High court rules that 'dispersal zones' are not allowed

[Marcellus]

A 15-year-old boy has won a landmark High Court challenge to the legality of child curfew zones used to tackle anti-social behaviour.
The teenager said the use of dispersal zones in Richmond, south-west London, breached his rights under the European Convention on Human Rights.

Unaccompanied under-16s found in zones after 9pm can be held and escorted home, whether badly behaved or not.

The Home Office said it would be appealing against the ruling.

The police and Richmond Council had argued that curfew zones reduced anti-social behaviour.

The High Court ruled that the law did not give the police a power of arrest, and officers could not force someone to come with them.

More at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4699095.stm

What does everything think about this? Should the police be allowed to set up these dispersal zones, where anyone under 16 can be forced to go back home after 9PM, whether they are doing anything wrong or not? Or not?

Personally, I am against them (not that there are any near me). As a 15 year old, I resent the fact that I am not allowed to go out on the streets simply because the police thinks that anyone under the age of 16 is a trouble maker.

[IliaDN]

More at [url]Personally, I am against them (not that there are any near me). As a 15 year old, I resent the fact that I am not allowed to go out on the streets simply because the police thinks that anyone under the age of 16 is a trouble maker.
Agreed. ~:cheers:
Maybe you will think different after 40 years.
P.S. I am 19, but nevertheless I think those restrictions are useless.

[Al Khalifah]

Personally, I am against them (not that there are any near me). As a 15 year old, I resent the fact that I am not allowed to go out on the streets simply because the police thinks that anyone under the age of 16 is a trouble maker.
Perhaps its because so many people under the age of 16 are little turds with no respect for authority (present company not included of course). The problem for the police in the UK is that even if they catch young people in the act, their powers to do anything about it are so limitted and the punishments that get handed out are pathetic and inneffective that it just isn't worth their while. Plus the parens in these cases always assume that their child could do no wrong and that it is the police that must be mistaken.

I agree this is not the right solution to this problem. What is needed is tougher sentancing for misbehaving children.

[English assassin]

In the UK those people would be called asocial. Anti-social means you sniff glue and smash things up.

Alas, the high court obviously has little idea of the problems of modern policing. Of course, we COULD wait until the little toe rags have committed a crime. or we could take a sensible measure to stop the crime in the first place. Yobs aren't stupid, they don't walk about tooled up, for instance, they hide the knives in stairwells or bushes where they can get them in seconds. So if the police search them, they find nothing.

Nothing in these orders required the police to remove ALL under 16s, it just gave them the power, and only in a limited area where the police have shown trouble is likely. Now instead they will have to wait until a crime is committed, If that crime happens to be someone being stabbed I hope the judge and the plaintiff will have the decency to visit them in the hopsital...

[scooter_the_shooter]

I saw a thing on the news about london could any one there tell me if its true.

here it is


The youths there go beat people up, sometimes rape the person, and video tape it, and call it "happy slapping" :embarassed:

[Kanamori]

Yeah, they're misbehaved; don't have that problem where I live. :charge:

[BDC]

If you aren't doing anything, you should be free to go.

If you are trouble making (and it's pretty obvious who is really) then off home you go (although of course assuming you're under 16, out after 9 and trouble making then chances are your home life isn't much to up anyway).

[Marcellus]

Perhaps its because so many people under the age of 16 are little turds with no respect for authority

Some are, but by no means all. These powers treat ALL people under 16 years old as if they had no respect for others and for authority.


(present company not included of course).

Of course



The problem for the police in the UK is that even if they catch young people in the act, their powers to do anything about it are so limitted and the punishments that get handed out are pathetic and inneffective that it just isn't worth their while

The police still have dispersal powers, so if there is a group of people who are causing trouble or potentially intimidating people, the police can still break the group up. And for real trouble makers, as well as regular powers, the police can try to have an ASBO (Anti Social Behaviour Order) issued.


Nothing in these orders required the police to remove ALL under 16s

But they have the power to, and I am opposed to that. Often I suspect that the police won't bother trying to differentiate between trouble maker and not, and just send the child home regardless. If the police are only going to force trouble makers home, then the law should only allow them to do that.


