AUSTRALIA
Rich city, poor kids
Lawless street gangs in an inner-city suburb reflect
deeper tensions between the have-nots and the haves.
The window of James Kyriakou's blue Peugeot is a
thousand pieces of glass — Glebe crystal, some locals call it. His
laptop is running down the streets, borne like many before by the speedy
feet of a boy. Police are unfazed. “They felt sorry for me because it
had happened. But they see it on a daily basis — they just seem to
accept it,” says Kyriakou.
For years Glebe has kept crime figures high in the
Leichhardt police command, which consistently ranks as one of the worst
areas in the state for stealing from cars and homes. The heroin drought
was trumpeted this week for pushing down crime in NSW, but Glebe and the
neighbouring suburbs of Redfern and Waterloo stand apart for their
continuing high rates of theft.
Glebe, Redfern and Waterloo are also officially in the
embrace of an increasingly international city, having been stuck on to
the City of Sydney in recent council amalgamations to make an almost
schizophrenic mix of wealth and poverty. On one side is a world without
boundaries, where opportunity beckons and ambition is rewarded; adjacent
but separate are tight, little neighbourhoods where disadvantage,
neglect and welfare prevail.
Redfern supplies the dramatic images of which the
February riot is just the latest example. But despite close connections
between Redfern and Glebe, and the similarity of many social issues,
Glebe has been relatively neglected. Tiny backyards help make Glebe's
streets a playground. Most play is innocent, but police, retailers and
residents say Glebe's high levels of petty crime are driven by a small
group of children. Jeff is one of them. Only just in his teens, Jeff —
not his real name — has form for stealing from cars and houses and is a
regular at Children's Court. He runs a gang of younger boys, about 10
years old. One resident sees him scouting for valuables in cars. “He
then calls for mates with a whistle when they've found something.” Some
younger kids, around 10, are given the stolen goods because if they're
caught, they face little or no action, he says.
Another local says: “There was a time a while back
that he was causing endless trouble.”Many of Jeff's offences are
committed when he should be in school. Others are in breach of bail
conditions that forbid him from leaving home after dark, except with his
carer.
Crime was worse a couple of years ago, says Mick
Byrne, a publican. But house break-ins continue through window cracks so
small “only kids could get through”. It's a great community, Byrne says
with pride, “interesting, [with] all kinds of people”. He says people
are frightened of some younger residents. “You might have an issue with
two or three of them but within a few minutes you'll have 30 of their
mates crowding around.”
Residents and shopkeepers, while acknowledging
problems, are aware how damaging, and paradoxically, misleading, the
area's image as a crime-ridden zone can be. “It would be unfair and
erroneous to write that Glebe is a hotbed of crime,” says Andrew Craig,
the president of the Glebe Society. “Ninety-nine per cent of people on
Glebe Estate are fine. This tiny group causes all the trouble when it
arises. The source of the problem is a small number of people who are
having serious difficulties ... people who have had truly hellish
experiences. There are about six who are serious problems. The rest are
followers and aren't a big problem.”
As Leichhardt mayor from 1999 until last month, Maire
Sheehan had responsibility for Glebe. “There were significant petty
crime incidents that left Leichhardt Council when Glebe went to the City
- breaking into cars, snatching handbags, scuffling in the streets,
young kids intimidating people,” Sheehan says. Now the city has grown,
the challenge is to respond adequately to demands from residents and
business for crime prevention programs.
The inner-city suburb spans the city's social and
economic divide in one postcode. Million-dollar terraces stand just
blocks away from considerable poverty. In parts of Glebe near Broadway,
more than 80 per cent of homes are rented from the NSW Department of
Housing, with most families existing on less than $400 a week, the 2001
census reveals. More than 1400 public housing residences shelter at
least 600 young people.
Dr Don Weatherburn, director of the Bureau of Crime
Statistics and Research, says poverty increases juvenile crime mainly by
increasing the rate of child neglect. Child neglect, abuse and other
forms of poor parenting — such as harsh and inconsistent discipline —
increase the likelihood of crime, as do delinquent peers, drug use and
poor school performance.
Staying in school has always been a problem for Jeff,
but not his only one. Taken from hospital at birth by his grandmother
because his mother was a heroin addict, he has lived mainly with
relatives. When Jeff was five or six he would roam the streets at night
asking for food, sometimes covered in insect bites. By 10 he was drunk
on those streets, “with no shoes in the pouring rain”.
His mum's been in jail again and Jeff's contact with
her appears less regular than his visits to a psychiatrist. “All kids
need love. They need people who care about them. The youth centre can't
be open 24 hours a day,” says a local who still thinks of Jeff as a
lovely boy. “Now he's running around trying to make out he's bigger
[older] than he is to the older boys.”
