If anyone had any doubts about the effectiveness or otherwise of ‘community punishments’, especially for young criminals, then the widely publicised report of the 16 year old thief who, as part of his ‘Intensive Supervision and Surveillance Program’, was ordered to write a letter to his victim supposedly in apology for his actions, should clarify matters.
His letter as it turned out was anything but, you can read the text here.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8910227/Burglar-calls-victims-dumb-in-letter.html
Now according to the Ministry of Justice the program this habitual criminal was on is “the most rigorous non-custodial intervention available for young offenders”.
Well clearly it doesn’t work – it hasn’t rehabilitated him, made him sorry for his criminality or deterred him from offending in the future.
Youth crime, such as that reported in the media concerning a 14 year old boy involved in a street robbery which resulted in the death of a 79 year old woman, will not be curbed by ‘programs’ which young criminals have neither fear nor respect for.
It’s a sad truth however that we will not see any change in what has become an article of faith, that young criminals are victims of society, needing help not punishment, and that the concept of teaching children, from an early age, the difference between right and wrong, and enforcing that concept, is out-dated.
We have, as my grandmother would have said, made a rod for our own backs
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