Tale of two Northern guards dealing with fare evaders.

GatwickDepress said:

You're absolutely delusional.

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So what would suggest doing to tackle faredodgers, whether their under 21 or not? I've suggested some solutions, which I will add may not to be to everyones taste but the options are there.

NorthernSpirit said:

So what would suggest doing to tackle faredodgers, whether their under 21 or not? I've suggested some solutions, which I will add may not to be to everyones taste but the options are there.

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I could suggest an automated machine gun mounted above each exterior door that detects when a passenger doesn't have a valid ticket in their possession and shoots them stone dead. We could then bring back porters (play off that British Railways nostalgia) to carry the carcasses over to the buffet for use in their fresh BLTs. Cuts down on crime brings jobs to the economy. In particular troublespots we could string the bodies up from signal gantries as a deterrent, just like they hung pirates from the yardarm.

Just like your suggestion, that is totally unworkable and delusional. Your suggestion would put strain on and waste the time of an already crumbling justice and social care system, is open to a lot of abuse and manipulation, directly harms families and children for absolutely stupid reasons, and would likely violate rights legislature too - holding parents accountable for their children, sure. Sending them to prison because of the kid committing a (comparatively) minor crime of not paying a few quid to ride a train home? Would not fly. Above all, it's just ridiculous!

I would primarily change the culture surrounding 'fare-dodging'. Like Bletchleyite said, the term 'fare-dodging' can be problematic. To me, it suggests something quite harmless and fun, a bit of a jape. Even 'fare evasion' doesn't sound that serious. Changing it to 'travel fraud' would make it sound quite severe. Run targeted advertisement campaigns, ensure gatelines are manned at all times, hire more revenue officers to do random inspections on trains, maybe even have people from TOCs visiting schools to publicise the railway and discuss the ramifications of not paying for a fare. At the end of the day, if the opportunity is there then people will take it.

How about "do you have a mobile phone on you?". "Well phone your parents and tell them what time you will be home, and then I will confiscate the phone and you can have it back when someone pays for the ticket you haven't got. I will hand it in at your destination station and it can be collected as soon as someone pays what you owe."

They might suddenly find some cash in a pocket if they are likely to lose their phone. Although no doubt that is illegal these days .

trainophile said:

How about "do you have a mobile phone on you?". "Well phone your parents and tell them what time you will be home, and then I will confiscate the phone and you can have it back when someone pays for the ticket you haven't got. I will hand it in at your destination station and it can be collected as soon as someone pays what you owe."

They might suddenly find some cash in a pocket if they are likely to lose their phone. Although no doubt that is illegal these days .

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It is illegal.

MPotter said:

It is illegal.

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I think in the very old day (the Great War or 20s or 30s?) the conductor detained the dodger’s property to mortgage unpaid fees (usually a ring in the days) which is a popular story spread among in the public.

MPotter said:

It is illegal.

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Would it be illegal if it was a BTP officer?

trainophile said:

Would it be illegal if it was a BTP officer?

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Yes because he would have no legal power to seize your phone even in such circumstances. The same would apply to a HO Police officer.

Seems there's very little incentive for youngsters not to take a chance on travelling without buying a ticket then.

trainophile said:

Seems there's very little incentive for youngsters not to take a chance on travelling without buying a ticket then.

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Yet surprisingly very few try it. The very vast majority are perfectly pleasant law abiding folk going about their business, such as it is at their age, having paid the correct fare. Some try it on and we deal with them as our employer sees fit. Funnily enough that doesn't involve giving their parents sentences exceeding those for manslaughter.

trainophile said:

Seems there's very little incentive for youngsters not to take a chance on travelling without buying a ticket then.

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In the same way that there's little incentive in them paying for whatever they fancy in many shops?
Weirdly enough the vast majority of younger people do not need the threat of punishment in order to stick to the laws and pay their fares like decent human beings.

Qwerty133 said:

In the same way that there's little incentive in them paying for whatever they fancy in many shops?
Weirdly enough the vast majority of younger people do not need the threat of punishment in order to stick to the laws and pay their fares like decent human beings.

