I was horrified to read today’s story about the ‘new’ police response to youth crime “Going to lock you up’: cop warning for regional youth” New England Times 19/3/2025. It sounded like the cops were intending to just go lock kids up to make other people feel better.
The Deputy Commissioner of Police should not be threatening children with the most base ‘we’re coming to get you’ threat. What on earth was he thinking? Was he auditioning for a role in a horror film?
I don’t want juiced up young, inexperienced police trolling the streets of Tamworth looking for kids to lock up just to hit some kind of quota, like they do with speeding fines. I don’t want officers ripped out of small country towns that already don’t have a 24/7 police presence either. These extra police have to come from somewhere – and that’s the only two options I know of.
I understand that people are concerned about the increasing severity of crime – there’s not more crime, and there is no crime crisis, it’s just different kind of crime that people aren’t used to. It’s scary and confronting, and of course something should be done about it.
But as any parent of a teenager will tell you, threatening them doesn’t work. They think they’re invincible, and are only likely to do more of whatever you’re trying to stop. I’m not a very smart person, I didn’t go to uni or anything, but even I know that.
Politicians and police leadership should be ashamed of themselves for jumping up and down on this issue. The rhetoric from Tamworth MP Kevin Anderson on this has been just as bad as that deputy commissioner.
Go get tough on yourselves and your own poor performance. If you want to do something about crime, then perhaps deal with the fact that everyone is broke, rather than wasting money making yourselves feel better and achieving absolutely nothing.