Are there short-term responses that would help?
Last month in Ballymun, members of the Community Action Tenants Union (CATU) held a public meeting with residents of Santry Cross apartments.
Chronic anti-social behaviour, often veering into criminality, in the apartment blocks were among the issues raised.
Residents told of young people – who seemingly didn’t live there – getting into the buildings, setting off fire extinguishers, taking drugs and partying, sleeping in common areas, and being abusive towards residents.
Gardaí were slow to respond to calls – or just didn’t, they said.
At last week’s meeting of the council’s North Central Area Committee, councillors described similar complaints from tenants of De Verdon Place on the Malahide Road.
Councillor Jesslyn Henry of the Social Democrats told of one woman who, after escaping domestic violence, had thought De Verdon was a fresh start.
“It has become a nightmare and every day gets worse. At least before the broken bones and bruises healed. I eventually got the courage to go, but this is never-ending,” Henry says the resident communicated to her.
The woman is so worried about what may be going on outside her door that she is afraid to leave the apartment, Henry said.
Debate has been intensifying around how the state should respond to the concerns of people who are living – at its most extreme – in real fear of older children, and anti-social behaviour.
At the heart of this debate is whether stricter laws are needed, with more immediate consequences for children and their parents – or whether those would do more harm than help.
In law, anti-social behaviour among children under 18 years is defined as behaviour to someone who does not live with them that causes harassment; significant or persistent alarm, distress, fear or intimidation; significant or persistent impairment of their use or enjoyment of their property.
As well as longer-term measures, there should be “short, sharp shocks” for children immediately in response to such behaviour, said Paul Gogarty, an independent TD, in a motion before the Dáil last September.
The motion, which was put and carried, said the Dáil “commits to providing a full list of implementable legislative and resourcing reforms” within six months of it passing, “based on contributions made during this debate, best practice in Ireland and internationally”.
The motion suggested 23 possible measures that he wants assessed, some immediate punishments, others with a longer view.
Among them was fines for parents, or similar measures that “encourage co-operation and act as a deterrent”. Also, the confiscation of game consoles and smartphones, and better monitoring of school attendance.
The use of restorative justice to pay back any damages was another proposal.
But do short-term punishments, overseen by the state, actually help to halt these behaviours in the community?
Not really, says Jen Cummins, Social Democrats TD for Dublin South-Central, and former youth worker with a doctorate in education.
Her doctoral research focused on trauma and early school leaving, she said by phone on Wednesday.
“I'd love if there was a short-term measure that could sort all those sorts of things out. There isn’t. This is a long-term investment to communities that basically have been forgotten about,” she says.
Currently, there is under investment in youth work, community work, family support workers, and school-completion programmes, she says.
For some, neglect can start at a very early age, she says.
In parts of her constituency, she says, there isn’t a dedicated public health nurse. Early developmental checks are being missed, she says.
“How are parents supported all the way from birth until the child goes to college? They're not being supported because the resources are not there,” says Cummins.
Short-term fixes might be good for news headlines, she says – but for little else.
Cummins says she absolutely accepts that the behaviour of some people is unacceptable.
But there are existing laws around many of the things people consider anti-social behaviour, which just aren’t enforced, she says. “There are laws around scramblers and scooters, they're not implemented.”
Parental fines, she says, already exist under the Education Welfare Act 2000 for chronic non-attendance of school. Again, she says, this area is underfunded, understaffed, and underenforced.
In his speech to the Dáil, Gogarty said that fines should be considered for parents who are “not playing ball”.
This seems to imply parents who will not engage with state services in regards to their child's behaviour. Gogarty did not respond when contacted for comment.
Cummins’ Social Democrats colleague, Councillor Lesley Byrne, who is also a secondary school principal, says she has worked with thousands of young people and their families.
“Those types of parents that you're talking about, I could count on one hand. They are absolutely in the tiniest, tiniest margin,” she says, of parents who don’t engage in helping children course-correct.
Those parents, she says, are usually traumatised young people themselves, who are trying now to parent their own child.
“They need such professional therapeutic supports that even if you did fine them, it wouldn't make a difference, because the needs are so complex,” she says.
Fines for parents for their children’s anti-social behaviour would obviously also favour families with more money, who can afford it, she says.
Another of Gogarty’s suggestions in his motion was for more resources for educational and youth diversion.
On this, Cummins agrees. “If you talk to anybody working in Garda youth diversion, they will tell you that there has been an under investment in that.”
On Christmas morning, Deputy Lord Mayor of Dublin John Stephens went to visit his mother’s grave in Glasnevin Cemetery, he says.
A large group of young people were gathered at one of the entrances. Some were tearing in and out of the cemetery on scrambler bikes, said Stephens, a Fianna Fáil councillor, by phone on 19 January.
Stephens confronted the group and asked them to move on, he says. But he got verbal abuse and threats back.
Stephens says he has worked for a long time for better facilities for his community, and youngsters in particular.