And although adults are still around, you still have to consider that maybe a third or more of the potential criminal population is sitting in their bed-room.

And two thirds are allowed onto the street simply because of their age?

[scooter_the_shooter]

How common is that happy slapping thing. in london

[Marcellus]

How common is that happy slapping thing. in london

I don't know. Certainly I've never experienced it or heard from anyone whose experienced it (first hand). I suspect that the extend of the problem is exaggerated in the press, but it's probably still a problem that we have to deal with (but not by curfews).

[Zalmoxis]

Are the children of London that bad that they even need to consider this?

[Tribesman]

Are the children of London that bad that they even need to consider this?
No , its just that the people of Richmond are so stuck up that they feel the need to create child free zones ~:cheers:

The youths there go beat people up, sometimes rape the person, and video tape it, and call it "happy slapping"
Rape and happy slapping ? where did you hear those two things linked ?

[JAG]

At times like this I am very glad I am a member of Liberty. Liberty can be pretentious and missing the point every now and then, but it is such a great organisation on the whole, in informing and watching out for all of our civil liberties.

Why should any of us be forced to go home by the police simply because we are out past 9pm?! No adult would stand for it, why do we think 16 year olds should as well? Remember this law which has been cracked down is not one which is necessary to stop the police acting upon those who have committed an offence, it merely means that those who are out and about past 9pm are not automatically pounced upon by the police, there has to be a reason. That, to me at least, seems not only completely fair and logical, but common sense and what we would all expect.

If police are able to drag people off home for simply being outside their houses past 9pm, that isn't a state I want to live in, some have very good descriptions of a state like that -
police state
n.

A state in which the government exercises rigid and repressive controls over the social, economic, and political life of the people, especially by means of a secret police force.

[JimBob]

cheers jag ~:cheers:
Sums it all up properly

[Duke of Gloucester]

Perhaps its because so many people under the age of 16 are little turds with no respect for authority

This is the attitude that lies behind this unfair and ridiculous law. As a teacher who has met 10's of thousands of people under 16 so far in my career, I can tell you that the vast majority of under-16's are pleasant, normal and just as interested in law and order as adults. Of course thre are those who could be described as above but very few of them. It is obvious that treating all of them as if they are "turds" will make more of them anti-social and erode their respect for authority.

[Al Khalifah]

The police still have dispersal powers, so if there is a group of people who are causing trouble or potentially intimidating people, the police can still break the group up. And for real trouble makers, as well as regular powers, the police can try to have an ASBO (Anti Social Behaviour Order) issued.
That is exactly the problem. All the Police seem able to do is move the trouble-makers around without ever actually punishing them in any serious way.
The kids near my estate seem to treat ASBOs and restraining orders like trophies and they have become like a migratory flock of birds. Every time the police move them out of one bus shelter or from outside the front of one supermarket, they move to another bus shelter or supermarket and so it begins again. They also seem to have started contegrating in more shaded areas like alleyways and underpasses, the sort of area where if they were to attack you there'd be no one there to see it.

[English assassin]

I'm sorry JAG but the crunching sound you hered was a perfectly laudable philosophical position colliding with the real world.

We have these dispersal zones in camden town and in Kings cross (which Tribesman puts the middle class angst thing into perspective.) We have had them the last few summers, for the summer holidays only. They are NOT used to take innocent under 16 year olds home, honestly, don't you think the police have enough to do? They ARE used to disperse gangs of teenagers obviously causing trouble without the police needing to search them for drugs and weapons (which if they did Liberty would no doubt also object to) or catch them committing a crime and arrest them (giving them a criminal record, very constructive).

Before the orders we had gangs divided on ethnic lines openly fighting turf wars, including on one occassion following an ambulance to A and E and bursting in and continuing the fight in the hospital. After the orders, no such large scale violence has happened. they work, and the infringement of liberty is (1) hypothetical and (2) proportionate to the aim of preventing crime.

I guess Liberty have to take this sort of thing on, but they are backing the wrong horse here. If they maybe spent a week in a local authority or a police force seeing what actually happens they would be a much more effective organisation IMHO.

