The amoral panic surrounding juvenile crime

Almost inevitably she called for tough action against the yobs. Although it is quite understandable why this retributive instinct was expressed, we know there is not a shred of evidence that it is likely to work.

Childhood expert Tim Gill has argued that play policy cannot be constructed on the basis of extreme cases of predatory paedophiles and rare cases of child abduction, so significant elements of youth policy cannot be built on the flimsy foundations of the wild behaviour of a handful of young people off their heads on drink and drugs. Not that this can be overlooked, especially when murder is perpetrated by someone on bail who has just been released from custody - though, for me, this raises the question of why no-one was monitoring that situation. Perhaps it was because Adam Swellings ("Swellhead") was not a juvenile, unlike the two other young people convicted alongside him.