Inevitable Really.

So, Police are moving onto south Auckland secondary schools in a move to cut youth crime and gang activities ... Police said the system was to build up trust with youngsters and gather intelligence about youth gangs, drug dealing and to tackle crime before it happened.

Now I would have thought that those kids getting in to significant criminal activity at a young age would have significant others in their lives modelling these activities, condoning these activities and 'doing quite well, thankyou' out of these activities. Further, these activities encompass such characteristics as force, fraud, intimidation and ostracism to maintain 'ethical standards:' such as an overwhelming sense of loyalty ('thou shalt not nark'); carmerarderie in the face of adversity (practice in dealing with the social services), and the delegation of culpability ... so ultimately these police placements will only be able to act on what they see, and that wont be much because their presence will also result in more intensely meted out sanctions for violating those 'ethical standards.'
... And the police know that young people can do 'things' these days largely with impunity, they know their elders allow them to 'take the rap' (nay, they demand it) for their law breaking and, if they thought about it, they would know that being in schools will publicly show them to be inconsequential and this will generalise to their wider activities.

But they will claim it is a successful intervention, and it will probably be instituted in other schools.

Sooo ... we have plummeting teaching standards and this impacting largely on those schools servicing low socio ecconomic areas; an increase in poorly disciplined and poorly socialised kids again largely (although by no means exclusively) deriving from these lower socio economic areas ... and the latter was of course 'successfully' addressed by having social workers in schools. Or was it? Is that not the role the police are considering?

The next move will of course be to have those police present in the classroom, restraining and withdrawing the 'wild ones' and this up to the mandatory age of 18.

Now some time ago, I believed teachers should have begun a programme 'tazers for teachers' the deteriorated situation was certainly warranting this. That is, the ongoing disempowerment of both parents and teachers in the management of their children. Unbeknown to me they were discreetly doing this all the time, in fact more sensibly than I had considered ... having a third party to 'pull the trigger.'

An additional bonus, is of course, that this move will help redress the female/male imbalance amongst adults in schools.

So parents and teachers can no longer use force for correction ... but policemen can.

One has to wonder where Helen Clarke, Sue Bradford and Cindy Kiro 'sit' with respect to all of this ... this is after all their legacy to society.

Update: Auckland Post Primary Principals' Association regional chair Gerald van Waardenberg teaches at Otahuhu college, one of the schools which will have a police officer.
He says there has been no consultation and was surprised at the news. "It's in no way clear what kind of a role the police will have within the school, whether they'll be approaching students directly, what the police will actually be doing." ... the idea follows a pilot scheme about eight years ago, and is supported by the Minister of Police, Annette King.

So again, those that a policy will directly impact on have not been consulted.