`We had one lad who was a leader of the joyriders. It was nothing to him to steal three cars a week, set them aflame when he was finished with them and never get caught. We said, `if they're interested in cars let's give them some to work on.' "
As a direct reaction to the seemingly unstoppable spate of joyriding which their local community of Neilstown in Dublin was afflicted with, this is precisely what Sister Carmel Earls and Derek Shortall did. Along with another Franciscan nun, Sister Patricia Kidd, they created Carline.
Carline is premised on the notion that the best way to cure teenage joyriders of their romance with cars is to bring the object of their desire into their hands for supervised, structured and respectful construction and deconstruction. A youngster can even end up as a qualified mechanic in a reputable garage. "I'd been out of the country for 40 years and thought I'd seen everything," says Sister Carmel, who operates as chief fundraiser for Carline. "I'd worked with poor blacks, Puerto Ricans and whites in the US, but I'd never come across the phenomenon of joyriding before.
"The kids in Neilstown would congregate around the church looking for help, saying they were fed up of the endless cycle of theft and drugs," she says. "One little fella begged me to help him. Ten days later I had to go down to the morgue to identify him. I knew then we had to do something different."
Carline has been working in the background for the past four years. The original venture dates from late 1991. Back then, Joan Burton sanctioned a £3,000 grant. They borrowed another £10,000 from the Order of the Franciscan Nuns in Philadelphia, and used their funds to purchase a Triumph Spitfire.
Very quickly, too, Carmel enlisted the help of Judge Gillian Hussey to spot children with potential who were in and out of the court system and refer them to Carline instead. Judge Hussey has since become a patron of the scheme.
In the beginning, Carline consisted of four young joyriders, a mechanic, the Sisters Carmel and Patricia and youth social worker, Derek Shortall. A couple of weeks ago, one of the last acts of former President Mary Robinson was to unveil the new quarter of a £1 million premises at Balgaddy in Clondalkin.
THROUGH funding from the Department of Education, FAS, the Eastern Health Board and Sister Carmel's community in Philadelphia, Carline currently employs 20 part-time and full-time staff, including a teacher, a carpenter and glassblower, three security guards and two childcare workers.
Carline's approach is broader now than at its inception. It caters for 20 young people from differing backgrounds. Monday to Friday, from 10 in the morning to four in the afternoon, the 15 boys and five girls are engaged in a variety of activities, one of the most popular of which is horticulture.
Youngsters accepted on Carline but with prison sentences to serve must serve them out."No way is Carline a substitute for serving your sentence," says Sister Carmel. "I've lived in the States too long for that. We all have to suffer the consequences of our actions. Sometimes sitting in the Joy for six months does the world of good. We remind anyone who's with us how they should be thinking while they're in there."
Michael O'Connor, director of Oberstown Boys Centre in Lusk, thinks Carline is such a good idea that it could be an alternative to the customary custodial sentence. Custody should always be a last option, he maintains.
"Projects like Carline are the unsung heroes of the juvenile justice system," he says. "What they're doing is channelling these kids into more productive areas. They're trying to replace that buzz joyriders talk about, by showing them there's a legitimate, socially acceptable way to get it but you have to do a bit of work for it."
The author of Crime and Chaos, Paul O'Mahony, agrees it makes perfect sense to involve joyriders with cars in this way. "Boredom and the search for risk-taking are the main reasons for juvenile delinquency," he says.