Feral Youths and Kebabs

If you want a discussion about crime in the Uk pick up the papers.Opinions ranging from it was different in my day to don't balme the kids via lets all blame the government

The Sun leads the way with its front page letter from a Dr Stuart Newton who describes the current situation as being the 2008 equivilent of Nero fiddling while Rome burns.

It tells its readers to

to heed the rallying call of former school head Dr Stuart Newton – and fight to take back our streets, towns and parks from the violent young thugs terrorising Britain.

urging them to

fill in the coupon on Page Five of today's Sun newspaper and send it to PM Gordon Brown,

Its leader saying

POLITICIANS wring their hands. Police chiefs complain their hands are tied.
The Home Secretary Jacqui Smith admits she would not feel safe walking through London late at night.
Yet the problem of violent youth crime just keeps growing with convictions and cautions up by more than a third in only three years.
For all the politicians’ empty promises it takes Sun reader and ex-headmaster Dr Stuart Newton to hit the nail on the head with his plea for action today.

The front page of the Mail focuses on the comments of the Home Sec under the headline

Skewered a reference to kebabs in Peckham

Jacqui Smith suffered a barrage of criticism yesterday after admitting she would not feel safe walking the streets after dark.
Opposition MPs said the Home Secretary had made an "admission of failure" to the millions of shift-workers who have no option but to brave the threat of violence.
Aides of Miss Smith compounded her gaffe with a desperate attempt to undo the damage by claiming she had recently popped out in the evening to "buy a kebab in Peckham".

Although according to the paper which tracks down the kebab shop owner who said

She came in during the early evening. We were a bit busy so I can't remember the exact time, but it was just turning

The papers Melanie Philips says

It will take more than weasel words to make the streets feel safe, Ms Smith

adding

for her to say, without any apology, embarrassment or shame, that London's streets are effectively no-go areas for women at night is to add the insult of insouciance to the injury of Britain's disorderly public spaces.

Tony Parsons writing in the Mirror says

There is much that can be done immediately - zero tolerance for carrying any weapon, ensuring that men with murder in their hearts are not wandering the streets on bail, and letting a life sentence for murder mean exactly that - you will rot in jail until the day you croak, not that you will be out by your 30th birthday

. and looks to the past

The youth of the past were no angels. But they were afraid of the law.
They were afraid of the courts, they were afraid of their fathers, they were afraid of their teachers, they were afraid of losing their jobs.
They would not have killed Garry Newlove, or even beaten him, out of pure naked self-interest. They had too much to lose.

Amongst the qualities there is a lot less coverage,Philip Johnson writing in the Telegraph asks Crime is falling? Tell that to our children

Jacqui Smith was right about one thing yesterday, when she said she would be too afraid to walk around Hackney in east London after midnight. That was the most honest and sensible statement from a Home Secretary about crime in recent years. She then went and spoiled it by claiming that crime had fallen, that people were safer than they have been for 10 or 20 years, and that once everyone was convinced of this "truth", we would praise New Labour for making us all so much more secure.

Bruce Anderson writing in the Independent takes a rather different approach,commenting on the rape of a girl in North London

One's first reaction is that hanging is too good for her attackers, who should be condemned to lifelong forced labour, plus a monthly flogging. But the five rapists are also youngsters. Can we be sure that they were all born to be monsters? Is it not more likely that some of them were turned into monsters by an upbringing designed to produce feral anthropoids, not human beings. It is probable that those young males never knew love and discipline, and that the vacuum was filled by the brutal bonding of a street gang. If infants are nurtured by wolves, they are unlikely to turn into Romulus and Remus.

adding that

The rapists must be held responsible for their crimes. But they cannot be blamed for their childhoods. Modern Britain did not only fail the girl. It failed the five youths. That crime did not have one victim; it had six. As the rapists will come to understand during their long years of captivity, the criminal usually ranks high in the list of his principal victims