Have Rocket, will travel. Have wings, will fly. Have knives, will stab and potentially kill.

The stabbing death of a school-child in central Adelaide on a weekday afternoon comes as no surprise. Many schoolchildren carry knives nowadays.

This is supposedly for safety, but there is no bigger pile of rubbish than that claim. An adolescent child, particularly a male, who is armed with a knife is far more likely to carry it in order to feel brave rather than to feel safe.

Young 'braves' have an alarming tendency to wind up in combat. That fact hasn't changed in many thousands of years.

Curiously, this trend has occurred during the age of academic social solutions. This, we are told, is an era of social improvement through scientific methods rather than age-old rules of thumb.

Taxi drivers are striking because another cabbie was bashed in Adelaide yesterday. Good on them!

It is clear that a lot of people are cynical about taxi drivers. However, that only serves to increase the amount of violence against them, since among sub-cultures of the unrefined and destructive it is considered less of an offence to bash a member of a group who are generally 'on the nose'.

That in turn will make it impossible to get more responsible individuals to become cabbies. The public cannot win from that sort of vicious circle.

Violent crimes have got out of control. They are all too often committed by people with long histories of similar offences who are released on the ridiculous notion that if they are gradually bashing people less often then their rehabilitation program is working. It's called 'growing out of offending'.

Everyone in society needs protecting against these rat-bags, not just cabbies.

I have never believed in Neighborhood Watch programs. I see them as helping to facilitate government cop-outs on crime control.

I can see their worth as an adjunct to effective crime control policies. As a substitute, which is what they have tended to become and were always going to become, they are useless.

This month the St Marys (South Australia) Neighborhood Watch newsletter confirmed that my assessment is spot-on. The front page feature article is a generic spiel about - believe it or not - the wearing of seatbelts in cars! It is a mirror of a current road safety advertising campaign.

What does that have to do with crime control?

Oh, yes! I see the point, alright. Failure to wear seatbelts is a crime because it causes needless deaths. And in response to that I say to the Neighborhood Watch coordinator and the fans of this half-baked club of committee-lovers -" Belt Up!"

Worthwhile though they may be, there are places for road safety articles. Neighborhood Watch newsletters isn't it.

These programs and their periodicals were initially designed to encourage locals to help prevent mainstream crimes by keeping a sharp eye out and reporting anything suspicious.

What we expect to read are articles detailing how local heroes have helped to curb crimes in the area through timely deeds. Where are they? People have largely become cynical because when they have tried to report something to police the response has been somewhat lacklustre.

To make matters worse, the remaining three pages of this rag contain nothing more than generic crime prevention tips and a list of crimes reported in the area last month that is so tiny it couldn't possibly reflect the true picture of local offending.

Here is the final insult - a four page insert crammed full of advertising! Frankly, I found the advertising to be the only worthwhile content in this dismal publication that was stuffed into my letterbox. Since the advertising is clearly paid for and since the newsletter contained no new material, just what exactly is money being raised for?

The guest speaker at their next meeting is from the Adelaide Youth Court. The subject is Juvenile Justice Family Conferencing. That news hints to me what I have long suspected - that Neighborhood Watch programs have become a tool for governments and justice officials to saturate the public mind with their own preferred crime control policies.

Those policies are the ones that work for them. Do they work for us?