(no subject)

[andrewducker]

The Guardian has a reprint of a press release to do with children and crime. Backs up some of what I was saying recently and calls for changes in the way that crime is approached.

Five children's charities, including the Children's Society, together with the crime reduction charity Nacro have launched a project called Shape to reshape the public debate about young offenders. In particular, we want to encourage alternatives to custody.

Out intention is not to be soft on crime. But a rational debate about young offenders must take account of the hard reality of children and young people's lives.

Children and young people are increasingly victims of crime yet as a society we focus on the small minority who are perpetrators. The fear of youth crime has never been greater yet only 2 % of young people are cautioned or convicted each year.

The UK has one of the lowest ages of criminal responsibility in Europe. At 10 a child is held to be as accountable in court as an adult. As a result, the number of young people in custody has risen dramatically in the past decade.

About 7,000 under-18s were in custody last year, according to the Home Office. Yet more than 88% of children who receive a custodial sentence re-offend within two years, indicating that locking children up does not work.

The members of Shape believe that children should never be locked up. If it is necessary to detain them, they should always be in small units close to their homes, where they can maintain links with their families.

However, we welcome initiatives by the youth justice board, which advises the government on tackling young offending, to provide community-based alternatives to custody.

But we need to go beyond that and question whether the criminal justice system is the best way of handling children and young people who are deeply troubled, at risk of abuse and neglect, and living in poverty.

Comments

[nickys.livejournal.com]

I think the priorities should be :
First protect the victims, then rehabilitate the offender.

Sometimes there's a contradiction between these because it is often more effective to rehabilitate someone if they remain at home in contact with friends and family, but if, for example, they have attacked a person who lives in the same area then the victim's right to feel safe should over-ride the offender's need for social support.

As to removing kids from their families - if the cause of their offending is a dysfunctional family or abuse then it could be a good idea, although we definitely need better screening of social workers and youth custody people to get rid of the pedophiles who exploit the situation.

Playing devil's advocate

[wolflady26.livejournal.com]

I agree with you, but I'm not sure it's as simple as it seems. Because if most offenders who are locked up re-offend within two years, doesn't that mean that by jailing a child, you are actually putting another future victim at risk?

[nickys.livejournal.com]

Well, at the moment unfortunately custody is just locking people up and ignoring them, which is why the reoffending rate is so high.

There have been schemes to use time in prison for re-education and rehabilitation of offenders, and they work pretty well.
Taking a child away from an enviroment in which their anti-social behaviour is accepted or reinforced and putting them in one where they are encouraged to change could be a good thing, if it were done properly.

Re: Playing devil's advocate

[allorin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, locking people up and forgettign about them doesn't work. I mean, look at Australians.

Sorry, couldn't resist. ;+)

[allorin.livejournal.com]

I think there comes a point where you stop learning and developing as a person rapidly. This slows to a crawl, where the changes you experience as a person are subtle compared to those you experience as your personality forms.

This point comes way after the age of 18. At that age, kids ('cos they are kids) are still forming, developing, changing. While some of them may be irredeemable, a lot of them would benefit from a system that doesn't stigmatise them, but tries to rehabilitate them.

As you know, Andy, through reading my journal, my credo is 'Respect yourself, and respect others'. A lot of these kids dont' have that, but they should be taught it, and why it's necessary, and why it's a good thing. How much respect for themselves will kids gain if they are locked up and forgotten about, effectively told they will amount to no good?

Some, though, will never change. Some people are just bad. Fact of life.

Additionally, people reach a point where they won't change. Where, once bad, they stay bad. That's where the rehabiliation argument falls down. Maybe these people are failed by society, maybe more should be done for them when they are younger. However, fact is, we all have choice. If adults choose to harm others, and won't reform, then I see no harm in locking them up out of harm's way. It has to be a two way thing. They have to want to reform.

[andrewducker]

Oh absolutely. When you get to the actual psychopaths who cannot actually empathise with other human beings then yes, you need to lock them up somewhere nice and safe where they can't hurt anyone else.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I think most such people can be identified fairly easily with psych tests, I know that it is actually shockingly easy to identify sociopaths. What we need (in general, not just for kids, but especially for kids) is when someone is arrested, to do some basic tests and if they seem to be a sociopath or something similar do additional test to check this and then look into humane but highly restricted living situations for such people.

For everyone else, the focus should definitely be on reform. One program that has been used on a few occasions in the US (mostly decades ago because right-wingers see it as being "soft on crime") is to relocate people. With minors, this would be fairly easy, place them in good foster care in a location far from where they currently live, to get them away from the problems they previously faced.