Crime prevention series

The problem

Published in:
Preventing graffiti and vandalism
Susan Geason and Paul Wilson
Canberra : Australian Institute of Criminology, 1990
ISBN 0 642 14936 4 ; ISSN 1031-5330
(Crime prevention series) ; pp. 7-13

The offences

Vandalism and graffiti are costing too much, not only in dollars, but through danger to human lives, increasing fear of crime among the old and the underprivileged, loss of services, and a general lowering of the quality of life in our communities.

According to a 1988 NSW Police Department report, there are at least 140 graffiti gangs or "crews" with a membership of about 800 graffitists or "writers" on police computers, but approximately 300 groups involving up to 3,500 youths from 12 to 18 years of age could be involved in the graffiti subculture in New South Wales alone. In 1986 it was costing the NSW State Rail Authority $5 million a year to clean graffiti off trains, and New South Wales Transport Investigation Police tell of a gang of nine who caused $182,000 worth of damage in two nights.

In Victoria, graffiti is costing the Met - Melbourne's urban rail system - about $5 million annually. The cost of cleaning trains, structures and stations belonging to the London Underground was £285,000 in 1985, rising to over £400,000 the following year.

Up till 1988 Australian Telecom was spending $18 million annually to repair vandalism to its public telephones, and in Liverpool in the United Kingdom, before an anti-vandalism campaign began to take effect, half that city's public phones were out of commission at any given time (Merseyside Police 1988).

The school arson and vandalism bill for the New South Wales Government has reached $14 million a year (Sun Herald 18 September 1988) and it is estimated that arson in English schools has been costing between £25 and £30 million annually.

But there is a cost in human terms, too. By 1988 six youths had been killed on New South Wales railways while painting graffiti on carriages, and many are injured every year (Wilson 1988). As many graffitists steal to buy spray paint, the public also suffer. In a six-month period in 1988, the New South Wales Police Graffiti Task Force laid 288 charges against graffitists - 115 of malicious damage, 47 of stealing, 22 of assault, 13 of assault and robbery, and 17 of carrying offensive implements. And according to Transport Investigation Branch police, graffitists who leave a crew are likely to be bashed for defecting.

When schools are burned or vandalised, children suffer, and when public phones are out of order, those who do not own phones - usually the underprivileged members of the community - are further disadvantaged, particularly in emergencies.

Vandalism is unacceptable on every level. It looks bad, costs money, reduces the quality of life for those it affects, and often frightens people vulnerable to crime.

Graffiti is not so clear-cut. Although it can be ugly, costly to remove and dangerous for its practitioners, it has some benefits for some people: it can look better than what it covers up; some slogans are funny; it is seen by some as a form of community art; and politically-motivated graffitists like members of BUGA UP (Billboard Graffitists Against Unhealthy Promotions) see themselves fulfilling an important social function, a belief which is often upheld in court.

The offenders

With the exception of Britain's soccer hooligans, those who indulge in vandalism and graffiti are largely young people who under-achieve at school. Boredom, alienation, family and community breakdown, lack of leisure opportunities and youth unemployment have all been cited as causes.

The view of the New South Wales Transport Investigation Branch is that kids become graffitists for fame, recognition and identification. The New South Wales Police and Telecom's Special Vandalism Investigation Squad regards vandals and graffitists as petty criminals (Monaghan 1986) or unsupervised larrikins, but this is disputed by many talented graffitists, the authors of books on "subway art" and collectors of graffiti.

Graffiti got a very bad press in Sydney press in September 1988, when a young woman was allegedly abducted from a railway station and murdered by a group of young men and women who had associations with graffiti gangs. Graffitists and their sympathisers fought back, and stories portraying graffitists as, if not quite the kid next door, at least frustrated artists, began to appear in the media.

Former bombers turned "piece" painters (painting whole pictures legally rather than illegal tags) at Sydney's Bondi Centre clearly view themselves as artists, not criminals or vandals (Sun Herald 18 September 1988). As one 23-year-old explained: "The graffiti crew are all about friendship and our shared interest in art".

And at least one convicted graffitist formerly of "The Future Art Beat Four" graffiti gang now designs covers for record companies (Sydney Morning Herald 15 September 1988). He also gets permission from builders to paint on their hoardings. Not only is it legal and more artistically fulfilling than writing tags on trains, it also commands a much wider audience.

"Graffiti has been around since man lived in caves," he said. "The graffiti we see now are the purest form of the art because they are something spontaneous, and outside the structured art gallery system."

He went on to explain the motivating force behind graffiti, especially tags - "They spring from a fundamental urge to be recognised."

The culture

Graffitists have a pecking order, and to qualify as a serious practitioner (a "writer") rather than an amateur (a "toy"), a youth has to spray his initials ("tag") at least 1,000 times on trains. If the train "runs" with the tag still on it, this gives the writer more recognition among his peers, and one of a writer's great triumphs is to be photographed beside his handiwork before the railway maintenance workers clean it off.

The Transport police say graffiti crew communications networks are so effective that a train painted at 3 a.m. in a depot will have an audience of admirers with cameras lining the tracks when it "runs" on its first trip of the day. Writers also gain status by being arrested and can become heroes if they get off the charges.