OT: happy slapping involved kids beating each other up and taking pictures. I doubt any more beatings go on now than when i was a kid, its only that proplr have mobile phone cameras now. The bit about rapes is I think a misunderstanding; there have been a few stories where a woman has been raped in, say, a nightclub toilet, and the media have reported that bystanders took pictures rather than helping. The incident I read about, though, the police were saying that the bystanders probably didn't realise it was rape and thought it was drunk people having sex in public. Not quite the same as photographing a rape for fun, then

[Marcellus]

They are NOT used to take innocent under 16 year olds home, honestly, don't you think the police have enough to do? They ARE used to disperse gangs of teenagers obviously causing trouble without the police needing to search them for drugs and weapons

If they are used only against under-16s who are causing trouble then why do you object removing from the police to take ANY under-16 home? For those who are causing trouble, the police still have the power to break up groups (of any age) who are causing trouble or are intimidating people.

[scooter_the_shooter]

Rape and happy slapping ? where did you hear those two things linked ?


here it is from yahoo





By Tom Hundley Tribune foreign correspondent
Sun Jun 19, 9:40 AM ET

Watch out for "happy slapping," the latest youth craze to sweep Britain.

It's not a new dance step or even a new designer drug. It's a criminal assault.

Groups of teenagers approach an unsuspecting person and begin punching and kicking him or her while capturing it all on their mobile camera phones. The images are later uploaded and shared on the Internet.

The victims can be young or old, male or female. Bus stops, tube stations and parks are considered prime venues. In most cases, the injuries are minor. But on Saturday, British newspapers reported that an 11-year-old London girl had been raped by a gang of happy slappers, and Scotland Yard confirmed that three 14-year-old boys had been arrested.

The craze apparently started in London late last year but has spread across the country. British Transport Police say they have investigated about 200 attacks in London alone since the beginning of the year, but they acknowledge that most go unreported.

Happy slapping is the latest manifestation of what Britons call "yob culture." The word "yob" dates to the 19th Century--it likely derives from "boy" spelled backward--and it denotes a kind of loutish, anti-social behavior associated with working-class youth in Britain's urban centers. The British soccer hooligan is the quintessential yob.

"I happyslap people," explained "Huni bo" from Sleaford on a popular yob blog. "I dnt see nowt wrong wit it tho, ima good person! Its well funni tho!!"

"It's not funny," replied Spartanette from Swansea. "If it's just among mates and you actually know the person, then it's harmless, but when you do it to someone you don't even know, you deserve a beating."

"So I deserve a beatin yeh?" replied Huni bo. "Wes onli do it ppl lyk are age ish, say from 15 -- 19 or 20. summats, wunt do it to an old man, even though they keep avin a go at us, an it dus are heds in!"

Violent anti-social behavior is hardly news in Britain--it was common in Charles Dickens' time and was made iconic by the 1971 film and Anthony Burgess' 1962 novel, "A Clockwork Orange"--but a particularly vicious attack last month once again focused national attention on the problem.

Phil Carroll, 49, a father of four from Salford, a modest, middle-class suburb of Manchester, confronted three youths from a nearby housing project after they threw a stone at his car. Suddenly, he was set upon by a larger group. The attackers left him bleeding and unconscious in the street. He remained in a coma for two weeks before waking.

But it wasn't the attack that drew headlines. It was Manchester Police Chief Supt. David Baines' graphic characterization of the attackers:

"They are gangs of feral youths who are under no control from adults, parents or anyone else," he said. "They are not concerned about respect or their responsibilities. The criminal justice system holds no fear for them. This is a national problem. Today it is Salford. Tomorrow, it will be somewhere else."

`Culture of respect'

A week later, Prime Minister Tony Blair pledged to create "a culture of respect" in Britain. He used the annual Queen's Speech, in which the government sets out its legislative agenda for the year, to declare war on yob culture.

"It's time to reclaim the streets for the decent majority," Blair told Parliament. "People are rightly fed up with street corner and shopping center thugs ... [and] binge drinking that makes our town centers no-go areas for respectable citizens."

