem.

Nor is it to say that what is represented in the media is simply "made up". But the images magnify certain aspects of a phenomenon, while obscuring and down-playing others.

What is wrong with government and media responses to youth crime and antisocial behaviour is its emphasis on the unprecedented nature of the problem, while losing its grip on the actual social and historical background. We need to unlock this profound historical amnesia.

· Any comments on this article? Write to society@theguardian.com
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This panic over youth disorder is nothing new, says Geoffrey Pearson

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This malaise is nothing new; it was a general current of feeling in the 1920s and 30s. Then, as now, these sentiments were linked directly to problems of crime and criminal justice. In addition to common allegations that the family, community and authority were in disrepair, a key cause of crime was seen as American gangster movies that incited "copycat" crime and immorality.

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The culture of Chavs in the UK, the symbol of Chavs which including hoods, caps and burberry products. The public views of Chavs are described as negative.

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How a top can turn a teen into a hoodlum 

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How a top can turn a teen into a hoodlum 

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This report describe the roots of youth culture in UK: from Teddy boy, Mod and Rockers to Hoodies. Also discuss the public reaction over the

ban of cap and hoods in Blue Water shopping center in Kent

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Happy slapping, binge drinking, hoodie-wearing feral yobs have been swearing and spitting their way across the country this week. Tube drivers said yesterday they would strike over intimidating behaviour by gangs of youths on the District line. John Prescott recalled 10 "fellas with hoods" trying to beat him up and film it at a motorway service station.

Tony Blair said people were "rightly fed up with street corner and shopping centre thugs" and promised to make the restoration of respect a priority for his government. Both endorsed the approach taken by Bluewater, which has banned hoods and caps.

There is a moral panic over hooded teenagers. What's wrong with the kids? Are they worse than ever? "Yes," chorus the girls shopping at Bluewater. "My 14-year-old sister acts so much more grown up than I did when I was that age," says Carly. "It's unbelievable how old she acts - she wants to go to the pub." "When we were 14 we went to the cinema," says Lauren. "Now they all sit on the streets drinking and smoking." But none of the teachers, pensioners, mothers, employers and teenagers out shopping at Bluewater want to admit they are part of a society rearing a generation of hooded hoodlums.

Both government and shopping centre initiatives sprang from fearful focus groups. Voters told the prime minister of teens' loss of respect. Shoppers told Bluewater they hated the young hooded gangs listlessly congregating in the brightly lit mall. Its ban was shrewd PR, helping the 330 chain stores identify shoplifters on CCTV and sending a message to shoppers: leave your hoodie-infested local shops and come to Bluewater. (Gamestation, the computer games retailer, opportunistically announced yesterday that it would welcome hooded top-wearing teens into its stores.)

Now Kent's cavernous shopping centre seems to be where the hooded street rats come with their mums or girlfriends for a spot of down-time after skulking at the bus stop all day. From middle-aged women to teenage boys, all are wearing their hoods responsibly - down, not up. They come in their thousands to buy more hoodies: on sale in the windows of dozens of other shops yesterday.

Most of the teenage "guests" hanging out at Bluewater say their schools - in Gillingham, Rochester, Sidcup and Bexley - have banned hooded tops. Newsagents, pubs and clubs in these ordinary towns and suburbs have also outlawed hats and hoods so they don't obscure troublemakers' faces on CCTV.

Cameras are everywhere. It is not just hooded happy slappers who flourish their phones to film attacks. "I used to wear my hood up all the time when it was in fashion about a year ago," says Craig Wilkshire, 20, with his Nike cap on and Reebok hoodie down. "I was walking down the road once and a bus driver stuck his phone out of the window and took a photo and said, 'Now I've got you.' That's what it's like in Woolwich. Everyone wears hoods. It's really bad."

His girlfriend, Julie Hogben, 23, is angry about the stereotyping. "The other side is people think you are causing trouble so you might as well go and cause trouble. It's labelling the youngsters. It's society pushing them to do it - 'We've been given a bad name, we might as well carry it through.'"

Violence, cameras, hoodie bans, more cameras. People seem bewildered by this spiral of fear and control. "You can't wear hooded and caps in our school," says John Halford, 34, a teacher at a secondary school in the Medway. "I don't agree with the ban but the argument was crime could be committed in the school and they could remain anonymous on the CCTV cameras. The subtext is they are trying to stop all youths wearing things they consider offensive. It's a scare tactic. Hoodies signify they are rough, tough kids but what you wear is not necessarily a signifier of who you are.

"They gave a whole assembly talking about former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and that's seeped into many schools - sort out the small things and you sort out the big things. But if you quash freedom of expression that much you are going to make kids do other things."

The government is talking tough but critics fear it lacks a coordinated approach to tackling the problem. David Miliband's appointment as minister of communities in Mr Prescott's office has created grounds for a turf war between it and the Home Office. There are also rumours the much-hyped antisocial behaviour unit is to be closed.

