David Cameron talks tough about what will happen to rioters who have been identified and arrested but he could actually do something useful and end the automatic anonymity afforded to under 18s under Sec 39 of the Children's and Young Person's Act 1933 .
I wrote about my own youth horror story and how the whole tragedy was made worse by Govt policy backing for the out of the control kids involved who used it to their own advantage to evade justice and the consequences of their wrong doing.
They knew that they could, quite literally, get away with murder. Any youngster under 18 never has to face severe consequences for their wrong doing because the law states they must be handled with kid gloves.
I've seen some horrible youth cases in court and just as many outrageously soft approaches by magistrates who have to punish them. It is extremely hard to persuade a bench that the most violent of these young criminals should be named and shamed. Often exposing their wrong doing to the wider community is left far too late ** for any chance of rehabilitation, remorse or community protection.
I accept, up to a point, the argument that press reporting of youths could award them glory and recognition for bad behaviour among their peers, when they don't excel at anything else, but I also know from experience that most youth and adult offenders fear press exposure far more than any sentence that magistrates hand out. Certainly the majority of parents are mortified at such shame brought on their family - even those in the underclass who try to do the best they can. To say ALL underclass parents are crap is like is saying ALL Muslims are terrorists.
One case where I successfully applied for reporting restrictions to be lifted was a boy and his mates who terrorised elderly neighbours in a quiet village and attacked them with baseball bats. The bench allowed one boy to be named but not photographed.
Another that was refused despite much effort from the press, was a girl gang who beat up any kid they came across, robbed them, smashed up property and then assigned each other with the appropriate offence based on the likely outcome given their varying criminal records. Youths go through a gamut of sentencing options before getting locked up and by then they don't appear to care.
At least if violent youths could be named and identified from press reports, the communities they live in would know to avoid them.
NuLabour's youths have been preying on individuals in their communities for a decade so it was always just a question of time before they turned on communities themselves. They need to be reined in and adults need to be allowed to be their moral guide without fear of prosecution if they take reasonable action against youths who threaten them, their families or their property. And just because they are under 18, that should not give them an automatic right to be believed above their adult victims.
The fact that kids have nothing to fear from the law was made clear in yet another interview trying to probe the reason for the recent mob violence :
None of the group was concerned about the unprecedented police efforts to catch those responsible. Because there were so many people looting they believed their chances of not getting caught were "quite good."
One of them must have inadvertently given police a clue :
A 17-year-old said he stopped in Clapham Junction solely to target a store where he had been refused work. He said: "It was Comet - they didn't reply to me emailing my CV, or going up there so this was payback man, payback."
Despite the fact that in my own experience parents were part of the problem and actually as threatening as their horrendous kids, I don't support what can only be described as vengeance from the state in taking council homes from these yobs' families or stripping them of benefits.
We really can't be sure that all of the parents were involved or even knew of their kids involvement in the riots. In a lot of cases, adults have been terrified into over-pampering their kids from fear of being seen as child abusers by taking them to task. Like it or not, sometimes a clip around the ear does it when all else fails - and that does not equate to beating and torturing which should be the real concerns of child abuse allegations.
The teens told Sky News their parents were unaware of their activities. One said he had been told to stay in his bedroom but climbed out of the window to join in the looting.
The very fact that we are not allowed to know who these troublesome youths are also means we cannot tell whether an injustice has been committed or not on those families to be evicted by Govt vengeance.
And one wonders if the middle and upper class parents of rioting youths will also feel state wrath at failing to bring up their kids in accordance with state views.
Photo from here
If we are serious about mending "Broken Britain" then maybe we should be looking at one rule for all no matter what class they come from and ending the protection of those who attack adults and others in their neighbourhoods.
** H/T Orphans of Liberty