A new youth subculture has come to the fore in Aotearoa, styled on the United Kingdom’s “roadmen’” and Australia’s “eshays”.
They call themselves “hoodrats”.
The teens commonly wear Nike TN trainers, black hoodies, shorts or athletic wear, and bumbags worn across the shoulder.
They have their own slang and a strong presence on social media platforms like TikTok and Snapchat.
READ MORE:
* Is youth crime really a growing problem and what can be done about it?
* ‘A real worry’: Two 12-year-olds caught in group of six youths stealing cars
* Looking back on Emo: The bands, the skinny jeans, and the over-teased hair
Some – including other teens – say the movement is styled around “acting tough”, and allege it has a dark side, involving ramraids, car thefts, assaults, and intimidation.
But experts argue the hoodrat movement is largely made up of children from ethnic minorities and lower socioeconomic backgrounds, who are more likely to be unfairly targeted and scapegoated.
Focus was drawn to the subculture after a series of incidents involving teenagers at Christchurch’s Westfield Riccarton mall.
On September 10, one teenager was left “bruised and battered” and another received a “martial arts-style” kick to the head during a robbery outside the mall.
A group of eight to 10 teens followed four other boys from the mall, accosting them in the car park. They allegedly stole a basketball and took the shoes from one boy, throwing them on the roof.
Police said a 15-year-old had since been arrested and charged. There had also been two other recent incidents where “youths were threatened and had items stolen”.
It triggered a dean at nearby Christchurch Boys’ High School to issue a warning to parents, saying there had been two incidents in one weekend of students being “jumped” by mobs of young people.
Meanwhile in Lower Hutt, police were called to two assaults in two weeks outside Queensgate Mall.
In the first, a 16-year-old girl allegedly had her head stomped on and held at knifepoint at the bus stop outside the mall. A week later two youths were arrested and referred to Youth Aid after an assault left a 14-year-old boy with blood streaming down his face and two front teeth knocked out.
Sixteen-year-old Ben, whose last name Stuff has chosen to withhold, had a lot of friends who identified as hoodrats, and hung out with them at the Christchurch bus exchange.
He said hoodrats ranged in age from 8 to 18, and were behind “most” of the recent assaults. He also attributed car thefts and ramraids to young people involved in the movement.
A lot of the conflict was about “postcode” – whether you’re from the east or west side of the city, he said.
George, 15, said it could be “pretty intimidating” running into big groups of hoodrats on the way home.
“If you’re friends with some of them, it’s fine.”
Some carried weapons, but they were more for intimidation than to actually use, he said.
“Pretty violent stuff though.”
Stuff approached some of their friends who identified as hoodrats, but they did not want to comment.
A police spokesperson said they were aware of a recent spike in offending, where young people had put themselves and others in harm’s way through “high-risk activities” such as ramraids and aggravated burglaries.
“While ramraids are not a new crime, we do see spikes in certain crime types from time-to-time.”
But they said police figures showed youth crime had actually decreased over the past decade, and there was no evidence this latest wave of offending was being driven by the hoodrat movement.
“The recent offending is driven by a number of factors, including the use of social media to promote their criminal offending and gain notoriety.
“It also likely stems from young people exposed to a negative home environment, disengaged from school and their communities, and the monetary gain from stealing.”
Youth crime was a complex issue, and police said they could not solve it alone.
“Strategies that involve the environment in which the young person lives – their family, whanau, and community – are more likely to be effective than those that focus solely on the individual.”
University of Otago sociology teaching fellow Kyle Matthews said subcultures provide a sense of shared identity and belonging, and a common set of cultural understandings and rules for young people who identified with them.
Youth subcultures were made up of young people “breaking away from families and developing independent identities” as they reached for adulthood, he said.
They also provided a language and shared understanding when meeting others they didn’t know who shared the subculture.
“If two groups of young people meet, either to socialise or engage in some conflict, that interaction can happen in ways that probably aren’t clear to outsiders.
“Watching some videos on TikTok there’s a whole language associated with this culture that makes no sense to me, but it certainly looks like it’s even shared internationally to an extent.”
Matthews said youth culture had always spread across borders, but social media was now playing a big role.
“TikTok is undoubtedly a big vector – it’s a massive trendsetter in terms of culture and its spread, and short videos are ideal for conveying dress, language, interactions in accessible ways.”
In terms of crime, Matthews said the situation was more complicated than high-profile “ramraid” stories.
“Sometimes no doubt they are committing crimes, but young people [in these subcultures] are also more likely to be targeted by shopkeepers, security, police.”
There was often conflict over the purpose of public and commercial spaces like streets, parks, and malls, he said, as groups of young people sought places to hang out and express their identity.
“Others would just like them to go away so that the space can feel more welcoming for people who feel threatened by some young people, and shops can focus on business and attracting customers.”
Matthews said while the hoodrat movement’s broad features were similar to the roadmen and eshay subcultures, it appeared in New Zealand the subculture was associated more with ethnic minorities.
“It raises lots of questions about race and class… who we feel comfortable around in public spaces and who we’d like to exclude from them.
“You don’t have to scroll back far in media archives to see stories of young people hanging in malls and the malls playing classical music to try and drive them away.”
© 2022 Stuff Limited