He was instrumental in the building of John Paul Park in Cabra, a vital amenity, he says.
Recently, he says, he helped a local kickboxing club get rehoused after it lost its premises.
“I'm not just about chastisement. I've been an activist in the area so I know what we have to do,” he says.
Stephens has said that he too wants to see short-term consequences.
He feels uncomfortable with it in a way, he says, but thinks that people can’t shy away from discussing the reality that people facing anti-social behaviour and petty criminality live with every day.
Measures could include confiscating passports for a while so the young people can’t go on holiday, he says.
He also again mentions fining parents, some of whom, he says, should bear more responsibility for what their children do. "I'm not going to make them decisions, society is gonna have to make them, and governments. But if we do nothing, it's not gonna go away, this problem.”
Earlier this month, Stephens said that he supported a ban on scrambler bikes on city streets.
His Fianna Fáil colleague Councillor Daryl Barron, chair of the North Central Area Committee, said the same thing on 21 January.
Days later, 16-year-old Grace Lynch was killed in a fatal scramber crash. Keith Lee, 18, has been charged with dangerous driving, causing her death.
There is no one magic formula to addressing anti-social behaviour, says Professor Pat Dolan of the University of Galway, who also serves as UNESCO Chair in Children, Youth and Civic Engagement.
But one critical part of the toolkit is to teach empathy, he says. Empathy is something that can be taught and nurtured, he said.
Before his career in academia, Dolan was a youth worker for many years, he said by phone on Thursday.
A report he co-authored links empathy development to a wide range of positive outcomes.
It fosters lessened aggression and bullying, stronger peer relationships, greater emotional regulation and a greater sense of belonging within schools and communities.
People often assume that the idea of teaching empathy in schools is “soft and lefty”, he says. But it isn’t, he says.
“I'm a social scientist. I look at this from the point of view of what is the evidence of what works best or most likely to work or is promising, that could work,” Dolan says.
There is a lot of evidence that empathy education yields strong results, he says.
Young people are less likely to engage in anti-social behaviour if they are well-educated in pro-social behaviour – or basic kindness, he says.
This is not just a view held by social scientists, says Dolan. Neuroscience shows the same connections.
Parental influence is also a huge factor, he says. “Absolutely, there's a strong connection between parent’s social values and the values of their kids.”
But it’s always case by case, he says.
Most people know someone in their lives who turned down a bad road even while their parents did everything “right”, he says.
Similarly, he says, most people know someone who came from a problematic family situation but managed to thrive. “There’s no one recipe.”
There needs to be a combination of empathy education with good services for kids around the margins that divert them into other things, he says.
There is not going to be any one service or education programme that's going to fix the problem entirely, he says.
Ultimately, he says, while there are some fantastic youth services in Ireland, like Foróige, we need far more than we have.
In recent years, Dolan – with help from Oscar-winning actor Cillian Murphy – has helped bring empathy education into the second-year SPHE curriculum in secondary schools.
As of this academic year, another more intense follow-on empathy programme has been introduced for transition-year students, he says.
Byrne, the Social Democrats councillor and school principal, says that the positive impact of teaching empathy in schools can already be felt with her own students.
“Teaching empathy and helping people to understand the impact that their actions can have on those around us is absolutely transformative,” she says. “But it takes a while to embed it.”
Under current legislation, those between the ages of 12 and 18 can be given an Anti-Social Behaviour Order (ASBO).
This means they are ordered to stop doing whatever is specified in the ASBO.
Ashling Golden, Justice Programme manager at the Solas Project, the Liberties-based youth work organisation, says she hasn’t really heard of many young people getting ASBOs.
They’re mostly associated with people over 18, she said by phone on Wednesday. They’re not managed well either, she says.
ASBOs are similar to fines, she says. A seemingly quick-fix.
“But if we don't actually have the services to look at, ‘Well, how do we support that? Or how do we oversee that?’ It becomes quite ineffective,” she says.
Another issue with ASBOs, she says, is that somebody can end up with a criminal record for a non-criminal offence.
“You could be done for an anti-social issue, and then you don't comply with the rules of the order, which could result in you being brought before the courts for the breach of the order,” says Golden.
The idea of ASBOs may come from a place of good intentions, she says, but it’s not properly resourced.
Where crimes might be committed by young offenders, diversion continues to be at the core of the Irish youth justice system, a spokesperson for the Justice Department said on Thursday.
“Its success can be measured through the reduction in the number of young people coming to the attention of An Garda Síochána,” they said.
“By intervening at an early time in the life of a young person involved in crime, using evidence-based interventions, we can steer these young people away from continuing on that path, resulting in safer communities,” they said.
“A diversion system can provide a second chance and enable people to avoid prosecution, and a criminal record,” said the spokesperson, “and bring about the conditions whereby the behavioural patterns of young people can change and mature, ultimately bringing a long-term benefit to society.”
Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.
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