Unreal perceptions of juvenile offending Letter from Rosie Kane to
the Herald newspaper
I WOULD like to take up Eddie Orme's point (June 11) that "I do seem to witness more and more anti-social behaviour in daily life". Our research, and that of several major organisations involved in juvenile offending, shows that offending rates have remained more or less unchanged over 10 years. Our contention is that the perception of juvenile offending by a section of the adult population is way out of proportion to reality and that it is played up mercilessly by the tabloid press who love nothing better than to scare folk.
The deputy chief constable of Lothian and Borders Police, Tom Wood, said on June 1 that "The facts are that young people are no worse or better today than they ever have been. And there is no more youth crime than there ever has been, at least not in the last 10 years". He also suggested that the use of pejorative language in relation to young people "is misleading in that it implicates all young people" and "leads us down a false track".
Urban myths are prone to grow rapidly but "Rosie Kane wants to ban the word 'ned'" must surely be the fastest-growing fib in history. Here is the question I asked on June 5 in the Scottish Parliament that has caused this whole stramash: "Rosie Kane (Glasgow) (SSP). To ask the Scottish Executive what its position is on use by ministers [I repeat, by ministers] of the word 'ned' in relation to young people". I was asking the government what they thought of the use of pejorative language in relation to young people by its ministers.
The SSP group were saying that ministers should be ashamed of the way they have used young people as a political football to win the votes of people who may have genuine concerns over juvenile offending. They were able to get away with it because 16-17-year-olds in this country are an easy target - they don't have the vote.
Give them their democratic rights and you'd see the mainstream political parties falling over themselves to shake hands and ask for their support. It's an iron rule of politics that politicians don't insult the electorate; our youngsters should be afforded the same protection as the rest of us.
Rosie Kane, MSP, The Scottish Parliament.
