Banned wagon
A weekly survey of the things our rulers want to prohibit 'CHILDREN should be seen and not heard,' elderly aunts used to recite. But not even the aunts would have consid- ered it the state's duty to dictate when children should and shouldn't be on view. Last week a 12-year-old boy and his 15-year-old brother were banned from the centre of Weston-super-Mare under an antisocial behaviour order. Few in the town, which is said to have endured a three-month crime spree courtesy of the boys, are likely to be sympathetic, but the brothers have been caught by new legal provisions which allow children to be removed from the streets without actual- ly being convicted of any crime. Why a ban on visiting one place should help to deal with the problem of delinquent chil- dren is pu771ing in any case; the order won't, for example, prevent the Weston- super-Mare boys from wreaking havoc in Clevedon instead.
Disturbingly, the 1998 Crime and Dis- order Act allows local authorities to impose curfews on all children under the age of ten, whether they are causing a nuisance or not. If Weston-super-Mare wishes to ban all children from its streets after 6 p.m., it simply has to apply to the Home Secretary. Like so many laws, it has been dressed up as a means of pro- tecting children, although well-behaved ten-year-olds heading down to the park for an evening game of football may sus- pect that it has more to do with the inter- ests of adults who appreciate peace and quiet when they get home from work. The good news is that so far local authorities have been reluctant to intro- duce a curfew. The bad news is that the constraint might not last much longer. We have written to all local authorities asking them why they aren't making use of the new legislation,' says a Spokeswoman for the Home Office.
Ross Clark
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