'YOU GO OUT THIEVING TO GET ENOUGH CASH TO BUY YOUR DRUGS. THERE'S NOTHING
ELSE TO DO'

Naz aims to steal two mobile phones or car radios – preferably both – every
24 hours to feed his UKP60-a-day crack and heroin habit.

The baseball-capped 17-year-old is one of the disenfranchised youngsters at
the heart of the drugs and crime problem that has made the Bury Park area of
Luton in Bedfordshire one of 50 areas to be targeted by the Youth Justice
Board.

High unemployment and years of miss-targeted social funding have left Bury
Park's vibrant and predominantly Asian community facing the task of
reclaiming their streets from drugs, theft and prostitution.

Luton, a post-war sprawl once famed for making hats and now the home of
Vauxhall Cars, has seen its crime rate increase by 9.2 per cent in the past
12 months with its Pakistani, Kashmiri and Bangladeshi neighbourhood bearing
a large part of the burden.

Naz, a second-generation Pakistani found sitting on a bench yesterday
waiting for his lunchtime fix, said: "Mobiles are the best thing – people
leave them in their cars or you just grab bags. I know someone who gives me
UKP30. He sells them on for ?100 I think.

"Drugs is the best thing around here, there is nothing else for us to look
forward to. You go out thieving in the shops or the streets and get enough
to buy your bags [of drugs]. Everything is all right after that."

Community workers in Bury Park – a bustling mile-long strip of Asian food
and clothing stores, wholesalers and importers surrounded by rows of
terraced housing – admit drugs is their major problem, with the attendant
difficulties of youth crime and unemployment.

The jobless rate of 8.9 per cent in two council wards of Biscot and Dallow
is double that of Luton as a whole and more than triple that for all
Bedfordshire. The two wards were recently ranked among the 100 most deprived
in the country.

House burglaries and shoplifting are among the favourite methods for addicts
to get the money to feed their habit, according to Luton's Drugline help
centre. Jackie, a 67-year-old Irishwoman who has lived in Bury Park for 22
years, said: "I've been burgled twice in the last six months. They come
through the back window looking for my pension money or whatever they can
get their hands on."

Those at the front line of Bury Park's problems put them down to a general
social malaise and history of urban deprivation combined with a failure by
the authority to recognise the specific needs of its immigrant inhabitants.

Sultan Mahmood, development officer for the Bury Park Community Resource
Centre set up with a government grant two years ago, said: "We have a
situation where the basic facilities and amenities don't exist to help us
take youngsters off the streets and away from things like drugs... In
effect, there is an element of institutional racism because there has not
been enough recognition of the ethnic background of the people in need of
help."

Luton's red light district at the heart of Bury Park is another problem,
with prostitutes trading on two residential streets at night and leaving a
detritus of used condoms for schoolchildren to pass in the morning.

There is a temptation to dismiss Bury Park as an ghetto - a diverse and
friendly community, yet one beset by problems of its own creation. But those
who work there say the truth lies elsewhere. Shakeel Ahmed, an outreach
worker at the Bangladeshi Youth League, said: "These are problems
communities face across the country. The support structure of the close-knit
family has been eroded and young people around here are looking for
something to replace it. We have to persuade them that that something is not
drugs or crime."