Kid Criminals - The Boy King - written for "The Evening Standard"

‘Youth is a blunder’. Well this week has proved Disraeli horribly right: it is a blunder with knobs on. Close on one in ten 11 -13 year olds drink more than ten units of alcohol a week; a survey of 11,200 violent crimes committed by under-18s includes a catalogue of sex offences; school expulsions and exclusions are at record-highs; a twelve year old (ten at the time) is convicted of stoning a retired man to death; police are considering Tasar stun guns for under-age offenders.

But all this would come as no surprise to the sages of old. Past societies were well aware that ‘the age of juveniles’ is a Pandora’s Box, and did everything they could to keep the lid on. Taboos, religious ritual and age apartheid recognised the horrific potential of the next generation and vigorously, sometimes desperately, attempted to stop the self-harm.

In Ancient Sparta a boy-child was kept cloistered with his Mum until he was 7 (no video-nasty equivalents allowed at this tender age) but by eight he was thought responsible enough to be sent off to the agoge to learn to live like an adult. Parents across the country who let six year olds watch Mission Impossible but won’t allow healthy Year Sevens walk to senior school by themselves, take note.

Roman towns frequently educated all ages together – with the hope that this would foster social cohesion, that kids would keep an eye on one another rather than polarise into warring age-tribes.

The sexual yen of children was recognised as a fact of life, not an aberration. On Greek pots, boys, still young enough to play with hoops are given the faces of satyrs. Sumptuary laws from the court of Versaille to the backstreets of mediaeval York kept young girls decently covered – and protected – until they were physically strong enough to stand up for themselves.

500 centuries-worth of English church records are littered with cases of child brides and grooms who elope with juvenile lovers. Romeo and Juliet remind us that teenagers are chemically-programmed to do desperate things. Our job, rather than arm these hormone-bombs with supra-erotic of music, T-shirts that beg ‘Pop my Cherry’, and then act surprised when they misbehave is to keep them as sexually repressed as possible. Far from the modern age seeing the invention of childhood it has in fact seen its destruction.

Politicians scurry around applying bandages. Boris wants police officers 24/7 on London’s streets. Ed Balls introduces happiness classes. Our ancestors took pre-emptive action. History’s child-rearing book, (minus the chapter on whelp-whipping) offers cogent advice: give kids the freedom they can cope with, don’t imagine they are little angels, and do everything humanly possible to keep them, simply, children.