A poet who has described himself as an “ex-scumbag” and former drug addict has made a plea for understanding of those who live on sink estates. Byron Vincent, a slam poet and regular performer at festivals and on TV and radio, argued on an edition of BBC Radio 4’s Four Thought, broadcast last month: “Those born into Britain's underclass don't exit the womb with an insatiable desire to shoplift branded sportswear, any more than soldiers are born with a heightened capacity to kill. Yet I watched pretty much all of my peers grow up to engage in sustained criminal activity. Not because of a genetic predisposition. Not because a life of crime is an easy option - it really isn't - but because the people with the worst social and economic problems have been ghettoised and isolated.”

Vincent went on to argue that those “born into Britain's disaffected underclass” were the victims of their environment. “If this behaviour is an environmental construct, then surely there are ethical issues in punishing it. Those with power are reprimanding those with no power, for crimes they themselves would be committing if they'd been born into a different household. To me that is not a functioning society, it's abhorrent.”

He added: “The underclass of which I speak didn't create itself - it's a product of ghettoisation. Taking a bunch of people with social and fiscal problems and forcing them to live en masse together is an idiotic idea that is destined to create a culture of perpetually spiralling criminality. If we want the disenfranchised underclass to adopt the morality of the mainstream, social housing needs to be integrated into mainstream society. That means individual houses among the private residences. Social housing estates shouldn't be these separate isolated places that keep poor people out of sight and mind. That model is not only distasteful - it clearly breeds problems that affect everyone.”

Vincent concluded by saying: “It baffles me how those in power expect those at the bottom of the social and economic ladder to behave responsibly when the architects of the issues they face take no responsibility for their part. I hope that next time you have to pass through a dodgy estate and you worry about getting robbed or worse, that you extend that concern to those who live there.

You can listen to the programme here