Sarah's Law and Communities

When I was a kid, my friends and I always knew that the bloke at the end of the road was "dodgy". We didn't even know the word paedophile, or anything about sex for that matter, but we knew damn well to steer clear of that bloke.

That was a small Welsh community, settled and cohesive. The community held its memories and made its social judgements. No formal charges need be made, no official pronouncements or registers demanded. I daresay that this remains the way of things in small communities.

Equally, in larger and more unsettled areas, then such social information and judgement must be absent. When people do not know their neighbours, how can they know whether they are Good or Bad?

This effect of social mobility and isolation must play a part in the reasoning underlying Sarah's Law. If it is, then it has the distinction of being the only strand in this mess that has any coherence.

On the face of it, it is obvious that we should be told if there is a danger in our midst. There are two huge flaws in this. Firstly, it assumes that a person’s future actions can be extrapolated from their past. They cannot. Human beings do not dance to some Newtonian clockwork mechanism.

The second flaw is rather more fundamental and fishy. Kids are far more likely to be molested once they reach home, rather than being kidnapped by a stranger on their journey.

Sarah's Law distinguishes itself in its deliberate and wilful mis-direction as to the danger. It isn't so much the sex offenders who have already been captured, punished, released and registered who pose the problem. It is those who remain unknown, in their homes that are the risk. But now everybody is looking in the wrong direction.

And has Sarah's Law had a positive effect? According to the papers and its supporters, yes. According to keener eyes - has it hell!

Is it the fragmented nature of modern life that has forced us to rely on the State for information about our neighbours, rather than our being able to tap into stable social networks? And, one for futurologists, will social networking on the Web replace a little of the networking that used to take place on the streets?

I apologise for mixing themes in this piece - communities and Sarah's Law - but they are profoundly connected. A purer, more focused piece would have pointed out that Sarah's Law is a testament to the will of the tabloids and some victims’ groups, and nothing to do with actually protecting children.

And a separate piece would have pointed out that our fragmenting society no longer acts as it did as a channel to carry useful information within communities. Rather than a new boyfriend being placed in a context, a known history of rumours and pub talk, leaving us to make our own judgement...now we have to rely on the State to gather than information and make the judgement for us. In this sense, Sarah's Law is more pertinent to a discussion about the nature of communities than to child welfare.

And here's the kicker. If you do inquire of the police about a new partner or child minder, they won't tell you straight if that person has dodgy antecedents. No - they only tell you if they believe that he poses a future risk. With a lack of information on our part, we surrender our judgement and discretion to some minor State bureaucrat. Strange way to protect kids.