INQUEST has been working to identify trends and issues emerging from the issue of deaths of children and young people in custody since 1990. We have also been concerned with the effectiveness of the state’s investigative processes for identifying and rectifying dangerous practices and procedures in order to ensure that lessons are learned and further fatalities prevented. We have worked on many child death cases, produced numerous documents on the issue and published a detailed analysis in the book In the Care of the State? Child deaths in Penal Custody in England and Wales by Barry Goldson and Deborah Coles (INQUEST 2005). It concluded that children should not be imprisoned save for in child-centred Local Authority Secure Children’s Homes.
Since January 2000 126 young people aged 18-21 and children aged 14-17 have died whilst in state custody in prisons, immigration detention centres and secure training centres. 113 of those young people took their own lives, and two died as the result of homicides by other prisoners. This figure includes 12 self-inflicted deaths of children in custody.
Our monitoring of the investigation and inquest process following the deaths of children and young people has revealed consistent and repeated features, illustrating that systemic failings are not being addressed but continue to be reproduced by the practices and processes of child imprisonment. The starting point is the very high levels of children being sentenced or remanded to custody (often at great distances from home) with no consideration by the court as to where the child will be detained. This is resulting in children who are often extremely vulnerable being sent to institutions which do not have the resources, facilities or trained staff to deal with their needs.
Increasing numbers of children and demonstrably vulnerable young people are being detained in manifestly unsafe environments and being subjected to bullying, degrading treatment such as strip-searching, segregation and restraint. This amounts to a failure by the state to fulfil its duty of care towards children in its custody and additionally is a significant and substantial breach of the UK’s international treaty obligations. However, the violation of the rights of this large body of children goes worryingly beyond inhumane and humiliating treatment. It has been proven forensically that it presents a persistent risk of injury, suffering or death to young people detained in child prisons.
The campaign for a public inquiry into the death of 16 year old Joseph Scholes in HMYOI Stoke Heath in 2002 received strong parliamentary support and galvanised both the public and NGOs. Our work on this campaign drew national and international attention to the high number of children and young people dying in the hands of the state. INQUEST also has particular concerns about the high levels of restraint used on children in custody. We produced case briefings on the restraint-related deaths in 2004 of 14 year old Adam Rickwood, who took his own life in Hassockfield Secure Training Centre shortly after being restrained by staff, and of 15 year old Gareth Myatt who was killed in Rainsbrook Secure Training Centre after being asphyxiated by three custody officers who restrained him after an incident following his refusal to clean a toaster. Our work with the families and their legal team was critical in exposing the dangerous and unlawful use of restraint. In 2007, we also campaigned successfully with the NSPCC and the Child Rights Alliance for England to end the use of pain compliance restraint techniques against children in custody.
Most recently an inquest concluded into the death of 15 year old Liam McManus who was found hanging in his cell in Lancaster Farms Young Offender Institution in 2007, the thirtieth child to die in state custody since 1990. The jury returned a six-page narrative verdict which criticised the YOI, social services and the Youth Justice Board's systemic failings of a seriously damaged young boy. It is deeply shocking that such failings across several agencies responsible for Liam's care were highlighted once again, despite all the previous inquests into deaths of children.
What the inquests held into the deaths of children and young people have uncovered is that the juvenile justice system needs urgent and profound public scrutiny, investigation and review, significantly wider in scope than the inquest process permits. It is essential for there to be a properly-resourced, transparent and critical analysis of the defects of the custodial treatment of children and young people in the form of a public inquiry in order to ensure that the deaths of the children of the families who we support are not to be entirely in vain.
Deborah Coles,
Co-Director
INQUEST
Showing posts with label demonising young people. Show all posts
Showing posts with label demonising young people. Show all posts
Friday, 5 March 2010
Wednesday, 3 March 2010
Tainted by the James Bulger legacy
Why does the horrific murder of a Merseyside toddler by two young boys in 1993 still have such a lasting effect on the way we demonise and stereotype disturbed children?
Helen McNutt
The Guardian
Wednesday 3 March 2010
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/mar/03/james-bulger-legacy-disturbed-children
Nasty little juveniles. Hooligans. Freaks. Bastards. Worthless. Evil. Those are just a few of the words used by our politicians and media to describe some of the country's children. It could be now, but this was in 1993, the year that two-year-old James Bulger was murdered on Merseyside by two 10-year-old boys.
I grew up with what headlines described as "hooligans on holiday". In 1985, my parents set up Bryn Melyn, a home in north Wales to look after some of the most disturbed teenagers in the country. They included children who'd slice themselves open to push paper clips underneath their own skin; a girl who inserted shards of a smashed lightbulb inside her vagina; a boy whose guardians – his grandparents – would hold his hands in the fire to punish him; and a pubescent girl whose parents would drag her out of bed when they got back from the pub so their friends could have sex with her.
The "holiday" bit referred to the intensive one-to-one trips abroad my dad designed to kick-start their rehabilitation. These trips were incredibly successful. Before we sent the first boy away, he had regularly assaulted the staff and other teenagers. After returning from a three-month trip to France, he went to work with Alzheimer's patients. A short spell in prison – this boy's only other option – has a failure rate for young men of about 90%.
As part of my research for a book I am writing about Bryn Melyn, I've studied the newspaper coverage of 1993 to trace the path between the horrific Bulger murder and the way we view young people today.
