Fewer
than one in fifty children aged ten to seventeen were convicted of
a criminal offence in 2001. But with headlines referring to yobs,
thugs, and “demon” children appearing almost daily in
some newspapers, it’s no wonder that the British public lives
in fear of young people.
Each
November we give millions of pounds to the BBC’s Children in
Need appeal. We shed tears when appalling cases of child abuse and
neglect become news stories, and applaud the judges who send to prison
those parents who mistreat their children. And yet the moment a child
commits a crime, we condemn without hesitation – despite the
fact that there are often clear links between crime and factors such
as abuse and neglect.
This
is why five children’s charities have set up Shape: Children’s
Lives & the Youth Crime Debate. Barnardo’s, The Children’s
Society, National Children’s Bureau, NCH and NSPCC have joined
with Nacro and secured funding from the Rethinking Crime & Punishment
initiative of the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. The aim of Shape
is to raise the level of debate around youth crime and to challenge
misleading portrayals of young people.
Shape was launched at Westminster Cathedral Hall – site of Tothill
Fields juvenile prison, demolished in the mid-19th century –
in July. Baroness Helena Kennedy, QC, joined the chief executives
of each of the charities involved in speaking in support of Shape’s
key messages, which are:
1.
We need to recognise that the majority of young people don’t
commit crime.
2. Dealing with the causes of child neglect and abuse will
help to address the causes of youth crime.
3. Communities need support to work together to build a safer
environment and prevent crime.
4. We need to place our support in community penalties that
work at reducing offending.
5. Sending children to the potentially damaging environment
of custody should be the absolute last resort.
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Collectively,
these messages are probably not dissimilar from those of organisations
such as the Howard League, Liberty, or the Prison Reform Trust. Shape’s
difference is in its background in the children’s – rather
than the penal reform – sector. People expect the Howard League
to say that children should not be in prison – but they wouldn’t
necessarily expect it of the NSPCC.
Another
aspect which marks Shape’s difference is the central part being
played in the initiative by young people. Very often news of policy
and practice relating to young people, in all areas of public policy,
is reported by ‘grown-ups’, with ‘grown-ups’
offering the analysis and comment. Guided by the importance placed
on giving young people a voice by the children’s sector as a
whole, Shape has recruited and given media awareness training to ten
‘Young Media Representatives’ who are available to the
media for interview and comment on youth crime issues. The launch
event showed just how powerful the voices of young people can be,
when three of the Young Media Representatives spoke lucidly of the
need to stop tarring all young people with the ‘criminal’
brush.
Later
this year, Shape will publish the results of a media scoping exercise
in which we analysed print media reporting of young people and crime.
We wanted to establish just how positive or – more likely –
negative the reporting actually was.
Whilst
the scoping exercise was underway, a story broke of three brothers
from the south-east of England who had been made the subject of Anti-Social
Behaviour Orders (ASBO). Dubbed “Hell’s brothers”
and “Demon brothers” in most reports, the catalogue of
offending made depressing reading. But at no point did any of the
papers – save, perhaps, for The Guardian – attempt to
unscramble the sorry state of affairs and work out exactly what had
led these three teenagers down the path they trod.
The
media and, in consequence the general public, have an inability to
link the causes of crime with the offender. In the same manner most
people accept that “Prison doesn’t work,” but continue
to call for more and more sentences of imprisonment. Reporting of
crime and criminal justice isn’t sophisticated enough to allow
people to make the simplest of connections between causes and crimes.
Helena
Kennedy criticised the government in her speech at the launch of Shape
for forgetting the second part of Blair’s mantra, “Tough
on crime, tough on the causes of crime.” Nick Cohen, writing
in the New Statesman recently, pointed out that more than 660 new
crimes had been created since the Labour election victory in 1997.
We all know of the inexorable rise in the prison population in recent
years. “Tough on crime” in popular eyes means being tougher
on the criminal, whilst giving scant regard to the causes. To address
causes, in the eyes of some commentators, is to be soft.
Shape
believes that the time has come for Government to take firm action
on the causes of crime, not by criminalising teenagers who congregate
on the streets in the evening, but by dealing with the social exclusion,
neglect, abuse, poor access to health and education and all the other
social factors that we know – and have known for decades –
can often lead to crime.
Above
all, Shape wants to see a fresh debate about youth crime and accurate
portrayals of young people, because it’s a sad indictment of
society when our icons of fear are our children.
For further information about the organisation, its aims, the launch
event and press reactions, visit www.shapethedebate.org.uk
