There’s been a really unpleasant murder here in the UK, London to be precise. Happy slapping as it’s become known is a craze amongst some young people involving running up behind strangers, slapping them around the back and filming the whole incident on a mobile (cell) phone. However, this one went far too far with a gang of youngsters killing a guy on London’s south bank and attacking 7 or 8 other people – and filming it all.

Sadly, it looks as if this was all too predictable in the light of what we know about drugs and alcohol use and people who go on to kill. One of the young perpetrators, a teenaged girl, had a history of family drug use – according to newspapers she had to watch her mum inject heroin when she was tiny. She was abandoned at age 3, ended up in care and so on. She went out on slapping expeditions from her care home. We know that people with her kind of history are at a greater risk of problematic drug and alcohol use themselves too and lo and behold the tabloids have been quick to pick up on her cannabis use. She seems to have had, according to the judge a chaotic and fragmented emotional life.

Much of the literature on drug-related deaths – suicides and murders as well as accident or illness suggests that some people who kill and use drugs or alcohol often show indicators like this girl’s in earlier life – which if there is effective intervention can be helped and thus reduce the risk to self or others.

Now I’m not saying she shouldn’t go to jail – her diaries and phone records show that she at least had an idea that what she was doing was wrong. However, the reality of it seems to be that our inability to intervene effectively and early with high risk youngsters can result in this kind of tragedy. One man’s life taken away and a young girl’s brought to a halt.