When the death of James hit the papers, the Daily Star offered a £20,000 reward "to trap beasts who killed little James". The Guardian reported a "lynch mob" outside the home of a wrongly arrested 12-year-old suspect. In the Sun, Richard Littlejohn screeched: "This is no time for calm. It is a time for rage, for blood-boiling anger, for furious venting of spleen." Headlines such as "Evil that makes a child kill", "Locked up in luxury", "Riot mob fears at Jamie court" dominated the newspapers.
It was also the perfect opportunity for the Tories to reassert themselves as the party of law and order. Three days after James's body was found, the then prime minister, John Major, gave an interview to the Mail on Sunday, highlighting his tough stance on crime. He said: "Society needs to condemn a little more and understand a little less." Five days later, his home secretary, Kenneth Clarke, announced plans to incarcerate children as young as 12. When it came to the two boys charged with the Bulger murder, the policeman in charge of the case, Detective Superintendent Albert Kirby, asked us "to remember that they are 10 years of age". But the law didn't. Jon Venables and Robert Thompson were tried as adults.
"How do you feel now, you little bastards?" asked the Daily Star's front page on the day of the sentence. "Evil, brutal and cunning," said the Mail. The Mirror went for "Freaks of nature".
Despite the sensationalist, fear-mongering coverage of the Bulger case, my father was still taken by surprise when he first went on television to talk about his work. "When the producers of Eamonn Holmes's chat show invited me along to 'put across my side of the story', I naively believed them," he says. "I walked into the studios just before the programme went live. As it did, a huge 'Hooligans on Holiday' banner unrolled behind me. Then three women in the audience stood up with pictures of their dead children, who'd been killed by joyriders. Our kids had never killed anyone, and many hadn't even offended, but the producers were quite happy to confuse joyriders, murderers, young offenders and children in care.
"Throughout the negative press attention, social services knew the trips worked, and continued to place children with us. But the kids themselves were very upset and angry. They felt they were being verbally abused by the whole country."
In response to a Sun campaign, Michael Howard, who had become home secretary, (illegally) extended the sentences imposed on Venables and Thompson from 10 years to 15 years. And in response to the media furore surrounding Bryn Melyn, Howard also banned therapeutic trips abroad for children in care.
Recent media attention has turned to Edlington, South Yorkshire, where two brothers, aged 10 and 11, brutally burnt, stabbed and sexually assaulted two boys, aged nine and 11. This incident has the same ingredients as the Bulger case: the horrific attack, the disastrous parenting, the boys' escalating violence, and the failure of the relevant authorities to do anything about it.
It is a simple cause and effect; incidents like these don't just happen. But instead of tackling this problem rationally, we defer to hysteria and hollow accusations that solve nothing and protect no one.
These days, we have Facebook pages and YouTube video montages dedicated to James Bulger, created by people who, apparently, never even met him. Nobody will say that these are mawkish, sentimental and ultimately extremely damaging in their creation of monstrous, unsubstantiated fears about young people. Nobody will say to Denise Fergus, the mother of James Bulger, that it has got nothing to do with her swhen she demands that the Edlington boys be named. Nobody seems bothered that the media has casually dubbed the Edlington boys the "devil brothers" or "hell boys".
But amid this fresh wave of moral panic, there is a glint of optimism. A new documentary by Spirit Level Films, The Fear Factory, was launched in London on Monday, and attempts to untangle the perceptions we have about our "dangerous" young people. Increasingly frustrated with the perpetuation of stereotypes and the way young people are treated in care, the criminal justice system, and even schools, three organisations – Safer Wales Ltd, Construction Youth Trust and Addaction – commissioned the film, which includes interviews with politicians, heads of charities and teenagers. "We want the film to be a wake-up call to politicians, colleagues who work in this field, and to the media," says Barbara Natasegara, chief executive of Safer Wales.
A failure to intervene with a holistic approach early in the lives of young people at risk of offending has had stark consequences. We spend 11 times more on locking children up than on preventing youth crime. About 75% of young people leaving custody will reoffend, and 27% of adult prisoners have been in care. Reoffending by these former children in care costs about £3bn a year.
As a result of The Fear Factory, more than 40 charities have now formed a coalition to lobby the government to put a stop to our relentless demonisation of young people.
Seventeen years on, it still sickens me to remember the parents of the children in Bryn Melyn who gave newspaper interviews complaining that the way my father was treating their children was a waste of time, that what he was doing was wrong.Helen McNutt
The Guardian
Wednesday 3 March 2010
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/mar/03/james-bulger-legacy-disturbed-children
Friday, 26 February 2010
Young People’s Participation in the Youth Justice System
Young offenders have the same right to have their views taken into account as other children and young people. However a new NCB report, Young People’s Participation in the Youth Justice System, has found that there are a number of barriers to participative approaches in youth justice services, despite evidence that young offenders who have a say in decisions that affect them are more likely to have better outcomes overall.
The report suggests that negative public perceptions of young offenders have resulted in political ambivalence as to whether young offenders ‘deserve’ a say, while staff culture and commitment and a lack of training on participative approaches can further hinder meaningful contributions by young people in their own assessments. Furthermore young offenders have low expectations about their ability to influence the plans that are made for them, despite welcoming the opportunity to have more say.
