No fixed abode...

I was in the dreaded supermarket yesterday and saw the front page of the local paper. Two of my ex-clients have been barred from entering the city for two years. On one level I'm pleased that something has been done about these two - they're a couple who have harrassed and bullied so many vulnerable people through the years and have lead to the deaths of at least a couple of other clients. Of course it's all drugs related, and if their absence makes it easier for anyone to beat their addictions or to get themselves straightened out then it's great and I applaud the authorities.

On the other hand, it's a total non-sentence and probably won't stop them from continuing to flaunt the law and do whatever the hell they like. After all, these are people who've dealt heroin for the best part of fifteen years between them and have spent most of their recent lives in prison, so I doubt that they will be concerned by an ASBO. And what has also irritated me is that there's two sides to every story, and although the reporting reflects some of the damage they've done, there are many things it doesn't say.

It doesn't say that he can't read. That he's dyslexic and has never been able to come off drugs for long enough to work with a teacher successfully. Or that he'd love to learn but believes himself to be "too thick". Or that he is, basically, a kind-hearted young man (25 now, I worked with him aged 21-23) who has been under the spell of a woman much older and more experienced (and more damaged) than him since he was little more than a child.

It doesn't say that their childhoods were so horrendously awful that they actually chose their current lifestyles as the better option.

It doesn't say that she has been so badly abused that she sees selling herself for a bag of smack as "no big deal".

It doesn't say that their baby died two years ago, that he was stillborn, probably because she simply could not cope without the heroin that is killing them both. Or that she had already had her first two children taken into care but was desperate to turn things around and keep this baby. Or that she was threatened by dealers who promised to cut the baby out of her before killing them both. That maybe this stress was as traumatic as the heroin for the tiny little boy who never stood a chance.

It doesn't say that these two are the product of a society that treats parenting as a part-time chore, not a privilege, an amazing honour and an inspiration. It doesn't say that we are all to blame for the way in which these two and countless others like them have turned out and for the fact that they see no value in their own lives or those of anyone else. It doesn't say that once, a long time ago, these two were tiny babies with a blank canvas of life ahead of them. It doesn't say that someone let them down. But hey, it's alright, because they can't enter the city for two years. And that'll fix it all. Won't it?