Not problem kids but kids with problems

TEENAGERS are not by nature maladaptive or delinquent. They are in the main a product of how they are nurtured, their experience of life and their culture. Any effort to combat teenage crime based simply on the punishment or control of teenagers or parents is doomed.

Our punishment based child rearing model, though culturally acceptable, has created our current society and many of its problems. It creates aggressive young people and robs children of any sense of respect for parents, internal discipline, morality or responsibility.

The coming publication of the juvenile crime Bill by Minister of State Mr Austin Currie will be most welcome. It will represent the first coordinated effort to address juvenile crime and offences since 1908.

The Bill will provide an opportunity for society to examine its values, objectives and strategies in addressing increasing public worries about criminal, asocial or aggressive behaviour by young people. On past experience, it may take a long time to implement new legislation. We should, therefore, allow maximum time for Dill discussion, between agencies and especially in communities with parents and children themselves.

Any effective juvenile crime legislation must identify the protection and nurturing of young people as its priority while ensuring the protection of the broader society. Legislation which is focused simply on social control of either children or parents will address the symptoms of social problems rather than the root causes and will negate and conflict with the essential focus of the 1991 Child Care Act which has as its primary focus the "best interest of the child".

The ISPCC has campaigned for an increase in the age of criminal responsibility. We welcome the proposed increase from seven to 10 years initially and ultimately 12 years. The Scandinavian level of 15 years does, however, make a clearer statement of parental and societal responsibility for the actions of young people.

The Child Care Act also defines children as those under 18 years. The proposed special care units for unmanageable children are long overdue and very necessary. The ethos of such units must, however, be focused more on alternative care and nurturing than on social control or social retribution.

Many children identified by the State or State services as unmanageable have spent part or all of their lives in care. Such children are often criminalised by being brought to court for offences committed against staff or property while in care.

Policies which attempt to enforce the social and individual responsibility of young people whom the State has failed must be replaced with a new therapeutic model. We must value and nurture such children rather than merely managing their behaviour until they become old enough to become the responsibility of the mainstream justice systems.

Some of the measures likely to be contained in the new Bill seem culturally specific and relevant to the middle class background of our legislators and public officials. They demonstrate a poor understanding of the reality or lack of family life for some teenagers, particularly those living in marginalised communities where asocial behaviour is more commonly reported.

Children who wander the streets engaging in criminal or unsocial behaviour often do so because of poor parent child relationships at home, a cultural acceptance of maladaptive or criminal behaviour in the home or community or to escape from an abusive or indifferent home environment.

Violent or aggressive children usually experience violence and aggression at home and can rarely communicate with parents. Such lack of relationship often begins in early childhood. It is because the years up to five are so important in terms of the parent child relationships and because children who are not emotionally nurtured communicate that deficiency in aggressive and bad behaviour at a very young age, that society sees delinquency as genetic and that parents see children as having been bad from birth.

The new Bill will contain proposals to impose fines on parents and curfews on children. There is little point in holding a single mother (who may be living without support and/or in poverty) financially or otherwise responsible for the actions of an aggressive 14 year old son. She certainly would fail as a jailer under a curfew.

Parents whose skills in relating to and supervising their children are proven inadequate by the criminal behaviour of their teenagers are the least likely effectively to implement a curfew which will inevitably result in conflict or restraining violence.

There is no greater challenge to a difficult teenager than incarceration. Escape becomes an obsession and a badge of defiance amongst peers. The ability of children to repeatedly abscond from secure units run by professionals is testimony to the ineffectiveness of the lock up model.

Children often live in ghettoised communities where gardai and those living in society beyond the ghetto are the enemy or fair game. The culture of the whole community (including parents) is often one of "Don't get caught" or "Don't rob handbags in your own area". Often adaptive delinquency is a community wide reality and a consequence of broader values or failed social support or policy.

The effectiveness of new legislation will hinge on the balance in its implementation between measures of control and prevention. Control will be manifested in short term expediency, obvious retribution and a further criminalisation of children. Prevention will see the Child Care Act concept of promoting the welfare of children as primary.

Curfews and parental fines, while populist and electorally visible, are a poor substitute for parent education which helps them to understand their children's needs and identifies much bad behaviour as a form of communi cation to which they can respond.

Future hope lies in an integrated response from the Departments of Education, Health and Justice. Children who act up at school must not be seen as "problem children" but as children who have problems. This necessitates proper psychological and counselling services in school.

The home school liaison scheme must be universal to all schools. The excellent Garda juvenile liaison scheme must be expanded and the concept of family conferences proposed by the Bill promoted and funded.

As in all matters relating to children and families, prevention is the way forward. Parents must be supported in understanding children's needs and that good relationships established with toddlers build positive relationships later. Positive limits can then be set without aggression or abuse of power.

Children will feel important and cared about. They will feel a sense of empathy with vulnerable people rather than a sense of anger towards them. Juvenile crime legislation must be a vehicle to empower the whole of society to protect and nurture children and support parents in the demanding task of doing so.