Tackling youth crime

SOME 70 years ago I was a cadet journalist working on a newspaper in the Isle of Man. It was a time when there was no evidence of graffiti and no vandalism on the island which had a similar population to Toowoomba today.

As a junior court reporter one of my duties was to attend the Children’s Court. It was never busy.

It was a time when any young offender would face the wrath of the Sergeant of Police using a birch rod.

The youth would be asked to drop his trousers and bend face downwards over the back of a chair. Any offender aged under 16 could be flogged by up to 25 strokes.

Although it was called birching, the usual practice on the island was to use four or five hazel twigs.

There was a stigma about being birched; the offenders’ names were known across the island and they were unlikely to be employed.

Each day the ferry from the mainland would tie up at the island and the same Sergeant of Police would be waiting at the end of the gang plank. Any person he considered undesirable was escorted back on the ferry to be returned to the mainland. It was justice that worked.

The Isle of Man was the last jurisdiction in Europe to abolish birching as a judicial punishment. That was in 1976.

DON TALBOT, Toowoomba