Branding 3-year-olds Future Criminals Not the Solution to Street Crime

Written by Sally Hamwee on Sat 21st Sep 2002

The Metropolitan Police's proposals to stem the huge increases in street crime in London by creating a database of potential offenders, including youngsters who have never been involved in crime, is at once flawed and inspired.

The idea, proposed by Deputy Commissioner Ian Blair, is to ask schools and social services to provide the Met with information on children, possibly as young as three, who they believe are at risk of offending. The database will then help officers monitor and support likely offenders and victims.

Not unusually for a police proposal, the scheme has extremely worrying implications for civil liberties. Who will have access to the information? Will individuals be told that their information is being passed on? And who will guarantee its accuracy? The invasion of privacy caused by storing personal information, without permission, on people who have not committed an offence is bad enough with adults. In the case of children, it is abhorrent.

Equally important is the likely impact on the children in question. As well as the danger of stigmatisation, labelling an innocent, or even a not so innocent, child a potential criminal could cause the child to feel alienated, arming him or her with a disrespect for authority that simply makes future offending more likely.

Yet within the Met's scheme can also be found the seeds of a possible remedy to the phenomenal surge in street crime. The Met are right to assume that the spur towards street crime is built up gradually, and that children can be vulnerable from a very young age. A desire to provide guidance and assistance on a long-term basis to those at risk is extremely welcome.

What the police have got wrong is how to go about providing assistance. A heavy-handed and illiberal scheme that brands children potential criminals is not the solution. What is needed is a more supportive approach that can help guide youngsters through a youth culture that is increasingly accepting of crime.This vital role is not one for the police at all. It is up to schools and social services to provide an environment in which children are imbued with sufficient self-respect to be able to resist the path of criminality. It is only a constructive approach such as this that can combat the development of a culture where children see street crime as just a part of daily life.