Commentary
Britain’s war on kids heats up
By Linda S. Heard
Online Journal Contributing Writer


Jul 18, 2008, 00:16

Being young in Britain is no longer fun. Youths, in particular, as young as 12, are looked upon with suspicion by the society at large and their once carefree school days are now punctuated with metal detectors checking for knives and guns, while teachers will soon be allowed to search students for alcohol and drugs.

In some communities, police have rights to disperse groups of young people in the street or in shopping centers. Some local authorities are imposing 9 p.m. curfews pertaining to all under-16s who can’t leave their homes unless accompanied by an adult. Critics complain that good kids are being punished along with potential offenders.

With all eyes on burgeoning knife crimes committed by youths, on Monday, a senior police officer, Alf Hitchcock, called for the implementation of nonmilitary mandatory national service requiring every youngster to undertake community service. Other influential figures are calling for a nationwide curfew for youngsters with greater dispersal and stop/search powers given to the police.

During this decade, there were approximately 60 fatalities in Britain resulting from terrorism, while 700 people were injured. Contrast these statistics with those for knife crimes that are presently occurring 60 times a day on average, say the authorities. Other estimates suggest as many as 20,000-60,000 young people may be stabbed and injured each year in England and Wales alone, with 22,000 of those ages 10-25. Most agree that knife crime in Britain has increased tenfold since the Labour government first took office, with perpetrators getting younger and younger.

Since the beginning of the year, 50 people have been stabbed to death in London, including 20 teenagers, while last weekend, in other parts of the country, there were six fatalities during a 24-hour period.

This is a relatively new phenomenon in Britain, once considered one of the safest countries on the planet, and the government seems unsure what to do about it. Certainly its efforts to date have borne little fruit as knife crime goes up year upon year while the average age of offenders decreases. Children caught carrying a knife often say they feel obliged to carry a weapon just to protect themselves from armed bullies and street gangs.

Until recently, the Brown government was doing its best to minimize the public’s perception of the growing problem but with a portrait of victims being shown to the public by the media almost daily, it is having to face up to the epidemic square on. However, the government’s analysis of the scourge is different from that of the opposition. While the prime minister and his cabinet are focusing on knife crime in particular, his Tory counterpart, David Cameron, believes it is a symptom of a society that has broken down in terms of family values, ethics and morals.

“The thread that links it all together passes, yes, through family breakdown, welfare dependency, debt, drugs, poverty, poor policing, inadequate housing, and failing schools but it is a thread that goes deeper, as we see a society that is in danger of losing its sense of personal responsibility, social responsibility, common decency and, yes, even public morality,” said Cameron during a recent visit to Glasgow. Nevertheless, Cameron believes that anyone caught with a knife should automatically be sentenced to a jail term.

The government is taking a more softly, softly approach. It has to since the country’s prisons and institutions are already packed to capacity and overflowing with young offenders. The fact is Britain is locking up more children than its European neighbors. A new plan announced by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith includes forcing young perpetrators to visit their victims in hospital and meeting with grieving families coupled with community payback. Similar pilot schemes in the US haven’t worked, perhaps because there is a presumption that offenders are more scared of their conscience than incarceration. Moreover, this doesn’t take into account the feelings of victims’ loved ones who may not be emotionally prepared to face the individual that took the life of a beloved parent, child or sibling.

During his monthly press conference on Monday, Brown was forced to defend the government’s new measures. “Too many people, young and old, do not feel safe in the streets, and sometimes even in their homes, as a result of the behavior of a minority,” he told reporters. “We need to make it absolutely clear to everyone, but especially to young people, that in our country there are boundaries of acceptable behavior, that it is completely unacceptable to carry a knife.” He also warned families with troubled teens living in government housing that they risk being evicted if they refuse to cooperate with early intervention strategies.

Alcoholism in Britain among teens is also escalating, as is morbid obesity. A 2007 UNICEF report that embarrassed the government found that British children were less happy, consumed more drugs and alcohol and enjoyed less satisfactory relationships with parents and peers than their overseas counterparts. It also reported that British kids were more likely to fail in school, to experience bullying and be subjected to extreme poverty. They were also more likely to feel isolated and lonely than kids in other developed nations. Is it any wonder that some young lives have become consumed with violence?

There is definitely something wrong in the state of Albion. It seems to me that rather than punishing children for reacting to a societal breakdown, parents should be forced to attend classes, preferably run by Portuguese or Italians, whose countries topped the UNICEF league.