I used to get mocked by the extreme right on here for suggesting that spotty 'Islamist' terrorist martyrs have mental health issues.
I will now perhaps enrage the extreme left and right by suggesting that 'chavvy' wanton mad dog-owning skunk-heads also have mental health issues, and are neither unwilling victims of a harsh capitalist system, or of an inviolate criminal class.
I have some but limited experience of 'out of control' (white, down here in North Kent) 'problem' families and my view is there is a streak of (largely undiagnosed) mental health issues at work.
It has traditionally been the reaction of 'people like us' to condemn and mock and seek to protect 'ourselves' from the 'feral' and suchlike.
Maybe there is another way, which would involve the tricky business of 'persuading' people who may have committed little or no criminal acts (yet) but who have chaotic lives, to engage with help, the availability of genuine and useful help, and the acceptance by the public that this will cost money (albeit this would save money if teenagers are caught early before they breed like flies and provide suboptimal lives for their kids at best, or neglect/abuse them at worst, recreating a cycle of deprivation and massive strain on social services, the police and criminal justice system).
Call me peculiar but I just don't accept that people whose brains are wired effectively make the sort of lifestyle choices that we all mock or fume about, using a fully-informed fully-functional free will.
We can ignore, we can criminalize, or we could try to intercede. The latter means interfering with [people's lives. So it will be a tough sell by whoever decides to make it policy.
As a poignant note, our nipper's 13 year old friend, who has been excluded from school, is currently being pestered by her 'boyfriend' who constantly sends txts telling her he loves her.....he's 16. It is not my responsibility to enquire about coercive control, or council the girl about her choices. I can't ask an unrelated 13 year old what she is 'up to'. Our nipper has limited information but we can't, in any case, use her as an intermediary/conduit. And if there are concerns that one might whistle blow to social services . . . . what exactly would they be able to investigate in the current climate with the currently available frameworks? The girls looks and sounds healthy. So this is way under the radar of the current social service rubric. And yet I can see how this is all likely to pan out....
