The Road Not Taken

I intend to make a bit of a Victor Meldrew rant today based around crime in the UK. It seems to me over the years that crime in general has gone up mainly due to the youths wandering and sometimes controlling the streets. In my youth I would be wary of my peers, other youths who may want to start a fight. These days youths will harrass, confront and attack anyone of any age and you know the worst part, nothing is being done about it.

Just look at this table taken from a government website showing crime figures for England and Wales in 2004.

The numbers speak for themselves. Only the other day I read an article about a journolist who lives in Brixton and wrote of the hassles he and his housemates receive at the hands of the youths living in the area. They have been intimidated, threatened, their car smashed and door kicked off it’s hinges. The police were called but could not respond immediately. The trouble is, the kids know they can not be touched in most cases.

You end up in a situation where people will take matters into their own hands, neighborhood vigilantes and the like. How have things changed over the years to make these areas unpleasant to live in? The age old cry of “where are the parents?” goes out. Do they know what their kids are up to? In most cases the parents are just as yobbish as the kids.

Perhaps it may just be me. Maybe things have not changed that much but it is I who have changed. Living in the US I did not feel the level of anxiety that you feel walking along a dark street in London these days, and many other British cities. Nottingham, my old University town, is rife with teemage crime so much so that the chief of police said he can’t control it anymore. What a sign to send out to these youths. They are overtaking the police who can’t do anything about their behaviour.

I make it sound like you can’t walk safely in the streets these days which is not the case. However, with teenage crime on the increase things can only get worse. Time to hone my JKD skills.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 24th, 2005 at 2:17 pm and is filed under Post-Trip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.