Britain's Yobs

Hoodies, yobbos, happy-slapping and ASBOs. We're deluged with images of a teenage menace that appears to be sweeping Britain and which we're seemingly powerless to stop. In this film, Dispatches investigates why as a nation we've become increasingly intimidated by young people and why we won't intervene when we see someone being attacked or property vandalised.

Reporter Deborah Davies travels across Britain to visit the cities and towns which are most afraid of their younger inhabitants. She also meets the victims of violent attacks: those who dared to tell teenagers to stop behaving badly and those who discovered that when they were attacked people just walked on by rather than help them.

In one town, Dispatches films over 100 teenagers as they gather on a Friday night to begin their weekly rampage through the streets, downing bottles of vodka, smashing windows and hurling abuse. Deborah meets the local residents, who are too terrified to walk past the groups of kids, let alone say anything to them; and the policeman who's been left with steel plates holding his face together after he was viciously attacked by the youths.

Chanting "ASBO 'til we die," a crowd of teenagers surround the camera but eventually calm down enough to talk to Deborah and admit they're fully aware how intimidating they seem to passers by.

Dispatches also meets the ex-military men, specialists in covert surveillance, who're employed by local authorities to gather video evidence of anti-social and criminal behaviour because local people are often too frightened to testify against the culprits.

Investigating the rationale behind this increase in fear, Deborah interviews head teacher Frances Gilbert, whose attack on a night bus by a gang of teenagers inspired him to write Yob Nation , a study of yobbish behaviour in Britain. She also speaks to Michelle Elliot, Director of Kidscape and herself a victim of teenage muggers, and Professor Richard Sennet, whose work on respect is often quoted by the Government.

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