The Laz Word: A nasty whiff on Lord Street

GET nabbed for anti-social or disorderly conduct and they’ll have you crawling around on your hands and knees picking up dog poo. And they’ll make you wear a distinctive vest to tell the world you’ve been a naughty boy, or girl. Talk about rubbing your nose in it.

The idea, being rolled out in Southport, stinks. I am all for offenders doing something to repay society for their ill-deeds, but this is scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Next they’ll be lining Lord Street with deck chairs so the mainly elderly inhabitants can sit there knitting and tut-tutting while they watch the pooper-scooper chain gang in action.

It smacks of a vengeful, “ha-ha-ha look at you” society, rather than one willing and capable of pointing out to offenders the errors of their ways, in a civilised way. Offenders will resent this task, and many of them will be physically sick at the thought of the job.

And yes I know, some will suggest it's not enough, that offenders should scoop up the muck with their bare hands, and perhaps even eat it.

Punishment of this kind doesn’t work, in the same way hanging never deterred murderers. It’s OK for people like me to talk, some may say. I’ve probably never been the victim of crime.

Well since moving to Liverpool I’ve been mugged and stabbed, I’ve had four cars stolen and vehicles broken into countless times, I’ve been pick-pocketed and threatened by road-rage idiots. Yet I still feel the best example society can set is one in which we do not stoop to the same low-life level of offenders. I don’t feel sorry or sympathetic towards offenders, but showing them there is an alternative to bad behaviour and crime is preferable than the chain-gang mentality.

People doing community service work, and that could include keeping places clean and tidy, should be doing it alongside people who do it full-time, they should be properly mentored and encouraged, so when they have done their tasks they may take some pride.

I don’t want these guys to wear tell-tale vests, or hair-shirts as a penance for their behaviour. I want them to learn, from the experience, that decency should always be the victor.

The problem is society is heading more towards eavesdropping on people who stray from the straight and narrow. The television is crammed with police programmes, camera crews following. It makes me wonder whether there are more coppers in Equity than the Police Federation.

Not that many generations ago towns and cities had stocks and pillories, with offenders bombarded with tomatoes and rotten eggs. The deeds of the spectators were often far worse than the ‘crime’ of the offender. If we re-introduced public floggings I have no doubt we’d cram the ACC Arena. Don’t tell the council though, they’d see it as an income stream.