While some local services have developed their own initiatives to consult young offenders on issues that affect them, the report recommends that the Youth Justice Board lead the process by developing a participation strategy covering all aspects of the youth justice system. It is imperative that such a strategy establish mechanisms that will support the development of a culture of participation throughout youth justice services. In responding to the report, Frances Done, chair of the Board, has stated that the Board will consider its approach to participation and regard the development of a participation strategy as a high priority.
We know from evidence and experience that outcomes are more likely to be positive when young people have been active partners in shaping the services they receive. The approach to involving young people within the youth justice system in their own assessment and case management should also be reviewed, in partnership with young people. Developing a comprehensive participation strategy covering both individual and more general aspects of youth justice services could greatly improve outcomes for young offenders and enhance the job satisfaction of staff working with them.
Diane Hart
Principle Officer
Youth Justice and Welfare
National Children's Bureau
The report suggests that negative public perceptions of young offenders have resulted in political ambivalence as to whether young offenders ‘deserve’ a say, while staff culture and commitment and a lack of training on participative approaches can further hinder meaningful contributions by young people in their own assessments. Furthermore young offenders have low expectations about their ability to influence the plans that are made for them, despite welcoming the opportunity to have more say.
While some local services have developed their own initiatives to consult young offenders on issues that affect them, the report recommends that the Youth Justice Board lead the process by developing a participation strategy covering all aspects of the youth justice system. It is imperative that such a strategy establish mechanisms that will support the development of a culture of participation throughout youth justice services. In responding to the report, Frances Done, chair of the Board, has stated that the Board will consider its approach to participation and regard the development of a participation strategy as a high priority.
We know from evidence and experience that outcomes are more likely to be positive when young people have been active partners in shaping the services they receive. The approach to involving young people within the youth justice system in their own assessment and case management should also be reviewed, in partnership with young people. Developing a comprehensive participation strategy covering both individual and more general aspects of youth justice services could greatly improve outcomes for young offenders and enhance the job satisfaction of staff working with them.
Diane Hart
Principle Officer
Youth Justice and Welfare
National Children's Bureau
Friday, 12 February 2010
Barnardo's
The rise in the prison population since Labour came to power in 1997 has been dramatic, with a third more people behind bars. But there has been an even more startling rise in the number of very young children imprisoned. In the decade from 1996 the use of custody for 10 to 14 year olds increased by a staggering 400%. England and Wales now stand out almost alone in Western society in routinely incarcerating large numbers of young children who offend.
The law is clear that children should only be sent to prison if their offending has been grave or both serious and persistent. Justice Secretary, Jack Straw, has further asserted that children as young as 12, 13 and 14 should only ever be incarcerated when it is the only way to protect the public. So are the teenagers being sent to custody guilty of grave crimes or of serious and persistent offending? Are they all violent? Do they pose an unmanageable risk to the public? In fact, research by Barnardo’s published last year (Locking up or giving up?) shows that many of them are neither violent nor dangerous. They have been found guilty of non-violent offences and some are guilty only of summary offences, the least serious on the statute book and those which, in the case of adults, are rarely punished by imprisonment.
Barnardo’s examined 214 cases of children under 15 who had been sentenced to custody but had not committed grave crimes or been given extended sentences for serious offending. We found that one in five was in prison for breach of a community sanction and nearly a third had not committed a serious or violent offence. Overall, 35 per cent of the sample did not appear to meet the custody threshold as set out in legislation. This clearly demonstrates that the government’s intention of making custody for young children genuinely a last resort is not reflected in sentencing practice.
When we looked at the life circumstances of the children it was depressingly clear that those who end up in custody are almost always those most failed by our welfare and education systems. Half had experienced some form of abuse, one in five were living in care,16 per cent had special educational needs and 8 per cent had attempted suicide at some point in their young lives.
If these children had been given the support they needed earlier in their lives there is every reason to believe that they would not have ended up in prison. Instead they are more likely to be written off by the age of 14, failed by mainstream services when it really matters.
Using custody for children who have not committed grave and serious crimes is costly and ineffective. They do not pose a danger to the public, if anything they are a greater danger to themselves than anybody else. Can anyone really believe that we need to lock so many of them away?
Enver Solomon
Barnardo’s
Assistant Director, Policy
The law is clear that children should only be sent to prison if their offending has been grave or both serious and persistent. Justice Secretary, Jack Straw, has further asserted that children as young as 12, 13 and 14 should only ever be incarcerated when it is the only way to protect the public. So are the teenagers being sent to custody guilty of grave crimes or of serious and persistent offending? Are they all violent? Do they pose an unmanageable risk to the public? In fact, research by Barnardo’s published last year (Locking up or giving up?) shows that many of them are neither violent nor dangerous. They have been found guilty of non-violent offences and some are guilty only of summary offences, the least serious on the statute book and those which, in the case of adults, are rarely punished by imprisonment.
Barnardo’s examined 214 cases of children under 15 who had been sentenced to custody but had not committed grave crimes or been given extended sentences for serious offending. We found that one in five was in prison for breach of a community sanction and nearly a third had not committed a serious or violent offence. Overall, 35 per cent of the sample did not appear to meet the custody threshold as set out in legislation. This clearly demonstrates that the government’s intention of making custody for young children genuinely a last resort is not reflected in sentencing practice.
When we looked at the life circumstances of the children it was depressingly clear that those who end up in custody are almost always those most failed by our welfare and education systems. Half had experienced some form of abuse, one in five were living in care,16 per cent had special educational needs and 8 per cent had attempted suicide at some point in their young lives.
