Don’t Incarcerate, Educate

Tomorrow the four children’s commissioners for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will be presenting a report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. The report concludes that although there has been progress made since the last UN review in 2002, there are areas that are worsening.

One of the most serious issues stated in the report is Youth Justice and how we tackle youth behaviour. With the Government announcing plans to automatically prosecute young people for carrying knives, young people from the age of 10 could see themselves charged in the category of ‘excluded offences’ which also include kidnap, arson, poisoning and causing death by dangerous driving. Are we in danger of painting a negative picture of the youth of today? Surely this will only makes things worse?

We have been criminalising and alienating our youth for too long, creating a vicious circle of re-offending and fear. This isn’t helped by the media discriminating against a whole generation for the crimes of a small minority of young people. How can we expect the attitudes that young people have towards each other to change, if we as a society do not change our attitudes towards young people? We are pushing our children to the edge when we should be helping them.

What we need is a more integrated approach, working with whole communities, offering young people support, interest and activity, rather than hostility and inconsistency. While measures to tackle such issues are always welcomed, we need to look at prevention and working with young people to stop them from offending in the first place.

We need to stop victimisation of our children by society, the media and especially in schools, where the biggest concern among young people is bullying. 

Children have the right to have their views respected and to have their best interests considered at all times. Let’s not forget all of those fantastic young people working to tackle issues that affect them day in, day out, as well as focusing on their education. Mentoring schemes like Beatbullying’s Peer mentoring model are proven to work at reducing conflict and violent behaviour, so why are these schemes not available in every school in the country? 

Education is the key to social change. We have the will to make that change, all it takes is a bit funding where it matters and in turn we can start to change the lives of the 11 million young people in the UK for the better.

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