Dealing with Youth Nuisance

Posted By: Mark Birkett
Date Posted: 21/02/2008

Re: Triangle Action Group

Last year I helped to set up a local community group in Newbold. They are now called the Triangle Action Group TAG) and have made a magnificent effort dealing with all manner of issues over the last 12 months.

Last night I attended one of their group meetings, during which an issue arose which I know resonates with every community in the Borough; that of youth-nuisance. I believe that the Police, the Council, local community groups, schools and parents ALL have a hand in improving youth behaviour; not to mention the youngsters themselves.
 
The behaviour of some of these gangs is an utter disgrace. They are NOT deserving of 'respect' and they are certainly not 'cool'. Breaking bus shelters, being out of control with drink, dealing in drugs, dropping litter and frightening local residents makes you a seriously uncool loser, period.
 
But what's to be done?
 
In the short term, these gangs MUST receive more attention from uniformed officers. That means the Police MUST regularly feed back information on progress to street-by-street community groups like TAG. Local Police efforts must be directly responsible to local people. No-one wants centralised Police help lines. They want a local telephone number to call where a local bobby will deal with local kids. I want to see targets set by local community groups and local Police absolutely answerable to those targets. What can possibly be hard about that?
 
In the medium term, all parents MUST to a degree be held responsible for their children's activities. That means parents ensuring their kids are in at a reasonable time, that they do not have access to alcohol and that their parents taking responsibility for where their children are in the evenings. If parents are acting irresponsibly they should find the Anti-Social Behaviour Teams dealing firmly with them as well.
 
In the longer term, and this is the hard bit...we as a society MUST be prepared to pay for two things;

• more Police officers on the streets (instead of asking them to fill out endless paperwork) along with
  
• better, MANAGED youth facilities so that these kids have somewhere to go AND something constructive to do when they get there.

That means councillors like myself, David Clayton and Naim Mahmud trying to get more funds allocated to such initiatives as a matter of urgency. It's a long haul but perfectly achievable. What is not acceptable is the current state of many of Rochdale's streets.