Top 10: Yard Legend's 10-point answer to yob UK

How I'd beat
the hoodies

Lord Stevens, former Metropolitan Police Commissioner

AFTER terrorism, the biggest single crime crisis facing this country is juvenile yobbery.

It is a raging social cancer tearing away at Britain—but currently we are treating this terrible sickness with the moral and social equivalent of a sticking plaster.

I've been a policeman for 43 years, and have never seen such fear and helplessness about juvenile crime in our communities while there is total official paralysis about how to tackle it.

It has been encapsulated in the last fortnight alone by the horrific murder of 16-year-old Mary-Ann Leneghan; the video-phone "happy slapping" ordeal of Becky Smith; and the vicious attack by yobs that left respectable dad Phil Carroll fighting for life.

The louts who did it were rightly branded by one shocked police officer as "feral by nature", with parents who didn't give a damn what their sons and daughters were doing.

But you know what was truly, truly awful about all these cases? None of them was unusual.

Remember Damilola Taylor...? What happened to him is branded on my mind for ever.

It was probably one of the most influential events of my life.

It made me rethink my attitude to juvenile crime, and realise how deadly serious a problem it is.

Events since have confirmed my alarm. So what to do?

1. TONY BLAIR. We need the PM to personally head an official government inquiry into juvenile crime. It must include politicians of all parties, police, social workers, everyone. The system IS broken, let's stop pretending it isn't. Thousands of decent lives are being made hell, lives are being lost, lives are being wasted, because we're not facing the fact.

He, like any politician, will want a monument to be remembered by. Let it be as the Man Who Tackled Juvenile Crime. He must start by thinking the unthinkable. Such as...

2. CHANGE THE LAW. The thinking that governs juvenile and under-age crime legislation was formed decades ago. Well, the world has changed radically and horribly for the worse. Is it realistic to treat drug-dealing, carjacking, drun-ken violent 16-year-olds as children any more? Are those 12-year-olds with dozens of criminal convictions who swagger out of a court waving two fingers at police really too young to know right from wrong? Are they the "kids" those laws were designed to protect? No they're not.

We need an entirely new level of law in this country placed between the old juvenile and adult levels of criminal responsibility—a mid-level perhaps between 14 and 18 where we can still make allowances for their youth but can still punish them severely as knowing, active criminals. And we should also consider lowering the age of criminal responsibility even further.

3. LOCK THEM UP. Persistent juvenile offenders cannot be allowed to get away with continually breaking the law simply because of their age.

We must remove them from the community and prevent them doing so. There are not enough secure units to house all the young repeat offenders. So build more, lots more—and lock more of them up. Not least because the general community— YOU!—needs and deserves respite from their repeat offending.

4. PAYBACK. These kids need to get purpose in their lives. Once deprived of their liberty they need to learn and work. Whether its education or training, they need to have their minds exercised. They also need to pay back the communities they have badly damaged.

We should copy schemes I've seen work brilliantly in the US where young offenders serving custodial sentences are put to work painting public buildings, sweeping streets, washing cars (the money goes to paying for the offenders' keep), digging old folk's gardens and so on.

There should be no talk of chain gangs, or of making them wear orange boiler suits...but they should wear sober but distinctive clothes that make it clear what they're doing.

5. WORKFARE. The harder, more successfully they work or learn, the quicker they can be set free. That would help develop a work ethic and sense of personal responsibility. Parents should be required by law to be part of this process. They should have to help supervise their offspring's work and education in custody. Then they both have a motive to see change.

6. PERSISTENT OFFENDERS. After Damilola's murder, a survey revealed that in virtually every London borough there were 20-30 feral children running wild, committing huge volumes of crime. Often these were tragic children who had been neglected by their parents, were in care, had been sexually abused, played truant constantly, virtually lived wild.

They respected nothing and no one—except the gang leaders who in a twisted way were perhaps the only "family" they had. Part of Tony Blair's inquiry must look at how to rescue such youngsters.

But they must also be targeted and confronted by the full force of the law.

7. OFFICIALDOM. As I found when Chief Constable of Northumbria, life can get very complicated on housing estates. It's easy to get estranged from the authorities.

There should be one-stop multi-source centres set up on estates. So if you need to sort out your plumbing, housing benefit, or an education problem you go to just one place.

And if, at the same time, you want a private word with the permanently-based local police team about a yob issue you can.

Similarly, if there is a major problem on an estate, you draft in a larger emergency team of assorted police and officials from every department until it is resolved.

No more no-go areas—but also make authority more accessible to and work harder for the people it is there to serve. Make them believe they have an investment in it and a reason to control their youngsters.

8. SCHOOLS. Renewing discipline in schools is vital. Heads must have the power to expel problem pupils and not be over-ruled by some remote council committee or group of governors.

Political correctness that makes a teacher too scared to separate fighting pupils must be ignored.

Steps to prevent weapons being brought onto school premises—metal scanners to detect knives, for instance— must be standard.

Police should be required to visit regularly and be part of school life. And parents must be held legally accountable for their children's behaviour.

9. NEW OFFENCES. The law often lags behind social changes. Examples are the current craze for "happy slap" attacks and so-called hoodies.

"Happy slap" incidents are vicious assaults. Those who film them and those who pass the films around are encouraging such attacks.

Hoodies, if used to hide identity in a crime, are as much a criminal tool as wearing a mask. Both should lead to extra legal punishment.

10. YOUTH FACILITIES. Most juvenile crime is committed by a tiny minority, but often others get dragged in simply because they're out on the same street corners and have nowhere else to go.

What was once called the youth club has died out. Local authorities have a responsibility to to restore some kind of youth facilities in communities for kids to use if they want.

Easy to dismiss, difficult to get right maybe...but anyone got a better idea?