The demonisation of the young
I was at a party with a lot of lawyers last night, and there were some truly hideous ASBO stories floating around. (Anti-Social Behaviour Orders: these direct people - in about half of the cases - children, not to do certain things, on the pain of their contravention making that action criminal - and imprisonable - when it would not otherwise be.)
Classic was the case of the female alcoholic - harmless, cheerful, but the neighbours didn't like to see her sitting on a park bench with her White Lightning (super-cheap cider, the preferred drink on the street). She got an ASBO forbidding her to have an open alcoholic container in the street; so the next time she sees a police officer she smiles cheerfully, raises her bottle and politely says "cheers" to him. Six months in jail - bang. And next time it will be two years. And soon she'll be spending life in prison for drinking in the street. (And they wonder why the jails are full.)
It is even worse when the targets are children - children as young as TEN - as the government's own "youth crime tsar" has complained today:
Professor Rod Morgan, the Government's chief adviser on youth crime, today issues a warning that children as young as 10 are being labelled with "the mark of Cain on their foreheads" because of the furore over anti-social behaviour.
Calling for a radical rethink in how we deal with unruly teenagers, Professor Morgan says that discretion should be exercised in cases where children are being sent to court for offences that would once have been dealt with by a slap on the wrist. ...
Record numbers of children are being sent to court, although the actual level of youth offending has remained the same over the past decade. Ten years ago about a third of the 200,000 children in the criminal justice system every year went to court. Today the figure is closer to half.
I was watching a group of local 12-year-olds doing something mildly destructive recently (what they were being destructive with was some already broken frames for temporary fencing, so I didn't intervene) and realised that the messing around they were doing would once have been regarded as perfectly normal, whereas now sooner or later someone was certain to call the police.
Until even very recently in London there were derelict sites, building sites, places where a group of kids would build a den and muck around, smashing up waste materials, making lots of noise, sorting out their own battles independently of adults. That involved, no doubt, more than the occasional nasty injury, more than a bit of bullying, and a level of risk that would be considered wholly unacceptable today. There are, however, now virtually none of those spaces left; they are boarded up, fenced off, guarded by security men and dogs. The kids are doing exactly the same things they used to do, but now risk being criminalised for them.
And yet, as this Observer story makes clear, children still find spaces to vanish into as runaways. But they are, I suspect more hidden, private spaces than in the past, and hence far more dangerous ones, particularly for the girls.
5 Comments:
Here, here, clanger. ASBOs can't be obtained for one minor incident - you have to show a pattern, as well as harm/alarm/distress to others not of the same household.
In Scotland ASBOs can only be sought for those over 12, and there are only 2 or 3 so far in the 18months since they came into force.
You were only speaking to the defence lawyers, not the victims so the rosy picture was a bit one-sided possibly? Recently a TV documentary included both an offender and his lawyer complaining about enforcement action being taken as he hadn't done anything to deserve it. His neighbours who had to put up with noise, disturbance at all hours of the day and night, threats from people visiting his house to buy drugs - not to mention the used needles, people shooting up in the hallway, had a different view.
There was a report in my local paper yesterday about 3 youths - 10-13 yrs old caught by the police for over 70 acts of vandalism, mainly to peoples cars. They are being reported to the Children's Panel who will address the welfare issues involved - where were the parents when this was going on - as well as the offences.
I'm not sure about England, but in Scotland any ASBO for a young person must come with a package of support to help the young person change their behaviour. Where I live there would have been a series of case conferences about such cases, voluntary measures would have been tried, but sometimes its necessary to take further action - to protect others in the community.
There was also a case of an ASBO in my local paper - a mentally ill woman banned from a whole area that had been her home. She was hauled up in court and faced jail because she had gone to a phone box in that area to call her mother, who is looking after her three children. She just, very just, escaped jail. What purpose does an ASBO serve in a case like this? She needs mental health treatment, not the threat of jail for breaking rules that she probably doesn't understand.
I live on a "good" estate, but there are groups of problem kids. But I'm sure they are no worse than kids have ever been. We may have got worse as an adult society at dealing with them and standing up to them; we may have increasingly mixed societal groups with different expectations, but the answer to these things I believed is not JUST waving a big stick, but looking at services, supports, mental health treatment - i.e. the causes, not just trying to treat the effects.
I'm not sure that Natalie was criticising the existence of the asbo. The criticism Natalie seems to have been making is that it is being misued as a cheap solution to a wide variety of social ills, few of which it is suited for.
Indeed, asbos in themselves cannot address the severe social dysfunctions you highlight as justifying their existence, even if they provide a temporary relief. That would require a well-funded multi-agency approach which the govt is loath to fund.
I support the intelligent use of asbos, but they are not a band-aid for society's problems and should not be used as such.
Natalie,
did you delete my comment along with yours ?
whoops, and then it comes back. Hmmmmm.
Buy the server a tardis
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