Report: Stop adventure trips for anti-social teens

Adventure trips for adolescents engaged in anti-social behaviour should be dropped because they can make matters worse and are seen as rewarding bad behaviour.

Gardaí have been urged to speed up plans to deal with the “escalation” of intimidation by gangs on families of drug users.

These are among the recommendations in the report of the Dublin lord mayor’s commission on antisocial behaviour.

The report also radically backs the establishment of a pilot injection centre for addicts.

The recommendations are based on the work of a commission made up of local councillors, gardaí, HSE officers, local groups and others. Lord Mayor Andrew Montague highlights the importance of parenting in preventing and addressing antisocial behaviour. He calls for a raft of interventions for targeted families and urges greater collaboration between state agencies.

The report said parenting programmes were “cost effective” over the medium to long term and that one course, Parents Plus, was beneficial is 60% to 70% of cases.

It said there should be specialist family therapy programmes for high risk adolescent offenders, but said there were few known interventions for those with severe antisocial traits.

The report was clear that certain interventions should be avoided: “Wilderness and adventure-based therapies, specifically to address antisocial behaviour, should be discontinued as they are at best ineffective and at worst seen by the local community as reward behaviour.”

It said research findings indicated that these activities “can result in a significant deterioration in behaviour” and said they offered opportunities for participants “to socialise and learn problem behaviours from each other”.

The report said there needs to be care management systems for children below the age of criminal responsibility (age 10) and that gardaí and the HSE should work together and identify children who become involved with criminality, including moving and storing drugs.

It said the gardaí should “expedite plans” to appoint local designated officers for families and individuals being intimidated by drug gangs. It said families with members who have built up debts are subject to threats of violence and intimidation.

“The escalation in such activity by existing drug dealing gangs is of great concern and must be addressed.”

It wants gardaí to “apply pressure” on those carrying out the intimidation.

The mayor supports the establishment of a pilot project for a medically supervised injecting centre for drug addicts. This would require a radical change in the law as it would effectively permit the legal use of drugs in the facility.

The report wants gardaí to have the power to prosecute people who are trading in prescription drugs, which it said was now a major problem in the city centre.