15 yr old jailed, "unmanageable in the community"

[BigMoaner]

they should just take each case as it comes. an incredibly messed up youth needs resources thrown at him, less punishment.

rapists, serial burglers, wife beaters, smack dealers, corrupt businessmen, etc, etc, - sorry, but you need to punish. help them too, but an element of punishment.

all these thigns are outcomes of our society - so logically if you change society, the crimes will change too, or even disappear. but still i am sorry you won't get me not feeling satisfied when i hear that a rapist has been caught and given a long sentence. or the smack dealers down the road are finally caught and locked up for a while. always remember the outcome of their behaviour. there are genuine victims who probably get closure, peace of mind, and a sense that world works correctly if the person who has done it them is sat in a prison cell. i know i would on some level if someone done that to me or my family. (but i would also want them/expect them to be rehabilitated too). also, they can no longer harm ohters.

 

[weltweit]

Yes, me, too. And I am alluding entirely to family.

Family was the first thought that came to my mind on reading the article but it is easy to assume his was lacking without knowing any facts, and 1) I certainly can't claim to be a perfect parent, and 2) anyhow many kids have less than ideal family situations and don't go down the wrong paths.

 

[AC14]

15 year olds are capable of making choices about their behaviour. They should therefore face the consequences of their actions.

"Less punishment" just means more misery for the community.

 

[dessiato]

15 year olds are capable of making choices about their behaviour. They should therefore face the consequences of their actions.

"Less punishment" just means more misery for the community.

While I agree with your statement to a large extent, do you really think that a 15yr old who acts like this one did is going to benefit from the punishment that has been meted out?

 

[8den]

15 year olds are capable of making choices about their behaviour. They should therefore face the consequences of their actions.

"Less punishment" just means more misery for the community.

So can 11 year olds. You're basically ruining a life because the system failed him badly.

 

[existentialist]

Family was the first thought that came to my mind on reading the article but it is easy to assume his was lacking without knowing any facts, and 1) I certainly can't claim to be a perfect parent, and 2) anyhow many kids have less than ideal family situations and don't go down the wrong paths.

The way I see it, nobody (or at least only the tiniest fraction of people) is "born evil".

I think they're born like the rest of us, and then it's down to the parenting and general family atmosphere. It isn't even about being a perfect parent - to really bugger up a kid's head takes lots of imperfect behaviour, carried on over time, because they're pretty resilient. But enough undermining, abuse, neglect, etc., and damage gets done. And then, 10 years or so later, society starts to have to pay the price. And, of course, the way we do things, that means essentially that the kid pays a heavy price, too.

 

[existentialist]

15 year olds are capable of making choices about their behaviour. They should therefore face the consequences of their actions.

"Less punishment" just means more misery for the community.

But if their upbringing has not equipped them with the ability to make valid choices about their behaviour, what good does punishment do? It's all very well punishing them to show that we don't like the way they've behaved, but if they don't know any other way to behave, how can they change?

 

[campanula]

The stick has so little effect on children and young people who already feel they have nothing to lose, nothing to risk: punishment of this type is merely a collective vengeance and a political gesture of symbolic use but practically useless. What can these children expect - no meaningful labour, insecure jobs with poverty wages...if any employment can be found. No housing, no education, no investment in skills, no future? Social care and therapeutic interventions are not any sort of answer in a system which is so profoundly unequal and desperate.

 

[Hocus Eye.]

There was a boy in my school who at age 16 used to regularly wind up (although the term wind up hadn't been invented) the art teacher. This resulted in a hard beating with a size ten slipper. The boy would get very red faced and stand up slowly and shakily but silently expressing no verbal expression of pain. This happened most weeks.

This was an art lesson, a non-threatening lesson. He was even good at art so had no apparent problems with the subject or the teacher.

My conclusion looking back on it over the years was that he and the teacher had found each other. It is a strange world.

