Certainly The NYA is pleased to see acknowledgement of the need to generate "a society where we respect each other, our property and our shared public spaces". At the same time, we are concerned about some of the other proposals, and the concentration on enforcement measures over tackling root causes.
The risk is these measures will reinforce the anti-social behaviour of some young people and the negative perceptions of young people as troublemakers who should be removed from streets. Several of the proposed measures are unhelpful and unworkable.
Police powers for group dispersal and fast-track child curfews will harm relationships between them and young people. They will penalise law-abiding young people with nowhere else to go, while propagating the myth that it is groups of young people who are largely to blame for antisocial behaviour.
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