The irony is so thick that you could not chop through it with an axe.
Amid all the hand-wringing and condemnations over incidents which may or may not have taken place at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, there does not appear to be even a bat-squeak of high moral tone over rituals of abuse and humiliation that are most definitely occuring in British schools: [note: link may not be available to non-UK readers.]
DOGS are visiting at least 100 secondary schools in England and Wales to search pupils for drugs, particularly cannabis. In some areas a private security firm is providing dogs and handlers to check children.
Sniffer dogs are viewed by some head teachers and governors as a softer option than random drug tests.
Well, they are also a softer option than the ducking stool but that does not justify their deployment. Nor are such degrading exercises made any more palatable by spoonfuls of sugar:
Annette Croft, the head teacher, said that there had been unease among some pupils when they were lined up to be sniffed by the dogs. She told Druglink magazine that the exercise was “a very mellow, humane and civilised response to the threat of drugs”.
Priceless! How about a mellow, humane and civilised response to the threat of drug warriors and their unquestioning footsoldiers. Really, is there any order these people would not obey?
Parents were asked to sign a letter of consent to the searches, which is usual in most schools where dogs are used. Any pupils who do not consent are searched by hand.
See, participation is voluntary so that is all okay then.
Only four pupils were picked out, including one who provided information about cannabis smoking on the school bus.
Confess and you will be spared, my child.
I am sincerely at a loss to comprehend the volcanic eruption of outrage and revulsion over the treatment of Iraqi prisoners when schoolchildren in this country are subjected to ritual abuse and humiliation as a matter of policy.
I expect there will be no shortage of angry respondents to point out that there is no comparison. They are right. The Iraqi prisoners were, at least, adults and while that does not excuse or justify brutal treatment, one should similarly spare a thought for just how intimidating it must be for children to be lined up by burly security men and set upon by dogs.
No, they are not being hooded, chained, beaten or kicked in the nether regions by belligerent squaddies but I get the feeling that the overlords of the drug war would gleefully institute such measures and, if they did, that the otherwise squeamish and human-rights obsessed British press would report on their progress with equanimity and no small degree of satisfaction.
Shock treatment, you see. It’s for their own good.
At least we Americans aren’t alone in being complete basketcases about probably the most benign drug there is.
I’m just amazed that marijuana is still prohibited in this day and age.
Seems Americas obsession with a “losing” war on drugs has spread it’s prohibitionist tentacles across the waters to more lands.
As for not being shackled. Why sure they will be shackled should they be caught with some dreaded drugs. After the shackling they will be finger printed, booked, and if really lucky beaten by some over zealous cop.
Teaching children to make up their own minds, unless we don’t like the choices they make. Then we’ll punish them into doing what we say.
P. G. Wodehouse used to write about tycoons who had done time in Sing-Sing for fraud and embezzlement, in later years getting together and being nostalgic over the old school tie and the good old days.
He was being facetious.
Unfortunately we do exactly that (provide a postgraduate education in crime) for our petty criminals and drug offenders. I have to wonder how much of the horror that slipped out in Iraq is simply S.O.P. in the domestic U.S. prison system. Perhaps those undertrained MP’s who depended on their fellows with civilian prison guard experience were surprised to find out that what they were doing was out of line. After all, American prisoners do much the same to each other and it is considered routine.
‘Nice’ people, who stay away from trouble with the law, look the other way and try not to think about it. Meanwhile, young men who get in trouble end up raped, infected with AIDS and provided with both a suitably low opinion of themselves and a trade at the same time. Truly effective education.
What honestly puzzles me is the pivotal question of “Who Benefits?” Obviously some persons or institutions have a vested interest in preserving this festering pushole in the body politic or it would have been cleaned up long ago. Instead it grows and prospers.
We agonize over crime and simultaneously produce more criminals. The school children in the article sound like prime candidates.
I couldn’t find an email address for Annette Croft, but the school website enables you to address an enquiry to her here. I’ve left a message registering my disapproval of the Sniffer dog searches and have encouraged her to defend her views on this site.
Just a bit of nit-picking
> The Iraqi prisoners were, at least, adults
How do you know they all were? I heard reports of young boys being abused.
Just out of curiosity, do any of the Brits know if it’s an offense to sprinkle black pepper inside your locker each day, just for spite?
In the bad old days when I was a street protestor, we always carried a pocketful of the stuff in case the apartheid cops used dogs on us.
A comparable paradox comes from the Royal College of Nursing conference last week. Having voted 9 to 1 to support a ban on smoking in all enclosed public places, the same delegates opposed by much the same margin compulsory drugs testing at work for nurses.
With every day that passes I give thanks that I cut and run when I did (1999, two years into the Blair Terror). I worry about my family trapped behind the wall, however.
Actually, that last line: I’m only being 95% facetious.
Guardian link for those wishing to avoid registering:
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffairs/story/0,11026,1219101,00.html
I haven’t consented for my children to be sniffed, and have instructed them to spot opportunities during the “hand search” to make allegation of “feeling up” etc.
I plan to collect some “avoid bad publicity” cash payouts to bury allegations of sexual abuse against my children. I’ve offered the kids 50% of what we take.
Who benefits? Everyone legally financed by the “War on Drugs”. Drug dealers who collect their risk premium.
It’s amazing. Savings from surrender in the WoD added to the taxes equal to the risk premium now paid on illegal cannabis would be beyond the average MP’s dreams of avarice.
Blind hogs.
David Gillies,
Hear, hear, and it didn’t start with Blair, it started with ‘the Grey Man’, – John Major, surely the worst and most damaging Prime Minister that the UK has ever had.
I see you jokingly infer to yourself as an ‘escapee’, I seriously refer to myself, when asked, as an exile.
Progress is one thing, but wholesale destruction of a society is a disaster.
R.I.P. Great Britain.
“rituals of abuse and humiliation”
Try Catholic boarding school for five years.
I know that at least one of the priests is in prison for touching up some boys.
Ernest Young: I would concur in your characterisation of John Major as the worst PM ever were it not for the memory of the dreadful Ted Heath. I put the point when the rot started in earnest as when this awful man lied to to the people of Britain and finagled them into the Common Market.
I think it is interesting that the current Conservative leader was reviled for his supposedly anti-civil liberties stance as Home Secretary when the present incumbent in that role is introducing measures that go far, far further than anything that was on the table back then. Think what an achievement this is for Blunkett: to make Michael Howard look like a libertarian by comparison.
Bless you, Squirrel, for making this old man roar with laughter.
Nothing like invoking the power of capitalism and inverted political correctness against the groping fingers of the State.