To establish why a 10-year-old boy, identified in his mother's womb as "at risk", has been causing such grief to the neighbours. How was it that the social workers, on the case for so long, didn't years ago train this feral child out of graffiti-ing walls and chasing cats?
Far-fetched? Well... maybe. But in a society in which policymakers claim they can predict who will become "antisocial" even before they are born, how can we be sure? After all, Tony Blair and his advisers seem to have an unshakeable and unself-critical confidence in their powers to predict the future.
The practical objections to policy approaches such as this - particularly to their (hopefully unintended) consequences - are numerous. Most serious is the stigma that will immediately become attached to the children and the families so labelled - something that carries a special irony given that this latest New Labour bright idea is being done in the name of reducing social exclusion.
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