Feral children and their feckless parents are leaving the rest of us living in fear

Sep 8, 2024 by Jill

by Camilla Tominey, Telegraph:

A new rot has set in since lockdown – as the rise in crimes committed by young people shows.

The start of the new term inevitably flooded social media feeds with charming pictures of the children of the UK in their brand new school uniforms and shiny shoes. In a typical parenting fail, I completely forgot to photograph my youngest on her first day of “big school” – preoccupied with the prospect of traffic on the school run and the need to make it to work on time.

But the beginning of the school year is an important reminder that the majority of kids in this country want to learn, make friends and get on in life. And the majority of parents are there to support them in becoming well-rounded adults, able to make a valuable contribution to society.

But an undeniable rot has set in since lockdown that we must address. We’ve always had to put up with our fair share of feckless parents, letting their feral children run amok while the rest of our offspring mind their Ps and Qs. You know the types I’m talking about here; they’re loud, they’re objectionable and they’re prone to ruining your pub lunch. (It isn’t a class thing, by the way. “Posh” children are invariably the most irritating on account of their unself-aware and entitled, Boden-clad Mamas and Papas).

But the pandemic appears to have unleashed a new subgroup of brats whose bad behaviour extends well beyond the mere annoying.

There’s a new element of fear in Britain today; a feeling that things aren’t as safe as they used to be; that the social fabric is fraying. We used to attribute those feelings to men behaving badly – but part of it is now undoubtedly down to the way that some children are carrying on.

It was revealed this week that there has been a serious rise in the number of crimes being committed by children – some of them very violent. The number of under 18s arrested for all offences has risen 9 per cent in a year – up 16 per cent since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020.

Children now account for nearly four in 10 (39.1 per cent) of all robbery arrests, where they use force to steal from a person or a place, while the number of young people arrested for carrying a knife is on the rise.

The number of children arrested for violence against the person, which ranges from assault to murder, has increased by 22 per cent since the pandemic, to 18,220 in the year to March 2023. In total, child arrests reached 58,507 in the year to last March.

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