Youth defense

You know what? I am sick of seeing young people being depicted as a bunch of selfish little pricks in the media.
I have a giant pain in the neck with scare stories about all of the filthy, evil, depraved things they get up to – whether it’s underage drinking, giving each other oral sex in public or frequenting pornographic websites.
Do the journalists who write this shite not remember when they were young, and what they got up to? Do the people who give the worst of this scaremongering credence not have any kind of bullshit detectors at their disposal? Are they not aware that the notion that we are all going to hell in a hand cart has been around for as long as people have been able to stand up straight and pick the fruit from the trees?
The current consensus is that young people are the problem – and all us poor, beleaguered adults are stuck with them. Well, I’m with the opposition on this: it is more accurate to say that they are stuck with us, and the shit that we have created for them to cope with. The onus to change is not on children: rather it is on those in postions of responsibility in Irish society to up their game, in relation to the way in which children are treated from the moment they emerge, bawling, from the womb till they reach adulthood.
Which is not to say that young people have no responsibility at all – of course they do. But if they have responsibilities then they also have rights and there has been far too little discussion of these over the past few years, notwithstanding the demands of United Nations conventions on the rights of the child and the excellent work of the National Children’s Office.
Maybe that’s about to change. I see that Michelle Shannon has been apppointed as the national director of the Irish Youth Justice Service. She is a public servant of long standing, who has worked with the Department of Education and latterly the Department of Justice. There is a feeling that she is well qualified for the job and capable of doing great things. That her work will fall within the ambit of the new office of the Minister fort Children, itself headed by Sylda Langford, who previously led the development and implememtation of equality policy, is even better news. Together they might just be able to take on the vested interests who are likely to stand in the way of real progress.
One thing we can say for sure: Michelle has been handed an onerous responsibility. If we get this wrong, injustice is likely to be heaped on injustice, with children and young people on the butt end. They’ve been there for long enough and it has to stop. But let’s be upbeat. There are more positive forces at work here and the vital thing is to allow them the space in which to operate effectively. The objective must be to ensure that there actually is – think about the meaning of it, please – justice for children. That is, we have to create the conditions under which, from now on, young people will be treated with decency, fairness and respect by those involved in positions of responsibility in relation to them – whether that means parents, teachers, gardai, public servants or officers of the courts.
What worries me deeply is that the drift of discussion and debate over the past few years in Ireland has been so loaded with prejudice against youth. The suggestion that people wearing hoodies might be banned from shopping centres has been floated in all seriousness by some members of the Dail. ASBOs have been introduced as a means of intimidating young citizens into acquiesence with dubious societal norms without the authorities having to undertake the more rigorous process of going before the courts to secure a conviction. And so on.
The Irish Youth Justice Service will be doing its job if it acts as a bulwark against that kind of thinking, which must not be allowed to continue to dominate the formulation of public policy in this critical area.
Let’s be honest with ourselves. The treatment of children and young adults by the authorities in Ireland in the past has more often been appalling than not. Specifically, the ancien regime in the Department of Justice presided over a hopelesly inadequate system, which often ended up with children being dumped into adult prisons. The operations of the children’s courts have been a mess too. So let’s start by dealing with that garbage pile.
There is no point in being under any illusions: the task facing the Irish Youth Justice Service is a difficult one. They need to find a way of giving children and young people an effective voice. And not one that is packaged, controlled and approved by the authorities. Youth needs to be listened to – really listened to, that is – and their views taken on board, and demonstrably so, in the way in which rules and regulations concerning them are framed and put into effect.
And what if children or teenagers do end up in conflict with the law? The Irish Youth Justice Alliance made an impressive submission to the Department of Children on the issue of Youth Justice Reform. In it, they argued that children have the right:
to be treated equally in a manner consistent with respect for their rights and their welfare
- to age-appropriate treatment
- to be involved in decisions made that impact on them
- to an effective independent complaints mechanism
-to be diverted where appropriate from the criminal justice system
- to be detained only as a last resort, which requires a variety of alternatives to custody to be available.
This is is where we should be heading and the Irish Youth Justice Service has the potential to make it happen. Its establishment represents a new beginning and a hugely promising one. Let’s hope that promise can be realised – and that young people will at last bne given the respect that is their entitlement by Irish society.