Michael McLaughlin of the Irish Republican Socialist Party is calling Cllr Brian McMahon’s, Chairman of Strabane District Policing Partnership, comments on dealing with anti social behavior draconian and extremely right wing.
Cllr McMahon condemns vigilantism for “creating more problems and hardships” yet in the same article calls on the PSNI to arrest and prosecute the youth involved in this activity, creating problems and hardship for the youth and their families who he intends to have arrested, a hypocritical stance.
Although vigilantism has been proven to solve noting, the DPPs approach to dealing with the problem of anti social behavior is completely flawed and worthy of the era of Thatcherism.
Arresting, prosecuting and indeed jailing youth involved in anti social behaviour is not the solution, anti social behaviour is a symptom of the society we live in today and should be tackled as such. Poverty, broken homes, lack of education and a myriad of other social issues contribute to the reasons youth end up involved in this activity.
If the problem of anti social behavior is to be tackled in the short term it can only be addressed by action from those in the community sector in conjunction with the all those affected.
Simply Felon setting and calling for prosecutions will not solve the problem of anti social behaviour, putting the hard work into tackling the causes of anti social behavior is where the solutions are, not Hydebank young offenders institution.
