The Independent Safeguarding Authority is our brand shiny new way of keeping our children safe from the dangerous paedophiles that lurk around every corner. You know, the ones on the bus, and in the street, and lurking in the windows of your neighbours’ houses; the ones who drive your kids to footie matches; the ones who run Scouts troops and gymnastics classes (because, let’s be perfectly honest, if you want to be involved in Scouts you must be a bit funny, mustn’t you).

There’s nothing at all wrong with that, of course – after all, if it saves one child it’s worth it.

Hmm.

I thought I’d round up a few of the comments that have come out of the announcement of the ISA, because there’s been lots of rather excellent writing on the matter. So, kicking us off is Caron Lindsay, a self-confessed worried parent who is not at all pleased with the ISA:

Despite being the world’s greatest worrier, I don’t subscribe to the idea that there’s a paedophile behind every tree waiting to harm my child. We’ve become obsessed with protecting children from a risk from strangers that pretty much isn’t there. We’ve got all scared about taking photos of children. I remember how we were all stopped from taking photos at my daughter’s last nursery sports day because of concerns – yet anyone in any of the houses opposite with malicious intent would have been able to take as many photos as they liked of the children as they ran their races. I’m angry that I lost the chance to record an important event in my child’s life because of groundless panic inducing nanny state nonsense.

There’s a difference, as Caron’s post shows brilliantly, between worrying about the safety of your children, and assuming that every single adult they might come across is out to molest them.

Iain Dale nailed this right at the beginning, saying it all comes down to trust.

What message does it send out to kids if none of us can be trusted to do the right thing, to behave responsibly when around children? What are they supposed to think? Surely we should be encouraging a culture of trust rather than appearing to want to destroy it.

Matthew Parris had a pretty good piece in The Times, which ended with this:

I believe in the State.

I believe in a strong State.

I believe in the State’s core purpose: to regulate and arbitrate.

I believe in the State’s power to do good; to bring justice, security and order; to defend and protect its citizens; and to make their lives better.

I believe in the State’s duty to care for the needy; to ensure that the rich help the poor, and that the weak are helped by the strong.

And I believe finally in the State’s nobility as an idea; the inspiring power of the national ideal; the tremendous possibilities unleashed by collective action; and the love and duty owed by citizens to the State.

But the incontinent expansion of the State’s reach degrades its grip. It undermines legitimacy, lowers confidence and breeds disregard. Twelve years of new Labour’s flabby-minded growth in the public sector, and the bloating of its claims on individuals’ lives, have begun to rot the whole idea of something the Left ought to believe in, and the Right do: society, and the public good.

“The more you tighten your grip, Lord Mandelson, the more star systems local authorities will slip through your fingers”

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Charlotte Gore is calling for a boycott, saying that if you want to help out giving lifts you should just do so and ignore the ISA – mass civil disobedience is the name of her game (worth reading the whole post, since she makes some rather excellent points throughout, I’m just picking out the ending):

This is the proverbial line in the sand. This is the ‘far’ in ‘too far.’ I propose a mass boycott, mass civil disobedience – simply refuse to submit yourself. Refuse to ask for ISA approval, too. This thing needs to be fought, and fought hard. If you’re in any doubt, try to figure out what you might say to other people if you submitted yourself for vetting and found yourself barred and realise you’re in for a few decades of pure hell trying to clear your name (and being put into the same category as sex offenders as a danger to children and vulnerable adults).

It’s an interesting approach, and very well argued, but Charlotte’s ignoring the fact that a boycott of the ISA will not be so simple – the fines won’t just be given to individual adult helpers but to the clubs and societies who get help from adults who haven’t had all the ‘appropriate’ checks. In other words, if you boycott the ISA, the clubs won’t let you help out, for fear of falling foul of the authorities. A boycott of the system is inevitably a boycott of the activities, which has the simple knock on effect that youth clubs and societies will simply disappear for good.

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Curiously, I’ve been unable to find any decent posts or articles which really mount a solid defence of the ISA (if you know of any, do tell). The usual haunts like Liberal Conspiracy or LabourList have been quiet so far – although it’s plausible that it’s just they haven’t said anything yet. The closest I’ve seen is a partial and caveated post on the political difficulties presented by the ISA from Labour MP Tom Harris:

Chris [Grayling] is in a pickle. If he becomes Home Secretary next year, will he repeal these new regulations? As far as I can see, he has made no commitment to do so. I don’t blame him; any relaxation of the regime by any minister would be incredibly dangerous – not just for children, but politically as well. The tabloid newspapers deploring these new rules would very quickly turn their attention on any minister they thought could be indirectly blamed for allowing a pedophile access to his victims.

As to the rules themselves, I’m not comfortable at all about sending out the message to all adult volunteers that they are assumed to be a threat to their charges unless they can prove otherwise. On the other hand, we’ve had a smaller scope vetting system in place for many years now and I recall similar criticisms being made when it was introduced. Yet no-one now is proposing to do away with the checks that everyone who works with children must endure.

What Tom is really saying, though, is that this is a measure made necessary by the newspapers, not by the facts.

