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.
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"

[Kanamori]

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