Boot camp and National Service (Young Offenders - What Should The Law Do With Them?)

Member Name: January

Product:	Young Offenders - What Should The Law Do With Them?
Date:	22/01/05 (850 review reads)
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It’s hard not to have an opinion about what to do with young offenders, every now and then something shocking comes into the news and the crime has been committed by youngsters. It’s all to easy to blame the parents, the places where they live, the wrong crowd or any other scape goat that comes to mind.
When really as a society we should be tackling the problem head on and looking at why the young offend and try to change things.

There’s an old wives tale which goes:- “ The devil makes work for idle hands”.
I think this has a lot to do with the root of the crime rate from the youth of this county, take for instance the place where I live.
A little town which is in a small valley, two minutes drive any way out of the town and you’ll be in the country, I’m one of the lucky one’s and live in the country but have to go into town for shopping and meeting my friends for a drink. When I first came top live here it was a quiet town with a very low crime rate, hardly any robberies, mostly drunken brawls on a Saturday night which come down to either couples falling out or a window getting smashed.
All the youth from 10 years to around 15 hung around on the high street and everyone knows everyone else. A case of keeping your eyes out for other parents kids was the order of the day.
Nothing much happened and the kids were safe.

Now is a totally different scene.
The kids petitioned for a swimming pool as the next towns one got closed down, the council took no notice and spend thousands on upgrading the Library, as well as closing down the youth club due to lack of funding, so they said.
So the kids had no-where to go, summer came and the skateboards came out. The local community complained and the kids petitioned for a skateboard park to be built on the spare ground where the swings were, the local residents complained and the petition was thrown out, even though they had got together to raise half the funds to contribute, as well as having the sponsorship of some local businesses.

So the kids hung around the high street again with no-where to go.
What does the local council do?????
They get a curfew on the kids and the police hand out leaflets saying that if any youth is seen on the high street after nine o’clock they will be taken home, if this happens three times the parents may get prosecuted.
So the kids hang around in the underground bypass out of sight, where the junkies visit them and sell them speed and heroin. Violence in the town has risen and it’s the youth that have been left to their own devices. It breaks my heart to see kids I have know since they were five, high on drugs, with no hope of getting off.

This is happening all over the country, local councils are turning a blind eye to our youth.
It’s all well and good blaming the parents but kids can't be made to stay in, they want to go out with their mates, you can't lock them in, or smack them as you'll be the one in trouble breaking the law. So the kids lose respect for their elders and parents, take away a persons dreams and you’ll destroy their hopes and ambitions forever.
So I’m not saying we have to be lenient with the young offenders, anyone who commit’s a crime has to be punished. I’m saying it’s our responsibility to try and help prevent the crime happening in the first place.

I believe Boot Camps should be the order of the day for the young offenders, for six weeks then onto compulsory national service, teach them some respect and discipline so they think twice about re-offending and maybe they will turn out with a different attitude they had before they went in.

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