Another Chester towpath attack

[Barry]

My parents had very different ways of applying discipline. My mother, short tempered and hot headed would lash out whenever she felt the need and without consideration for where she was but my stepfather very rarely raised his hand. When he did he always took us away from public view (so we weren't publicly humiliated), he explained where we had gone wrong, why we needed to be punished, and what the punishement would be. He would also ask us why we had done what we had done and encourage us to accept our punishment with dignity. Many years later I have very little respect for my mother and little affection but I have huge respect for my Stepfather and a great deal of affection.

 

In my time in the Fire Service I have been to places where a lot of people can't go. I have been inside the houses on these problem estates and seen at first hand how some people live. For a while I was involved in working with young offenders who had been sent to the Fire Service by the courts if their crime had been arson. We would talk to them about the consequences of their actions on other people and try to make them see how their moment of fun or adventure might have a ripple effect. My Fire Service also runs a scheme where problem, unteachable, children are placed on a course within the Fire Service and taught, by the medium of carrying out fire service type drills, which require a great deal of teamwork, how to work with others, how to respect others and how to respect themselves. It doesn't work for them all but some learn enough about other people and themselves to go back to school and continue their education.

 

Sometimes I think that the answer to delinquents is to make them bare their arses in the high street and beat them to a bloody pulp with a birch but it is easy to assume that humiliating them in front of their mates would stop them from doing it again. I think the actual answer is for society to take my stepfather's view. Unfortunately what we mostly do, or threaten, is my mother's view and I know the result of that.

 

It is very easy and pointless to decry large sections of society as useless and condemn them as worthless. It is self satisfying and justifies our own point of view. I think that we have to accept that there is something seriously wrong with society and then try to find the answer to the problem. I suspect that the causes are many and varied and the solutions are likewise many and varied. Don't get me wrong some people need to be removed from society, some need to be caught and punished but some are not automatically lost causes and we should not, from our lofty moral high ground, pronounce that they are ALL delinquents and should be damned to perdition or flogged under the town hall clock

 

The way these children behave is a symptom of our sick society and we would do well to actively seek a cure, one which will work and not be just a quick political fix

 

I don't know what the all answers are but I have seen that some young people behave because this is how they have been taught to behave - the way they are treated by their parents, with verbal, physical and emotional abuse or else indifference means that if society attempts to treat them the same way their response will be the same, rejection, hostility and anti-social behaviour. They respond to society the same way their parents respond to them, as they have been taught. That cycle has to broken and their parents aren't going to do it

[Sir Nibble]

Is there really a PC way to say it though.

S'not a question of pc, ADD or ADHD is a genetic difference and no more an "illness" than having dark hair in a predominantly blonde population. Some argue that it has had great evolutionary advantages and at one time was a desirable trait before social evolution rendered it obsolete. Let's not discuss it tho', (unless you really want to) as it's complex, contentious and I'm up to the teeth with it having been my wifes study partner. Mind you, she does have a repeat prescription for dexadrine!!

[Sir Nibble]

If we follow the example of New York (who a few years ago had serious problems with petty crime and vandalism) and the government is serious about tackling these anti-social problems, we need a zero tolerance approach and real punishment for those who choose to behave badly. ASBO's are not the answer...

 

Ah, that was my hero Jack Maple. "Zero tolerance" was a term most widely used by his detractors, the real strategy went something like this.

A while ago I saw a tv programme where an officer was called to attend a petrol station where a gang of kids were being a problem, the camera followed this copper with the kids in front of him grinning and waving at the camera with one of them zig-zagging across the path in front of him. The copper turned to the camera to repeat the mantra "nothing we can do" IN FRONT OF THESE KIDS! MORON!

Anyway, the Jack Maple strategy would be to nick the kid with the bike for riding on the pavement, any lip from his mates nick them too, go through their pockets, bet you find cigarettes, who sold them to you? Down the nick. Get the kids parents out for the interview, ruin their evening. And be prepared to do it again and again until this behaviour becomes too much trouble for the kids and their parents.

Problem is of course that the copper will be taken off the streets by the process, well what other plans did he have for his evening other than upholding the law? Have we really got a situation where an officer dare not make an arrest for fear of breaking the thin blue line?

Keep this kind of strategy up and you end up nipping petty delinquency in the bud with huge knock on effects.