A LETTER from one of your readers in the latest edition of News Shopper stated the reasons for youngsters hanging round our streets was a lack of things to do. I wonder if the reader is talking from experience?

When I was 16, my friends and I used to hang around Orpington High Street after school and at weekends. We did not do it because there was nothing to do, we did it because it was where our friends were.

Despite youth centres being open and the efforts of other groups to provide us with things to do, we chose to hang around on the streets.

With the majority of kids, if their friends are not involved, then neither are they.

An example of this is the schemes mentioned in News Shopper last year set up by the police in Bromley.

The schemes were set up following discussions with teenagers but closed within weeks as the youngsters who wanted them did not go.

There is nothing wrong with kids hanging around the streets. Why should they not be able too? Where I live, groups of youths are out every night and rarely cause any trouble.

The problem is when they choose to be violent, abusive or to commit an act of vandalism. Society nowadays frowns upon punishing anyone under 16 this must change.

Police and courts have their hands tied when it comes to punishment and prevention of youth crime, the only exception being extreme acts such as murder or rape.

Meanwhile, parents cannot be bothered or do not really know how to teach their children to behave, so we have a generation for whom random acts of violence or abuse are irrelevant and meaningless and for which no punishment will be handed out.

JOHN

ST PAULS CRAY