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But I think its fair to hypothesise that there will be a minority of repeat offenders who have worked out that not much will happen of they get caught, and for whatever reason don't feel a moral obligation to pay their fares if they can get away with it. Personally I feel that there should be some enforcement power to back up the requirement to purchase a ticket. I don't know what form that would take, but I'd think it reasonable if they were allowed to complete their journey but sent some kind of fine in the post.

I didn't really have any knowledge of how fare evading children were dealt with before reading this thread, and am quite surprised that it seems in most cases they aren't!

I suppose I risk being slightly hipocritical here, as when I was a child I regularly used to travel without a ticket from a station with no facilities on trains where a ticket inspector would only occasionally show up to a station which did have a ticket office complete with a constant queue. I usually exited via an unmanned exit (because it was closer to where I was going than any desire to avoid challenge, not that there ever was any anyway). At the time I felt no compulsion to waste time queuing up at a ticket office after already completing my journey when from my point of view the train company hadn't bothered to provide me with a means to pay - I always had the fare with me and was ready to pay should a ticket inspector come along though.

On one occasion while travelling from a different station I was stuck in an exceptionally long queue at the ticket office and was about to miss my train (despite having arrived about 15 minutes before the train). I think I was going into town to watch a film or something. I decided to get on the train anyway - if you could buy a ticket on the train from inspectors then how bad could it be, I reasoned. So on that journey an inspector did come round and I explained why I'd got on without a ticket, and he seemed not to accept my explanation, instead selling me a adult fare ticket from the station before where I got on which I guess was his way of giving me a penalty fare. I was quite confused about this but didn't say anything and when I got home later my mum thought it was most unreasonable.

Now perhaps the 'right' thing to do in these situations would have been to queue up at the ticket office to retrospectively purchase a ticket after every ticketless journey, and to miss my train (and therefore the film I was going to see with friends) in order to finish queueing up and buy my (no longer required) ticket. If I was aware of the actual rules covering train tickets (which I wasn't and don't think my parents were either), and there was defined enforcement in place to stop this behaviour I think I may have been more likely to queue up and buy tickets, or more likely I would have shunned trains for having a terrible customer experience and taken the bus more instead. I've gone on a bit of a ramble now and I suppose what I'm trying to say is that I think there should be enforcement options/penalties for children trying to fare evade, but there should also be much more of an effort to educate people about the rules AND keep an eye on making rail a convenient a pleasant mode of travel (which in my example would mean employing more ticket inspectors and having more counters at ticket offices).

NorthernSpirit said:

Kids these days think that can get away with doing things without repercussion, lets bin all this PC parenting and lets get back to basics - if the parents aren't responsible enough to look after their own child then the parents should be punished, whether its 10 years in the slammer or their child being removed from them and placed into foster care. It would be enough to make parents think and to actually act and behave as proper parents, just imagine the headline on the front of a national paper (complete with newspeak) stating "Faredodger parent caged over theft of unpaid £3 fare", "Parent fears losing faredodging child over theft of £5.50 fare". It would completely s*** the parents up as they would be publicly humiliated, which would also be another punishment.

It needs to be hammered into some parents that if their child (male for female) is found to be faredodging it should be treat as theft and that crime doesn't pay. As I've said earlier, rail staff are not babysitters and I'll also add that if someones child does wrong the guard is unable to chuck the troublesome child off (at lets say Ulleskelf) as the guard themselves would be b******ed if anything happened.

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Superb. This is incredibly silly. It is so silly as to almost be a parody of swivel eyed gammony kippers. Almost. Cheered me up no end.

Pretend you have children. You have beaten right and wrong into them like a good parent ( not like the chavvy scum obviously) but they still do something silly like nick a mars bar form the corner shop. Off to jail you go. Do you hold yourself to the same standard? Do you think that is proportionate?

I was brought up to know right from wrong ( without it having to be thrashed into me) but still did silly things as a kid. OBVIOUSLY ( and that has to be stated here) pinching stuff is wrong but I am sure lots of posters will admit to have lifted a mars bar from the corner shop or tried it on for a reduced fare on the bus or stayed in the swimming baths longer than your ticket allowed. That hardly requires the imprisonment of parents.

