A parliamentary debate to discuss the implementation of a National Discipline Act.
Parliament should convene to discuss the criminality perpetrated by feral youths and troublemakers during the nation-wide rioting of August 2011. MPs should discuss ways of encouraging and enforcing higher degrees of discipline and respect in British society.
The act should seek to establish where the responsibility for the behaviour of teenagers and children lies, and offer remedies to common obstacles and problems encountered in investigating and disciplining them.
The act should also seek to address the long term societal influences upon the behaviour of children, teenagers and young adults, and things that are typically corrosive to communities.
Signatories of this petition propose that the following be considered:
A debate on the legality of limited corporal punishment, carried out by parents, and protected from the reach of European human rights law.
Consideration of the infectious nature of behaviour. It is evident that poor attitudes and destructive behaviours are inherited and transmitted socially from parents, the media, peer groups, neighbours, school playgrounds etc. Parliament should explore ways in which such negative relationships can be legally broken up, disrupted or dynamically altered. This should include the consideration of dedicated state boarding schools, possibly doubling as juvenile centres. It should include the consideration of curfews and digital-grounding orders banning offenders from communing or communicating with like-minded thugs, be it on the street or using digital messaging services and social networks.
Parliament should consider that during a childs formative years, teachers and schools are the most appropriate, impartial entities capable of considering and assessing a childs behaviour. These teachers often spend more waking hours of the day with children than their parents do. Schools should be given more authoritative powers to refer children and their families to social services or to the police. They should be able to detain children punitively without objection from parents, move the child to another area of the school, to another school entirely, or to separate them from friends. They should be given more powers to monitor and if necessary, search students.
It should be an offence to conceal your face in the presence of a police officer. Anyone who uses hooded garments, helmets, cloth or balaclava-like garments to conceal their appearance must be compelled by law to reveal themselves if asked to by a police officer. Refusing to do so should be grounds for arrest. Considerations for religious garments should be taken into account, such as making female officers available for women if necessary, but no exemptions should apply. In a situation where an officer finds it both urgent and necessary to divest someone of exploiting their anonymity, they should be able to do so.
As an alternative to handing down custodial sentences, standards should be drawn up for alternative sentences including more constructive community service, working with local councils and industry to provide a live directory of temporary placements. Parliament should also consider mandatory military service as a consequence of anti-social behaviour.
As some criminals can often not be fined to the degree that damages are recovered, Parliament should consider levying a crime tax upon offenders, collected via the PAYE system, which does not expire until all damages have been collected. For convicts who have caused significant damage, bailiffs should be contracted to assess the prospect for repossessing goods to fund reparations to businesses and victims.
A young persons crime index should be created to monitor the frequency of crime perpetrated by persons aged 18 and under up and down the country. Areas scoring high on the index should be considered carefully for special campaigns, programs and additional council funding. The robust encouragement and enforcing of discipline should be a key measure of success for schools residing in these areas. Council tenancy and housing agreements should be fluid enough to allow councils to redistribute families if deemed necessary to help improve the scores of council estates using this index.
Parliament may wish to put these matters before a select committee, and have them look into the viability of these suggestions and seek out others. A public consultation, including a website open to suggestions from the public, would also be a good idea.
Kind regards,
The undersigned.