It causes inconvenience to the miscreant, and they can use the time to think about not doing it again. Having some time to calm down and reflect, while waiting for the next bus or walking somewhere, is likely highly effective (in the view of those of us who believe in rehabilitative justice).
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Antisocial behaviour on buses: Have we given up?
- Thread starter mikeg
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RailUK Forums
Not just anti social behaviour on buses either, its also I feel anti social behaviour outside of the bus as well. Many times I seen photos of numerous buses damaged in Holmewood area in Bradford, putting passengers and drivers at risk.
Innocent People who live in the area will get punished because of these people, because bus companies would rightly refuse to risk their safety of the drivers and send buses down there at night.
Bus companies will suffer because buses will keep getting damaged, and bus drivers and their families will suffer because they could get hurt and injured.
There's no easy solution to this. I do think if a family causes trouble, and if they are in social housing, they should be kicked out and not allowed to claim social housing again, and the kids, should be handed to the custody of the state.
Arriva pulled out of an area permanently in Yorkshire about 20 years ago, because of this sort of behaviour.
Innocent People who live in the area will get punished because of these people, because bus companies would rightly refuse to risk their safety of the drivers and send buses down there at night.
Bus companies will suffer because buses will keep getting damaged, and bus drivers and their families will suffer because they could get hurt and injured.
There's no easy solution to this. I do think if a family causes trouble, and if they are in social housing, they should be kicked out and not allowed to claim social housing again, and the kids, should be handed to the custody of the state.
Arriva pulled out of an area permanently in Yorkshire about 20 years ago, because of this sort of behaviour.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
No, they're not, they're much more in a position to defend themselves. I'm pretty big, nobody has ever gone for me. People have sense.
Either people on here are overstating risk or they live in a bizarre state of permanent fear!
It associates consequences directly with actions. It's very powerful. That's why I think we need to do much more of this kind of thing. For instance I would arrest anyone who steals from a shop, even if only tenpence worth, and give them a night in the cells. Release at noon the next day to make sure they have to explain why to their boss, too.
The sort of simple brain that doesn't think past the selfishness of these actions needs simple and immediate consequences. Way back when that was a clip around the ear. I don't support returning to physical violence, but I do think things that are analogous, e.g. a long walk home, are simple, effective and appropriate.
If they don't, then the bus is cancelled. Lights off, engine off, everyone off, refusal means the police are called. In my observation the success rate is near 100% - some big scary bloke always intervenes.
Peter Sarf
Established Member
Never will work except for hardened and repeated offenders - too cumbersome. A short sharp reaction at point of miss behaviour has to work. Not time and money spent on court cases.
That might be simpler and more likely to happen.
Difficult and not perfect but what about the victims on the bus who did not choose to do anything wrong.
Sometimes have to learn the hard way.
When I was young I would not dare to miss behave and I was not having punishment threatened.
I do not have respect for people who think they can miss behave and get away with it by hiding behind their rights.
Nowadays we talk about rights BUT what about responsibilities ?.
I do not agree - it pushes the problem back on to the perpetrator there and now.
It will have unfortunate down sides until the message gets across.
I suppose wait long enough end then call for backup (police).
It will not happen very often once the perpetrators start to learn the lesson.
bramling
Veteran Member
One has to be careful with that. Lee Pomeroy was pretty big, and felt confident to take someone on off the back of some anti-social behaviour - and tragically it didn’t end well. It all very much depends on the situation, which can’t always be accurately sized up.
I generally agree with this. It’s the lack of consequence that is the root cause for people trying it on. The other week a couple of teenagers thought it was funny to throw a rock at a pensioner. It absolutely wasn’t so funny when they had a 100kg guy in rugby gear appear that they didn’t know was there, and who could run rather faster than they were able to attempt to run away. I shall leave that one there, apart from to say that the lesson was learned.
The only difficulty with the latter is it can then put the “big scary bloke” in bother, like it did with the ScotRail incident. It’s effectively holding everyone to ransom, but the problem is (1) CCTV, and (2) the prospect of someone else deciding to film it and placing it on You Tube. If one goes back to the 1990s neither of these things were likely to happen on a transport service.
No, they're not, they're much more in a position to defend themselves. I'm pretty big, nobody has ever gone for me. People have sense.
Either people on here are overstating risk or they live in a bizarre state of permanent fear!
