Today's Scum...

...is 17 year old Kyle Ivison, from Clitheroe, Lancashire.

The Daily Mail list some of the incidents which have earned him the prestigious award of Scum of the Day:

For "fun", the lout smashed up four benches in a cemetery in the town in January 2006, two of which had been installed by grieving relatives.

Such was the extent of his offending he was even banned from his local Tesco.

In May he was convicted of a catalogue of offences.

They included:

• Being found drunk with a 15-year-old girl who had to be rushed to hospital by ambulance

• Causing £1,400 worth of damage to a church's windows

• Systematically targeting parked cars, smashing off wing mirrors, jumping on the vehicles, kicking them and ramming one with a shopping trolley

• Torching a neighbour's shed.

The lout, who lives in Riverside, Clitheroe, filmed himself smashing up 21 cars during a one night orgy of vandalism.

And in the last month alone, busy bobbies logged a further seven incidents involving the yob, who loved to brag about his crimes, including an occasion when he admitted taking drugs.

Accrington Magistrates heard that on 29 June the teenager's own father reported him to the police for smashing up the family home.

PC Geoff Woodcock, of Lancashire Police, said Ivison committed 38 per cent of the town's crimes during just one week.

Even for a small town with a population of only 22,000, that's not bad going. Ivison is known to have committed 48 crimes so far this year, and looks set to pass the personal best of 56 offences per year, which he achieved in 2006.

And how did Accrington magistrates deal with this increasingly criminal low-life? They slapped an ASBO on him. That'll show him!

Or perhaps it won't. Because I really doubt that thugs of this nature are the kind of people who will be affected one way or the other by an ASBO. As I see it, ASBOs are for lower-level scum; for thirteen and fourteen year olds who are behaving badly, but are only on the borderline of criminality. An ASBO might - might - have an effect on them.
Ivison, by contrast, is a serious and habitual criminal. This is an entirely unsuitable case for a mere ASBO, no matter how restrictive: if he's prepared to break the law with the regularity that he does (and he's currently averaging almost two known offences each week) then I doubt that fear of adding the additional offence of breach of ASBO to his record will stop him. What this boy needs is prison, and perhaps a good long spell at boot camp (if we had them, which we sadly don't).

Actually, I find it unlikely that Ivison will ever be made into a productive member of society. I have very little doubt but that he will be doing this kind of thing for the rest of his life. ASBOs won't stop it, and even the threat of prison won't deter him. But if he were locked up then, at least for the period during which he was behind bars, the people of Clitheroe would be spared his loathsome presence.