AIBU to think parents should lose benefits /homes for persistently antisocial children?

[Soddingcat]

This has been suggested, im not sure if it will happen , but i think this is a great idea, if the parents think they will lose their council house and benefits , they may attempt to to control their feral offspring .

My friend is in a local harriers group that starts at a local sports centre in the rough part of town, they are now having to stop their favourite route because of gangs of young teens who intimidate them , run along side them and are abusive, one delightful boy said “ lift your legs higher you c**t ,

How have we come to this ?
Do you think it will make any difference ?

I would remove child benefit from them too , maybe this will force them to parent if they risk losing money or their home

Obviously not all the parents are bad, but virtually all the awful kids round here riding motor bikes with hoods, abusing people are from the council estates near by

Im absolutely sick of it, and sick of decent people being targeted by them

What rules /sanctions would wise mumsnetters suggest ?

There's not a lot of respect for the Police among many MN users who presumably are not all in council houses and on benefits (while I'm sure most council house tenants and benefits claimants are perfectly law abiding) so why would the criminally disposed behave better with hobbies on the beat?

'there is no longer any respect for authority in our society and this has partly to do with status and pay. Police and teachers and social workers and anyone really are not just not respected, they are despised and treated badly and paid badly, which all fits together.'

• I think this is too pessimistic. There have always been gangs and crime in some areas, look at the East End of the Kray Twins era, or in the years before. The problem now is that there 's extra elements : zombie knives, drugs, online radicalisation...

I think WRT teen anti social behaviour having someone patrolling and getting to know the teens can really help. When I was a teenager there were always patrols passing through on evenings, whether you lived in a town or village. There was a presence that kept the teens in order and gave residents someone to approach should anything occur.

Yes I would evict them and they would lose their right to be housed. They would have to rely on the private sector, or just be homeless.

Maybe a curfew?

more tagging? It is surely more cost effective to tag than anything else? Computers would do most of the work, and when an alarm goes off then the police could get involved and the strikes start to build up towards a greater penalty This would weed out the less persistent offenders, I reckon - those who are basically good kids from good homes, because their parents would enforce the tag and they themselves would want to play ball to get rid of it

Police and social services would then be able to concentrate on the little scrotes who don’t give a toss and just refuse to stay within the tag perimeter (home and school), whose parents either won’t or can’t control them.

Peronally I would review social housing every 3 years, checking the people who are registered are actually the people living there, I would also check for complaints against the property for noise and anti social behaviour. Whether the whole property is occupied , and I would also check for complaints against the children in the house and the income of the adults ( to show they actually need subsidised housing). Using all these metrics the tenants could stay, or not depending on all these factors.
Obviously this would not remove the councils responsibility to house the tenants, but the possibility of being moved to B&B accomodation might improve behaviour, and the system would open up more housing for those in the most need.

One example is, police are rarely able to chase down the youths on electric scooters because it is deemed unsafe to chase them.

Car thief’s are often let go once they go into a residential area or the wrong way down the road etc.

I obviously understand this is for the publics safety but the criminals know exactly what is and isn’t allowed.

It is big electric bikes here they race up and down the town centre, popping wheelies they are an absolute menace, the police are stuck between a rock&hard place.

I see what you mean but this is, as you say, partly to protect the police, not simply giving criminals more rights than victims.

It's very hard, as the police shouldn't be put in unnecessary danger but we do also need to catch the types.

But one of the main roles of the police is to prevent crime. More physical police presence in communities, regular patrols, etc, would go a long way to achieving that and would address the problem of feral youths.

Ok.
And how does that work for people who own their own homes? Do you propose they are seized by the local authority?
And people not on benefits? Do you propose they have the equivalent benefit amount deducted from their wages?

Yes, we definitely do need more physical presence. The paperwork issue needs to be fixed but not at the expense of that. It seems somewhat like the NHS, where we still have paper for a lot of stuff that other countries have online, and healthcare staff are bogged down in paperwork.

