Youth want Action not Asbos!

national | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis Wednesday June 22, 2005 23:02 by Ruairi - SpunOut.ie info at spunout dot ie

Donegal teen slams anti-social behaviour plans

Below is an article written by 17 year old Tracey McGroary who is a youth writer for the SpunOut.ie National Youth Website.

Tracey is also a volunteer youth worker at the Ballintra-Laghey Cross Community Youth Project in South Donegal.

Solutions not ASBOS

As far as I can tell (from the limited information we’ve been given) these new anti-social behaviour laws will be a disaster if they are introduced to Ireland.

They have already caused havoc in the UK. Being a teenager I’m worried that these laws are going to have serious consequences for my friends and myself. Will I be banned from meeting all my friends at once like another teenager in the UK has been? Will I be banned from being sarcastic like an elderly man in the UK has been? I for one am not going to put up with the government trying to control us more than they already do.

The government believe that these laws will help stop anti-social behaviour in teenagers but I think it will just make it worse. Take one look at teenagers today: it is more fun to drink and smoke because they are underage and it is illegal. Drugs are becoming a big trend not because of the effects but because they are illegal. Teenagers like to push boundaries. What will happen when these new laws come in? Teenagers will have new boundaries to push and things will just get out of control.

I don’t believe that all teens are the same, yes I do admit there are the rebels but there are also the good kids, kids who aren’t out to cause trouble or do damage, these are the ones who are going to suffer.

For a start the government are looking through the wrong windows with these anti-social behaviour laws. They should be enforcing current laws a bit better. Anti-social behaviour only exists because of underlying problems such as drink, drugs or family related issues. Why is no one interested in what’s causing the behaviour, why are they only interested in what they can see?

Someone once said to me that they would rather be blind than deaf because what you see can be worse than what you hear but I believe it’s the other way around. If we actually took the time to stop and listen to these kids and find out what is going on in their lives I think it would make a far greater difference.

What these rebel teens really need aren’t new laws that restrict them even further. They need something to do, somewhere to go and someone to listen. That’s why we need more community based youth projects that can be there on a ground level helping these kids. The government should be delivering the money they promised to these projects instead of wasting it on stupid ideas like the anti-social behaviour laws.

We need to work from the ground up so we can tell the government what our teenagers want, not the government telling us what our teenagers need.

Do we not have the better knowledge?

By: Tracey McGrory (17)