IT wouldn’t have made a global news scoop, but the recent cowardly attack by a pack of local girl gangsters on a pair of visiting French students was nonetheless a significant embarrassment.

Although it might have stained our cherished reputation as a relatively safe and stable community, it reflects directly on the criminals themselves, and obliquely on an impotent legal system which prevents their offensive identities being revealed as a fitting badge of shame.

It would be too easy to launch into a fury of birch-wielding retribution or morbid hair-shirt introspection, but some of the responsibility for the petty violence pandemic must rest with the ambivalent measures available to deal with it.

The law, for one, appears to have put in place more protection for perpetrators than victims – the cloak of anonymity being just one such impediment to their facing up to their brutal misdeeds.

So faced with headlines such as ‘Youth Court under pressure’, it’s not surprising that our Home Affairs Minister has proposed stiffer penalties for offenders under 15 years old. As a former magistrate, the minister is well placed to judge how historical limitations of court powers have permitted the actions of an unruly few tarring the reputation of the overwhelming majority of young Islanders. But he is not alone.

In the week when the UK assumed the trophy as violence capital of Europe, its own Home Secretary poured scorn on his government’s complacency in tackling violent, loutish crime. Anti-social behaviour has hit epidemic proportions and you could be forgiven for believing it was sanctioned by the ‘don’t intervene’ generation.

But are we guilty of making distinctions about generational crime? Stealing millions in ill-gotten bonuses and fiddled expenses is OK for the middle-aged establishment; flashing a knife to rob a couple of cigarettes at Snow Hill and beating up your teenage peers isn’t.

Is it the nature of what generally passes for ‘youth crime’ – namely the in-your-face vandalism and public brawling – that offends us?  We all possess an assertiveness gene, a throwback to days when physical protection was a must for survival in a harsh environment. It is not by definition aggressive or anti-social and it can be positively harnessed.

Now that we have refined so much physical activity out of our daily lives – walking to work, manual labour, even climbing stairs – there is a reservoir of pent-up energy suppressed in our make-up which, like a volcano, can erupt sporadically if it is not tapped for benefit.

Sports have given way to play station consoles. You can’t expect that those with little to do won’t need an avenue to use up the physical energy they build up on high-carbohydrate intake. There is probably a shred of truth in the old adage ‘The devil makes work for idle hands’, and it’s not surprising that young men and women become frustrated and aggressive when their only activity is riding on a bus or watching TV.

There is also no denying that there has been a progressive demonisation of outlandish youthful behaviour as it appears to have strayed further out of control.

But has it? Certainly there are more reported cases of violence, cruelty, drunkenness and drug abuse abroad in the community. Much of it is practised by the young, but not all of it.
By comparison, there are spades full of achievement, hard work and compassion expressed by members of the so-called broken generation which goes unacknowledged simply because it doesn’t fuel the desired scripts of the sensationalist headlines writers.

Sadly, the report of the unprovoked attack on the students at Havre des Pas coincided with the national newspapers featuring a ‘doting’ mother cuddling a child ‘tearaway’ who, by  the tender age of 12, had stolen cars, started fires, terrorised neighbours and had been expelled from three schools. Her casually named ‘My Little Satan’ – as if this diminutive Asbo was a hero – can hide behind the newly identified syndrome of Oppositional Defiant Disorder to excuse his unrestricted reign of terror.

It is easy to break the seven stages of man into labelled compartments. Step one, for example, would be school. Last year police in the UK were called at least 7,000 times to deal with violence in schools. Step two would be the age of criminal responsibility, which in 1998 was 14 but now has been reduced to 10. By 16, young people can vote and sire progeny, but have yet to break through to adult citizenship. Yet was it really surprising that only 21 16 year-old potential voters turned up for the ‘special’ Senatorial hustings last year?

Inclusion doesn’t extend to putting on a separate show for them; indeed it can be counter-productive. They don’t get actively involved in politics or go to vote because it’s not a priority at that age. They don’t go to church in droves, either. They have simply got other things to do. 

We can’t just expect youngsters automatically to act by good example.  There isn’t enough of it around these days. From parents unaware that kids aren’t just for Christmas, to a generally negative press, there are significant gaps to be filled. Instruction in tolerance and relationships, anger management, along with community responsibility, wouldn’t come amiss before it becomes obligatory behind bars.

So spare a thought for the fledgling Youth Enquiry Service (YES, for short), based in La Motte Street, which offers youngsters help with career and lifestyle choices affecting the leap into the adult world.

And whether or not you subscribe to the innovative proposal by the Community Sports Team for inflatable football pitches to occupy minds and energies this summer, a positive tweak on the citizenship-responsibility dial won’t come amiss, at whatever age.