Mapping Driving Factors of UK Serious Youth Violence across Policy and the Community: A Multi-Level Discoursal Analysis

Author: Watkins, Luke William John & Alinka Gearon, Alinka

Abstract: The discussion of factors driving young people’s involvement in serious violence continues to be well documented across policy, news media, and academic research. The government response to riots taking place across the UK in 2011 set a precedent for an increasingly punitive discourse surrounding young people’s involvement in criminal lifestyles, as well as the Criminal Justice System’s response to the overall issue. In order to develop a greater understanding of the complex breadth of driving factors behind serious youth violence and their discoursal representation, this article presents findings of a multifaceted investigation through the interpretivist paradigm, merging macro-level policy with micro-level community insights. The article commences with an argumentative discourse analysis of a selection of Government and Youth Violence Commission policy documents before drawing on three semi-structured interviews with community-level practitioners in England working within policing and youth work organisations. The findings reveal a complex interplay of socio-environmental factors, poverty, domestic trauma, cultural dimensions, and street-based exploitation positioned alongside constructs of social exclusion and masculinity. The study uncovers a broad issue of systemic marginalisation and reduction in community resources, exacerbating conditions of social exclusion that create a greater propensity for involvement in serious youth violence. The findings support calls for the framing of serious youth violence as an issue of ‘public health’, encouraging deeper investigation into underlying socio-economic, cultural, and political conditions.

Keywords: serious youth violence, social exclusion, child exploitation, masculinity