BTW what would have happened to my late father then I got a lift over the turnstile at the football? That deprived the club of 50p. Perhaps stoning would be appropriate. The turnstile operator was also complicit in that heinous crime. Would he get a tariff discount for turning Queens Evidence or would it be 20 years hard labour? He probably did it for loads of people and is clearly the criminal king pin in this operation. Perhaps execution would be the right response!

NorthernSpirit said:

I favour a stricter approach as with stricter parenting, kids are more disiplined and less likey to misbehave in general and are therefore less likely to faredodge when using public transport. Which in turn keeps rail staff happy, as their job can be stressful at the best of times without having to put up with the feral offspring of laxed parents who it seem to seek to normalise faredodging amongst their own kids. Rail staff are also not babysitters as some parents think.

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because, of course, in the good old days when parents could brutailse children by thrashing them with belts or sticks there was no crime whatsoever. None. None at all.

GreatAuk said:

Now perhaps the 'right' thing to do in these situations would have been to queue up at the ticket office to retrospectively purchase a ticket after every ticketless journey, and to miss my train (and therefore the film I was going to see with friends) in order to finish queueing up and buy my (no longer required) ticket. If I was aware of the actual rules covering train tickets (which I wasn't and don't think my parents were either), and there was defined enforcement in place to stop this behaviour I think I may have been more likely to queue up and buy tickets, or more likely I would have shunned trains for having a terrible customer experience and taken the bus more instead. I've gone on a bit of a ramble now and I suppose what I'm trying to say is that I think there should be enforcement options/penalties for children trying to fare evade, but there should also be much more of an effort to educate people about the rules AND keep an eye on making rail a convenient a pleasant mode of travel (which in my example would mean employing more ticket inspectors and having more counters at ticket offices).

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I've highlighted what I think is a very good point. Threatening parents with life sentences, or children with the belt isn't going to solve the problem because the problem is quite deeply embedded into elements of society, i.e. that evading fares is a victimless crime. What needs to happen is better education in schools, perhaps alongside children being taught why trespassing on lines is not a good idea, combined with a proactive campaign by DfT to promote the message to buy before boarding wherever possible. It won't change things overnight, but might help plant to notion more firmly in society's psyche over time, especially if such a campaign inferred that evasion might cost them the taxpayer in unnecessary subsidies (people do hate paying for things through taxation ).

In the meantime introduce franchise requirements for more revenue checks at stations, onboard etc with potential penalties for TOCs failing to meet minimum requirements, but more importantly work with them to promote smarter ticketing solutions & keeping these online & available. Most parents with school age children will have access to mobile technology, so there is no reason not to promote the use of mobile ticketing for youngsters traveller to and from school so that evasion is no longer such an issue.

MPotter said:

Yes because he would have no legal power to seize your phone even in such circumstances. The same would apply to a HO Police officer.

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To seize a phone they would need reason to believe an offence had been committed using it, e.g. suspected illegal material on it, in which case they could seize it as evidence for a prosecution of that offence.

It can't be seized as any kind of "deposit" against a completely unrelated offence.

LowLevel said:

Children (and even teenagers, at times grudgingly) require handling with care.
<snip>

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Some really wise words in your post there.

I often take a more agressive thought process though.
I pay my hard earned money for tickets all the time, yet if someone gets let off seemingly all the time then why should I pay? It's a difficult balance though and unless a constant presence from RPIs (or similar) is around, if people can get away with it, they will I suppose.

I often wonder why people get on the train assuming they can travel for free.
I understand at unmanned stations, you have to buy on the train, so fuels the same thought process for stations without barriers too. But "the people" seem okay with getting a free journey. Is that the same as eating a sandwich round the supermarket and not paying? Funny how one seems worse than the other (morally) but is more or less the same.

I quite like India's approach:
Make fares cheap, but penalties for no ticket huge... and followed through!

