The neoliberal era in the UK has been characterised by rising economic inequalities, accompanied by increasing differentiation between people by class, gender and race. For those sections of the population with the least material resources there have been rises in relative social deprivation measured by a number of indexes. This study examines how exclusion and marginalisation has created a sense of stigma, anti-social labelling and, in many cases, criminalisation of the socially excluded. The punctuation of this era by acts of riot has been a sporadic but regular feature, indicating the presence of anomie and alienation which cannot always be contained by authority. Specific common features in the collective biographies of this figuration are identified and discussed below; namely interpersonal violence in the form of knife crime amongst young people, the impact of formal and informal exclusion from the mainstream system of schooling, and the consequences of these features being triangulated with another factor statistically likely to lead to involvement in the criminal justice system – being looked after by the state. In order to range across a wide range of different aspects of social policy and examine their human impact this material is presented here as a city case-study. By confining research to a specific locale the researcher has been able to carry out an ethnographic study with various members of the affected cohort in the course of his work as a school teacher, community worker and Youth Justice Mentor in the city of Bristol between 1995 and 2012. The statement below contextualises the works in the public domain submitted for examination.