Opinion: Look at the signs behind antisocial acts

So what to do? Home Secretaries are, of course, completely protected from the direct realities of antisocial behaviour, even if they are responsible for dealing with it. A namesake of John Reid's, a few years back, was not. He was walking back from the pub and saw four teenage boys vandalising a bollard in the road. All accounts say he intervened, though no-one knows exactly how. Local people feel it is a stain on his memory to suggest that he spoke over-aggressively to them. What is not disputed is that the boys attacked him viciously and killed him.

I knew the victim vaguely and I knew the boys as well. I think the former despaired at what he saw as the fragmentation of his community and the steady decline in respect. The latter were "bored teenagers", messing about, and - as they would describe it - having a laugh. They are now paying the price, in the form of lengthy custodial sentences, for a laugh that got out of hand.