If these children had been given the support they needed earlier in their lives there is every reason to believe that they would not have ended up in prison. Instead they are more likely to be written off by the age of 14, failed by mainstream services when it really matters.
Using custody for children who have not committed grave and serious crimes is costly and ineffective. They do not pose a danger to the public, if anything they are a greater danger to themselves than anybody else. Can anyone really believe that we need to lock so many of them away?
Enver Solomon
Barnardo’s
Assistant Director, Policy
Monday, 8 February 2010
Adulthood: ‘Ready or Not’
Does adulthood arrive when a young person reaches 16, 18 or even 21 years old? No, gradually, most young people between the years 16–25 work their way towards living independently. The State, however, requires lines, boundaries, legal clarity – for entitlements, responsibilities, and so on.
As a result, the journey into adulthood can feel like dropping off a series of steep cliffs, encountered at 16 years, 18 years and sometimes beyond. Very few parents expect their sons or daughters to stand on their own feet at an arbitrary date; most support their children into their early 20s and beyond in some way or another. However, estimates put more than half a million young people aged 16–25 without no immediate family or wider community to help them. Many face a desperate series of no-win situations.
We work with thousands of young people, often trapped in a daunting web of difficulties. We help them as individuals, not just dealing with the ‘label’ with which they are sent to us – homeless, unemployed, care leaver, offender – and so on. Most young people want the same things as everyone else – to find a job they enjoy, somewhere safe to live and to stand on their own feet. Our work can make a lasting difference in young people’s lives, for their families and for the whole community, but this is not made easier by government policies or society.
Childhood and adulthood are not mutually exclusive life-stages. While childhood is considered a formative time, adulthood is seen as a period of attainment ranging over several decades of achievements in career development, family life, economic stability and growth and well-being. Jammed in between is adolescence; a ‘catch-all’ term for the stage of life that is not quite one thing or another and when policy, legislation, social and healthcare provision tend to work around arbitrary age markers.
During this ‘nearly’ time, many of the events that signify adulthood will occur. The fact that these events occur at this time does not mean that young people will always be able to handle their new responsibilities in an ‘adult’ way. This is largely driven by the subjective views of legislators and policy makers on when young people can be allowed adult status.
The arbitrary definition of adulthood based on age does not address the emotional dimension of becoming an adult. Nor, does it consider whether events in a young person’s formative years have secured them the best life-chances or if they have access to supportive networks like family, friends and community.
When asked if becoming a fully independent adult occurs at the age of 18, young people we spoke to overwhelmingly said “No”. When asked to identify the events that indicate becoming an adult, common responses were
• Moving out of your parents or carers home
• Being responsible for your personal health and well being
• Caring for someone else
We know young people between 16 and 25 have distinct and acute support needs, which require tailored interventions. We are particularly concerned about the provision of resettlement services for young offenders.
Catch22 piloted a two-year project called RESET that tested various models of resettlement support for young people. The partnership aimed to make a real difference to the lives of young offenders and develop a resettlement model that could be widely adopted to help cut reoffending levels. It involved more than 50 partners, including the YJB, the prison service and the DCFS. The service provides:
• A dedicated resettlement support worker to provide personal support and
practical help and co-ordination of a package of care,
• Education and/or training, with specialist assistance to access this,
• Specialist family support, mediation where needed,
• Mentoring where appropriate,
• Supported accommodation where needed,
• Help with any substance misuse, as needed, and
• Assistance for young people to take ownership of their resettlement and future.
A cost-benefit analysis of the pilot showed that where a persistent offender is offered an effective resettlement package, the frequency and seriousness of offending is reduced, and the cost to the taxpayer is reduced to £65,707 – a saving of £12,333 per offender against the normal average cost of £78,040 per year.
If this saving is expressed across the total number of young people aged 15-17 who are given DTOs (Detention and Training Orders) in England and Wales (approximately between 6,000 and 6,500) the total saving to the taxpayer is £80 million.
While the limited sample size of the RESET pilot would need to be reinforced by further reconviction studies before concrete conclusions could be drawn, even a conservative assumption shows that good support in resettlement leads to a reduction of 35% in frequency and 10% in seriousness of offending.
It would be wrong to assume that every young person requires specific support during this transitional phase of their life, however, to assume that the need for support will neatly arise at a specific age is nonsense. It would seem that determining policies and legislation based on age criteria helps the legislators and policy makers but does not help those they are intended to support.
The majority of young people we asked agreed that becoming an adult is not a matter of reaching a certain age as people mature at different speeds. We need a system that formally recognises the transition to adulthood and supports those passing through it with policies and legislation that deliver around need and not birthday.
Vulnerable young people; those in tough situations, are often disproportionately affected by the gaps in support created by a ‘single point of entry’ approach to adulthood. As our policy makers and legislators continue to enforce an artificial and one-dimensional view of when becoming an adult occurs; we believe that now is the time for decisive action to overhaul our entire approach to young adulthood. We need to recognise that the period of late teens and mid-20s is a vital period of transition and young people who lack a family and community network to give them emotional and financial support need better coordinated policies.
We must create clear accountability for the achievement of basic outcomes in the lives of young adults. This accountability framework should extend from central government downwards, and should include policies that secure good outcomes: a job, a safe place to live and a stable future, and thereby avoid the damaging impact of negative labels.
