Content of the news programme

Over recent years the younger generation have increasingly received a bad perception in the media. With Knife crime on the increase and the terrible stories such as Rhys Jones covered in the news, we felt that a story on ASBO would be an interesting topic to cover. To give us more of an idea of what our story could be about that we would cover in our news programme we did some research into the area.

Knife and Gun Crime

According to a report covered by the Telegraph 'Knife crime has more than doubled in the past two years across England and Wales...' The number of muggings involving Knives soared from 25,500 to 64,000 according to the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies of King's College London. This is an increase of over 35,000 which is an incredible amount. According to research, knives are now used in one in five muggings twice the amount of two years ago.

BBC covered a report which showed from figures released by the police, a 48% rise in gun crime in the past year. 2224 firearm offences were made in 2008 to the 3306 in 2009. These offences include whether a real or fake firearm has been seen or used. The figures provided in these reports show the seriousness of knife and gun crime. Most people feel that this does not concern them but with all of the younger generation being given a bad name.

Anti-social Behaviour

In the UK an ASBO is seen as an offence 'which caused or was likely to cause harm, harassment, alarm or distress to one or more persons not of the same household as him or herself and where an ASBO is seen as necessary to protect relevant persons from further anti-social acts by the Defendant'. The Government introduced ASBOs by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and are issued by Magistrates' Courts. They can also only be given to a person over the age of 10.

Anti-social behaviour includes a range of problems:

• Noise Pollution


• Busking


• Drinking behaviour from excessive consumption of alcohol


• Abandoning cars


• Stealing/Mugging/Shoplifting


• Begging


• Vandalism/Criminal damage


• Loitering


• Littering/Fly tipping/Dog fouling


• Dealing/consumption of controlled recreational drugs


• Intimidation


• Fare dodging


• Spitting

From the list above we decided to focus our news report on vandalism and criminal damage. Nearly everywhere you go now there is some sort of vandalism whether it be graffiti or destruction of property. A report written for the Telegraph showed that one crime was committed every 2 minutes by British Youths. The report stated that "youngsters aged 10 to 17 carried out 277,986 offences in the past 12 months". The seriousness of this issue was highlighted by a 20% rise in the number of youths convicted for violent offences in the last 3 years. So we decided that we would do a feature on graffiti and whether it was art or vandalism?