News

Recently, society has been consumed by a debate about the increased violence and crime facing children. But for all the rhetoric, Ruth Winchester finds that policy makers are slow to listen to children.

Life, in the words of Thomas Hobbes, is "nasty, brutish and short".¹ For children, it can be much worse. The death of 10-year-old Damilola Taylor in Peckham, south London, in November 2000 made it abundantly clear how dangerous life can be for children in urban areas.

Fatal stabbings and shootings involving children are still rare, but bullying and verbal abuse are "facts of life" for many children. In some inner city areas, young children - particularly boys - are regularly mugged by other children. Staff working in youth clubs in deprived areas say children turning up with small stab wounds is "by no means unusual".

New research by the Howard League for Penal Reform² has looked at the experiences of crime among 1,180 children. The study revealed that most had been victims at least once. Half had something stolen from them inside school and nearly a third had been robbed outside school premises. Two-thirds had been hit or kicked and half had been racially abused.

Last year, a report by the Office of the Children's Rights Commissioner for London, Sort it Out,³ asked children what they felt about living in the capital. Overwhelmingly, children said they wanted to feel safe on the streets - they perceived life in London as violent and unpredictable and some even felt worried about their parents being on the street alone.

It is not about good kids being mugged by bad kids, either. A child can be a victim one day and a perpetrator the next. Claire Lanyon is a researcher at Kids Company in Peckham, which offers education and therapeutic work to 300 children a week. She says younger children are regularly being threatened and robbed, then joining gangs and becoming the perpetrators as they reach their early teens, continuing the cycle.

It is clear that some children are living with the daily threat of robbery, assault and intimidation on a scale that most adults would find unbearable. The impact of this ever-present threat on children's lives, sense of security and emotional development has not been assessed. Statutory services for children focus almost exclusively on sexual and physical abuse - usually committed by adults - to the extent that little is known about how children respond to being victims of crime perpetrated by their peers.

There are some specialist organisations that offer therapeutic support to child victims, but they are scarce and most have long waiting lists.

National organisation Victim Support runs schemes in every locality to help adult victims of crime. According to services policy manager Peter Dunn, the organisation does run some excellent schemes for child victims but they are patchy. The organisation receives 90 per cent of its funding from the Home Office, none of which is earmarked to help child victims of crime. While the Home Office does fund some schemes that cater for "vulnerable witnesses", including children, these only cover children who are entering the witness box. And this is a tiny minority - children hardly ever end up as witnesses because they hardly ever report crimes against them.

The reasons for this are complex, but according to the co-ordinator of the Howard League youth crime survey, Catryn Yousefi, most children do not view themselves as victims of crime. They regard harassment and bullying as "just the way life is", she says, or accept it as part of youth culture. They also develop their own strategies for dealing with the threat - such as hiding their money, moving around in groups and avoiding danger spots.

In fact, says Yousefi, children start to think about themselves as victims only when someone talks to them about their experiences. She says that children should be receiving information and training about dealing with crime - if only to raise their awareness that being bullied, assaulted or robbed at school or on the way home is not an accepted part of growing up.

Children also fail to report crime because they suspect that adults will not take it seriously or will treat them as the offender. Teenagers hanging around in groups may seem threatening to members of the public, but are they ganging up aggressively - or protectively? And children are understandably reluctant to involve teachers or the police when the consequences of "telling tales" may be an unpleasant confrontation on the way home from school.

The recent increase in awareness of crimes against children may have been driven by the mobile phones that parents expect to make them safer. Children may have lost their dinner money once a week for years without making a fuss, but parents notice when their child loses a £100 mobile - hence a surge in reported crimes.

But despite the evidence that children are routinely doing terrible things to other children, society still treats child-on-child crime as inconsequential. While punching someone at work would be viewed as a serious offence, punching someone in the playground may be regarded as "rough and tumble". Tellingly, the British Crime Survey⁴ - regarded as the best source of reliable data on reported and unreported crime in the UK, and the basis of government policy on crime - does not collect data from anyone younger than 16.

Sarah Simpson is director of training and resources at the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, which provides safety awareness training and courses for adults and children. She says that children should receive training about crime and how to avoid it from parents and other agencies (see panel).

She also argues that attitudes to boys and girls need to be revisited. "Young men are significantly more likely to be the victims of crime between the age of 16-24, yet we don't reflect that in our attitudes," she says. "Parents will usually have a discussion with their daughter about when and how she will be getting home, but boys are expected to look after themselves."

In March, the government put a new emphasis on tackling street crime in the 10 worst affected police force areas, possibly spurred on by the rise in robberies. But more information is needed. Children's experience of crime ought to be recorded in a co-ordinated way by the British Crime Survey. And children need information and support if they are not to be left permanently scarred by their experiences in childhood - both as victims and as perpetrators.

According to Peter Dunn at Victim Support, a new service for child victims is in the early stages of development and should be available by the beginning of next year. The plan is that every local Victim Support scheme will offer a two-tier service - with a basic level for older children aged 11-17 and a second level using qualified counsellors and play therapists for younger children or those with more acute needs.

All it needs now is some funding.

¹ Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), Leviathan, 1660

² Howard League for Penal Reform, Citizenship and Crime Project, Survey Results. From 020 7249 7373

³ Office of Children's Rights Commissioner for London, Sort it Out, 2001. It is available from the www.londonchildrenscommissioner.org.uk  

⁴ Home Office, British Crime Survey 2001, from www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/bcs1.html  

PLAN

The mnemonic the Suzy Lamplugh Trust uses is PLAN.

Prepare - So if you are going to the cinema, you make sure you know the time of the last bus home, and that someone knows where you are.

Look confident - Lots of research indicates that you are more likely to be targeted if you look ill at ease, lost or unsure. Having a hood up or headphones on is also bad news because it prevents you from hearing or seeing the warning signs.

Avoid risk - If there is a group of youths down an alleyway, you have a choice about whether you go down there.

Never assume it won't happen to you.

For further information contact the trust on 020 8876 0305.