Naming the yobs is pressing issue (From Gazette Series)

Naming the yobs is pressing issue

TO answer last week's leader comment, it's not hard to see why responsible adults might not report problem youths.

As many recent national stories have shown, there is often a legitimate fear of reprisal. The have-a-go hero who defends his or her property can often end up seriously injured, if not killed.

Secondly, blame apathy - people reasonably question the point of calling the police when, unless they feel emboldened to dial 999, they will invariably find themselves wrestling with a switchboard 25 miles away, and someone who isn't sure how to spell the name of their village, let alone the road they live in.

There's another crucial reason too, which makes your own comments pretty ironic. As a journalist, I was privileged to be trained at a time when local newspapers were far more engaged with their community.

As a trainee on the Dursley Gazette in the late 1980s, we would attend court sometimes as much as three times a week. If, to use your own parlance, some "snotty-nosed" teenager was before the beak, you can bet that the entire story would be in the paper by Friday.

It's not a sophisticated process, it's simply naming and shaming. If you check your own files, you'll find barely an unpaid TV licence escaped the Gazette's scrutiny, let alone a smashed window or post-pub fight.

Maybe in today's far more politically correct climate actually reporting on crime in all its details is seen as much too negative, but I'd put my money on a more basic reason: unless it's a major story, you don't send your reporters to Stroud Magistrates' Court, or indeed cover courts in any serious degree, because it's cheaper and easier to fill the paper with comparative 'lifestyle' froth.

So no, we don't need a Pied Piper. Simply put your reporters back to the courts' press box and have them keep a closer eye on police files. You'll inject much more confidence into the community as a result. And you might even boost sales. As things are, who knows if justice is being done? It's hard to spot it in these pages.

Simon Hacker School Lodge Hillesley

Editor's note: I am sure you were an adequate journalist Mr Hacker, indeed I remember you from your days with the Bailey Newspaper Group. You will appreciate, therefore, that the laws of the land prohibit newspapers from "naming and shaming" as you put it, offenders under the age of 18, even when they have appeared in court and even if they have pleaded guilty. I do, however, take your point about court reporting, a matter I am in the process of addressing.