I'd also be interested to know how many people over a given time evade paying and how much that costs the railway, AND whether the amount would be really noticable.

bluenoxid said:

There has also been the incident where a woman was raped when she was not let on the last bus because she didn’t have enough money.

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It was a consequence of not having any money. I have little sympathy for people who are out but don't think about the last bus/train back, or whether they'll have enough money. Completely different if they were robbed but I'd have thought the majority of cases (of people not having enough money) are people not taking enough personal responsibilty, which then makes it hard when someone really needs genuine help.
On a half related note, I wonder how many 999 calls over Christmas have been genuine "I need an ambulence/fire/police" rather than "I'm too drunk to help myself" or "there's a seagull on my roof".

MPotter said:

trainophile said:

How about "do you have a mobile phone on you?". "Well phone your parents and tell them what time you will be home, and then I will confiscate the phone and you can have it back when someone pays for the ticket you haven't got.

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It is illegal.

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But if the phone was handed over, it's not like the Train Manager forced it from them. They (despite being told to) voluntarily gave their phone over.

whhistle said:

But if the phone was handed over, it's not like the Train Manager forced it from them. They (despite being told to) voluntarily gave their phone over.

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The law would disagree, as the child might believe that they had no choice in the matter or feared for their safety if they refused to do so. In such a case then a Judge could rule that the guard's actions amounted to theft. In any event if the guard does refuse to hand the phone back on request then they are guilty of theft. Two wrongs don't make a right.

Bottom Line is we have a Duty of Care (Rightly or Wrongly). No Guard should ever detrain a vulnerable person regardless of their age. The best we can do is attempt to take their details and fill out a report. Delaying a Train over a small fare will not go down well with our employers. HOWEVER if a person feels that an individual is in danger or at risk I would have no hesitation in delaying that train or offering assistance to the individual concerned. We are there for the safety of the passengers first and for-most after all.

Do Northern conductors receive the usual commission payment on ticket sales ?

Meole said:

Do Northern conductors receive the usual commission payment on ticket sales ?

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I believe they receive some commission, what that level is I'm unsure.
Sam

Bletchleyite said:

Mind you, so long as the prevailing attitude in adults is not "it's a fair cop, I'll pay the PF/parking fine and not do it again" but "how can I get away with this even though I am guilty", there's little hope for children of those adults to grow up as moral, law-abiding individuals. It's precisely this selfish attitude that's causing increased enforcement of just about everything these days. Parking is an excellent example - if people just parked considerately and correctly, these companies nobody likes would simply go away as there would be no way for them to be profitable. People bring them on themselves.

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I find the comments about parking enforcement in this thread to be quite interesting . Personally I dont think that all private parking enforcement is all that fair nor should it be respected . For example I had once been issued an invoice from a private parking company (some might call them tickets or fines I prefer to use proper legal terms) because I had overstayed by 5 minutes , this was whilst I was visiting a hospital when I was visiting a desperately ill relative who had deteriorated during my visit and I was anxious to stay as long as I could . Now my parents brought me up to challenge unfairness in situations such as that . And any children of mine will be brought up exactly the same . Not to just blindly follow rules set by supposed authorities .

Bletchleyite said:

I think I'd go a bit stricter than that. Some parents think it's enough to tell their child they should not steal - it isn't. They need to be involved in the process of "enforcing" that as well and not just leave it to the state to do so as far too many children do. So I do believe parents should carry at least some legal responsibility for the actions of their children - certainly more than is the case at present - though it would take some thought as to exactly what form that should take.

As in, in quite a lot of cases (though admittedly not all), the reason a child still commits crime X *as a child* is often because parents have not done enough to instill on the child that X is not OK and that there will be serious consequences of X.

To use an example of where this is the case, parents can be prosecuted if their children do not attend school - it's not adequate for them simply to say "you need to go to school" then ignore them. I'd extend this to far more areas too in order to catch out the parents who simply don't care. Making them legally responsible for a PF, fare+admin fee or Byelaw prosecution (maybe not a recordable RoRA) would seem reasonably proportionate to me.

