We need to summon courage to punish young thugs
The liberal bleeding hearts are haemorrhaging so badly that they are in desperate need of a blood transfusion.
In the face of mounting youth crime, they continue to push their agenda of excessive leniency towards offenders.
Shuddering at the idea of punishment, they urge that juvenile miscreants be given yet more rights, more welfare and more support, even though the lengthening catalogue of violence proves that this enfeebled approach has been a disaster for our society.
Well-paid quangocrat Professor Sir Al Aynsley-Green is typical of the bleeding heart brigade. From his £130,000-a-year perch as the Children’s Commissioner – a position created by the Labour Govern-ment in 2005 “to give a voice” to young people – he has made the usual cries about the need for greater understanding towards “kids” involved in crime.
In an interview at the weekend, Sir Al bleated about “the demonisation” of the young, warned against putting delinquents in custody and dismissed as outdated “authoritarianism” the idea that adolescents should be told to follow the rules. Just as absurdly, he wailed that the police are too hard on teenagers. I would like to see him telling that to the faces of the bereaved relatives of those recently beaten to death by gangs of thugs.
Sir Al’s views might seem grotesque to the British public but he represents the authentic voice of the modern British political establishment. Driven by the sub-Marxist dogma that trouble-makers are really victims of society, our ruling elite has abandoned any effort to set moral boundaries or force delinquents to take responsibility for their actions. As a result, juvenile delinquency is out of control. Instead of guiding the young, too many adults are forced live in fear of them.
More indulgence of the kind that Sir Al advocates will only worsen the problem, since feral gangs will get the message that they will be rewarded for their behaviour rather than punished.
So we have to break the cycle of juvenile contempt for authority. That means confronting thugs, not appeasing them. Soft sentences, expensive holidays and useless Asbos should be brought to an end. In their place we need spartan jails and rigorous work programmes, so demanding that they are taught a real lesson. If a drug-fuelled savage beats someone to death, then they should have to serve at least 30 years in prison, not be given a slap on the wrist.
But it is unlikely that the Government will go in this direction. The entire thrust of our civic order is towards appeasement of criminality. Since the early Nineties, the mantra of the Labour party has been “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”.
The first part of that slogan can now be seen as a sick joke, the second as just another piece of socialist ideology. The Left-wing theorising behind those words is that crime is a result of deprivation. This is nonsense. Poverty was far greater in Britain in the Thirties and after the war, yet our country then was the most crime-free in the world.
Wallowing in their terror of punishing the young, politicians and civic leaders like Sir Al are also fond of claiming that the solution to juvenile savagery lies in “education” and in giving “the kids something to do”.
But again these are fallacies. We have never spent more on education yet we have never experienced such endemic violence, both in the classroom and on the streets, because of the collapse of adult authority.
According to a recent study, one in 20 secondary school pupils have been suspended for physical or verbal assaults against teachers. The NASUWT, one of the biggest teaching unions, says that “disruption, harassment and violence in schools causes more concern to teachers than any other issue”. And a culture which feels it has to educate pupils not to knife, shoot or maim is already in an advanced stage of moral sickness.
Furthermore, without the sanction of custody, how can threats against young miscreants carry any conviction?
Similarly, it is deeply repugnant to excuse youngsters who turn to violent crime simply because they are “bored”.
Our towns and cities are awash with sports clubs, Sure Start schemes and after-school programmes, all of them keen to cater for supposedly deprived teenagers. But the nihilists prefer to get high and kick a few heads in because they think it’s more fun and they know they will get away with it.
Contrary to what the bleeding heart liberals argue, punishment of young criminals is not cruel. The real injustice lies in allowing the bully boys to flourish. In a climate of anarchy, the biggest winners are the thugs, the biggest losers the quiet, the isolated and the vulnerable. As William Golding’s novel Lord Of The Flies so chillingly demonstrated, the real sadists glory in a society without adult discipline.
It takes moral courage to deal rigorously with offenders. As Sir Al Aynsley-Green demonstrates, cowardice towards young criminals is dressed up as compassion.
And in our increasingly feminised civic order, where female teaching recruits outnumber men by seven to one and women dominate social work professions, it is unlikely that there will be many enthusiasts for tackling delinquency.
But that, again, is part of the problem. The miscreants become ever more emboldened. The experiment in social policy has been a disastrous failure. And given that we are run by the likes of Sir Al, the descent into crime-filled chaos will only continue.
