Knife through the stereotypes

ARound about the time I was still doing juvenile court crime '“ like delinquency, a practice one hopes to grow out of '“ the fashion was to blame all society's ills on single mothers. As far as the tabloids and government policy ( often indistinguishable, then as now) was concerned, their general fecklessness, indolence and irresponsibility was to blame for everything. Specifically, their pig headed refusal to have truck with the absent heroes who had fathered their children was the root cause of 'Britain's Breakdown'. It was always a surprise to go to court and meet the reality '“ worried, hard working, committed women trying to keep their families together against the odds. Not all of course '“ the odorously pissed mama, a stranger to education, employment or indeed soap, who swigged cans of loopy juice while letting rip to her strongly held views about immigration and shouting obscenities at her 11-year-old wasn't a particularly great advert for motherhood, or indeed our species. Her mantra was that Britain was no longer a place for the decent white working class, like her. After an afternoon of this I did mutter 'Well, one out of three ain't bad' but by then she was too drunk to hear it. But I remember her as a glorious exception to the norm '“ the majority were wilfully misrepresented.

The enemy within

Fashions change. Then we demonised mothers. Now we demonise their children. Drunk killers roaming our streets in feral gangs, the pockets of their hoodies bulging with crack, guns and knives, they must be contained by ABSOs, done for breach, banged up, kept under perpetual surveillance, filmed in their faces, banned from the streets after 9pm, be curfewed, tagged, and blasted by high powered supersonic noise if they lurk outside shopping centres. Adults who approach them will be knifed; teachers will be abused, police officers assaulted. . . a Martian landing in a newsagents or a Home Office policy meeting might well think other aliens had got here first, and we were in a state of siege from the enemy within.

What must it be like to be a child in our society, knowing that adults think of you like this? Or at least think of your peers like that, if you are a 'good child' who does not fit the stereotype? When did we learn to be frightened of our children? And when, more to the point, did they learn to be frightened of each other?

The debate about knife crime has prompted the government to do what it always does '“ announce more criminal justice measures. Young people between 16 and 18 found with knives will no longer be cautioned but prosecuted, even where it is a first offence, and the under -16s will be cautioned and referred to 'education' about the dangers of knife crime. Why need they be cautioned at all? Why is criminalisation seen as an answer to everything? Cautions are recordable sub-convictions, which instantly remove the child from the ranks of 'us' to the growing legions of 'them' without any apparent deterrent effect.

Forfeit a knife policy