Point of no return (Young Offenders - What Should The Law Do With Them?)

Member Name: janesargeant

Product:	Young Offenders - What Should The Law Do With Them?
Date:	21/09/04 (639 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: New look to the future, teach respect, reduce crime

Disadvantages: lack of goverment funding, No hope in our lifetime, a rise in crime

When I moved onto a council estate I was completely shocked to see children as young as five committing crimes such as smashing windows and vandalism. Shocking more was to see an eight-year-old youth driving around the streets on a stolen motorbike with his parents watching and cheering him on. Makes you wonder what drives these kids to crime in the first place when you see parents allowing there1 ½ year olds to wonder the streets in soaking wet soiled nappies but then this is how many of them have been raised so, I suppose it seems normal.
On the other hand I have seen many parents, on the estate I live on, climbing the walls with fear not knowing where their children are. Or in complete desperate states when the police have yet again brought their child home for one reason or another. These parents have tried everything in their power to stop their kids going too far and often nothing works.
So what should we do with young offenders?
Well don’t ask me I truly believe that our country is a lost cause when it comes to punishing young offenders. I have spoken to many young offenders on the estate I live on and come to the conclusion that they commit crimes mainly because they are bored and everyone else is doing it. I asked them also if they were frightened of being caught and they didn’t care. Yo Hotel they called the young offenders institutes, seeing it as a holiday camp rather than a place for realising what your in there for in the first place.
I really think that the first step would be for the government and local councils to provide activities and things for these kids to do. I don’t just mean youth clubs and skate parks I mean proper things to do. They might want to start by finding out what these kids like and using these things to create activities and venues of interest. If the local council can afford new buildings and equipment for them selves then I’m sure they can provide something for the local community. Then the government’s excuse is that the running of these things costs too much money and not worth spending money on. Many parents on the estate where I live have said they would volunteer to run these things if it helped stop their children committing crimes. Giving them more things of interest to do occupies their minds.
I do think that parents should be investigated when their children become young offenders in order to offer appropriate measures to possibly help if the problem lies at home or outside it if the case may be.
I do like the idea of creating young offenders strict boot camps for those that re-offend, in order to apply discipline that most obviously lack in. They would also have to earn possessions and lose possessions if they do wrong while in there. Any contact to the outside world would have to be earned and again lost as punishment. Everything they do would be done on command and nothing would be done in a leisurely fashion. They would, however have some free time everyday to socialise as long as they have earned it. This may sound a bit harsh but harsh may be what these young offenders need. The punishment they receive for committing crimes should be punishment enough for them to not want to go back and commit more crimes and also realise the wrong in what they did in the first place.

So we could concentrate on the punishment that these offenders receive, we could also look into their family backgrounds and offer support, and help to these families in order to take a step forward, and offer help and advise in areas where they need it. Or we could even get our heads together as a country and create activities and venues of interest to help occupy and teach respect to these children.
But no! Often the government refuses to spend money on such schemes and so we are back to square one. I guess the government don’t realise that our children of today are tomorrow’s adults, tomorrow’s future. And do we really want to see one of these young offenders running our country?

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