Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Hopscotching with intent

Police are to be put into low-decile schools.

This will definitely get the big brother conspiracy theorists' knickers into a twist.

I would have thought after the publicity that HVHS would have been on the list but IIRC its not low decile. It used to be a fairly snobby place until the catchment was increased and white flight took hold.

Anyway, I digress.

This bit intrigues me:

Police chiefs are introducing the system to build up trust with youngsters
and to gather intelligence about youth gangs, drug dealing, and to tackle
crime before it happens.

Hmmmm
  • Tackling crime before it happens is a throwaway line.
  • Intel on gangs and drugs is after the fact.
  • The only preventative component made explicit is building up trust.

Not sure how trust is going to stop anti-social behaviour. First of all, anti-social behaviour (tagging, robbery, theft - the typical stuff young offenders get involved in) will not be avoided if you like the fella in the nice blue uniform and stabproof vest. The trouble runs much deeper.

Quite possibly this will only introduce the kids to the police earlier than getting nicked.

Personally, I think the resources would be better spent trying to instil better parenting skills through community groups.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Overall I think it's not a bad idea, as long as police don't abuse the priviledge.

Young males in particular need good role models, and they should be encouraged to see the police as their 'friends' rather than enemies.

But then again, as you say, this perhaps wouldn't be needed in the first place if parenting skills were of a higher quality. That's a hard one to fix.