More reflections on Salem

The discussion on sex-offenders in school has made me reflect upon my school experiences some considerable number of years ago in my secondary school - a highly selective boys direct-grant school, a now defunct category balancing between grammar and public schools.

I remember well one schoolmaster (that's what they were, not teachers), a science master who was also, if I remember right, responsible for, what we would now call, pastoral care of the boys in the first two years. This master had an unhealthy interest in the genitalia of the boys in his charge and would often invite boys back to his house, which was next to the school, for tea. He was a gifted and enthusiastic teacher, who gave many of his pupils a deep, and I suspect, lifelong interest in science. He even managed to give my brother, who was adrift outside the arts and humanities, a passing interest which was a far more difficult accomplishment. I do not remember myself - and I was in his charge for a three week school trip round Europe - nor any other boy coming to harm from him. I think it likely that if he were around now he would not have resisted downloading child pornography from the internet. I do not think that would have made him a worse teacher or a greater danger to children - he would, however, have been caught in the net of Operation Orr and under Kelly's law and the Daily Mail's urging, have been automatically and, without further thought, been barred forever from teaching.

This is perhaps unfair to the Daily Mail as almost the entire press has been baying for the blood of these paedophiles and even the Guardian has welcomed automatic exclusion. Also Operation Orr is important in trying to slow the demand for child pornography and thus, hopefully, it's supply and the exploitation of children required to produce it. But, unless exclusion from teaching is seen as part of a deterrent strategy and some way is found of justifying this continuing punishment, conviction should not lead to automatic exclusion. It should however be an urgent prompt to seek out evidence of more threatening and dangerous behaviour, while keeping open the possibility there may be none. However the easy access to child pornography that the internet provides has created many more offenders without demonstrably increasing the risks to children in our schools and youth centres. The joint occurrence of the words sex, children and internet produces a stream of saliva that Pavlov could only have dreamed of. Replay this over-excitement from press to parliament to television and back to the press and we have a feed-back loop spiralling out of control, proscribing any rational action.

Going back to my school, although I'd rather not, I came to far more harm from uncaring, spiteful and sarcastic teachers than I did from this science teacher. These were the people who made some, but far from all, of my school days unhappy. Child sexual abuse must be a horrifying thing to experience, but it is only one, if one of the most extreme, way that a child can be made unhappy in school. The over-concentration on sex is prurient, moralistic and self-serving - it is easily identified as something most of us do not do. It is safer to engage with than behaviours like sarcasm and verbal aggression that most of us must admit we do perpetrate to some extent. These are dangerous not just to our children, but to our sense of self as a good person as we cannot so easily define an us and a them.

Salem part 2

So now we know how Kelly will handle the difficult decisions about who will teach in our schools - she will abdicate all decision making and discretion. Any transgression, no matter how minor, no matter how long ago will mean a lifetime ban. Of course many, even most, people on the sex offenders register are not suitable to work with children (or vulnerable adults). But this decision is one rooted not in the desire to protect children, but in moral cowardice.

There is a paradox however, only future offenders are subject to an automatic lifetime ban, people who have offended up to now will still need to judged, weighed and unless the current febrile climate abates, condemned without exception.

Orwell's Big Brother may have been transmogrified into TV humiliation (the rats in room 101 seem benign in comparison) but Kafka's Castle has been relocated to Sanctuary Buildings. Now that's an ironic address if ever there was one.

Salem comes to Westminster

There is more than a whiff of sulphur in the air. It is not the tell tale smell of witches; it is the sulphurous outpourings of the press about the paedophiles who hide round every street corner and school desk and the politicians who protect them.

There has been a deliberate, damaging and de-humanising elision of a name on the sex offenders register and a clear and present threat to every child that person comes in contact with. Not all people on the sex offenders register are a threat to children; not all the people on the register are guilty of anything substantial or at all. A justice system exists to deal out punishment to those who deserve it, prison, fine, community service or whatever. The sex offenders register exists, not as part of a punishment system, but in an effort to minimise future risk to potential victims – children and others. If membership of the register is by itself to prevent people from working in many careers it is then not part of a risk and harm reduction systems, but a lifelong punishment regardless of the gravity of the original offence. The register is a call for a risk assessment not a predictor of the outcome of that assessment. There is also pressure on the police and courts to make the register more and more inclusive so they can avoid future blame if a person who was not put on the register commits a future offence. A particular cause for concern is the route from a caution to the register. People often accept cautions when they are doubtful of their ability to establish their innocence, the police like this as it avoids the time and cost to them of court appearance, for what are often marginal cases. But if the route is caution – register – lifelong punishment, without any judicial or quasi-judicial review we have gone several dozen steps too far.

Without a detailed knowledge of the circumstances I cannot say whether I would have reached the same conclusions as Kim Howells and Ruth Kelly in the cases they reviewed. However, the evidence is that the procedure they followed was careful and detailed and based on a study of expert reports. I similarly cannot know whether what other present and former ministers decided was wise. We need a careful audit of the process by which a decision is made whether a person is granted future employment or is moved from the status of being on the register, being a cause for concern, to being on list 99, considered to pose an immediate and continuing risk to children.

Kelly was right (I don’t often say that) not to reveal Kim Howell’s name, placing the focus on someone who has made a difficult and unpopular decision and making them subject to media and public scorn makes the position of future decision makers more difficult. The personal risk of making a permissive decision becomes close to unbearable and decision maker becomes a conduit for mob vengeance and is forced to become the hand that lights the bonfire – whether we have found a witch or not.

Kelly was wrong to agree to pass the decision making to experts. This suggests that there are clearly defined ‘right’ decisions that ’experts’ will always reach. Expert opinion is crucial in this process, but the decision is one of public policy and judgement, which is what we elect politicians to exercise on our behalf. Further, there is no certainty (or even liklihood) that experts will agree, who then adjudicates between the experts, a better expert or a judge or an elected representative? The political decision becomes pushed back to, even concealed behind, a highly contestable choice of which experts to appoint. The decisions will be framed, even made, through this appointment. In Britain such decisions are made in secret, unlike in the United States where there are made publicly as the senate arguments over the Supreme Court membership demonstrate. Registers, lists and databases are not solutions to our problems; they are ways of ordering data to assist our judgement forming and decision making.

Kelly should not be sacked for this farrago. She should keep her job so she can be hounded out of office for the war she is waging, on Blair’s behalf, on the comprehensive education system; and for the disastrous error of judgment she made over rejecting Tomlinson’s re-ordering of 14-19 education and condemning further generations of school children to inadequate examination systems. Now, that’s what I call child abuse.

It seems Blair appointed her in preference to the more qualified David Miliband because she would do his bidding on Tomlinson and Miliband wouldn’t. So war on our children, can be added to his other wars and his tenure in his post shortened too.