This, sexual abuse was known to be a problem in the old borstals. The staff would need to be highly motivated and trustworthy...

Yes, I don't think more children in an already overstretched care system would necessarily improve things.

But otoh, I do think, at least somewhat, that thresholds to remove kids are too low. It is very hard for social workers at the moment.

They do. My friend lost her council house due to her DS behaviour; noise, abuse, drugs etc. She ended up in a hostel with her DD, and her DS - who was 18 - was sent to a separate men’s hostel with restrictions/curfew etc.

After 8 months she got a council flat for her and her DD but her DS was not allowed to live with them.
They are all on benefits. I don’t think my friend could have done anything about his behaviour at that time. He was already wild and she had absolutely no influence on him.

The damage was done from a very early age and he was very spoilt by his Mum and other siblings, who continue to spoil and enable him.
It’s getting things right from a much earlier age that is crucial. Very sad and frustrating.

'I favour Borstals run along the lines of the one in Scum and I don't care if they go from there to prison without having learned a thing and spend their lives there.

The greater good is more important.'

• how is it the greater good to make prisons more full with no care for rehabilitation (which is more possible at younger ages)?

Do you realise that our prisons are full to bursting? And that building more, even if we start now, will take some time?

The more crowded prisons are at the moment, the more time prisoners spend in their cells getting worse rather than doing woodwork or similar, and the more chance of staff being injured or overwhelmed in a riot.

I thought the whole point of Scum was that it didn't work.

Good post, made me think if ever such a policy as mentioned in the op was put in place it would probably raise allegations of racism towards black kids so would end up a lot harsher on the white kids.

This also needlessly punishes younger siblings (or siblings im general really) in more in favour of borstals for out of control teens, you know rather than punishing their entire family who can’t help being related to them

I remember the olden days when everyone was terrified of 'what would the neighbours say?' and your social appearance was everything. I mean, this is sixty years ago, but around where I lived, even the most feral families didn't want the police at their door because everyone would talk.

So maybe this is a 'society' problem too - familes are all so fractured, nobody knows who lives in their neighbourhood any more. The exclusion by friendship groups and the family groups that you relied on were more of a punishment than anything else - nobody wanted to be known as 'the problem family'.That has all gone, the whole 'it takes a village' has gone.

There were problem families in the past too, of course, It's not a solution, just an observation based on where I grew up (very working class neighbourhood).

Only know a couple of officers these days, both would have failed entry years ago. Literacy is not their strong point. Whilst we all agree doors shouldn't be closed for ND, there does need to be common sense too. Notes/ statements need to be accurate/ coherent and legible. Someone who cant do that cant realistically be in position where its important, other roles yes.

Mental health provision needs to improve.
Social services need investment.
Social contract needs rebuilding. It's been eroded over the years. Education, policing, health, housing all are suffering and social cohesion the victim.

So low IQ people would be banned from patenting?

The problem isn't low IQ, though that can overlap. The problem is behaviour.

I don’t wan to derail, but I worked for sure start back in the dark ages.

One of the reasons it was scrapped was because the demographic it was aimed at weren’t using it.

In the centres I oversaw, it was all the middle class mummies wanting freebie classes.

The parents who needed it, on the whole, wouldn’t engage.

Thank you, this is important info : 'Only know a couple of officers these days, both would have failed entry years ago. Literacy is not their strong point. Whilst we all agree doors shouldn't be closed for ND, there does need to be common sense too. Notes/ statements need to be accurate/ coherent and legible'

I had no idea about this. Wonder how widespread it is. If it's getting more common for officers to not be properly literate, no wonder there are paperwork issues...!

This gets said all the time on here but I used to go to one back when my eldest was a baby. It was aimed at young parents (I was 16) and the other parents were all under 21. Went to a few clubs open for anyone and the same people were there with a few older parents (who didn’t seem like “middle class yummy mummies” but even if someone like that wants to go so what?)

So did it not actually really improve things?