ANOTHER eight young people from Nottingham have pledged to improve their behaviour after being caught throwing dangerous objects from windows of school buses and causing vandalism.
All the school pupils, aged between 12 and 14, have now signed Acceptable Behaviour Contracts (ABCs) with their parents, police and bus operator Nottingham City Transport.
Four of the young people have also agreed to pay costs for the repair of damage.
The action follows the earlier signing of ABCs by four teenagers this year (2006) after they were caught scrawling graffiti on an NCT school bus, damaging seats and verbally abusing a bus driver.
In all 12 cases, bus CCTV and help from the young people's respective schools were instrumental in identification of the culprits.
ABCs are essentially informal contracts by which low-level offenders agree to improve their behaviour. The contracts are aimed at reducing anti-social behaviour rather than tackling people with entrenched criminal lifestyles.
And the evidence is that ABCs are effective in controlling unruly and abusive behaviour towards people and property.
PC Derek Pickering, beat manager for Nottingham 's public transport network, said none of the four teenagers caught earlier in the year had caused trouble since signing the contracts.
It's encouraging that we haven't had any problems with those four teenagers since they signed the ABCs, he said. I'd like to think that that is more than coincidence. Certainly, in all cases I've dealt with, all the young people have expressed remorse for their disruptive activities.
However, PC Pickering stressed again that if an ABC is breached over a 12 month monitoring period, the breach can be used as evidence in an application for a more serious Anti-Social Behaviour Order (ASBO).
In one of the latest incidents, four boys aged 12 and 13 on the upper deck of a bus travelling to school in the morning were seen throwing objects, including marbles, at vehicles and passers-by. They also littered the bus with dozens of newspapers.
In a second incident, four girls aged 14 were observed applying graffiti to seats, floors, windows and sides of a bus traveling back from school in the afternoon.
Bus-mounted CCTV captured images of all the culprits and this evidence was later taken to the pupils' schools by PC Pickering. Staff helped the officer identify the pupils and a visit to their homes, in the presence of parents/guardians, was subsequently arranged. The ABCs were signed by each child, parents/guardians, PC Pickering and an NCT representative.
The four girls also agreed to pay £100.05 to NCT for cleaning the graffiti.
ABCs are now just one of the many methods being used in the campaign to tackle crime and anti-social behaviour on Nottingham 's public transport system.
Police and transport operators are increasingly co-ordinating their efforts and clamping down on offenders using ABCs, ASBOs, criminal prosecutions and unannounced Gateway checks on buses and trams. More Gateways are set to take place in 2007.
The campaign is supported by Respect for Transport, which aims to increase use of public transport in Nottingham by reducing actual and perceived levels of crime and disorder on trams and buses.
Respect for Transport is backed by Nottinghamshire police, Nottingham City Council, Nottingham City Transport, Nottinghamshire County Council, Nottingham Express Transit, JC Decaux, British Transport Police and Greater Nottingham Transport Partnership's The Big Wheel and was launched in the summer of 2004.
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