Similarly, when a child is caught, say, vandalising a bus shelter, "I didn't know where they were" should not be adequate. You need to know if you can trust your child, or supervise them more until you know you can trust them.

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Personally I think that such enforcement action would only effect parents who generally do try their best but whose kids occasionally do get involved in the odd bit of mischief . I take myself as an example , my parents made sure I knew right from wrong and I was punished when I was caught doing wrong of course it helped when I was growing up that there was enough police to take naughty kids home and letters/phone calls from school did get answered/read . That didn't stop me engaging in various acts of mischief that went undetected and thus unpunished . I still grew up to be a well rounded individual who has worked every day since leaving college and contributed various amounts of time voluntarily to differing causes over the years , never been in trouble with the police or any other authorities . If my parents had been hit with full liability for a penalty fare the first time I had been caught fare evading I dont think that this would have been particularly fair given that I knew full well that It would have been wrong but my parents cannot control me every minute of every day either .

Those parents that simply do not care and dont try and instil any decent values in their kids wont care if they are to be held liable for their children's fare evasion ,if they dont work or have any tangible assets what sort of enforcement action are you really going to be able to take against them . You see it all the time with the fines for kids missing schools that you mentioned . You see it all the time with letters and phone calls from school being met with disinterest . Its these sorts of parents that generally raise kids who dont go on to contribute to society but to be frank if they dont care that their kids being expelled from school , being brought home by police officers and they are being fined for their kids not attending school what hope have you got of getting them to care about being made liable for a penalty fare ?

I knew of such people when I was at school , their parents ran up huge amounts of unsecured credit never paid it , engaged in low levels of criminality and never paid the fines . Unless you imprison these people which in many cases is simply not proportionate or possible with swelling prison populations they are largely beyond enforcement . Fortunately for society such people are a minority .

DarloRich said:

Superb. This is incredibly silly. It is so silly as to almost be a parody of swivel eyed gammony kippers. Almost. Cheered me up no end.

Pretend you have children. You have beaten right and wrong into them like a good parent ( not like the chavvy scum obviously) but they still do something silly like nick a mars bar form the corner shop. Off to jail you go. Do you hold yourself to the same standard? Do you think that is proportionate?

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I'd regard myself as not doing enough to prevent my own child from stepping out of line.

Some on here can see the gist at what I'm trying to get at, others don't.

DarloRich said:

BTW what would have happened to my late father then I got a lift over the turnstile at the football? That deprived the club of 50p. Perhaps stoning would be appropriate. The turnstile operator was also complicit in that heinous crime. Would he get a tariff discount for turning Queens Evidence or would it be 20 years hard labour? He probably did it for loads of people and is clearly the criminal king pin in this operation. Perhaps execution would be the right response!

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I'm not suggesting using a firing squad, what I'm suggesting is the parents of children who have been caught faredodging would have to cough up the unpaid fare and failure to do so would involve action such as imprisonment of the parents (something that the kid wouldn't want) or the child taken into care (something that the kid wouldn't want) - OK, it is drastic but as I've said before it would s*** them up and if it happened to a few people then more and more people wouldn't take the risk. It would send a serious message that faredodging / defrauding the railways /whatever you want to call it would not be tolerated and the risks are there if anyone is caught.

TOCs are already assessed on their ticketless travel and the vast majority of customers do pay for their tickets, there is always going to be the minority who will not pay. Enforcement action is very expensive for an unpaid £20 penalty fare. The TOCs do employ Fraud Officers however they are told to focus on high level fare evasion and fraud over more minor in comparison fare evasion. You'd be amazed the number of people from professional occupations who are caught fiddling. This is more worth their while, as they have a more realistic chance of recovering the money owed especially when said evader has a fraud criminal record hanging over them, they usually settle pretty quickly.

It would perhaps help change the attitude to fare evasion if rather than Grayling blaming staff wages and unions for fare rises, that the entire industry - staff, DfT, unions etc all blamed evasion and covering the losses suffered through fare evasion as the reason fares have to increase.
Of course, it may be counter-productive; you'll get the attitude from some "oh it's ok, everyone else will pay for me" but I think we'd start to see less of a public tolerance to it.

