Tackling the yobs

THE shocking murder of ten-year-old Damilola Taylor on the stairwell of a block of flats in south east London has thrown a sharp light on the problem of young people and crime.

Even as Damilola's father, Richard Taylor, was making his public appeal for information about his son's tragic death yesterday, Tony Blair was putting the finishing touches to what will almost certainly be the last Queen's Speech of this Parliament.

At the centre of the speech were five new bills to tackle crime - among them a Criminal Justice and Police Bill contained proposals for child curfew schemes, a ban on drinking alcohol in the street, new police powers to shut rowdy pubs and clubs, and fixed penalties for offences of disorderly behaviour in public.

Mr Blair was, Downing Street let it be known, determined to tackle 'yob culture' in Britain.

Anyone living on one of York's bigger estates has direct experience of that 'yob' culture. There hasn't, thankfully, been anything on the scale of what happened to little Damilola. But residents of most of York's larger estates, and even many of the outlying towns and villages, have at one time or another had to put up with vandalism, victimisation, disorder, burglary, theft and even just the 'nuisance' factor of large groups of youths hanging around on the streets.

And whenever such problems appear to have been brought under control in one area, they flare up somewhere else.

Two months ago, police said they were winning the war against youth crime and disorder.

New police powers and a tougher stance on teen crime, coupled with partnerships between police, the council and residents, had improved life on some of the city's most troubled estates, York police chief Superintendent Gary Barnett said.

Clifton, once plagued by anti-social behaviour, had been transformed, while the Etty Avenue area of Tang Hall, branded 'Beirut' just a year ago by a former soldier living there, had been made fit to live in again, he said.

But even as the corner seemed to have been turned, fresh problems were breaking out in Chapelfields - and now even Bell Farm, the city's flagship 'regeneration' estate, is experiencing trouble again.

So will the new measures announced yesterday ensure that the yob culture becomes a thing of the past?

Police in York say they are still waiting to hear the details, but they will admit to concerns.

One of the central planks of the proposed new legislation will be powers to impose curfews on children aged between nine and 15. The way such powers would most likely work, says PC John Bolton, York's community safety officer, would be for police to go to a court for permission to impose a blanket curfew on all children under 16 in a given area.

While that might prove effective sometimes, it would be very draconian. It could also, adds Detective Chief Inspector Steve Barlow, head of York CID, be difficult to enforce.

There are enough problems already, he points out, in ensuring people on bail abide by their bail conditions. "How do we police it?" he says. "We're stretched already. One of the concerns we have is raising expectations about the power of a curfew. We don't want people to expect that all of a sudden we will get a curfew power and will clean the streets of youths."

Quite apart from that, he adds, there is the human rights consideration. Young people have a right to gather on the streets as long as they're complying with the law.

John Bolton thinks proposals for fixed penalties for disorderly behaviour may also be problematic.

"It's a suck it and see situation," he says. "If someone is drunk and rowdy and an officer is trying to give a fixed penalty ticket rather than arrest him, it might just make it more difficult with other young people around winding the situation up."

Proposals for a ban on drinking alcohol on the street, meanwhile, may not be quite as radical as they might seem, PC Bolton suspects.

Police are already entitled to go to a court and ask for an order about banning drinking in a public place. All the new legislation may do is make that easier.

So the new measures are unlikely to put an end to problems of youth disorder overnight. They will though add to the range of measures already available to the police and other organisations: measures that, police insist, have made a noticeable difference to many areas of York over the past year or so.

The Crime and Disorder Act has greatly increased the powers of youth courts. York, for example, has been at the forefront of using new Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) to crack down on young criminals. Issued by the courts, an ASBO places restrictions on a young person's activities - a curfew, say, or a requirement not to visit a particular area of the city. If those conditions are broken, it is a criminal offence and can be dealt with as such.

ASBOs, says PC Bolton, have had a big impact in York - even though so far only four have been issued.

"One street in York has changed completely. It's gone from being a place where nobody wanted to live to being a normal street as a result of one person being evicted then banned from going back to that street."

It's not only the big stick that has been wielded. There have been attempts to tackle the causes of crime among young people - and to stop youngsters falling into the spiral of criminal behaviour.

For the twelve months, York's new Youth Offending Team, led by manager David Poole, has been attempting to get youngsters to face up to the consequences of their actions.

Under the Crime and Disorder Act, magistrates now have power to issue Reparation Orders against young offenders - orders which require them to meet their victims, and make reparation in kind. They can also issue Parenting Orders, designed to help parents improve their parenting skills.

All these measures have helped. But even with the extra clout the new measures announced yesterday may bring, is it realistic ever to expect that the problem of youth crime can be made to go away completely? The answer to that has got to be no.

"It has always been there and always will be there," DCI Barlow admits.

There is one crumb of comfort. While it may seem that teenage crime and disorder is more widespread than it used to be, that isn't necessarily so.

"I think there is less tolerance of it now," admits PC Bolton. "Part of the problem is that we have dramatic headlines about youth crime now, which didn't happen 20 years ago. If there are eight kids standing on a corner, people think they are going to commit a crime.

"But I remember policing South Bank 15 years ago and having complaints about groups of youths. I don't think the problem is any worse now than it was then."