Joyce Moseley
Chief Executive
Catch22
As a result, the journey into adulthood can feel like dropping off a series of steep cliffs, encountered at 16 years, 18 years and sometimes beyond. Very few parents expect their sons or daughters to stand on their own feet at an arbitrary date; most support their children into their early 20s and beyond in some way or another. However, estimates put more than half a million young people aged 16–25 without no immediate family or wider community to help them. Many face a desperate series of no-win situations.
We work with thousands of young people, often trapped in a daunting web of difficulties. We help them as individuals, not just dealing with the ‘label’ with which they are sent to us – homeless, unemployed, care leaver, offender – and so on. Most young people want the same things as everyone else – to find a job they enjoy, somewhere safe to live and to stand on their own feet. Our work can make a lasting difference in young people’s lives, for their families and for the whole community, but this is not made easier by government policies or society.
Childhood and adulthood are not mutually exclusive life-stages. While childhood is considered a formative time, adulthood is seen as a period of attainment ranging over several decades of achievements in career development, family life, economic stability and growth and well-being. Jammed in between is adolescence; a ‘catch-all’ term for the stage of life that is not quite one thing or another and when policy, legislation, social and healthcare provision tend to work around arbitrary age markers.
During this ‘nearly’ time, many of the events that signify adulthood will occur. The fact that these events occur at this time does not mean that young people will always be able to handle their new responsibilities in an ‘adult’ way. This is largely driven by the subjective views of legislators and policy makers on when young people can be allowed adult status.
The arbitrary definition of adulthood based on age does not address the emotional dimension of becoming an adult. Nor, does it consider whether events in a young person’s formative years have secured them the best life-chances or if they have access to supportive networks like family, friends and community.
When asked if becoming a fully independent adult occurs at the age of 18, young people we spoke to overwhelmingly said “No”. When asked to identify the events that indicate becoming an adult, common responses were
• Moving out of your parents or carers home
• Being responsible for your personal health and well being
• Caring for someone else
We know young people between 16 and 25 have distinct and acute support needs, which require tailored interventions. We are particularly concerned about the provision of resettlement services for young offenders.
Catch22 piloted a two-year project called RESET that tested various models of resettlement support for young people. The partnership aimed to make a real difference to the lives of young offenders and develop a resettlement model that could be widely adopted to help cut reoffending levels. It involved more than 50 partners, including the YJB, the prison service and the DCFS. The service provides:
• A dedicated resettlement support worker to provide personal support and
practical help and co-ordination of a package of care,
• Education and/or training, with specialist assistance to access this,
• Specialist family support, mediation where needed,
• Mentoring where appropriate,
• Supported accommodation where needed,
• Help with any substance misuse, as needed, and
• Assistance for young people to take ownership of their resettlement and future.
A cost-benefit analysis of the pilot showed that where a persistent offender is offered an effective resettlement package, the frequency and seriousness of offending is reduced, and the cost to the taxpayer is reduced to £65,707 – a saving of £12,333 per offender against the normal average cost of £78,040 per year.
If this saving is expressed across the total number of young people aged 15-17 who are given DTOs (Detention and Training Orders) in England and Wales (approximately between 6,000 and 6,500) the total saving to the taxpayer is £80 million.
While the limited sample size of the RESET pilot would need to be reinforced by further reconviction studies before concrete conclusions could be drawn, even a conservative assumption shows that good support in resettlement leads to a reduction of 35% in frequency and 10% in seriousness of offending.
It would be wrong to assume that every young person requires specific support during this transitional phase of their life, however, to assume that the need for support will neatly arise at a specific age is nonsense. It would seem that determining policies and legislation based on age criteria helps the legislators and policy makers but does not help those they are intended to support.
The majority of young people we asked agreed that becoming an adult is not a matter of reaching a certain age as people mature at different speeds. We need a system that formally recognises the transition to adulthood and supports those passing through it with policies and legislation that deliver around need and not birthday.
Vulnerable young people; those in tough situations, are often disproportionately affected by the gaps in support created by a ‘single point of entry’ approach to adulthood. As our policy makers and legislators continue to enforce an artificial and one-dimensional view of when becoming an adult occurs; we believe that now is the time for decisive action to overhaul our entire approach to young adulthood. We need to recognise that the period of late teens and mid-20s is a vital period of transition and young people who lack a family and community network to give them emotional and financial support need better coordinated policies.
We must create clear accountability for the achievement of basic outcomes in the lives of young adults. This accountability framework should extend from central government downwards, and should include policies that secure good outcomes: a job, a safe place to live and a stable future, and thereby avoid the damaging impact of negative labels.
Joyce Moseley
Chief Executive
Catch22
Monday, 1 February 2010
The solutions are already out there
The media coverage of the Doncaster boys who abused two other children has drawn vast and varied comment – but most of it has one thing in common - the need to blame. It has to be someone’s fault, the reasoning goes, so let’s find who it is and then we can all rest. Some are blaming the social workers, others the parents, then we have the politicians- they must have something to do with it, or maybe it was the Mayor for appointing a pie man to run its children’s services.
But when the blood letting is over, when anger has subsided, will we be left with a sustained desired to really understand the problem and in doing so find a solution?