NorthernSpirit said:

I'm not suggesting using a firing squad, what I'm suggesting is the parents of children who have been caught faredodging would have to cough up the unpaid fare and failure to do so would involve action such as imprisonment of the parents (something that the kid wouldn't want) or the child taken into care (something that the kid wouldn't want) - OK, it is drastic but as I've said before it would s*** them up and if it happened to a few people then more and more people wouldn't take the risk. It would send a serious message that faredodging / defrauding the railways /whatever you want to call it would not be tolerated and the risks are there if anyone is caught.

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This is just pie in the sky nonsense given that its highly unlikely that the parents would get sent to prison even if it was themselves evading the fare . Why dont you actually put some effort into suggesting actual plausible solutions ?

Teachers can confiscate phones at school, I don't see why rail authorities can't do the same. If they issue some sort of receipt (written on a UFN to avoid having to carry yet more paper around) I don't see the problem. They still have the option of getting a parent to meet them at the station and hand over the relevant ticket money, although I appreciate even a quick transaction on the platform could impact on delay minutes. Wouldn't mind betting that in 9 out of 10 cases the child would miraculously find some money on his or her person, before it came to that.

trainophile said:

Teachers can confiscate phones at school, I don't see why rail authorities can't do the same. If they issue some sort of receipt (written on a UFN to avoid having to carry yet more paper around) I don't see the problem. They still have the option of getting a parent to meet them at the station and hand over the relevant ticket money, although I appreciate even a quick transaction on the platform could impact on delay minutes. Wouldn't mind betting that in 9 out of 10 cases the child would miraculously find some money on his or her person, before it came to that.

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Because the law says so. A receipt doesn't negate the fact that the conductor would have committed an offence under the Theft Act 1968, even if he had every intent on returning the phone back in exchange for money. Getting a parent to meet them at the station would be silly as every minute of delay costs £100.00. Isn't that sort of thing what a TIR is for? Failing that the guard could always report for summons or failing that call the Police. I don't see why a new option is needed personally. However if you are that concerned you are more than welcome to raise it in a letter or email to your local member of parliament.

On the other hand a teacher has the legal power to confiscate phones at school but would need to return the phone as soon as their power to retain it expires, this will most likely be at the end of the school day but might be longer.

muz379 said:

This is just pie in the sky nonsense given that its highly unlikely that the parents would get sent to prison even if it was themselves evading the fare . Why dont you actually put some effort into suggesting actual plausible solutions ?

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True. Not to mention the fact that even a short stint in prison costs far more than the average train fare and more than half of convicted prisoners reoffend within a year of their release.

In cases of fare evasion involving children I believe that the offender should be charged to court and that the court should award a community sentence at most. For lower level cases the court has the option of a fine or discharge. For cases which don't require a prosecution the conductor can still pass the offender's details onto their TOCs prosecutions department who could then offer the child the opportunity to pay a settlement instead of going to court. This is far better than the conductor taking the law into their own hands, potentially ending up with a criminal record themselves and causing their TOC a lot of embarrassment. Not to mention potentially losing their job. The law is best practice so it is best to just follow it.

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trainophile said:

Teachers can confiscate phones at school, I don't see why rail authorities can't do the same. If they issue some sort of receipt (written on a UFN to avoid having to carry yet more paper around) I don't see the problem. They still have the option of getting a parent to meet them at the station and hand over the relevant ticket money, although I appreciate even a quick transaction on the platform could impact on delay minutes. Wouldn't mind betting that in 9 out of 10 cases the child would miraculously find some money on his or her person, before it came to that.

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Yet more completely unworkable solutions

Teachers can confiscate phones , but in my experience when I was at school they often only did so until the end of the day when the child could collect them . Or in the case of repeat offenders the policy at my school was a parent could come in and collect the phone although I never saw this carried out . As a guard if I confiscate a childs phone and their parents are unable to meet them at the station it could then be hours before I return to my depot and can then deposit it for collection . The depot I work from could be miles from the child's home or school . And you are going to have to introduce infrastructure to log , store and provide for retrieval of confiscated property levied against unpaid fares at ever guards/rpi's depot. I would bet the that the cost of infrastructure for this would dwarf any increase in revenue from introducing this system .

