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I live next door to a decent youth centre. For the last month or so there has been an escalating level of silliness between the boys from different areas waiting for the bus home from youth club outside my front door.
I'm pretty sure someone pulled a knife last week.It was mildly amusing when some of them earlier in the month had pulled their belts off to fight, and were trying to swing belts and hold onto trousers.
It's less amusing thinking you heard someone shouting about a knife.
Chalfie
stevo_com
I was thinking about this earlier. mrs_com runs one of the nearby youth centres and had to deal with a lot of the fall out from this. A lot of very young kids saw him attacked and were understandably traumatised. They were saying things like "then the bad boy hit Stefan with the sword", horrible stuff.
I think it comes down to the fact that they couldn't beyond doubt say that he went there with the intention of killing Stefan. I don't know how I feel about the outcome, you could easily say that nobody carries that kind of shit about without realising it could kill someone.
So many young people carry. Most will say its for protection. They genuinely don't realise that it could end up with someone being killed. There has been some really interesting research in the last 10 years about the teenage brain and how the limbic system can override the prefrontal cortex, the bit that makes you consider consequences and question your actions. There was a production (that ends tomorrow I think) run by Islington Community Theatre called Brainstorm about this research, really eye opening.
I don't think the kid that did this, bought that knife or got hold if it with the real intention of killing someone. They didn't have it on them to whittle a spoon either but it is not a definite that they thought they were going to kill someone.
I'm not saying its anything like diminished responsibility but to be found guilty of murder it would have had to have been proved that he was deliberately trying to kill Stefan and I don't think that was the case here.
Its fucking horrible and the more the Tories cut from youth services (and any other service that is working against the socio-ecenomic situations that produce environments where these things play out) the more this kind of thing is going to happen.