My morning opinion (Young Offenders - What Should The Law Do With Them?)

Member Name: fuzzybear

Product:	Young Offenders - What Should The Law Do With Them?
Date:	12/02/09 (139 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Benefits to individuals and society

Disadvantages: Costly to implement

There are lots of conflicting opinions about how to handle the problems of youth crime and young offenders, for me one of the key range of initiatives are those put in place to prevent young people offending in the first place, the sad thing is that there is no one initiative alone that can bring this about rather a range of measures are needed.

The first has to be to reduce childhood poverty something this present Government has made a focus but had limited success with, if you are poor and disaffected with society then you are more likely to break the laws of that society as you do not see them existing for your benefit but for others.

Second it is important that young people are kept in education for as long as possible and that the education is relevant to them, it is pointless teaching a student history if they can see no relevance in it to them, I'm not suggesting history is pointless as a subject just that the education offerred at should be relevant therefore the individual may benefit from an apprenticeship at the age of 14 rather than GCSE exams that they will fail.

Finally there needs to be a sentencing structure that actually provides a deterrent to anti social law breaking, where the punishment is such that it will incentivise people not to offend, plenty of studies exist that show how appropriate and consistent sentencing can affect behaviour.

Summary: The politics gets in the way