AT the risk of once more upsetting the ‘pat them on the head and wag a finger’ brigade, who seem to think that dangerous behaviour by young people is somehow everyone’s fault but that of the nasty little morons themselves, can I add my small voice to the many who have criticised the Royal Court for giving non-custodial sentences to all but one of a teenage gang who kicked a man almost 50 times.

According to Court Commissioner Julian Clyde-Smith, the violence shown by the six teenagers – the little darlings can’t be named because the wag a finger brigade persuaded that lot in the Big House to up the age limit on identification, rather than lowering it as they’ve lowered the limits for all these brats’ ‘rights’ – has put people in fear of walking the streets of St Helier.

Well, there’s a thing. As a result of what happened after these thugs threw a bottle of urine at an ordinary citizen on 19 December last year, Mr Clyde-Smith says that people are now in fear of walking the streets.

Let me tell you something, pal. Ordinary people, and I wonder if you actually know any, have been in fear of our violent town and the scum which prowl its streets for years, not just since a week before the last Christmas holiday.

Where have you been? Orbiting the earth in the International Space Station or simply living here but oblivious to most of what affects and influences the rest of us?

These low life were caught, I suspect – and, therefore, remorseful when they got to Court – only because CCTV cameras produced the evidence which led to their conviction.

I wonder if their remorse would have led them to admit their criminal actions to their parents, and then suggest that they all go to the police station together to hold a communal confession, without the video evidence. Somehow I doubt that very much, because between them they also admitted to offences dating back to July of last year.

You can almost hear them saying it: ‘Let’s wipe the slate now we’re in real trouble because it’s not going to add to the sentences.’ My stomach sank when I wrote the word ‘sentences’ because apart from one who got six months youth detention, what’s the betting he’s out in time to get a summer tan, the remainder are fined, placed on probation and/or given varying lengths of community service.

I have looked at the e-mailed comments from the public on thisisjersey.com and I share the sense of outrage the majority of them express. One of the most telling came from someone who’s experienced the ‘punishment’ of community service. After asking if the community service was a joke, he described the ‘sentence’ as just a laugh and said that among other things it consisted of painting green bikes on a few Sunday mornings.

After saying that he didn’t mind going on record saying that he actually enjoyed his community service, more significantly, he went on to add: ‘The irony is that had a member of the public intervened (in order to assist the stricken victim) and punched one of the perpetrators, he would be the one in Court with his name in the JEP.’

That is from someone who, unlike those who imposed these so-called punishments, has actually been there, done it and got the community service T-shirt. It seems to me that it would ‘assist the Court’, to use the time-honoured phrase, if a few of these old lags, for want of a better expression, had a quiet word with m’lud in the form of Mr Clyde-Smith and, perhaps, opened his eyes just a little.

Having read the Court report in the JEP in its entirety, all I can say is that probably the only thing they got right in this case was telling the parents they would have to shell out 500 quid if their offspring re-offended within a year, although I’d have preferred it to have been a couple of grand and five years.

But the biggest let-off of the lot, yet again, it must be said, is that none of us know who these six are because even for a crime such as affray, which I’m told is viewed by most courts (although obviously not all of them) as far more serious than assault or breach of the peace and carries a lengthy maximum prison sentence, the media are banned by law from identifying them.

In circumstances such as these, I would have thought that a major influence on proper parental control (which seemingly was nowhere in sight while a 22-year-old passerby was getting his head kicked in because he objected to a bottle of urine being chucked at him) would have been the likelihood of names and addresses, and possibly even police photographs, being spread across the pages of this newspaper.

That sanction, so I am told, is open to the courts. The Children Law allows the courts this course of action, yet in the 40 years or so that the legislation has existed judges have lifted the ban on no more than a small handful of cases.

If they do seek to reflect the public’s views on crime and sentencing policies, those judges could do worse than name and shame much more frequently than they do.

And finally. Like most other people, I bemoaned the termination of the reciprocal health agreement because I felt that we were getting the thin end of the wedge. According to one former health administrator, the reverse is true and we’ve been charging the UK ten times what we should have for treating visitors from there.

I always thought obtaining money by false pretences was a criminal offence. As Boris Johnson might say, perhaps Plod should get involved.

Apologies also to the correspondent from the UK who I criticised for suggesting that Jersey should continue funding treatment. If the above is true, we really ought to.