Ah, okay, so only those who are weak and gangly are targeted. Just because no one has ever gone for you doesn't mean that's universal. There are plenty of examples of people you'd assume would be "able to handle themselves" being attacked. Also, do all "big blokes" have the skill and ability to defend themselves? I'm a big bloke but wouldn't have the foggiest about how to punch someone. In fact, only a few weeks ago I was confronted by two rather scrawny blokes and rather than puff up my chest I was in fact rescued by a middle aged woman who stood in front of me. You really can't tell how someone will react just based on their physical dimensions. You also can't base bus travel policy on whether the kid looks "hard enough" that he wouldn't get in trouble on the way home.
And how do you fund this? A night in the cells for a homeless person might actually be an incentive TO steal.
And in a world where blame has to be attributed what happens if that long walk home is in the rain / cold conditions and the person wasn't dressed for such and becomes ill? Or what happens if what is decided by the driver as ASB was actually ADHD or Autism and dropping them a mile from home could be as bad as dropping them 12 miles from home as they don't have a clue to get back?
And how is that fair to everyone else on the bus? What if there is no big scary bloke on the bus? What about the poor bus driver who will have to stay with the bus? Are the police likely to attend a bus that has been stopped because someone was vaping on the back seat? Or will they tell the driver to suck it up and just carry on driving?
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Except said youth who is angry at being chucked off the bus suddenly becomes a menace in the area they've been dropped off.
Peter Sarf
Established Member
There is always down sides and imperfections. But our society is getting hamstrung into doing nothing for fear of doing something wrong by our standards. Look where it is leading us. The feral rule because they do not care about what we care about so face them on their terms or lose.
I know people who grew up in the 1970s, that the fear of parents, if they did something wrong at School, or outside of School like anti social behaviour on buses, was known to make the kids behave. If they got in trouble at School or elsewhere, they'd get in trouble at home as well. I don't think it was just the punishment, but the waiting and anticipation of what your parents was going to do as soon as you got home. I think it starts with the parents.
Butts
Veteran Member
My Mum had a mule which she applied to the back of the legs with painful accuracy !!
Also the Tawse and Cane were dished out at School plus Teachers were free to hit you and throw Blackboard Rubbers with devastating effect.
Kicking someone off the bus with no further consequences already is a middle ground. I actually can't see why anyone would object to it, regardless of views on the purpose of justice.
I've never engaged in ASB on buses, but in the past, when I have needed to be taught a lesson, immediate consequences of moderate severity with time to reflect (which is what kicking off the bus achieves) have been very effective, and the people who gave me these consequences did me a favour.
Adults yes
But under 18s no.
I'm still concerned about stranding a 13 year old child in the middle of nowhere, especially if it's dark and in the winter especially if it's cold.
Especially if it's extremely far away from home. Anything can happen and these days you have to be careful.
I don't think I could live with myself if something happened to the kid while walking the long way home
Id only approve if there was some sort of supervision.
Like the dad in the US who made his daughter walk to School with him behind her in his car.
But under 18s no.
I'm still concerned about stranding a 13 year old child in the middle of nowhere, especially if it's dark and in the winter especially if it's cold.
Especially if it's extremely far away from home. Anything can happen and these days you have to be careful.
I don't think I could live with myself if something happened to the kid while walking the long way home
Id only approve if there was some sort of supervision.
Like the dad in the US who made his daughter walk to School with him behind her in his car.
Except this will never happen because of the negative publicity should one of those kicked off end up in danger. By carrying the child they have a duty of safeguarding towards the minor, even if the minor is being a pain in the backside.
Butts
Veteran Member
I think in the late sixties / early seventies a lot of the Male Teachers had seen Active Service during WWW2 or Korea and didn't stand any nonsense.
Indeed Males were referred to by Surname and Females Christian Name - that used to irk me a bit.
You had to stand up when they came into the room and they were free to dish out what punishments physical or otherwise they deemed appropriate to any miscreants.
They may not have been liked but they were respected and defaulters were a rarity.
The only time we got to be disruptive was with (particularly female) Student Teachers.
If you complained when you got home you ran the risk of getting another dose of punishment.
Was this an equitable system - possibly not but it was effective to control public behaviour.
I know quite a few people who was hurt by some of these teachers and would be in prison in today's world
A relative of mine got caned for being dyslexic.
Another got their head smashed against the wall.
You hear about all these incidents of abuse of teachers from the 1960s, 70s and 80s, getting sent to prison today because at the time kids was never believed
Surely we can't go back to this again
JohnofWessex
Member
If we want people, women in particular to move to 'active' and public transport we need a 'safety' plan
That means getting the drunk and disorderly off the streets and public transport. Also tackling street crime and cycle theft.
Not only arresting people but what happens next to them, that is taking them quickly to Court - which is the big deterrent and Judicial 'disposals' that tackle an individuals offending
That means getting the drunk and disorderly off the streets and public transport. Also tackling street crime and cycle theft.
