Blogger Alice Bachini rejects yet another collectivist ‘one size fits all’ approach to the problem of juvenile crime
If a certain group of people is identified as causing particular kinds of crime, is it OK to legislate against the rights of that group? Say, black men were proven to be responsible for 90 percent of stabbings. Would that make it OK to ban black men from buying or owning knives? What if white men between twenty and forty were responsible for 95 percent of all drink-driving deaths? Should we make a law banning them from pubs except between certain hours of the morning, say?
Obviously not. Which is why it is a good thing that plans to bring in an ageist curfew in Corby have been shelved. But of course, no-one there is concerned about the civil liberties of people under fifteen. The argument seems to be between those who want something done about certain kinds of crime perpetuated by this age group, reasonably enough, and those who think more football and youth clubs are the answer to immoral behaviour, which, they aren’t. And I don’t have any easy answers either, but I do think some kind of intelligent understanding that young people are human beings like the rest of us would be a good start.
My other main suggestion is to make it easier for young people to do proper, money-earning work. As long as the system continues to ban kids from doing honest mornings on low-paid milk rounds on the grounds that this interferes with their totally pointless unpaid days of school, it is actively preventing many of them from finding a good way forward with their lives.
Here is southeastern Wisconsin there is a curfew for people under 18 basically everywhere. If we were out past 10:00PM, we got a ticket and so did our parents.
“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things”
If there is one part of libertarian philosophy that prevents me from labelling myself as such, it is this bizarre attitude that we must treat children like adults. Fine! Allow them to marry, serve on juries and choose whether or not to attend school (paid — by whom? — of course). If there is one approach guaranteed to have people begging for the return of restrictive legislation, it is that.
In many ways, part of the problem with British 9and American, to a lesser extent) society is that we have treated children too seriously. As a result, more people act like children well into their adulthood. They have ceased to put away childish things, and the juvenilization of our civilization is the result.
Treat children seriously — as what they are, as children — and Britain might be a slightly nicer place to live.
Children are not little adults and shouldn’t be treated as such. It hurts them and society. ByFlux mentioned a curfew in SE Wisconsin (also my neck of the woods), if Milwaukee police would have enforced it, then Charles Young would still be alive. He was beaten to death by a mob of 10-18-year-olds. I will always remember that civilization is only one-generation deep. If we don’t inculcate proper social behavior, the next generation will become barbarous hordes.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/oct02/84736.asp
Iain Murray says: “we have treated children too seriously” and then “treat children seriously-as what they are.”
I agree with the latter.
When it comes to treating children like adults, the truth is obvious: they are like adults in some ways, and not in others. The most important way in which they are like adults is that they are rational intelligent beings.
The way children are argued to be stupid and irrational is exactly similar to the way black people and women used to be considered stupid and irrational.
Sean Hackbarth: children are *not* little adults, of course, and they *should* be taught proper social behaviour. But the way to do this is to talk to them rationally, not to force it into them, which doesn’t work and generally makes conflicts with them all the worse.
The curfew issue is one of human rights, however, and I don’t see any arguments saying that either:
1. Other groups of people with high specific crime rates should have their rights curtailed collectively, or,
2. There is some special reason why it is OK to curtail the rights of *all* children when *some of them* do wrong things, despite the fact that this approach is wrong when applied to all other humans.
Alice