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During the week beginning 19th May 2008, a very disappointing
news story is running. It seems as if increased spending and several
initiatives designed to reduce teenage offending, have failed. A study
by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King’s College
London claims to show that despite spending of nearly £3 billion
(yes, that’s £3000,000,000) by government and police agencies, there has
been an INCREASE in the level of youth crime.
In effect, the various initiatives have and are failing. For example:
·
new laws haven’t worked. In London, there were 100 stabbings this year
and 39 teenage murders in London alone since January last year.
·
the Youth Justice Board reports that cases of violence by young people,
ranging from common assault to murder, are up 39% over three years. Some
56,000 violent incidents involving teenagers were recorded in 2006-2007,
up from 40,000 in 2003-2004.
·
sending youngsters to young offenders’ institutions isn’t working.
·
anti-social behaviour orders aren’t working with fewer being issued and
about 60% of teenages breaking them.
·
whatever number we see for youth crime should be increased because
children under 16 years old are not included in the British Crime
Survey.
It’s not lack of understanding
Some social commentators and politicians use these data as a political
tool, saying that the government doesn’t really understand the problem
and consequently cannot can’t solve it.
This kind of accusation is not totally accurate. Most people, including
politicians know (and have known for years) what the causes are. We know
that when children are:
·
brutalised at home (through physical, sexual or verbal abuse) the chance
of growing up angry and violent is increased
·
exposed to the worst examples of behaviour by their parents and other
adults, and indeed, taught that theft, drunkenness and violence are
acpetable ways to behave, that’s what they’ll likely do
·
desensitised to human pain and suffering by some television programes
and video games, they can’t understand the pain they are causing others
·
not punished severely and taught there are serious painful consequences
for them, there is nothing to prevent them behaving as they have been
conditioned.
Knowing these reasons, we know what steps to take – but they will be
unpopular and remain unpopular until more and more children die and the
pendulum swings.
Values education – a longer term solution
What politicians and society in general is struggling with, is how to
get teenagers to NOT WANT to physically hurt others. We want people to
want to behave well. We can use punishment in the short term but we
don’t want to have to keep doing it. That’s where values education comes
in.
Values education, with it’s non-lecturing, non-accusing method of
getting people to reflect on their behaviours, will over time, penetrate
to the humanity that has been covered up (calcified) in so called
“thugs”. Unfortunately, with teenages who have been so conditioned, it
will take considerable time.
We still have to give this more thought to this, but values education
with teenagers who have been desensitised to violence will have to
involve an element of
·
meetings with victims and seeing and feeling the pain caused
·
hypnotherapy to penetrate to, and erase, the subconsious pain stored in
their minds and body from seeing and hearing the terrible things.
Two additional suggestions.
·
We should stop using that stupid phrase “war on teenage crime”.
You cannot make war on an abstract thing called crime, you can only make
war on people. We don’t want to make war – with it’s connotations of
extreme violence – on our children.
·
Stop using surveys which ask young people if they have taken part in
crime and how many crimes they have committed. There is no way of
checking the truth of the claims and the numbers are unlikely to be
inaccurate and therefore give a worse picture than reality.
Copyright © 2008 Dr William Robb
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