"I'm not sure it is always a good idea to see youth as a problem. We want young people feeling wanted in society," says Joanna Shapland, professor of criminal justice at Sheffield University. "Hooded tops are a problem if you are relying on cameras and policing at a distance rather than face-to-face personal security."

According to Richard Garside, the director of the Crime and Society Foundation thinktank, the government's drive for respect has simply amplified perceptions of antisocial youths. West Midlands police has complained the force is being inundated with calls about innocuous antisocial behaviour.

"First it was squeegie merchants, then it was antisocial behaviour and now it's respect," says Mr Garside. "By creating this category of loutishness or kids hanging around the government can acknowledge anxieties without admitting there may be a problem with crime." It is unhelpful, he adds, to place what young people wear on a continuum of antisocial behaviour that includes vandalism, noise pollution and crack dens.

"It is a collection of discrete problems," he argues, which require specific solutions. Draughty village halls and games of pingpong overseen by the vicar may not cure youth ennui anymore but providing teenagers with greater mobility would stop hanging on street corners. "There are generalised solutions too, like poverty reduction, but they are not the ones the government is talking about."

While more than 65% of people consider youth crime is rising and experts agree there can be a connection between antisocial behaviour and serious youth crime, statistically, youth offending is falling. The number of 10-to-17-year-olds convicted or cautioned fell from 143,600 to 105,700 between 1992 and 2002, a drop of almost 26%. Government research has found the most mentioned antisocial behaviour is speeding - an adult problem.

"We are not complacent but anyone familiar with social history knows that teenagers have been complained about in every era," says Rod Morgan, chairman of the Youth Justice Board. "We mustn't attempt extreme responses. Would we be wise to exacerbate the problem by making certain forms of dress or behaviour even more attractive by damning them? We have to be careful we don't demonise them. Having said that, if young people are engaged in serious antisocial behaviour, destroying the quality of life in neighbourhoods, it needs to be dealt with."

Mr Morgan insists that projects such as voluntary work with parents of young children seen as at risk and providing local facilities for teens must be pursued. "It will not be a solution if our response is to lock up many more children. All we will do is create adult career criminals."

There is fear, but not terror, in Kent. "We don't see too much of it [antisocial behaviour] but there isn't the respect now that there used to be," says a pensioner, Wendy Wadeson, from leafy Pratt's Bottom, near Bromley. "Kids used to stand up for you when you were on the bus or open doors." Her husband Colin says: "In the evening when you're out and there's a group of youngsters in a dark area it can be threatening. It's an impression. It doesn't mean that they are causing trouble. Historically there's always been this kind of thing. The teddy boys and the mods and rockers created fear."

Were they mods or rockers in their youth? "Mods, I suppose. We had scooters. We did more sporty things with them - we'd drive to Italy," says Mr Wadeson. Did he go to Brighton, where the mods and rockers famously clashed? "Oh, there were those days too. People were drawn into it. It's easily done."

From quiffs to gold chains ...
1950s
The concept of the teenager was born, and with it the first signs of panic. Gangs of east London youths dressed up in drainpipe trousers, long coats and slicked back hair. Their Edward VII-style apparel gave them their name: teddy boys
1960s: Mods and rockers
Mods and rockers hove into view. Mods took R&B and soul to their (purple) hearts and sped to all-night clubs on Lambrettas or Vespas. Rockers had beefier motorbikes and a distaste for the comparatively effete mods. Street battles at Margate and Brighton triggered press hysteria and a countrywide fear of little scooters and big bikes

1970s: Skinheads
As parents fretted about hippies corrupting their daughters, mods morphed into skinheads before punk took the mainstream by surprise. Fears of degeneracy were confirmed by the Sex Pistols' expletive-ridden debut on teatime TV. Academia got hip to the youth beat; Stanley Cohen analysed the phenomena of "folk devils and moral panics".

1980s: Acid house
Under the Thatcherite radar, youngsters turned to acid house with its repetitive beats and a new drug, ecstasy. Dance fans adopted hooded tops from hip-hop and created their own free parties. More shocked tabloid headlines. The scene was killed by commercialism, bad drugs and the Criminal Justice Act

1990s
Countless mini-youth cultures, quickly adopted by the market economy, spawned countless mini-panics. Dad-rocking Britpop didn't set off many alarms but violent videogames did. So too did knives and guns and black youth cultures. By the early years of the 21st century, the Welsh band Goldie Lookin' Chain put their tongues in their cheeks to remind everyone that "guns don't kill people, rappers do"
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How a top can turn a teen into a hoodlum

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Happy slapping, binge drinking, hoodie-wearing feral yobs have been swearing and spitting their way across the country this week. Tube drivers said yesterday they would strike over intimidating behaviour by gangs of youths on the District line. John Prescott recalled 10 "fellas with hoods" trying to beat him up and film it at a motorway service station.