Also, Costigan Quist not really defending the ISA, but disagreeing with Charlotte:

The new scheme run by the ISA is not an attempt by the Government to turn us all into sex offenders and snitches. It’s a genuine, if misguided in a typically New Labour way, attempt to deal with a real problem that worries millions of parents around the country. […] The idea that experts with gather data effectively and use their judgement to make the right decision on each person is completely laughable. The ISA won’t have enough resources. It will do what always happens in these situations. Corners will be cut, large chunks of data will be imported with little or no checking and decisions based on guesses, rules of thumb and arbitrary thresholds will be the order of the day.

I’ve made the same sort of argument before, actually. The fact is, our government is too bungling and impotent to ever be really considered ‘Orwellian’. He might be right – that there’s nothing scary about this, just irritating. But the fact remains that this is yet another expensive and complicated system put together by the Government which is likely to achieve virtually nothing at disproportionate cost and, just as the kicker, cause numerous more youth clubs and societies to have to close. Is the best response really to let out a wearied sigh and be glad that they probably at least had good intentions?

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But, okay, let’s accept for a moment, for the sake of argument, that this is well meaning legislation. Does well-meaning legislation actually work, when it comes to protecting children from sex offenders? There was a piece in The Economist last month which claimed otherwise, suggesting that, in America at least, the value of Sex Offenders Registers is disputed:

Several studies suggest that making it harder for sex offenders to find a home or a job makes them more likely to reoffend. Gwenda Willis and Randolph Grace of the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, for example, found that the lack of a place to live was “significantly related to sexual recidivism”. Candace Kruttschnitt and Christopher Uggen of the University of Minnesota and Kelly Shelton of the Minnesota Department of Corrections tracked 556 sex offenders on probation and found less recidivism among those with a history of stable employment.

Some bosses do not mind hiring sex offenders, if they know the full story and the offender does not seem dangerous. But an accessible online registry makes it all but certain that a colleague or a customer will find out about a sexual conviction. Sex offenders often report being sacked for no apparent reason. Mike had a job at a cake shop. His boss knew about his record. But one day, without warning, he was fired.

Publicly accessible sex-offender registries are intended to keep people safe. But there is little evidence that they do. A study by Kristen Zgoba of the New Jersey Department of Corrections found that the state’s system for registering sex offenders and warning their neighbours cost millions of dollars and had no discernible effect on the number of sex crimes. Restricting where sex offenders can live is supposed to keep them away from potential victims, but it is doubtful that this works. A determined predator can always catch a bus.

Now, obviously in the ISA debate we’re not talking about sex offenders in general, but the point is that branding people as ‘sex offenders’ and controlling their access to wider society for extremely mild misdemeanours (such as a 16-year-old having consensual sex with a 15-year-old, as in the anecdote at the beginning of that article) can lead to perfectly well-balanced people being entirely unable to lead a normal life, whilst not necessarily helping society much at all.

Although the restrictions it places are not anywhere near as severe, the ISA does go one step further in other ways – as Charlotte pointed out rather well – and considers unproven accusations, complaints, rumours, gossip and reports of such minor ‘crimes’ as swearing or even sarcasm when considering whether to grant adults the ability to help out around children. Do remember, as an aside, that people are not being restricted from access to children because of something they’ve done – we are now all restricted by law from giving regular lifts to next-door neighbours, until such time as we have sought the proper approval.

So there’s not yet any evidence it will work in saving children from sexual predators, there’s some evidence that it could be very harmful and indeed utterly counter-productive. ‘Well-meaning but wrong’ is just a nice way of saying ‘wrong’.

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There was also an interesting piece on Heresy Corner the other day which seems (tangentially) related to this debate, talking about social workers and the stringent vetting they have to go through, specifically the case of a 38-year-old trainee social worker, Serena, who was not allowed to become a social worker after being called to a meeting to explain accusations of sexual deviance in her past:

The [General Social Care Council] assumes that a person’s private life would create a “risk” to service users – but only, it seems, because it is assumed that it would diminish “public confidence” if it was exposed. It’s not explained why this is a risk to anyone but the social worker being exposed. Being spanked – professionally or otherwise – may not be to everyone’s taste, but Serena is not harming anybody, nor is she herself psychologically damaged. Such evidence as there is, indeed, tends to show that people who are into S&M are actually better balanced, and less likely to exhibit major psychiatric problems, than the general population. The fact that Serena has in the past earned money in a somewhat recondite part of the sex industry does not mean she would pose any sort of threat to vulnerable people she would be working with. Indeed, it may well have given her a greater understanding of her clients, many of whom will themselves have been involved in the most exploitative forms of prostitution.

I suppose the reason I think that’s related to the outcry over ISAs is that it’s not inconceivable or unheard of that some parents might be perfectly capable of raising their children during the daytime and enjoying what might be described as ‘a bit of rough’ at night. If rumours of such activities are grounds to have you barred from social work, surely the same rumours, put to the new ISA, would also make you unsuitable to help out at Scouts, or to drive a minibus for the football club. So we’re in the weird position of saying that such parents would be perfectly capable of looking after their own children, but a danger to anyone else’s.

Surely, you’re either a danger to children, or you’re not.

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As always, the last word goes to The Daily Mash:

According to new government regulations you are up to no good and always have this weird look in your eye, you horrendous pervert.