The 1960s, Labour and Roy Jenkins happened.
When I was a teenager in the mid sixties in South London there was some robbery and violence, mostly carried out by professionals, but very little drug abuse. There were the Mods and the Rockers, of course, but they targeted each other and if you weren't dressed inappropriately no-one would bother you. There certainly wasn't the random stranger violence seen today. People did get drunk, did fight in the street, but usually among their own crowd as it were.
People were in general respectful both to each other and to authority, although acquiesced to authority would probably be more correct. The local copper was, for the most part, local and knew who was downright criminal, who was a bit of a lad and who was plain stupid, and treated them appropriately.
Children creating havoc would get told off by the nearest adult and while they would vehemently protest if they were innocent would accept the reprimand if it was justified. You might even get a clout round the ear or a thwack from a stick if you were daft enough to let them get too close. Complaining to parents would only gather more retribution. And if the neighbours or the local copper came round to complain then you would really be in trouble.
People in general were much poorer, of course, but they had a set of virtues that included a strong sense of fair play, public decorum, self restraint, self discipline and self reliance.
There were faults in society, of course, censorship, regulation, class divide and so on. I think it went wrong when all the restraints in society were simply dumped and we allowed, even encouraged, all those good virtues to be dumped alongside the bad. Now we have two generations where there has been no real discipline in schools, no real discipline in public, no training in self restraint, self discipline and self reliance. Instead we have the instant gratification culture, the 'I want it' culture, the 'no need to put yourself out' culture, the 'how dare anyone criticise me or my kids' culture, the 'how dare stupid old people get in my way' culture.
And where has this brought us? Look around you.
I too, as teenager, used to go out with friends and come home late. There were no buses and I would walk the two and half miles at midnight or one in the morning most of it via a convenient footpath that ran alongside the railway without ever thinking it a risk. Would I do it now? I wouldn't even walk down the High Street alone at that time now.
It is not that we can't deal with these things it is because the 'authorities' choose not to deal with them.