And if the child is being cheeky enough to claim not having any money , what is to stop them claiming to have no mobile phone and then what provisions does the rail staff member have to prove otherwise ? What are we now going to have powers to search passengers for the purposes of levying against property for unpaid fares ? That is going to involve a whole new module of training and to be honest probably would not be wise to do unless there are more than one members of staff present . So now we need 2 revenue staff for the train , at a time when many operators are trying to remove the guarantee that there will be any .

As other rail staff have already pointed out , schoolkids are generally dealt with by way of monitoring and reporting if they become an issue . Then the company can aproach the school . I know on one line I have worked this was done at one point . A representative of the TOC contacted the school and pointed out the TOC could seek to ban the numerous pupils attending the school from travelling on the train . Things then improved , including for a period of time a member of staff from the school being sent to supervise the children at the station after school . If anything could be done to improve matters in this area TOC's could look at better ways of getting guards to report these instances and collect and display the reports . Outside of school hours patterns are again monitored and rpi/tso and btp resources directed as appropriate . Although generally my concern with children expecially older ones outside of school hours is generally that they engage in asb on trains and at stations particularly unstaffed ones .

muz379 said:

Yet more completely unworkable solutions

Teachers can confiscate phones , but in my experience when I was at school they often only did so until the end of the day when the child could collect them . Or in the case of repeat offenders the policy at my school was a parent could come in and collect the phone although I never saw this carried out . As a guard if I confiscate a childs phone and their parents are unable to meet them at the station it could then be hours before I return to my depot and can then deposit it for collection . The depot I work from could be miles from the child's home or school . And you are going to have to introduce infrastructure to log , store and provide for retrieval of confiscated property levied against unpaid fares at ever guards/rpi's depot. I would bet the that the cost of infrastructure for this would dwarf any increase in revenue from introducing this system .

And if the child is being cheeky enough to claim not having any money , what is to stop them claiming to have no mobile phone and then what provisions does the rail staff member have to prove otherwise ? What are we now going to have powers to search passengers for the purposes of levying against property for unpaid fares ? That is going to involve a whole new module of training and to be honest probably would not be wise to do unless there are more than one members of staff present . So now we need 2 revenue staff for the train , at a time when many operators are trying to remove the guarantee that there will be any .

As other rail staff have already pointed out , schoolkids are generally dealt with by way of monitoring and reporting if they become an issue . Then the company can aproach the school . I know on one line I have worked this was done at one point . A representative of the TOC contacted the school and pointed out the TOC could seek to ban the numerous pupils attending the school from travelling on the train . Things then improved , including for a period of time a member of staff from the school being sent to supervise the children at the station after school . If anything could be done to improve matters in this area TOC's could look at better ways of getting guards to report these instances and collect and display the reports . Outside of school hours patterns are again monitored and rpi/tso and btp resources directed as appropriate . Although generally my concern with children expecially older ones outside of school hours is generally that they engage in asb on trains and at stations particularly unstaffed ones .

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Not only that, there is no legal power to search a passenger for a mobile phone for the purpose of levying it against an unpaid fare. Not only could a guard be criminally charged with common assault for that, he would almost certainly lose his job and embarrass his TOC in the process. Furthermore the child may even use reasonable force to prevent himself being unlawfully searched and in addition to that any person with the child may use reasonable force to assist them in doing so. However there is no guarantee that any force used by other passengers would be reasonable. This could result in the guard being seriously injured or even killed. In such a scenario who is going to pay the financial cost to the guard's next of kin? Most likely the train operating company concerned would be liable. There's also the question of what happens to the proceeds of the sale of the phone if the child and their parents refuse to cough up the dough minus the fare. They would have to be returned to the child or their parents as the TOC would have no power to retain them. That would also be difficult to administer to say the least!