Thankfully the media is moving on from simply demonising the two perpetrators of these appalling crimes. There is at last a willingness to ask why did these boys turn out like this? Research is revealing that neglected children have not had the nurturing experiences needed for areas of the brain to develop that enable them to control their emotions and behaviour. But then doesn’t it make sense that if a child is brought up with little care or respect, they may not know how to care or respect others. If they have been treated more like a thing than a human being, it seems fairly obvious that they may have learned to treat others as things rather than human beings. And if they are shouted at, abused, and their feelings ignored, they may become adept at shouting, fighting, abusing and disregarding the feelings of others. A little reflection and a desire to understand leads anyone to these conclusions.
So we trace the problem back one generation, and find that the parents of these anti-social children were neglectful – but then how did the parents become so dysfunctional? If we use the same reasoning we find two grown people who may well have been damaged from their own neglected childhood. It seems to me that if your aim is just to find someone to blame, you will always get the satisfaction you seek. But you may not find the solution. The solution lies in our willingness to understand, and to exercise one or our greatest human assets – empathy. When I worked with children in care 30 years ago, as a residential care worker – at first, try as I might, I couldn’t stop being judgemental of the children’s bad behaviour, until I got to know the home life they had come from – and then I couldn’t help wondering how I would have turned out if I had been through these young peoples experience of life. I thought about it for a while over cups of tea, on long drives or bracing walks and I came to my conclusion: taking into account my ability to get very angry about injustice and any form of parental heavy-handedness, I think my behaviour would have been much worse than the children I was working with. If you were to reflect on this same question, if you were to imagine yourself brought up in a chaotic, neglectful and violent household, how do you think you would have turned out?
Look at the pattern – as a group, offenders have lower literacy levels, and poor mood control leading to anger management problems than the rest of the population. Neglectful upbringing commonly leads to impaired brain functioning that results in poor mood control affecting the ability to concentrate in school, self-modify behaviour or develop empathy – which wrecks the ability to do well in life and have good relationships. Children who suffer abuse or neglect in childhood are more likely to become offenders. Some believe that neglect and abuse damages a child early and permanently. Yes, there are windows of time in our development that are primed for us to absorb deeply and become imprinted by our environment – for good or bad. But research also suggests the brain is much more plastic than we ever thought and has vast capacity to learn, unlearn and move on. Some may need more patience and support than others, but people can move on and grow. It all depends how far we are prepared to go to understand and help those whose life experience has been so much less fortunate than our own. At any point we can fall back on the short-lived satisfaction of judging others or we can take time to reflect a little, try to understand, put ourselves in another’s shoes.
And where will all this compassion lead? There is always the worry that if we reduce in any way the punishment we meter out for criminal behaviour there won’t be any discouragement for crime. But if we really want to cure the problem, perhaps its time to look around and see that we already have some exceptional resources – people Like Camilla Batmanghelidjh, founder of the Kids Company. Or Maura Jackson, who has worked to create turn-around environments to help women reduce re-offending through Home Office initiatives. Or Dan Hughes who has done so much to create successful therapeutic approaches for neglected children. There are other grass roots workers doing exceptional work in Youth Offending teams – like Denbigh in North Wales – or Parent Support Advisors self organising to set up innovative groups to help failing children – like the team in Somerset. Or staff in Family Intervention Projects around the UK. Just browse the coalition members on this site and see how much commitment and compassion there is out there making a difference. Not to mention the innovative prison workers, social workers, chaplains and volunteers who are quietly doing amazing work unknown to the rest of us, day after day helping to turn peoples lives around. There may not presently be enough of these people, but they are there.
If politicians and media focussed their attention on seeking out these innovators in social care and therapeutic interventions, it wouldn’t take too long to find what works and how best to train practitioners in these approaches. The solutions are already out there. Granted, the scale of the problem is large and has probably been steadily building for generations. But the very existence of innovative workers who know how to effect lasting change in people who have been given up on by the rest of society gives us reason to be very optimistic.
Wendy Marshall
Co-founder
Hope Mountain
But when the blood letting is over, when anger has subsided, will we be left with a sustained desired to really understand the problem and in doing so find a solution?
Thankfully the media is moving on from simply demonising the two perpetrators of these appalling crimes. There is at last a willingness to ask why did these boys turn out like this? Research is revealing that neglected children have not had the nurturing experiences needed for areas of the brain to develop that enable them to control their emotions and behaviour. But then doesn’t it make sense that if a child is brought up with little care or respect, they may not know how to care or respect others. If they have been treated more like a thing than a human being, it seems fairly obvious that they may have learned to treat others as things rather than human beings. And if they are shouted at, abused, and their feelings ignored, they may become adept at shouting, fighting, abusing and disregarding the feelings of others. A little reflection and a desire to understand leads anyone to these conclusions.
So we trace the problem back one generation, and find that the parents of these anti-social children were neglectful – but then how did the parents become so dysfunctional? If we use the same reasoning we find two grown people who may well have been damaged from their own neglected childhood. It seems to me that if your aim is just to find someone to blame, you will always get the satisfaction you seek. But you may not find the solution. The solution lies in our willingness to understand, and to exercise one or our greatest human assets – empathy. When I worked with children in care 30 years ago, as a residential care worker – at first, try as I might, I couldn’t stop being judgemental of the children’s bad behaviour, until I got to know the home life they had come from – and then I couldn’t help wondering how I would have turned out if I had been through these young peoples experience of life. I thought about it for a while over cups of tea, on long drives or bracing walks and I came to my conclusion: taking into account my ability to get very angry about injustice and any form of parental heavy-handedness, I think my behaviour would have been much worse than the children I was working with. If you were to reflect on this same question, if you were to imagine yourself brought up in a chaotic, neglectful and violent household, how do you think you would have turned out?