Punishment seems to depend on whether the magistrate perceives the writer as a kid acting on impulse or a hardened gang member with a long record. Some writers have been sentenced to 12 months in an institution; others receive only 100 hours of community service.

The graffiti subculture seems to be highly developed, with secret signals, symbols and handshakes and cult books. There are reports of information exchanges, crew summit meetings, extensive interstate and even international connections, and a monthly periodical called Hip Hop.

The graffiti movement has even adopted its own logo from the Volkswagon car logo - an intertwined "VW". To crew members this stands for "Vandals Wanted", and like other important graffiti paraphernalia, must be stolen. Some graffitists with a taste for publicity have even had Vandals Wanted business cards printed, complete with the VW logo.

Graffitists have developed a fairly lofty "philosophy", first made public in Subway Art, a glossy illustrated "bible" for writers compiled from research on three continents by Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfont (1984). The follow up Spraycan Art by Chalfont and James Prigoff in 1987 is a full-colour how-to book with 244 illustrations of graffiti and photos of famous writers, along with romantic statements of the "live fast and die young" variety.

The philosophical stance, designs and operational tips in these books have been adopted by local graffitist, as has the graffitists' special slang. Some examples follow:

Bite	Copy other graffitist's style
Bomb	Spray graffiti on the outside of a moving train
Buff	Erase graffiti
Cap	Spray paint nozzle
Crew	Graffiti gang
Def	Good (derives from death)
Fade	Blend colours
Kill	Bomb excessively
King	Best with the most
Tag	Graffitist's three-letter identification sign
Toy	Inexperienced or new writer
Writer	Graffitist

Tags are the initials of graffiti crew names, for example,

ATK	All Time Kills
CC	Crime city
FSK	Fucking Psycho Kids
JFA	Just Fucking Around
LSD	Let Sydney Die, or Live Sex Darling
OSB	One Step Beyond
RSL	Resist Sydney's law

Some of these tags are simply self-aggrandising, but others point to a dangerous degree of alienation from their city, their elders, and their entire environment on the part of teenage graffitists.

Transport Police say the graffiti subculture is highly democratic, without discrimination against particular groups, and apparently crosses class lines. Only one discriminatory group was known of, a black crew which allows whites in only to steal for black members.

Their motives

To counter the common notion that vandalism is senseless behaviour with no motivation, criminologists have suggested a list of possible motivations (Canter 1984):

• revenge
• anger
• boredom
• acquisition
• exploration
• aesthetic experience
• existential exploration

They see an act of vandalism as very complex behaviour which might be the result of a number of different motivations.

Rennie Ellis, an Australian graffiti collector, regards graffiti as "...the result of someone's urge to say something, to comment, inform, entertain, persuade, offend or simply to confirm his or her own existence here on earth" (Ellis 1985).

For the most part, however, Australian spray painters, with the notable exception of BUGA UP, are not political: they don't leave slogans, just their calling card in the form of a nickname. And they prefer to steal the paint as part of the thrill.

Police psychologists say there are three sorts of vandals, each group with different motives. Phone busters are thieves; school burners and breakers are lashing out at authority; spray paint kids are showoffs, and seat slashers are less-eloquent showoffs.

The current polarisation of the debate about graffitists into dangerous criminals versus high-spirited kids with a love of public art may be preventing a serious examination of graffiti as a symptom of extensive alienation, hostility and social malaise on the part of growing numbers of youngsters.

Children have a tendency to stick together against the adult world, but most of them grow out of it and take their places in adult society. Kids who join graffiti gangs and become absorbed into the graffiti subculture may tend to stay outside normal society. At best this will cut them off from many of the benefits of participation in their community; at worst, it could lock them into a lifetime of crime.

Local graffiti gangs have tended to follow overseas trends - in rhetoric, artistic styles, symbolism - and the danger must be acknowledged that they will follow the lead of graffiti gangs in Los Angeles and New York who moved into drug dealing with all the violence it entails.

Types of vandalism

In their investigation into graffiti and vandalism for the New South Wales State Rail Authority (1986), Paul Wilson and Patricia Healy used the following categorisation of vandalism, adapted from Cohen (1972):

• Acquisitive vandalism - damage done in order to acquire money or property, for example damaging telephone boxes.
• Tactical Vandalism - damage done as a conscious tactic to achieve another end.
• Ideological vandalism - damage done to further a cause or communicate a message, for example slogans on buildings.
• Vindictive vandalism - damage done to get revenge, for example breaking school windows because of perceived unfairness by teachers.
• Play vandalism - damage inflicted incidentally or deliberately as part of a game or competition, for example seeing who can break the most windows.
• Malicious vandalism - damage as an expression of rage or frustration, for example scratching the paintwork on expensive cars.
• Innocuous vandalism - damage done to property defined by youth as unimportant or of no value, for example slashing railway seats.

Wilson concluded that, though the motivation involved in tactical, ideological and vindictive vandalism is fairly obvious, the motivations for play, malicious and innocuous vandalism - most common to railway damage - are less obvious, and unfortunately, quite widespread.