Not only arresting people but what happens next to them, that is taking them quickly to Court - which is the big deterrent and Judicial 'disposals' that tackle an individuals offending
But is this really any different to the old ladies I remember from decades ago discussing the medical issues of themselves and/or their families, neighbours etc.
I'd rather listen to "look at me" small-talk than the details of Doris's hysterectomy!
Peter Sarf
Established Member
For most of the people I see being anti social the bus journey is not that long.
Last night someone got on the bus and bunked the fare - got off two stops later. They could easily walk that. In fact I got off at the same stop and walked further because the bus I really needed seemed not to exist on the TfL information. I am aged 66, the person not paynig was late teems / early 20s. If they cannot walk that far then there is no hope for humanity and the NHS is going to get buried by unfit humans.
In London we are not talking about ejecting a school kid on a several mile journey on the only bus that evening !.
All these rights and no responsibilities.......
Never had any problem with old dears- and the chat cant be quite interesting to a certain extent.
One was 'I have already lent you £5000 this year, why do you need more money?' and the other that sticks in my mind was 'Yes, I have been to toilet properly this morning, the doctor says its these tablets'. TMI.
It absolutely was not.
These people should have been nowhere near a classroom.
They may have been feared but they did not control public behaviour. Those they meted out violence on were much more likely to then take it out on others.
Society in this time was far more violent than today. In places such as pubs violence was never far from the surface. I dare say that incidents of “anti-social behaviour” on buses were more common and worse.
GusB
Established Member
The "RailUK Standard Minority" is a response that, quite frankly, is getting rather boring and it gets trotted out rather too often on the forum.
Agreed on your first point. On your second, don't you think that you're being a little bit over-dramatic? I'm not suggesting that those crimes don't happen at all but they're very rare. In any case, I suspect that most reasonable bus drivers will weigh up the pros and cons of kicking someone off the bus before doing so; dropping someone off in the middle of nowhere on a rural bus route has its risks, but those are likely to be from other traffic more than anything else.
To add to this, most kids carry mobile phones now and it's easy to share their location with a parent or guardian who will probably come and pick them up. If the family doesn't have a car then it's a little bit more of an unfortunate situation, but a long walk home might focus the mind a little bit.
Sorry, but this is nonsense. How "built" someone happens to be is utterly irrelevant if you're an individual facing a gang of people. Indeed, there are some who would probably see a bigger guy as a challenge. That's before we contemplate that someone in a gang of thugs may be carrying something sharp and pointy.
There's nothing to disagree with in the points that you make here, but the problem is resources: who pays for it? Arresting and booking someone into the cells takes time and means that those officers are tied up while the processing is done, the closure of local police stations means that the distance to the cells is greater and that assumes that there's enough capacity in the cells to begin with. Add to that the fact that the courts are backlogged as it is.
It might be an idea (and cheaper) to spend money on things like youth clubs and sports facilities in order to prevent anti-social behaviour, rather than having to deal with the behaviour itself. This is definitely a subject for another thread, though.
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"Bus Bouncers" is certainly one idea but, again, who pays for it? Having one on every bus would be prohibitively expensive (you might as well bring back conductors) and only having a few would mean that they often won't be in the right place at the right time.
One answer could be technology. I don't know if existing ticket machines already have such a facility, but perhaps there should be an ASBO (Anti-social behaviour observation) button which, when pressed, would record the time, date and the location of the vehicle. These reports could then be analysed, along with CCTV from the time of the incident, to ascertain if there's a specific pattern of behaviour, particular individuals/groups or if there are certain geographic hotspots. Resources (police/security) could be targeted at those areas or routes accordingly.
I'm not sure how practical this would actually be but an ASB reporting function could even be built into operators' apps so that other passengers can report issues that perhaps the driver hasn't noticed. There would obviously have to be safeguards to ensure that this isn't abused: "Dear Mrs Jones, thank you for your recent report of anti-social behaviour on the number 2 bus last week. While we agree that the colour of Mrs Smith's coat is indeed "boggin", it is not in breach of our Terms and Conditions and we will not be taking any further action..."
One other solution is signage. I had a look at the conditions of travel for First and Stagecoach and it's already written there that use of loud things isn't permitted, but I haven't noticed any signs on my local Stagecoach buses encouraging people to wear headphones; a few stickers reminding people wouldn't go amiss. How many people are actually aware that vaping isn't permitted? It's pretty much universally known that smoking isn't allowed but vaping is not the same thing.
