Mass Teenage Criminality

Well, I 'm shocked, I really am: a quarter of boys aged 14 to 17 are serious or prolific criminals, according to a Home Office study.

A quarter?!!!

It is not simply a matter of parental discipline or inadequate policing (although it is about those things too). But what does that widespread criminality say about modern mores? We live in a country where common decency, respect for others, and individual independence and self reliance are giving way to a dishonesty and viciousness entirely destructive of society.

People live 'by right' on welfare, or with access to the welfare state. There is no compelling need to maintain the integrity and trust required in normal (for how much longer?) society. Nor is there any shame or humility. Governments have done all they can to elevate welfare benefits onto the same social and moral plane as hard earned income from a job or business.

There has been a price to pay for this beyond taxation: social and family breakdown on the one hand, and the growth of single parent families on the other, which by their nature 1) are less likely to value - and demonstrate the value - of personal commitment, trust, and integrity: all inherent in successful marriages; and which 2) have fewer financial and social resources with which to bring up children. In Britain the problem families end up being concentrated together in 'social housing' (anti-social sink estates), exacerbating the problems.

For all that, there is no simple answer to this epidemic of incivility and criminality. Part of the problem, I am sure, lies with education, which needs to be far more closely tailored to the needs of individual children, i.e. to be selective. The school leaving age should be reduced, as should the age at which children are allowed to work. Another part of the problem is policing: it is time for the police to leave their desks and go back on the beat, reverting to their role of preventing crime.

But most importantly, the welfare state should be allowed to wither away. The nanny state is an inadequate substitute for the self-reliant family.