Categories: uncategorized
Date: 22 October 2006 08:55:46
Interesting Story on the BBC site about the way British adults fear our young people in a way which they don't in other countries and part of the reason for this is to do with the way we (i) have less structured activities for them and (ii) we have less of a culture of naturally being around where they are in the evenings.
Think there are some valid points within this, but also think that it highlights the madness of what is going on in terms of fear creation and lack of appropriate investment at the moment, which the state and official agencies are just as much responsible for as the media, infact far more so
In the small town where I live the police have recently been introducing a couple of "crime prevention" measures. First putting stickers above cash machines to tell people to be careful when inputting their pin numbers because criminals have been operating in the area. Now I don't have a problem with advising people not to be stupid with their pin numbers - we all know of people who have had bad stuff happen to them with this type of thing. However, with the way the stickers are worded their is an implication that you are at more risk than you actually are and it is adding to the culture of fear.
Secondly a couple of the smaller off licences and stores that sell alcohol are having to keep a register of their customers names and addresses, if they purchase alcohol, so the signs on their doors tells us. Apparently it is an attempt to deal with underage drinking and the age old thing of kids getting adults to buy drink for them. Now whilst I do not condone underage drinking of the sort that is being described, the notices on the doors of these shops have left me fuming (and I am leaving it till I really need to let out some anger until I challenge them). The reasons for my anger, (i) there is no guarentee of how the police will use this information, (ii) it is picking on small retailers and making them targets for people to feel uncomfortable to go into and thus drive people into the bigger chains and supermarkets where they are not taking a list, (iii) it is a further watering down of our civil liberties. Also due to the ethnicity of the shops it is being applied to within our highstreet it is also downright racist. I also believe it is not actually going to help solve the problem in the way it is intended.
What this report has shown is that our young people need somewhere decent to go and something reasonable to do in the evenings. Where I live the powers that be have acknowledged the need for a permanent youth centre of a reasonable size but are faffing about trying to find an appropriate site (when if they would invest loads of money a couple already exist). This faffing about and lack of investment means the young people are left with inadequate facilities and so the problem of anti-social behaviour increases. The opening of schools for things like scouts will help for a certain amount but not too much, what we need is proper investment in the funding of detached youth workers and proper facilities like more skate parks, more youth centres, more graffiti walls, and whatever else young people may actually use!!!! (rant over)
(well almost over) I know all of this costs lots of money, but if we balanced it all out with the decreased costs of crime management and dealing with the effects of anti-social behaviour after the initial investment - aswell as the wider benefits to society - we would see that the costs would be worth it. Also if one considers how much of our taxes go towards war and propoganda feeding the growth of paranoia in our society, etc we can see that much of the funds for this type of thing are there, they are just being misused.