Curfews are the stuff of Nazi Germany and Communist Russia. At least, they used to be. Not anymore.
A police force is introducing a youth curfew to cut down on anti-social behaviour which will be the first to punish parents for letting their children out alone at night.
Operation Goodnight in Redruth, Cornwall, will see officers given the power to remove any youth under 16 seen on the streets after 9pm and any child under 10 after 8pm.
As a kid, I was often out later than that. My parents knew where we were (pretty much) and we weren’t getting into trouble.
The scheme encourages parents to voluntarily sign up to the lock-in and register their children.
Any child found outside after hours will then be checked on a register and if their parents have refused to take part in the voluntary scheme they face tough parenting orders.
I don’t have children, but if I did, I would never voluntary sign up to such a draconian scheme and they would have to stick their parenting orders where it would only be accessible by a very competent surgeon.
This is it, the slide into a police state. In a free country, you don’t have curfews, we, the public, have the right to go where we want, when we want and we don’t need police permission. They work for us, not the other way around.
How is this even legal…? The article states: “As far as we aware this is the first scheme of its type in the country.”
Let’s hope it’s also the last…
Any child found outside after hours will then be checked on a register and if their parents have refused to take part in the voluntary scheme they face tough parenting orders.
I think the true meaning of the word ‘voluntary’ is being abused somewhat here!
What this really is is the police taking, yet again, the path of least resistance.
If the children are breaking the law, it’s for the courts to punish them. If the courts aren’t doing that, then they should be looked at, it’s not for the police to institure draconian and illiberal measures to tar all young people with the same brush!
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Yeah, this is the NuLab definition of voluntary, not the one in common parlance.
I suspect they have created a new bye-law. Even so, it should be vigorously opposed, preferably with civil disobedience. Every parent sending their sixteen year olds out on errands at 21:10 of an evening should send a message.
I know this “voluntary” scam only too well from my schooldays during WW2. One of the selling points of the school was that, apart from lessons, all activities were “voluntary”. In fact, this meant that if you didn’t join the ATC parade every Sunday, you were obliged to attend a “voluntary” gym session.
I objected so strongly to this humbug that after a prolonged tussle with the headmaster [appropriately known as ‘Boss’], and the intervention of my parents, I was allowed to spend my Sunday afternoons as I pleased.
An early introduction to adult hypocrisy and “Do as we do, not as we say”.
At that age, I was usually playing computer games round at my mate’s house. The only time I was out on the streets around that time was when I was walking to or from his house. That was one street away. And this would have possibly landed me in trouble under this kind of scheme, even though there were obviously no gangs or cider cans involved?
What about kids who go to after-school activities at 6.30pm, for example, and are seen walking home a couple of hours afterwards? Does this apply to them?
One would think not and that the police would ideally apply some common sense. Unfortunately, we live in the UK and I can easily see 11 year-old Ryan and his 15 year-old brother Colin being picked up on the streets after leaving their local karate class, and then escorted home by grinning plods who later congratulate themselves for getting a tick in yet another of their ‘target’ boxes.
I’m moving to the US, anyway. I’ll send you the location of my sooper-seekrit bunker if it gets too bad for all of you over here (and it probably will).
A 15-year old from Redruth was interviewed on the 10:00 BBC1 News last night. He said that it wasn’t going to affect him since he would take no notice of said curfew. Then he lit up a roll-your-own as his father waddled into view. “I can’t do anything with a 15-year old” Dad said.
Then the interview switched to the 2 ladies whose complaints had been instrumental in getting the voluntary curfew into place. These 2 beached whales (whose lives I’m sure are being made a misery by the young – and probably not-so-young – scrotes on the estate) were at their wit’s end but welcomed the curfew because it appeared that “something” (no matter how ineffectual it will turn out to be) is being done.
I’m with you LR but we’ll have a difficult time selling “liberty” to those suffering from the depredations of the best underclass money can buy. If the “authorities” just demonstrated effectively that they were on the side of the anti-scrote majority (well, I hope they’re a majority); if the police did their job; if the council slung out trouble-making families sharpish, if if if ……
“…we’ll have a difficult time selling “liberty†to those suffering from the depredations of the best underclass money can buy.”
Oh, absolutely! If I were these ladies, I’d want ‘something’ (anything!) done about them too.
But, isn’t that what ASBOs were brought in for? To target behaviour that wasn’t criminal, but was causing distress in the community. Has that been tried, or has the fact that you still need to do some work to get an ASBO prompted the police to say ‘Ahhh, let’s find an easier way..’?
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Well, there appears to be precedent AGAINST any such curfew:
“Two judges, sitting at the High Court in London yesterday, upheld the right of a 15-year-old boy to be out on the streets at night unless the police suspected him of criminal or anti-social behaviour. The boy, who comes from Richmond, south-west London, and can only be identified as W, was challenging the new police powers to detain and forcibly return home any child who ventures into a designated curfew zone after 9pm.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/boy-15-overturns-evening-curfew-on-teenagers-499590.html
In any case, I saw no indication that any legislation had passed empowering the police to impose such a curfew; presumably one must possess such legislation in order to do so?
You would have thought so… I am presuming that they have passed some sort of by-law. Even so, a challenge is the right approach and a precedent makes it more likely to succeed. I do hope the residents of Redruth have the gumption to do so.