Look at the pattern – as a group, offenders have lower literacy levels, and poor mood control leading to anger management problems than the rest of the population. Neglectful upbringing commonly leads to impaired brain functioning that results in poor mood control affecting the ability to concentrate in school, self-modify behaviour or develop empathy – which wrecks the ability to do well in life and have good relationships. Children who suffer abuse or neglect in childhood are more likely to become offenders. Some believe that neglect and abuse damages a child early and permanently. Yes, there are windows of time in our development that are primed for us to absorb deeply and become imprinted by our environment – for good or bad. But research also suggests the brain is much more plastic than we ever thought and has vast capacity to learn, unlearn and move on. Some may need more patience and support than others, but people can move on and grow. It all depends how far we are prepared to go to understand and help those whose life experience has been so much less fortunate than our own. At any point we can fall back on the short-lived satisfaction of judging others or we can take time to reflect a little, try to understand, put ourselves in another’s shoes.
And where will all this compassion lead? There is always the worry that if we reduce in any way the punishment we meter out for criminal behaviour there won’t be any discouragement for crime. But if we really want to cure the problem, perhaps its time to look around and see that we already have some exceptional resources – people Like Camilla Batmanghelidjh, founder of the Kids Company. Or Maura Jackson, who has worked to create turn-around environments to help women reduce re-offending through Home Office initiatives. Or Dan Hughes who has done so much to create successful therapeutic approaches for neglected children. There are other grass roots workers doing exceptional work in Youth Offending teams – like Denbigh in North Wales – or Parent Support Advisors self organising to set up innovative groups to help failing children – like the team in Somerset. Or staff in Family Intervention Projects around the UK. Just browse the coalition members on this site and see how much commitment and compassion there is out there making a difference. Not to mention the innovative prison workers, social workers, chaplains and volunteers who are quietly doing amazing work unknown to the rest of us, day after day helping to turn peoples lives around. There may not presently be enough of these people, but they are there.
If politicians and media focussed their attention on seeking out these innovators in social care and therapeutic interventions, it wouldn’t take too long to find what works and how best to train practitioners in these approaches. The solutions are already out there. Granted, the scale of the problem is large and has probably been steadily building for generations. But the very existence of innovative workers who know how to effect lasting change in people who have been given up on by the rest of society gives us reason to be very optimistic.
Wendy Marshall
Co-founder
Hope Mountain
Friday, 15 January 2010
Why did we commission “the Fear Factory”?
With funding from The Nationwide Foundation, three Third Sector agencies came together to commission this film, Safer Wales Ltd, Construction Youth Trust and Addaction. We all work intensively with young people who are either offenders or at risk of offending, to break the cycles of vulnerabilities, and prevent re-offending.
Frustration with External Factors
We have become, over the past 15 years or so, increasingly frustrated with the external factors which work against us and the young people themselves. In particular with how they are viewed, and treated, both within the criminal justice system, and also to some extent in schools, or in the care system, and in particular by the media, which we feel has a lot to answer for in perpetuating stereotypes and demonising young people, lessening their chances of exiting from the dire circumstances some of them find themselves in.
Wake Up Call – we need a Cross-Party Solution
We want the film, to be a wake-up call – to politicians, colleagues in the Third, Public and Private sectors who work in this field, and to the media. We want to ask you to join this coalition to develop and commit to a realistic and practical way forward on youth justice; and reject a system in which young people and crime are used as pawns to sell papers or to attract votes.
We want all of our politicians to work on a cross-party solution, and deal with the issue with proper long term planning, policy and delivery, and evaluation over a longer period.
Young people are entering the criminal justice system at younger and younger ages. We need to be asking the question why? Where are we failing them so badly that no one seems to be picking up the signs early enough to prevent this?
“Somewhere to go and something to do”
Consultation with young people who are “hanging around” on the streets, consistently shows the same result. They want somewhere to go, and something to do. It’s not rocket science. Too often, the same level of short-sightedness results in money being spent on practical measures that can end up alienating the young people even more – costly resources such as CCTV cameras and alley-gating schemes, please the electorate and meet short term community safety targets, whilst longer term or more creative solutions like more detached youth services and facilities, or, for example, the community (weekend, evening and school holiday) use of schools, are often talked about, but not delivered.
“All I wanted was an adult to talk to......................”
Many agencies in the Third Sector, including Safer Wales, find themselves delivering programmes to prevent “re-offending”, and we know that mentoring or other support schemes, and other interventions – if they are engaged with on a voluntary basis and occur at the right time – can make a huge difference to offending or reoffending behaviour. But the question we should be asking ourselves is why do these schemes need to exist? – Why are these young people getting into offending behaviour in the first place? – How is it that we have not effectively tackled and managed risk factors and vulnerabilities evidenced over 10 years ago - what have we really done to tackle poor literacy, poor parenting, low educational achievement, mental health issues, child abuse and plain old poverty?
Short-termist thinking doesn’t work...
