InsaneJournal

So many things piss me off at the minute.

But let's take today's issue. Went onto the BBC news website this morning and found this "Have Your Say" thing. It's about the Barnardo's ad and the online survey, about children being demonised. The sheer ignorance of the people commenting amazes me - one person said "many" young people are out thieving and assaulting people.

Let's get something straight. And you might want to consider that as an employee of the Probation Service, I might, oooh, maybe know something about this!

1 in 10 young people in the UK have a criminal conviction. 10% in total.

1 in 3 adult men in the UK have a criminal conviction. One third in total.

And just to make it even more clear, at any one time, 10% of offenders the criminal justice system is dealing with will be women. 90% will be men. 10% will be under 21. 90% will be over 21.

And a third of all men in the UK have a criminal conviction.

Don't even get me started on ASBOs. Okay, wait, ASBOs annoy me enough that I'm ranting about them anyway. ASBOs are just slapped on you in the street - they're used by the police when they have it in for someone but cannot give them a criminal conviction. This means they cannot get them under any of the following:

Causing a public nuisance
Using words to cause alarm/harassment/distress
Being drunk and disorderly
Any of the harrassment ones
Any of the violent ones
Any of the drug ones
Any other alcohol ones

And yet whenever someone says "ASBO", people immediately think of one or all of the above. And it goes on your criminal record. Yes, that's right, something which is not a criminal conviction goes on your criminal record. You don't have the right to trial by jury, because you've not committed a crime! And oh, yes, you can get a jail sentence if you breach it. So you can get a jail sentence without ever actually committing a crime. Nice to know what sort of country we live in, isn't it?

Most of the young offenders I come into contact with are nice lads. (Yes, most of them are men: see above.) For a huge number of them, they'll be on their very first conviction, usually for something stupid like being drunk and disorderly. They'll normally get given unpaid work hours, and they'll get their head down and get on with it and we'll never see them again. Even the ones who have bigger problems are still nice lads - most of them just want a stable home and a stable job. The job part is often the biggest problem, because the number of offenders with learning difficulties is quite startling.