Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk with Aviva Insurance.
Chapter 2: Are we effectively addressing youth crime in the UK?
Now, are we dealing with youth crime strongly enough? I'm joined by the former London Met Police Detective Peter Blexley, who thinks we need to do more. Peter, you're very welcome to the show. Good morning to you.
Good morning.
So you've been speaking about the situation in the UK and how youth offenders are dealt with there. But you have brought up this issue of borstels. You think they're really effective. Why?
Well, they were back in the day for a number of young men. Not everybody, of course, but they did instill a sense of discipline. They were built largely on sort of military-type regimes, and they knocked a lot of young men into shape, so to speak, who vowed then not to commit crimes. Not everybody, of course.
But I think the more wider issue that I was trying to get at is that really we have a staggering lack of discipline in the UK. And I think so much of it starts with parenting, where you have ridiculous parents who will say, well, I never use the word no to my children because it has such negative connotations. And I think that's a foolish path to go down.
then in schools, discipline sometimes is not instilled in the children like it should have been. So if you're not getting discipline at home and you're not getting discipline in the school, is it any surprise whatsoever that people grow up to be entitled people who want to shout, I know my rights, but know very little about their responsibilities to society.
But I'm sure you know, Peter, that prison doesn't cure all ills. I mean, you have people coming out of prison who are addicted to substances they weren't addicted to when they went in. You have people making contacts which result in them re-offending almost as soon as they walk out the door. Do you accept those points?
Yeah, but short-term jail sentences are often a complete and utter waste of time. Longer jail sentences give the prison authorities the ability to work with an offender.
And, of course, if you are, say, separated from those that you love for 10, 12, 14 or more years, you have a lot of time to reflect upon your offending, the damage that you may have caused, and to address that and to learn and to grow and be educated, hopefully, within the prison estate. So I'm a huge fan.
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Chapter 3: What role do borstals play in youth rehabilitation?
Rehabilitation is absolutely fundamental and is key to anybody that finds themselves locked up for committing crimes. I've met a number of people who have served lengthy jail terms and they've all gone on to reinvent themselves and
many of them to set up their own businesses, to pay taxes, to contribute to society, because they've realised that spending 10 or 12 Christmas days away from their loved ones is a sacrifice they don't want to go back to. And consequently, they realise the error of their ways and then contribute.
I mean, you, like us here in Ireland, have a huge problem in the UK with overcrowding in prisons. So it's hard to see how this option will be chosen because there simply isn't the space to put people away.
Well, consecutive governments in the UK have failed to invest in the criminal justice system across all fronts, from the front line of policing through to the CPS, the Crown Prosecution Service, then to the courts, then to prison, and then finally probation. Massively underfunded, crippled often by a liberal kind of woke mindset, which doesn't help anybody in terms of rehabilitating people.
And that chronic underfunding is coming back to bite the nation firmly in the rear end. with crime at utterly unacceptable levels. So many people committing crime with impunity. We have a shoplifting epidemic. We have a knife crime epidemic and much, much more. Crime, unfortunately, in the UK does pay.
What is a borstal? It's around since the early 1900s, isn't it?
Yeah, and they were called approved schools back in the day, built on a sort of military discipline type arrangement where young people would be sent there, often as a last resort when their criminal offending had got to the stage where everything else had been tried and failed, or if their offending was particularly serious, and there was discipline.
Now I speak to people who work within young offenders institutions, so a modern version of how we lock young people up, and I hear horrendous stories of quite simply monsters, teenage monsters, out of control, ruling the roost, exacting horrendous levels of violence upon one another.
And an ill-disciplined situation where staff are often terrified to go onto the wings because they themselves live in fear of violence.
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Chapter 4: How does parenting influence youth behavior?
I mean, that's an extremely serious crime.
Yeah, it's an extremely serious crime and they deserve to be locked up for a long time. Same as we've just had an appalling case in the UK of gang rape where a liberal, woke, fluffy, idiotic judge didn't even impose any jail time. on the young people that did that, the monsters that did that. And this kind of woke fluffiness is getting us nowhere.
In fact, it's getting us to increasingly lawless streets and increasingly fractured society where our streets are covered in litter, graffiti, crime, knives, shoplifting, and much, much worse.
Okay.
Your own experience of this, because I know you have said that you didn't have discipline growing up. Now, you didn't end up in a borstal. You ended up in the police. Isn't that right?
Yeah, I joined the Metropolitan Police Cadets at 17 years of age, having largely flunked my education foolishly. And when I got into the Metropolitan Police Cadet School, I suddenly thrived on the discipline. I had former military physical training instructors.
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Chapter 5: Why is discipline important in schools for youth offenders?
Literally, you don't lean on a wall because they would say, right, Blexley, down for 10 press-ups. And or what wasn't an option of a reply. And I respected those men. and became incredibly fit, incredibly disciplined, as did the overwhelming majority of the cadets, be they boys or girls, that surrounded me. And it churned out a lot of very decent human beings.
And were you a disciplinarian then as a parent?
Love is the key as parenting. Yes, we had boundaries, very strict boundaries. But every night, my kids, and they still do, they're all young adults now, when they come to stay with us, it's exactly the same. Before they go to bed, they get hugged, they get kissed, and they get told that I love you. And that happened every day throughout their upbringing.
Peter, it's interesting to talk to you and I'd really like to hear what our listeners think. Peter Blexley there, former London Met police detective. So is the reintroduction of the Borstal harsher discipline at home? Is that the answer to today's teenagers? WhatsApp was 087 1400 106. A listener says a lot of the parents of antisocial teenagers are antisocial themselves.
Prison is the only answer for these people who have no regard for for normal society.
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Chapter 6: What are the shortcomings of short-term prison sentences?
Borstal should be revisited here, says another. It drives me mad every time I hear a terrible crime on the radio, followed by the teens being referred to the youth diversion scheme. Where is the justice? Well, I suppose, as Peter said, you've got to have a prison system that works as well and that rehabilitates young people if you are sending them in there. Send your messages in to us.
The Clare Byrne Show. With Aviva Insurance. Weekday mornings at 9. On Newstalk. Conversation that counts.