The answer is that much has been done – but most of it in short term bursts, measured over 2 – 3 years. Partly this is because much new work is done with grant funding, which has a shelf life of 3 years at best. Partly, it is to do with performance reporting within agencies and with grant funders; targets (again annual or 2 – 3 year at most, coinciding with the electoral cycles), often related to what both local and national politicians want to demonstrate they have done on crime and disorder, to the electorate. It is also partly to do with the fact that some local CJS partners (the police and the CPS for example) may have centrally set annual targets which pro-actively ensure that more incidents are recorded and more young people are charged, and so, whilst they are all members of crime and disorder partnerships or other statutory partnerships, such as those which concern children and young people, they are constrained in their action, and there is no incentive to undertake things in a different fashion.
These things reflect the fact that no guidance over the past 30 years has taken into account the basic fact that if you want to prevent youth offending, you have to analyse plan and evaluate in a continuous process, long term, at least for a 5 – 10 year period. For example a literacy or vocational skill initiative which is undertaken in one year may support more 13 year olds to stay in school, which could impact on youth offending figures in 5 years time. Practically speaking this is about the years in which a young person may be most vulnerable to criminality – age 10 –20. The wider picture, tackling poverty and poor parenting, health issues etc – starts in early years and could go right through to age 25.
Join the coalition...
We want national and local politicians to work with us on these issues, and not put obstacles in the way; we want national and local media to stop stereotyping and demonising young people.
We need to act on this issue – TOGETHER and NOW – I appeal to my colleagues in the Third sector and elsewhere – sign up to the Coalition, and let’s start getting this right. We are delighted that so many organisations have already signed up to the coalition and hope many more will do the same.
Barbara Natasegara MBE
Chief Executive
Safer Wales Ltd
Frustration with External Factors
We have become, over the past 15 years or so, increasingly frustrated with the external factors which work against us and the young people themselves. In particular with how they are viewed, and treated, both within the criminal justice system, and also to some extent in schools, or in the care system, and in particular by the media, which we feel has a lot to answer for in perpetuating stereotypes and demonising young people, lessening their chances of exiting from the dire circumstances some of them find themselves in.
Wake Up Call – we need a Cross-Party Solution
We want the film, to be a wake-up call – to politicians, colleagues in the Third, Public and Private sectors who work in this field, and to the media. We want to ask you to join this coalition to develop and commit to a realistic and practical way forward on youth justice; and reject a system in which young people and crime are used as pawns to sell papers or to attract votes.
We want all of our politicians to work on a cross-party solution, and deal with the issue with proper long term planning, policy and delivery, and evaluation over a longer period.
Young people are entering the criminal justice system at younger and younger ages. We need to be asking the question why? Where are we failing them so badly that no one seems to be picking up the signs early enough to prevent this?
“Somewhere to go and something to do”
Consultation with young people who are “hanging around” on the streets, consistently shows the same result. They want somewhere to go, and something to do. It’s not rocket science. Too often, the same level of short-sightedness results in money being spent on practical measures that can end up alienating the young people even more – costly resources such as CCTV cameras and alley-gating schemes, please the electorate and meet short term community safety targets, whilst longer term or more creative solutions like more detached youth services and facilities, or, for example, the community (weekend, evening and school holiday) use of schools, are often talked about, but not delivered.
“All I wanted was an adult to talk to......................”
Many agencies in the Third Sector, including Safer Wales, find themselves delivering programmes to prevent “re-offending”, and we know that mentoring or other support schemes, and other interventions – if they are engaged with on a voluntary basis and occur at the right time – can make a huge difference to offending or reoffending behaviour. But the question we should be asking ourselves is why do these schemes need to exist? – Why are these young people getting into offending behaviour in the first place? – How is it that we have not effectively tackled and managed risk factors and vulnerabilities evidenced over 10 years ago - what have we really done to tackle poor literacy, poor parenting, low educational achievement, mental health issues, child abuse and plain old poverty?
Short-termist thinking doesn’t work...
The answer is that much has been done – but most of it in short term bursts, measured over 2 – 3 years. Partly this is because much new work is done with grant funding, which has a shelf life of 3 years at best. Partly, it is to do with performance reporting within agencies and with grant funders; targets (again annual or 2 – 3 year at most, coinciding with the electoral cycles), often related to what both local and national politicians want to demonstrate they have done on crime and disorder, to the electorate. It is also partly to do with the fact that some local CJS partners (the police and the CPS for example) may have centrally set annual targets which pro-actively ensure that more incidents are recorded and more young people are charged, and so, whilst they are all members of crime and disorder partnerships or other statutory partnerships, such as those which concern children and young people, they are constrained in their action, and there is no incentive to undertake things in a different fashion.
These things reflect the fact that no guidance over the past 30 years has taken into account the basic fact that if you want to prevent youth offending, you have to analyse plan and evaluate in a continuous process, long term, at least for a 5 – 10 year period. For example a literacy or vocational skill initiative which is undertaken in one year may support more 13 year olds to stay in school, which could impact on youth offending figures in 5 years time. Practically speaking this is about the years in which a young person may be most vulnerable to criminality – age 10 –20. The wider picture, tackling poverty and poor parenting, health issues etc – starts in early years and could go right through to age 25.
Join the coalition...
We want national and local politicians to work with us on these issues, and not put obstacles in the way; we want national and local media to stop stereotyping and demonising young people.
We need to act on this issue – TOGETHER and NOW – I appeal to my colleagues in the Third sector and elsewhere – sign up to the Coalition, and let’s start getting this right. We are delighted that so many organisations have already signed up to the coalition and hope many more will do the same.
Barbara Natasegara MBE
Chief Executive
Safer Wales Ltd
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