The police area commander, Superintendent Arthur
Katsogiannis, says: “You've got very young children from broken families
— the father might be in jail and the mother a drug user — and they're
seeking love and affection, and they're doing that out on the streets.”
Many locals praise the police's high visibility,
crediting it with reducing crime. The figures have been decreasing, with
the latest crime statistics revealing falls of up to 30 per cent in some
categories. Police car, bike and foot patrols are more or less
continuous, bringing children, whether committing crimes or not, into
repeated contact with police. A key part of such pro-active policing is
leaning on known offenders. Chris — not his real name — 13, of Glebe,
with his baseball cap and streetwise attitude, goes to school
“practically every day”. And says he talks to police just as often.
“Every day they pull us up and harass us,” Chris says. “If I come out of
my home and someone's already broken into a car they say it's me. And I
say I didn't do it, and they say I'm lying.”
Katsogiannis see the police as “the safety net that
catches the end product ... of socio-economic forces. Yeah, there is
still a small group and we've identified them, we've arrested them and
we've charged them and they've been let out on bail. We do our job
repeatedly.”
Father Chris Riley, founder and director of Youth Off
the Streets, which works with troubled youths at 20 spots in NSW, knows
the problem. “We're working with some kids who are almost daily picked
up by the police and charged. They're released from court straight away
and picked up again that day by the police. This sort of escalates to
the point where they are just let go without intervention and when they
get to 16 or 17 and they've done a serious crime they're slotted big
time.”
But a Glebe Point Road retailer, bludgeoned on the
head in a back lane for his day's takings, has no understanding for the
youths' backgrounds, only anger toward them. He didn't see his
attackers, but he thought he knew what street they lived in. The street
was on the Glebe Estate, he says, with no evidence, apart from a vague
sense they were Aboriginal.
Concerns about some young people's behaviour may be
justified, says Dr Dorothy Bottrell, co-ordinator of the Glebe Youth
Service. But generalisations about “problem youth” and “youth crime
waves” stereotype youths and compound problems. Youths are implicated by
association of the company they keep, Bottrell says.
Marlene Wilson, an elder and member of the stolen
generation, loves her suburb but bemoans its inequalities. “The kids
think, ‘Why have they got so much?’ and think they are not going to miss
whatever they get out of their bag. They think it's not even stealing,
they call it searching, so they justify it. But I tell them 'no, it's
stealing'. If you get to know them they're just kids. They're hungry.”
Shane Brown, a youth worker of 22 years' experience at
the Waterloo-based South Sydney Youth Services, says: “Glebe has such a
close connection to the Redfern/Waterloo community. There are less
services in Glebe, so its needs are greater.”
He says the community solutions program from the
Premier's Department, an inter-governmental response to problems in the
Redfern-Waterloo area, doesn't cover Glebe. Its $7 million budget over
three years dwarfs spending in Glebe.
Sheehan says Glebe misses out because it's a smaller
area. State government agencies faced with problems are underfunded and
the workers stressed, she says. But she believes ignoring one place
because of a perceived bigger problem elsewhere is false economy. “If
you've got one generation that's stuffed basically, then when they have
two or three kids, the next generation will have even more problems.”
Local groups, such as the police accountability
community team and the community drug action team, are part of efforts
to bring people and agencies together. The City of Sydney Council runs
programs such as After Dark, with weekend activities for young people.
Some locals credit the Glebe Youth Service with
helping to cut crime. Its recent success includes participation tripling
to more than 300 young people, with their involvement in crime dropping,
Bottrell says.
Shoestring funding forced the youth service to shut
one day a week and cut its primary-to-high school transition support
program — Sailing into high school. Last week the Department of
Community Services indicated a funding increase was coming.
Weatherburn emphasises improving school performance in
crime-prone neighbourhoods, and programs to improve parenting. He also
recommends strengthening local institutions, such as schools and
sporting clubs.
Despite local protest, John McColl's gym shut about
three years ago. The Department of Housing had sold the property because
of high maintenance costs, a spokesman says. Byrne says when the gym
closed, a sharp increase in crime followed. Assurances were given that
the gym would be part of the re-development, but it is still closed, and
the development stalled. McColl had five microwaves heating food from
freezers he had stocked. “80 kids a day, seven days a week,” McColl
says. “The kids were hungry, but they could always get a feed in that
joint.”
The youth service regularly feeds local kids. But the
service's success does not necessarily pay. Bottrell has identified a
performance paradox. “When things flare up or there's a problem, you get
some attention and you get money thrown at you. But the more successful
you are, the less likely you are to attract grants. You don't get money
for telling people what you admire about the kids — their energy, their
humour, loyalty to each other, their ingenuity.”
By Jock Cheetham and Andrew Stevenson
19 April 2004
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/04/16/1082055655347.html
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