Bad Laws are made in Haste

There has been a never-ending stream of horrific stories over the last few weeks involving the sexual exploitation of young girls, so much so that the Prime Minister called a summit on the issue. There he said that abuse was on an industrial scale and that this was something that society needs to tackle. So far so good, then comes the policy made on the hoof that will probably conform to the law of unintended consequences.

One of the problems of these cases is that authority in all shapes and forms have tended to ignore the victims when they have made appeals for help. There has been the opportunity for early intervention that in almost all cases has been missed. So the government’s answer to this is to make the “deliberate” ignoring of serious offences like this a matter for the criminal courts with a potential maximum sentence of five years in prison. This is very populist and will certainly catch the headlines. I predict that it will be almost un-enforceable and have some very detrimental effects;

a)    Professionals will be very cautious and almost certainly will start to over-report cases. I remember some years ago where the children of families on a Scottish Island were all isolated on a false over-cautious premise. In all cases if there is a choice professionals will err on the side of caution.

b)    It is yet another stick to beat professionals with. This will make people more reluctant to join such professions, which are already synonymous with long hours and low pay. Instead we should learn how to support these professionals, with better training and more realistic caseloads.

c)    The government cannot give with one hand and take away with another. Local Authority expenditure in this area has been cut by 40%. If we accept that the symptoms have not been cut then trying to do more with less is probably not the right idea.

d)    It will punish the genuine mistake. Social work is about shades of grey and judgement; sometimes these will be wrong, regrettable but true.

So I absolutely accept that this is an area that needs a better approach, but this approach needs to be considered, not just a knee jerk reaction to generate headlines.