The ISA is Insidious and Unfair and Must Be Abolished
Tim Gill argues the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) into oblivion:
All the fundamental questions remain. Questions about cost. About due process. About data protection. About checks giving a false sense of security. About malicious accusations and people being wrongly identified as paedophiles. And, most profoundly, about the wider implications of living in a society in which casual, freely given offers of help are met not with appreciation but with deep suspicion.
Common sense tells us that the ideal of a zero-risk childhood is untenable, if not impossible. Of course, children have a just claim for a degree of protection from harm. But when it comes to protecting them, our responsibility should surely be to tackle the most serious threats first and foremost.
So as a parent, my response to the question “how would I feel if it were my child?” is as follows. We would all want to feel that our collective efforts to keep children reasonably safe in an uncertain world were well thought through, proportionate to the risk, and effective. On all these counts, the vetting system is still wholly unfit for purpose.
It’s not just unfit for purpose, it’s unsuitable for purpose. The ISA by definition won’t be able to fulfil its remit, all the while distracting its 250 administrators’ attention from the real abuses which are committed behind closed doors, almost always by people who don’t appear on its bureucratised radar. When we rationalise the management of risk we can’t exactly be surprised when, at enormous cost, children and other ‘vulnerable’ groups continue to be abused and killed, and a culture of suspicion continues to grow. When the most likely outcome is a generation of children and young people unable to risk assess the world for themselves, we should really think again. Bureaucracy and databases are pernicious and ineffective tools with which to manage society.
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Another excellent article – thanks.
I know we’ve all said lots on this issue over the last few years and it’s essential we keep up the pressure – for the sake of rising generations who are growing up in a country where fear and paranoia is sadly now the default mode.
However, the way society is changing as a result of mass vetting is only part of the problem with the ISA. Fundamentally though, it won’t do what it says on the tin, and people are incredibly stupid to think it will.
How silly of us to assume that just because we stop someone with a conviction from working with children – they cease to have access to children completely.
How silly of us to assume that just because we stop someone working with children who has a conviction for child abuse that they will cease to be a threat to children.
How silly of us to assume that just because someone with ill intentions is barred from working with children they’ll just cease being a paedophile and start to live a normal life.
As I say, this will do nothing whatsoever to ‘safeguard children’. That statement is wholly misleading – an utter fraud. It can’t stop people abusing children because it doesn’t seek to change peoples behaviour – it just moves it on.
The ISA must be abolished – for the sake of our children. Furthermore, the people responsible for its birth need to be banned from meddling in matters such as there again.