LOCK UP MY TEARAWAY SON OF 14, BEGS MUM

THE despairing mother of a teenage tearaway last night pleaded: "For God's sake, lock him up."

She says only the "short, sharp shock" of a spell behind bars will stop her 14-year-old son's life of crime. But the youngest age magistrates can send anyone to a young offenders' institute is 15. The boy, who has spent just one day at school in 14 months, has broken into ten cars already this year, and has repeatedly broken a home curfew.

His mother said: ""He keeps offending because there's nothing to stop him. He knows he'd more or less have to commit murder to get locked up.

"Yet the only thing that will work is to put him away for a couple of months."

A court order in January banned the boy, who can't be named for legal reasons, from leaving his Coventry home between 7pm and 7am but he has broken the curfew on all but two nights.

Last week, as a last resort, he was placed in the care of Coventry Social Services but absconded.

On Wednesday a warrant was issued for his arrest after he failed to show up in court to face accusations of taking a car and driving it without insurance.

His divorced mother withdrew her son from school at Christmas 1996 because he was being bullied. She wanted him to go to a special school but officials did not find a place for a year. Her son attended the first day but hasn't gone back since.

The mother, aged 31, said: "He had never been in trouble but got bored and got in with older lads who went thieving."

She said she had asked magistrates to impose a curfew on her son to give her more control.

"I kept awake to make sure he obeyed it but he started staying out. The police kept him in for the night but he'd be out the next morning."

Social Services chief Bal Chauhan said: "Nothing makes us believe that this boy would behave any differently if taken back into care."

An education department spokesman said the mother had been contacted but had ignored invitations to meetings to discuss her son's future.

From April, persistent offenders as young as 12 can be sent to detention centres. But only 40 places will be available at the first centre, in Kent.

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