All of this needs a bit of joined-up thinking, though. We need to have penalties that are severe enough to deter but we also need to ensure that those penalties are actually applied if someone is caught.
Pyewipecarshed
Member
As I remember it violent incidents on buses were rarer, it seemed that people got rid of their anger in the kind of pubs you mention before getting on the bus.
There were exceptions of course; in my native Hull the last Longhill bus on a Saturday night became so notorious that it received a police escort for a period of time in 1987. Unfortunately one night the drunks on the rear upstairs seat noticed the panda car following and threw the seat cushion out of the emergency exit window at it.
But that was very much the exception that proved the rule.
Peter Sarf
Established Member
A lot of sense in there.The "RailUK Standard Minority" is a response that, quite frankly, is getting rather boring and it gets trotted out rather too often on the forum.
Agreed on your first point. On your second, don't you think that you're being a little bit over-dramatic? I'm not suggesting that those crimes don't happen at all but they're very rare. In any case, I suspect that most reasonable bus drivers will weigh up the pros and cons of kicking someone off the bus before doing so; dropping someone off in the middle of nowhere on a rural bus route has its risks, but those are likely to be from other traffic more than anything else.
To add to this, most kids carry mobile phones now and it's easy to share their location with a parent or guardian who will probably come and pick them up. If the family doesn't have a car then it's a little bit more of an unfortunate situation, but a long walk home might focus the mind a little bit.
Sorry, but this is nonsense. How "built" someone happens to be is utterly irrelevant if you're an individual facing a gang of people. Indeed, there are some who would probably see a bigger guy as a challenge. That's before we contemplate that someone in a gang of thugs may be carrying something sharp and pointy.
There's nothing to disagree with in the points that you make here, but the problem is resources: who pays for it? Arresting and booking someone into the cells takes time and means that those officers are tied up while the processing is done, the closure of local police stations means that the distance to the cells is greater and that assumes that there's enough capacity in the cells to begin with. Add to that the fact that the courts are backlogged as it is.
It might be an idea (and cheaper) to spend money on things like youth clubs and sports facilities in order to prevent anti-social behaviour, rather than having to deal with the behaviour itself. This is definitely a subject for another thread, though.
---
"Bus Bouncers" is certainly one idea but, again, who pays for it? Having one on every bus would be prohibitively expensive (you might as well bring back conductors) and only having a few would mean that they often won't be in the right place at the right time.
One answer could be technology. I don't know if existing ticket machines already have such a facility, but perhaps there should be an ASBO (Anti-social behaviour observation) button which, when pressed, would record the time, date and the location of the vehicle. These reports could then be analysed, along with CCTV from the time of the incident, to ascertain if there's a specific pattern of behaviour, particular individuals/groups or if there are certain geographic hotspots. Resources (police/security) could be targeted at those areas or routes accordingly.
I'm not sure how practical this would actually be but an ASB reporting function could even be built into operators' apps so that other passengers can report issues that perhaps the driver hasn't noticed. There would obviously have to be safeguards to ensure that this isn't abused: "Dear Mrs Jones, thank you for your recent report of anti-social behaviour on the number 2 bus last week. While we agree that the colour of Mrs Smith's coat is indeed "boggin", it is not in breach of our Terms and Conditions and we will not be taking any further action..."
One other solution is signage. I had a look at the conditions of travel for First and Stagecoach and it's already written there that use of loud things isn't permitted, but I haven't noticed any signs on my local Stagecoach buses encouraging people to wear headphones; a few stickers reminding people wouldn't go amiss. How many people are actually aware that vaping isn't permitted? It's pretty much universally known that smoking isn't allowed but vaping is not the same thing.
All of this needs a bit of joined-up thinking, though. We need to have penalties that are severe enough to deter but we also need to ensure that those penalties are actually applied if someone is caught.
Youth clubs. Society does not want to spend money on them and so reaps what it (doesn't) sow.
I am reminded of the old saying - idle hands make evil work.
Parents - there are plenty of cases where parents did not sit down and decide how many (if any) kids they wanted. They let it happen and then do the minimum to bring them up. There are "good" families where there is only one child because the parents decided they could not afford to bring up more than one child properly. Irony is they often could have done a better job than parents that do not decide and end up having large families.
So we could possibly blame the parents. BUT. Is it innevitable and really society should make more effort to interfere (with things like youth clubs). If one wants a better environment then perhaps pay the price for youth clubs etc OR do voluntary work (I have but it can be a thankless task).
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In Medway the last bus was before last orders let alone closing time (Pubs in the UK used to close soon after 11pm). I used to have a longer than 60 minute walk home from meeting my friends.