Concerns about knife crime amongst young people, unacceptable delays in the court system, prisons bursting at the seams and yet most reported crime goes unresolved.
The UK has areas of deprivation the likes of which have not been seen since the second world war. There are children and young people with little to do and very little hope or aspiration. How can we punish children for behaviour which is a direct result of the society into which they have been born?
There are now 3.9 million children being brought up in poverty – 2/3rds of whom have a parent in work. Children brought up in poverty are less likely to do well at school, more likely to have health problems, making a demand upon the NHS, and have a shorter life expectancy.
Many children who offend, commit their first offence whilst truanting from school. The educational system has failed them. Children should want to go to school and not have to be made to do so. Schools should encourage children to get involved in organised out of school activity.
Community Policing should be exactly that by re-instating neighbourhood police officers who can be around so that the children know him/her and (s)he knows most of the children by sight.
Many children go on offending sprees between apprehension for an offence and disposal through the courts which is why this period needs to be kept as short as possible and to a matter of days.
Group residential intervention, be it Young Offender Institutions or residential care (secure or otherwise) for young people has been shown to reinforce offending and establish a pattern of offending for life. “Creating Criminals”.
During my social work training my residential placement was in a Remand Home. When boys arrived the others would ask what they had done. Which would usually be greeted by “Oh, is that all”. The story would get progressively serious with each telling and most conversation be about crime. Even if children were rehabilitated the local community would expect them to behave as before and they would soon revert to past behaviour.
Stigma and labelling is responsible for a great deal of anti-social behaviour.
Policies of diversion and alternatives to custody need to be adequately resourced because of the risks involved and capable of fully occupying the child who has offended throughout their waking hours on activities which interest and motivate him/her, so (s)he grows out of his/her offending.
Community-based activities are very visible and, as such, can lead to criticism of rewarding bad behaviour. Society is quite happy to spend £130,000 per child per year on Young Offenders Institutions which is seen as punishment even though it does not work than a fraction of that cost on constructive intervention.
This is why it is important that some of the activity should involve face to face contact with people in need (such as the CSV Children in Care Programme of the 70s and 80s) to change the perception from delinquent to helper in both the young person’s own eyes and in those around them.
Involving young people in environmental projects will give them ownership. A group of children who regularly played football, damaging flower beds, were involved in the planting of those beds and made sure that in future balls kept clear of their plants.
Restorative Justice whereby the young person is brought face to face with their victim(s) to discuss the consequences of their behaviour can also bring about lasting change,
The danger is that Courts use their powers to prescribe community activity which is then less effective as the value is in the young person wanting to take part voluntarily.
For those young people who are beyond parental control and cannot be supported at home professional, or paid, foster carers have been shown to be effective.
Adolescence is a period of rapid physical and emotional change during which the young person is trying to establish an identity independent of their parents. It is a time when peer group support is essential but can be detrimental due to “egging on”, which is why parents often say their child has got into bad company – which all the parents of that group say.
If parents have not got a positive relationship with, and the respect of, their child when (s)he reaches adolescence it is too late: they cannot go back a relive the early years.
The early years are the formative ones when children learn right from wrong and form many of their values, prejudices, behaviours and motivations which will remain with them for life. This is why it is so important to invest in work with the under fives in the context of their families. Sadly, people working in early years work are grossly undervalued and underpaid given the enormity of responsibility they carry for the future of the human-race. Perhaps parents could be given more choice and the option of either subsidised child-care or extended maternity/paternity leave?
Although, not cheap, community-based intervention is cheaper than counter-productive secure residential accommodation and therefore there is money available to re-deploy to early intervention and preventative work with families, particularly those with children under five.
Widening income inequality and increasing poverty is the social evil of our time. Trickle-down economics and the privatisation of public services have created dozens of millionaires, and turned millionaires into billionaires, whilst the vast majority are worse off than they were before the 2009 banking crisis. Perhaps now is the time to legislate so that the lowest paid in any one organisation is paid an agreed percentage of the highest paid in that organisation – with the back stop of the minimum wage. There is a positive and significant relationship between directors’ pay and employees’ average wage in Japan. Given the global nature of many of the large corporations this would benefit from the backing of the United Nations.
Those at the top could still have their million-pound salaries provided they paid those on whose hard work they depend proportionately. This might also improve output and productivity. What must it do to the motivation of an employee of the National Grid, for example, turning out at all hours and in all weathers to restore electricity in the knowledge that his/ her Chief Executive is probably warm and dry with his £6.5m salary in the bank.
Recent surveys have shown that a majority believe the Utilities, NHS, Social Services and Education should be not for profit and managed by people who are motivated by providing the best possible service at the least possible cost and not by people motivated by profit or greed.
One cannot resolve whole system problems with component level solutions. Income inequality and poverty are the great social evils of our time and effect so much else as does badly structured and managed systems. The public sector needs radical reform, restructuring and cultural change based upon a whole systems review. It is how we use and distribute our resources which is the big issue.
* Chris Perry is a former Director of Social Services for South Glamorgan County Council, a former Director of Age Concern Hampshire, a former Non-Executive Director of the Winchester and Eastleigh Healthcare NHS Trust and a former presenter of an award-winning public affairs programme on Express FM.
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13 Comments
I always value Chris Perry’s contributions.
However, I have to add that (on the Coalition Lib Dem watch) back in 2014, then Justice Secretary Chris Grayling decided to privatise 70% of the probation service splitting it in two. New private ‘Community Rehabilitation Companies’ (CRCs) were to be tasked to supervise low to medium risk offenders, and the pre-existing National Probation Service would supervise high risk offenders.
