Society
Bring back square-bashing!
Published 27 August 2008
Is national service the answer to youth crime? It may sound like a Daily Mail editorial but there could be more to the idea than disciplining errant teens
"Bring back National Service!" used to be the sitcom writer’s stock shorthand for an old, most likely bigoted person, who was scared of any youthful hairstyle or kind of music that he or she didn’t understand.
But something’s changed. With our prisons fit to burst, and the papers full of unending gang violence, the concept of sending teenagers off to square-bash and do assault courses for a year or two, to reset their moral compasses and keep them so busy they haven’t got the time or the energy to commit crime, has been floated quite seriously around the media and there seems more than usual willingness to consider it.
On reflection, this could benefit more than just potential young offenders. Someone like me might well have got something from it. I look back on my college days and cringe a bit. Although I had already spent my year off in Paris, where I learned to speak French but was mostly either crying or drunk the rest of the time, I rushed off to university with two ambitions - getting away from home, and meeting as many people as possible, the latter involving as much alcohol as I could get down me. Like many in my position, I had a lot of growing up to do and got into a lot of emotional scrapes. Sure, I got a good degree, but I don’t remember much about it.
I know that I would have benefited from getting away from home before that, but without parental involvement, and with a chance to try things out without constantly being told I wasn’t good enough. And I came from a middle class background where there was food on the table and a secure home, however miserable.
For kids from homes where the parents, if even present, expect their kids to be raised by a combination of television and the police, a year or more away from that would show that there’s another world out there. It would get young people away from unhappy homes, allow everyone involved to meet people from other backgrounds, and remind those who were lucky enough to have happy ones, to value them.
It wouldn’t just have to be about army training either, as there’s the obvious danger that it would just end up mimicking the horrors of school sports. It could be about learning life skills, money management, and, for all too many boys, how to be a man. Girls too might learn the self-respect that so many so desperately need after teen years spent on the sexual battlefield.
But perhaps I’m getting into fantasy-land. I can remember a time before the internet and mobile phones, and when cotton and linen cost a lot more than synthetics, and you couldn’t just buy a house because you felt like it, and broadsheet newspapers didn’t publish reviews of spas.
While this world was a paradise to the post-war populations that came before me, it is positively austere to those coming after, and successive generations have developed an increasing sense of entitlement to just about everything, whether wear-it-once-and-chuck-it-away clothing, or the right to bear arms at a bus stop.
For a start, 'national service’ can also stand for ‘peacetime conscription’. Lawyers would have a field day with that if any government tried to bring it in. In our twisted universe, ‘prevented from starting a mortgage,’ would come only a close second to ‘possibility of being killed in the next war’ as possible human rights abuses.
And that’s just the start. If such a scheme actually got past the lawyers, there would a bidding war to run it, which would be won by Capita, and the whole thing would fall apart within months. Even if it didn’t, those employed to oversee it would soon be flogging booze to the teens, and rich parents would rapidly find ways to get their kids past the draft. Assuming it still managed to clunk on after that, there would be so many anti-bullying tribunals that the place would eventually grind to a halt under the sheer weight of legalese, on top of the medical bills for all the abortions and STI treatments.
Shame, really.
Post this article to
We want to encourage people to comment on our content and to exchange views with other readers and hope this will be done on a courteous basis. However, if you encounter posts which are offensive please let us know by emailing comments@newstatesman.co.uk and we will take swift action where necessary.
