They've had a bad rep for a long time only they were often confused with and obscured by the american pitbull hitting the headlines, more lately with pitbulls banned from this country the Staffies have come more into the spot light.
I think part of the problem is that within the last decade or so they've been increasingly bred from those with better temperments and become more accustom to being house dogs which is what a lot of people have experience with but there are still plenty around that don't have that breeding and/or aren't so well trained/brought up. From what I remember there was historically 3 main forks of the breed, those bred for hunting which tend to be very dangerous once they get their teeth into something, those bred as range companion animals (which tend to be where a lot of the ones people own come from) that tend to be the ones that are quite docile with those they consider their family, etc. and those bred for fighting that tend to be more intelligent examples but also can be quite unstable (more likely to be the mistreated ones) and potentially very dangerous.