Failing Grayling’s dogmatic plan clearly failed……. and a later Tory government had to put the whole service back under public control in 2020. However, the probation service is still suffering from chronic understaffing (28% below strength) and this clearly affects its capability and effectiveness.
One hopes lessons have been learned should there ever be future Lib Dem participation in Coalition government.
‘The UK has areas of deprivation the likes of which have not been seen since the second world war’……
Simply not the case ….Having grown up in the 40s & 50’s – I can categorically assure that the poverty around when I was growing up cannot be compared to today – it’s like myself comparing my parents upbringing in grinding poverty in the 30’s was comparable with my own ….
As for crime – I didn’t and neither did my parents go wandering around with a knife looking to stab somebody…The author needs to read Lord Sewell’s report – being a teacher who spent 30 years teaching in London’s toughest schools it was very difficult to argue against his conclusions… Lord Sewell pointed out as have so many studies that child’s best chance in life is having both parents in the home giving a stable upbringing – it’s why Asian children do so well in school – disciplined
educational & work ethic ..
I haven’t met a single teenager yet that doesn’t own a smartphone – those youths that descended on Oxford street for a mass shoplift via a tik tok video – were obviously not suffering from depravation….
@Martin Gray
This sounds a bit too close to bell curve theory argument that I heard from people who try and defend keeping “the traditional, heterosexual nuclear famkily” as a guise on that. Families are diverse these days. I work in Children’s services and quite frankly too many children are in desperate need of just a stable environmental no matter it be a single unit, mum and dad, dad and dad, mum and mum etc.
And I can tell you that my half brother sister and and half brother’s experiences, they did not feel they were in a better home environment where their dad was abusive to my mum, an alcoholic, gambled money and left the family impoverished.
I’m a great believer of it takes a village to raise a child and it’s not about the family makeup but support networks. It can come from community, support groups, extended families, government (I.e. Sure Centres) etc.
@Martin Gray
And finally, I volunteer in my spare time at a local food bank. I’ve meet people who have gone days without food, have to decide living with empty belly’s or have the heating on. And one volunteer was telling me a story of one their service user’s children had to be omitted into hospital for rickets! Rickets in this day of age. So I do think the assessment is a it more complicated than that.
Andy…..Thats all well and good – but Lord Sewell’s report reiterates what the vast amount of statistics/data over a significant number of years has shown…No doubt it made uncomfortable reading for some liberals – but being a teacher in London’s toughest Schools for 30 years his report carried significant weight …Maybe some progressives were expecting something different – but the sheer weight of evidence is all there to see …
It is beyond question that prevention is better, and cheaper, than cure. If we get that and start looking after our young families now it can be productive relatively quickly. Ten to twenty years of steady reduction in offending that would start immediately.
Born and raised in a deprived area of North London during the forties and fifties, then living in Rotherham, Bradford, Liverpool and Wigan I can assure Chris that poverty and deprivation were far worse than today. However he is right to highlight the problems that exist NOW.
Regarding the Criminal Justice system, I have worked in the Courts, was a Prison Service manager in the Prison Service, then as a Youth Offending Service and now with the Social Services Emergency Duty Services. It is all relative and things are not good, however think back to the early 70’s Prisons were far more overcrowded, three in cell, slopping out, stench, there is much that has changed for the better. The overcrowding now is at a a much lower level than it was, there are in fact 700 cells still vacant in the system. The stories my father brought home about his role as a Housing Inspector in the forties, fifties and sixties and the deprivation he met in Poplar and Islington would stand peoples hair on end now.
Yes let us improve things from where they are but please it is nowhere as bad as it used to be.
There is a high correlation between poverty – measured by registration for free school meals – and exam results at 16. The reason for choosing these measures is that they are published for all areas and nationally. As a starter I suggest we need to work towards ending family poverty.
Where should the resources come from? I suggest making sure that the sort of corruption we have seen discussed recently is ended, and money is taken from those found guilty. There are of course many other ways of finding resources like ensuring houses are available for those who need them.
As pointed out , family is the most important driver of outcomes. Sadly too many on the left refuse to look at the evidence and confront hard truths.
@Thelma Davies
Are you implying there should be no help for poor families who struggle to afford the basics for their children – food on table, clothes on back etc.? And never mind the issue of better off parents being able to afford all the extras – sorts, clubs etc. for their children?
Is the child responsible for its parents?
@Nonconform. I’m stating that it’s my responsibility & my husband’s that my children were toilet trained & had basic reading and writing skills prior to starting school , that they have good dental hygiene, that they are fit & healthy enough to participate in school sports, that they are well behaved and attentive in class . These are basic parental responsibilities, not the states. You equate responsibility to earnings , none of the above has to do with costs. Me and my husband struggled but budgeted accordingly every week.
As previous, a child’s best outcome is a strong family unit . That’s why Ugandan Asians have done so incredibly well when arriving in the UK with next to nothing . It’s the best route out of poverty.
@Thelma Davies
I don’t have a problem with your views on parental responsibility.
But what do you think should be done about children whose parents are irresponsible ones? It isn’t the child’s fault that they have irresponsible parents. Does society just abandon such children?
@Nonconform. Sure start were making good progress in healthy eating & dental hygiene.
Sadly, well over 300 were closed during the coalition years. Let’s hope something similar is brought back under labour.