Section 30 Scandal Exposed

By Joanne Rice, Hayley Bather, Anthony Slack, Sean McHarron and Chris Slack

Section 30 is a new piece of legislation designed to tackle what some people call an epidemic in teenage yobbish behaviour. Within designated section 30 zones it is illegal for young people under the age of 16 to congregate in groups of two or more. Police now have the powers to 'disperse' any young people hanging around these areas, the constable can then prohibit the young person from returning to that area for a 24 hour period. If the young person doesn't follow this order they can be fined or arrested.

Our school is five minutes from the shops on Mather Avenue, as you'd guess the shops - which are on our way home from school - attract a lot of young people. Our blood started to boil the other day when we saw police on horseback moving young people on from the shops. The young people there had not been misbehaving. This is unfair and a total over reaction. Here is our response to the new law....

Why is it relevant?
Most of the time the police go where there are loads of kids in a group behaving themselves, instead of looking for real troublemakers who are up to no good and harder to find.

Why is everybody being punished for a minority's actions?
There are some knobheads out there and we understand can feel intimidated by gangs, it could be our gran getting picked on, but because of the way a tiny number of people are acting we're all being punished, this isn't fair.

Why can't the police treat us with respect?
Even if it's your job to enforce this law, you don't have to talk to us like we're little scumbags. Six of us from school were walking to the shops on our dinner break the other day and a big riot van screeched up in front of us and they threw us in the back. The police threatened us with a night in the cells and the way they talked to us was really intimidating, it made us feel bullied and small. Afterwards we were really angry.

We feel more anger to the police now than we ever have.
We might feel differently when we're older but now we feel bullied by the police, they just pick on us.

What happened to safety in numbers?
How can splitting up a group of young girls walking home together from a party on friday night and making us walk off in different directions ON OUR OWN be making an area any safer? A lot of the time we stick together for safety, if you're Billy-no-mates on the streets you're vulnerable. 15 -18 year oldsare the age range most likelyto be VICTIMS of crime, especially muggings and assaults.

Aren't there more important things to be spending their money on?
Like catching real criminals like burglars, murderers and drug dealers instead of making criminals out of normal teenagers. Why not put the money towards youth centres and other activities to give us something to do instead of hanging round the streets.

They are just moving the problem on.
We just end up on the streets still, but walking round all night sometimes into areas we don't know which can be dangerous.

Where are we meant to go?
This law stops us from doing normal things like playing football and pushes us to hang around places which can be more dangerous.

And lastly, why were we the only people in our community not to be consulted about this law? Especially as it is our lives it impacts on most.

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