Why do we still have rough places in the UK?

[Edrof]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00drr1r/Girls_Behind_Bars_Episode_1/

Just been watching a bit of Girls Behind Bars on iPlayer (I was expecting something else ) and it got me thinking.

The UK is hardly a Utopian society but we have an amazingly high avergae standard of living compared to most of the planet.

So how come, in today's society we still have really rough areas in the cities? I'm not talking about people who are poor or under-educated, I'm talking about people living in environments where violence and substance-abuse are normal ways of life. I understand that people born into this world hold their parents and friends up as role-models so if they are criminals, their children will follow suit so is this a vicious circle that we can never truly break?

Surely even real scumbags know it's wrong to beat up some old lady and half-inch her pension. Is it a case of 'it's much harder to do the right thing' and so the negative environment perpetuates?

If you could bring about a radical reform of the prison system, what would you change? Our current system clearly doesn't work particularly well, especially at keeping drugs out.

 

[Deleted member 66701]

Why do we still have rough places in the UK?

We stopped sending the residents to Australia.

 

[Vonhelmet]

All countries have problems, including those with a much higher standard of living than the UK. You can't get away from it.

 

[Prophet]

A better standard of life doesn't stop being A-holes.

 

[DJMK4]

Every place has its deprived area's

 

[Edrof]

A better standard of life doesn't stop being A-holes.

How do you change the a-holes? Or is it impossible?

 

[Prophet]

How do you change the a-holes? Or is it impossible?

I think at every level of society you have good and bad people. Everyone takes their environment for granted eventually no matter how good it is.

So I'm not sure you'll ever change the a-holes.

 

[drunkenmaster]

Morals and the idea that hurting other people is bad has smeg all to do with money, or the area, just about individuals. Even when it comes to how you are taught, there are plenty of people with entire families of criminals around them who grow up to think completely different and who do nothing wrong.

As for drugs, theres entirely nothing wrong with drugs. Heres a little hint, for the last several THOUSAND years drugs were legal, as was alcohol and smoking and pretty much everything else. There was little to no crime involved and people weren't overcrowding prisons with people who buy and sell drugs.

When we made drugs illegal, and by "we" I mean in general the western world who decided to arbitrarily impose a random new moral objection to the idea that people might want to alter their state of mind on a drug the western world wasn't heavily taxing, we created an entire industry of criminal enterprise, worth billions and billions of dollars worldwide, with smuggling and crime prevelant and its largely(not completely) these same types of gangs who smuggle drugs and get into crime who partake or move on to other crime, guns, forced prostitution, etc, etc.


Drugs never made illegal, society would be a happier, far lower crime, far less problematic place.

 

[scorza]

I think at every level of society you have good and bad people. Everyone takes their environment for granted eventually no matter how good it is.

So I'm not sure you'll ever change the a-holes.

No, but you can at least try do something to reduce the number of a-holes.

 

[meghatronic]

How do you change the a-holes? Or is it impossible?

Change must come from within. They have no desire nor motivation to change, so I'm not sure of the solution. This might be an interesting topic for SC.

 

[Abraham]

there's two types of criminal in very very general terms:
-those who think they have a right to do what they're doing i.e. don't think they're doing anything wrong.
-those who think they have no choice, it's not what they'd want to do
I'm thinking really with reference to theives/burglars here, but they're either just arses or there's something "forcing" them into it, usually drug dependancy but I can think of other situations that could lead to it.

Get rid of illegal drugs and you'd lose the majority of the second type, but that said you might increase the number of the first type

 

[Cosimo]

How do you change the a-holes? Or is it impossible?

Send them to Australia. No wait we've done that alteady.

I don’t think it’s possible as there will always be bad apples in a society. You can’t pick or choose the nature or the make-up of a person. There will always be a mixture of the good, the bad, the ugly and the beautiful.

 

[eatcustard]

We allowed to many immigrants in, so money is spread out to thin in areas that need it.

 

[Efour]

You cant have everything nice in a society based on exploitation and profits because it cant work without treading on lesser peoples throats.

 

[Vonhelmet]

We allowed to many immigrants in, so money is spread out to thin in areas that need it.

Indeed. This country did not suffer from any variations in class, social status, wealth or quality of life until the late 19th century.

 

[Fusion]

People forget how parochial and insular many communities and areas still are. In the 19th and early 20th Centuries new towns would be founded when a coal mine was sank or a foundry built in the area. Fast foward eighty years or so and when that industry ceases for whatever reason (foreign competition usually being the biggest), you have suddenly got a massive unemployment problem on your hands for the residents of that town and their families. Those residents are mostly likely not very well educated, preferring to do unskilled/semi-skilled/skilled manual labour with often specific skillsets which may not apply to other industry.

I have to admit I do find it strange to think that there are such deprived areas so close to city centres, where job opportunities and transport links are excellent. Nottingham is an example that springs to mind, where you have St Anns, The Meadows and Radford which are all very poor areas and all within about a mile of the city centre. They are however, very dense concentrations of social housing, designed and built for the neediest residents of the city and were home to slums and back-to-backs up until the 1960's when they were cleared.

As has been hinted at, it's the vicious cycle of benefit dependancy, low morale and low achievement that is hard to erase, and this is seemingly passed on from generation to generation.

 

[dowie]

As for drugs, theres entirely nothing wrong with drugs. Heres a little hint, for the last several THOUSAND years drugs were legal, as was alcohol and smoking and pretty much everything else.

I don't think people have been injecting opiates, of using crack cocaine etc.. until very recently. If you don't think there's anything wrong with either of those two then you're incredibly stupid.

 

[Vonhelmet]

I don't think people have been injecting opiates, of using crack cocaine etc.. until very recently. If you don't think there's anything wrong with either of those two then you're incredibly stupid.

They have been smoking opium for a fair while, though.

 

[apple_man77]

Rough areas are usually large areas of unemployed people living on a council estate who don't care about there house.

It's a fact of life that people don't care for things as much that they don't own or haven't paid for. Drugs and alcohol are obviously quite high in these areas in some places but that just goes hand in hand with the people that live there.

There is ALWAYS going to be the rich, middle class and poor no matter how rich/poor, developed/undeveloped the country is they live in!

 

[ACE01]

I don't think people have been injecting opiates, of using crack cocaine etc.. until very recently. If you don't think there's anything wrong with either of those two then you're incredibly stupid.

Though I take a strong anti-drug stance personally (never even put a cigarette to my mouth, let alone anything more), I appreciate that's my decision and rightful opinion. I'm not sure you'll win many arguments simply by telling someone they are "stupid".

Pointing out the above would be breaking UK law, fine. The knock-on impact of drug-related crime, check. Reported health risks, yep. Is it not better to educate & articulate?

<On topic> I'm not convinced this is a problem that can be solved forcibly in one generation. Methods of punishment all have their drawbacks as well as benefits, but fundamentally, I'd agree the prison system is flawed.

Food for thought: Moral conditioning over time, and a stable economy will help to lessen the occurrences of problem areas? Or does would it simply alter our perception and recognition of them, perhaps?