Abstract
I went looking for trouble, and I found it in Troublemakers. This book incisively explores the pitfalls of the British ‘Troubled Families’ programme, and intends to provide a critical ‘public sociology’ of its first two phases. Troubled Families was introduced to parliament and public as an official social problem on 15 December 2011 by the Conservative Prime Minster David Cameron, in the wake of a summer of riots induced by the police killing of Mark Duggan. These riots occurred during a time of national austerity, when cuts to public services were widening the pre-existing inequality gap and plunging more families into poverty. Crossley writes that this offered a moment when problem, policy and political process were aligned for a proposed solution to ‘troubled families’.
In Troublemakers, Crossley begins with a purposeful description and justification of his chosen Marxist muckraking sociological approach, with the aim of documenting and publicising the gap between values and practices in the Troubled Families programme. Crossley has previously written on challenges pertaining to Conservative family policy (Crossley, 2016), and Troublemakers provides developments to his previous work, while giving a comprehensive insight into the inconsistencies and contradictions of the ‘Troubled Families’ programme. In doing so, Troublemakers deconstructs the Conservative ideology that a ‘… culture of disruption and irresponsibility [that] cascades down the decades’, and attempts to disentangle the persistent Conservative conflation of poverty with delinquency and criminality (Cameron, 2011). Highlights of Troublemakers include Crossley’s damning examination of the ‘responsibility deficit’ and the process of ‘learning to be poor’. His sensitive exploration of street-level perspectives of this self-described ‘persistent, assertive and challenging’ programme is also notable and provides important critical insights into the real function of Troubled Families. He soon unveils the structural duplicity of the Troubled Families programme and its reliance upon ‘dirty data, deceitful practices and dubious claims throughout’, describing how the government over-claimed the success of the first phase of the programme, yet denied any wrongdoing. This book is strongly recommended for those who enjoy a decent and robust critique of British social policy. However those with an interest in cultural and social inequalities, family sociology, or the ‘long and undistinguished pedigree’ of social stigma that surrounds poverty, also have much to gain from Troublemakers.
In Troublemakers, Crossley identifies that the first issue with the Conservative ‘Troubled Families’ policy is its name. He explores the perpetuation of the myth of an ever-growing deviant underclass. He shares historic government rhetoric pertaining to poverty that builds upon centuries of concerns about the dangers posed by the ‘undeserving poor’. Crossley considers the legacy of Thatcher’s ‘welfare dependency’, in the light of the more recent Conservative portrayal of poverty as a moral hazard and the irresponsibility of ‘disadvantaged and dysfunctional’ families in the 2010s. Troublemakers also identifies the key government protagonists, namely Harrison, Cameron, Pickles and Casey, and considers their motivations.
‘Troubled Families’ originally arose due to Cameron’s rhetoric that a small group of troubled families were responsible for a large proportion of the problems in society, and that wide-ranging interventions were needed to constrain them. This heralded a new era of patriarchal authoritarianism towards multiply-deprived families. At this time, troubled families were not just given an official identity by government, but were also quantified and coded by the state. The programme was initially established to ‘turn around’ the lives of 120,000 troublesome and anti-social families in a single term of government. Crossley reveals that Troubled Families was initially aimed at those who met three of four criteria; namely involvement in youth crime or antisocial behaviour, truanting children, adults on out-of-work benefits, or high costs to the taxpayer. Despite existing data describing ‘troubled families’ in England including disadvantages such as poverty, poor housing, low skills, and maternal mental health, none of these issues were explicitly reflected in criteria used by the government to identify suitable families. Troublemakers provides smart and carefully-crafted insights into the political and cultural construction of the ‘problem family’, and how government data can be used to obfuscate and therefore contribute to contemporary social policy issues.
Troubled Families remains an active programme, although localised renaming has occurred to try to bury past mistakes. The current phase began in 2017 and has an increased emphasis upon worklessness by ‘improving lives: helping workless families’. Goals currently include the monitoring and management of crime and antisocial behaviour, issues with school attendance, out-of-work adults and young people who may be at risk of worklessness, domestic abuse, and families that have physical and mental health problems. It still receives government funding and aims to support 400,000 ‘troubled families’ by 2020. I am already looking forward to reading Crossley’s future review of the final outcome of this contentious work.