Locked up

All the way back at the end of August I wrote this post. In some senses this is a follow up.

I was having a discussion about politics with a couple of friends in Nando's this evening, when the guy at the next table decided to join in. He was nice enough, and there with his wife, so we were quite happy to chat to him, even if he'd had enough to drink that he didn't make a huge amount of sense. Anyway, he told a story about his childhood that I thought was quite interesting:

He said that when he was eleven, he'd seen some older kids steal a car and go for a joy ride. He and a friend of his had taken a screwdriver and tried to do the same. They got the car started, but had no idea what to do to actually drive it, and were caught by a policeman, who arrested them. They went to court and were sent to borstal for two months. He described crying for most of his time there, and showed us a tattoo on his hand that some of the older boys had given him (against his will, he implied). He said it was a 'reminder not to fuck up', and said from then on he'd never done anything else that would get him into trouble.

The implication of this story was clearly that he believed a spell in a youth correction facility would help to teach modern teenagers/youths some respect for authority, and help them get back on the right track. He also suggested a mandatory five year stretch in the army for anyone who doesn't have a job or apprenticeship to go into when they leave education. I think the latter suggestion is a bad idea, because a huge influx of bored, angry young men who have been forced into the army against their will seems like a recipe for disaster. Ultimately, if they're not going to form an effective part of the armed services (which they won't if they don't want to), it's no different from keeping them in a highly regimented part-time prison for five years.

His point about the youth detention or borstal system is, I think, also misguided, though clearly driven by the constructive effect it had on his life. I really wanted to ask him some follow up questions about his story, but he was switching topics quite quickly, and it was difficult to get a word in. I'd have been interested to know what his parents thought, firstly about him going to borstal, and secondly about him being tattooed while there. I can just imagine the media circus today about a young child who was forcibly tatooed by other inmates in a young offenders institution. I certainly imagine that there would be lawyers involved.

It's quite possible that for some of the 'problem' youths currently growing up in council estates (and, I'm sure, more affluent areas), a stint of hard dicipline with a threat of more would have an effect, possibly for the better. In general, though, it seems to me that treating kids like criminals would not help them to become productive members of society. A kid with a tattoo reminding him of a terrible experience that he doesn't want to repeat is going to behave out of fear, not because he understands why behaving well is desirable. Perhaps it is wooly liberal thinking, but it seems to me that someone who understands why not stealing a car, why not taking drugs, why not acting in an aggressive and confrontational manner, is desirable by thinking about the sociological consequences of these actions is going to be able to apply those rules to other aspects of life more readily and more accurately than someone who unhappily obeys the rules they are given by people in authority because they don't want to be punished.

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe some people would not be able to grasp the reasoning behind laws and social responsibility, or maybe they wouldn't care. Maybe some people are too far gone down their own path to be shown the way back, and maybe some people were never going to be able to follow the path society wants them to in the first place. Whatever the reality of it, it makes me happy that we live in a society when political discussions can break out randomly between strangers in the middle of a restaurant, even if not regularly.