The phrase of the moment today seems to be 'anti-social behaviour'.
A lot of words are being written about it, a lot of effort being put in to curb or control it and a lot of money being spent on dealing with its results.
We have seen it to a small degree, even in Haverhill.
Those who have suffered from it will be incensed that I should describe it as a small degree, but in the wider context small towns like Haverhill have not suffered anywhere near as badly as the big cities – yet.
We have to hope fervently that we don't see examples here of people being knifed for trying to protect their property or their peaceful way of life.
But the sort of mild level of nuisance covered by the term 'anti-social behaviour' is nevertheless enough to drive you up the wall if you suffer from it regularly.
Groups of youths gather in some public space on a regular basis. They may be noisy and their language may be offensive, or they may create damage on their way to or from the meeting place, or their presence may just intimidate older residents.
This sort of thing has always happened to a greater or lesser degree.
'Hanging around' as it used to be called in my day is an important phase of growing up – a sort of rite of passage.
The differences we see nowadays are that the youngsters seem to be younger and more irresponsible or childish in their behaviour, which can lead to greater offence and more damage.
There has probably always been a generation gap, but it became more pronounced in the 1950s and 1960s, between adults and adolescents.
But adolescence seems now to include children as young as ten.
The gap is often made worse by the speed with which adults forget what it was like to be young themselves.
This can result in an exclusive attitude to young people rather than an inclusive one, which is very counter-productive.
Society changes quickly and each new generation has to find its place within it.
A century ago, congregations used to sing:
The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
He made them high or lowly
And ordered their estate.
No-one would sing that nowadays, but the necessary corollary of freedom from a rigid class system is that everyone has to find their own place.
For all those who are successfully aspirational, there are others who are not, and what exactly is their place in society?
For boys, it is even more complex.
Whereas, within the prison of low self-esteem, brought about by an uncertainty of what one's place in the world should be, girls often try to find a way out through motherhood – via whatever circumstances come to hand – boys do not have such an option open to them.
More and more successful female single-parent families can imply that young males are almost redundant.
Pride in what used, rather naively, to be called 'honest toil' in a manual job or in a factory, is not enough, nor, in many cases, even available in the wake of the influx of labour from abroad.
So what is the future of these young people if they feel the ladder to success (or even to a basic family, house and job) is out of their reach?
Surrounded by the jetsam of a previous generation or two which has been through this process, often unsucessfully, they may well find no source of pride in the community around them and therefore no reason to consider the sensibilities of those who have benefited from the new social mobility.
As long as we continue to see them as just 'a problem' they will continue to live up to that stereotype.
And, of course, some of them are not victims of any social problems at all – they are just little b*****s.