Introduction

Abstract

It is seven o’clock on a Friday evening in June. A group of teenagers — mainly though not exclusively boys — are hanging around outside the shops on a usually quiet residential street. Local residents, fed up with the noise and anxious about levels of street crime in the area, call the police. Some 20 minutes later two officers arrive at the scene; they talk to the youths, a few muffled complaints are heard and the young people are moved on. The residents, for the moment at least, are placated.