Interesting report. Do you think this means generation Z will be more or less adverse to security than generations Y and X?

Director Frances Crook said children were rarely consulted about “the impact of crime on their lives”.

“The surveys revealed that these crimes are often not reported as children think adults will not listen to them or the crime will be viewed as too small to bother with,” she added.

“Ironically, the very institutions where children should feel safest – their school environments set up and patrolled by adults – are where children are most commonly victimised.

I am not sure I would agree with the conclusion.

I certainly never thought of school as an environment where I should feel safest; the opposite actually. I felt safest at home, where I was not forced to be in close proximity with strangers regulated only by even stranger rules and weak control systems that everyone seemed to know how to circumvent.

Something tells me that the “findings” are heavily weighted by an adult agenda to impose stricter controls under the guise of a “silent request” for safety. Strangely, the report does not discuss any trend over the period surveyed.

Every year, between 1997 and 2006, the survey asked children about their experiences of crime in the previous twelve months.

I mean there should be some data on whether there was an increase or decrease in the rate of criminal activity in the schools, no? 1997 to 2006 seems like an awfully short period as well. Why not survey adults about their experiences as a child — experiences of crime in the previous twenty/thirty years? Perhaps that would eliminate the error from lack/fear of reporting?

I suspect the bully effect is as old as the concept of the playground itself, so the question really should not be whether there are bullies or not but what are the appropriate (most successful?) controls among children as well as between them and adults. Perhaps there are simple ways to resolve some of the problems that do not require greater adult intervention and/or surveillance?