One new tactic that will be tried this summer is "dispersal zones," designated areas in cities where police have powers to impose curfews, ban groups of two or more youths from congregating and send those younger than 16 home to their parents. Those who defy the police risk large fines.

The government also floated the idea of forcing young offenders serving community service sentences to wear bright orange jumpsuits as a means of shaming them.

Hazel Blears, the Home Office's minister for anti-social behavior, told the Observer newspaper that she didn't want young people "breaking rocks" in chain gangs but that the public needed to see that offenders were being punished.

Experts dismiss humiliation

Juvenile crime experts were doubtful, and the idea appears to have been scuttled.

"In my experience there is no benefit gained from humiliating offenders in public," said Rod Morgan, the government's chief adviser on juvenile crime.

Last month, a large shopping mall near London banned teenagers wearing hooded sweatshirts and baseball caps, an adolescent fashion that in Britain is associated with anti-social behavior. The justification was that the hoods and caps obscured faces from the mall's ubiquitous security cameras.

Politicians and the public have applauded the ban. Owners of the mall say they have seen a 22 percent increase in shoppers since they began enforcing it. But many ordinary law-abiding teens also dress in that style, and critics said the ban tarred all youngsters with the same brush.

"It grabs media attention," said Bob Ashford, a specialist in prevention programs with the Youth Justice Board, an advisory and monitoring panel.

"Our view is we don't want to demonize kids. Lots of kids wear this clothing. It's a fashion statement. To label a person as criminal or dangerous because of what he is wearing . . . is not a solution," he said.

The government's main weapon against yobbery is the ASBO. An acronym for "anti-social behavior order," it is a civil order obtained from a court that prohibits a person from engaging in certain narrowly defined activities that are not necessarily criminal but are clearly anti-social.

A neighbor who habitually throws loud drunken parties might be slapped with an ASBO that sharply curtails the number of guests allowed on the premises after 9 p.m. People who violate an ASBO can be jailed.

At first, the process of obtaining an ASBO was overly bureaucratic, slow and costly. Only 600 were issued in the first three years of the program, which began in 1998. But the process has been streamlined, and last year 2,600 ASBOs were issued.

Some community activists say the targeted use of ASBOs has been an effective crime-stopper, but others point to abuses.

Banned from rivers, bridges

In one well-publicized case earlier this year, a woman from Bath who had tried repeatedly to commit suicide was issued an ASBO that prohibits her from going near rivers, bridges, train lines and tall buildings. A woman in Scotland got an ASBO to stop her from answering the front door in her bra and panties.

The problem, according civil libertarians, is that ASBOs allow people to be jailed for activities that are not crimes, such as using foul language or answering the door in one's underwear.

Children as young as 10 have been ASBOed. That prompted a warning earlier this month from Alvaro Gil-Robles, the Council of Europe's human-rights commissioner. He said the government's policy was "criminalizing" children, and that no child under 16 should be jailed for violating an ASBO.

Morgan, the government's crime adviser, said ASBOs could be useful in curbing juvenile crime, but only after authorities had worked with parents and schools, issued warning letters and drawn up acceptable behavior contracts.

"If you do the proper groundwork, very seldom do you need to resort to an ASBO," he said.

But crime rates falling

Although crime rates in Britain have been dropping for a decade, the public perception is that crime and anti-social behavior are on the rise. There has been no shortage of tough talk from politicians.

In the run-up to last month's general elections, Michael Howard, leader of the opposition Conservative Party, vowed to "make yobs fear the police."

"I want policemen--and women--to have the confidence to eyeball these characters, to invade their personal body space, just like they are invading ours, to confront and challenge their unacceptable behavior," he said.

"I don't want members of the public looking over their shoulders. I want the yobs looking around in fear," he added.

Morgan said a good start would be for politicians and the media to stop describing children as yobs and their anti-social behavior as "feral."

"They didn't choose their parents or their neighborhoods, and they can't walk away from their circumstances," he said. "I don't think these are appropriate words if we are trying to build a culture of respect."
__________________

[Marcellus]

That was one incident. On the whole, 'Happy Slapping' involves assault, but not rape. It's still a problem that needs to be dealth with, of course.