Jayne Dowle: You can forget teenage kicks in curfew town

We’re in the national news again, and this time it is because South Yorkshire Police instigated a curfew in Barnsley town centre, banning under-16s from the streets after 9pm unless accompanied by a responsible adult.

I’m certainly no soft touch when it comes to teenagers and discipline, but I don’t think this draconian stance will solve the perceived problem at all.

What it will do is alienate young people from their own town, erecting a barrier that won’t easily be raised and cutting them off from the place they live. This has potentially catastrophic results; when we talk about town centres needing to evolve to survive, are we now in danger of forgetting that people need to use them, and this means people of all ages?

It puts up further barriers too, between young and old, and between young people and authority. It tells under-16s that their opinions count for nothing, infringes their personal liberty and by taking away their own responsibility for their own behaviour, infantilises them. It also calls into question the role and authority of parents, and gives the neglectful ones further excuse to do nothing themselves to teach their children how to behave respectfully.

The creation of a huge “dispersal zone” from one end of the town centre to the other suggests a disappointing lack of imagination and involvement on the part of the police and local council, and says something about the efficiency of their joint tactics in tackling nuisance behaviour so far. I’m not pretending that young people are always perfect citizens, but treating them like rioters before they have even rioted is not the way to foster mutual understanding.

I’ve been in town in the evening and seen the rowdy groups of teenagers hanging out by the bus station, so I can understand how they might appear intimidating, especially to the elderly and those who feel vulnerable out on their own.

However, you’re not telling me that every single one of those youngsters is a serious threat to the moral order. What about the young people who simply want to go through town to attend events and clubs? Will they be under suspicion too?

It’s a long time since I was 15, but I fondly recall tripping off to under-18s discos and to see plays and gigs at the theatre. So does my mother, only in her day, it was dances at the Baths and the YMCA. Times have changed, I know, but is it really that bad now?

It must be said that since making the original announcement, SYP appear to have softened their approach, denying a blanket ban, and issuing a statement that the policy “will give police the discretionary power to take home young people under 16 who are involved in anti-social behaviour”.

The key to this will be in the “discretionary power”. I would urge police officers to single out the troublemakers and deal with them individually. Obviously, if drugs are being taken, or graffiti is being daubed on a shop-front, then laws are being broken and arrests should be made. However, escorting home every single person perceived to pose a potential problem would surely place a huge demand on police resources at a time when public spending cuts are already putting budgets under pressure.

And moving youngsters on won’t deal with the fact that they will find somewhere else to congregate. It will simply drive the “problem” deeper and wider. It’s happened before. I remember a new park opening with great fanfare a few years back. I’d drive past on a summer evening and see groups of teenagers lounging around in the late sunshine, thinking to myself, “oh good, that’s a nice place for them to hang out”. Within months though, local residents started to complain about the “nuisance” they were making, and the teenagers were forced to find somewhere else to go.

Some people say there should be more youth clubs and activities on offer, but anyone who knows anything about teenagers recognises that some will enjoy joining in, and some will always prefer to do their own thing. And providing organised fun is not as simple a solution as it sounds; there is not much money around to support such initiatives, and volunteers to run youth clubs are thin on the ground these days.

However it seems to me that the damage has already been done by the police. A message has been sent to the young people of Barnsley that they are not welcome in their own town. If I was 15, I would be incandescent with teenage rage. I’d probably be planning a protest on the Town Hall steps right now, if I could get on them without being arrested. At my age though, with two children approaching adolescence themselves, I just feel sad that this has happened in the place we like to call home.