 

[CNT36]

I'm sure short sharp shock of young offenders will sort him out and he'll come out a model citizen

Bloke I know used to work with young offenders. He used to visit at the end of the first week and they would be scared, in tears and asking for their mums. The end if the second week they were better and after that they were used to it and boasting about they would be hard as when they got out and wouldn't be caught again. He reckoned that if people were serious about deterrence a weeks stay would be the best.

 

[Batboy]

How long do you put up with this sort of behaviour?

A good friend of mine was a probation officer in central London for 23 years, upon retirement, his conclusion? Prison doesn't work.

 

[SpookyFrank]

"Less punishment" just means more misery for the community.

Bearing in mind that the people being punished are part of 'the community' as well, and that punishment amounts to deliberately making someone miserable in one way or another, your argument is fundamentally invalid.

 

[Batboy]

I'd add to this, My friend the probation officer would explain some of the stories and backgrounds of these kids and youths who may have committed some horrible crimes, when isolated from peers and communicated to, they would and could come across as nice kids. So what turns them into shits that may hurt or rob someone?

I covered most of my thoughts on this on the Alan Carr murder thread. 3 days ago another 17 year old was stabbed to death on the streets of Islington. Alan Carr has been forgotten in many ways. I am dreading the summer holidays in Islington and Hackney as my 15 year old son and his mates many of whom I have worked along side with on football projects take to the streets discovering things like drugs and alcohol in the parks.

At the risk of repeating myself there is little for them to do. The football league we played in last year as 15 year olds had 12 teams in, the year above they had to combine the 16/17 year olds together and managed to just find 4 clubs. That in a nutshell highlights part of the problem. I know it's a boring analogy, but for me its stark in highlighting how things develop for teenagers.

If you take something like football then the opportunities for kids diminish from the age of 13 onwards. There isn't the will amongst politicians or adults for that matter to engage the minds of young people and provide the resources that are needed at the outset to steer these kids into more positive roles. The end result many grow up into complete shits.

After Alan Carr was buried I tried to engage with politicians and the media to do something further. As usual the story dies and basically not a lot more is given to it as time subsides. I got an acute insight to how this worked and of course 4 months on there has been a spate of further stabbings and murder including the machete murder a few days back.

I know there is no quick fix to the problems of youth disenfranchisement and crime, but there appears to be an awful lot of clueless people involved at the core of the problem (and that includes the police, one police woman detective simply said to me that she would never bring her kids up in Islington).

The only time I have seen a bit of application was after the Ben Kinsella Murder and of course that was largely driven by his famous sister.

Depressing.

 

[Batboy]

From the media May 15th 2015:
An increase in gang violence has shaken Islington in recent months and the victim is thought to have been caught in the crossfire.

In particular the Cally Boys, from Caledonian Road and the EC1, or Easy Cash, gang from Finsbury have been squaring off.

There's the teenagers finding there own clubs to join.

 

[Steel Icarus]

.

 

[likesfish]

Poor sod will give it the big I am loads of abuse to anyone who he thinks won't hit back.
When the consequences turn up he turns into the scared kid he is

 

[BigMoaner]

How about a wife beater?
Rapist?
Serial burgler?
Corrupt business man?

What sort of punishment, if any, should these people get?

 

[BigMoaner]

If u don't punish one person, can you punish people who have done the same?

 

[Steel Icarus]

Maybe his long suffering community could do with some respite for a while .

Maybe!

But that's difficult to say for sure from the report.

As part of his community - and someone who has a lot more knowledge of this lad than the paper reports - yeah, you won't find many people round here remotely sorry for the boy or worried about his chances of rehabilitation.

 

[existentialist]

As part of his community - and someone who has a lot more knowledge of this lad than the paper reports - yeah, you won't find many people round here remotely sorry for the boy or worried about his chances of rehabilitation, me included.

I don't think anyone is particularly talking about feeling sorry for him: being interested in the underlying causes of someone's misbehaviour is not quite the same as becoming an apologist for it.

That's just a canard that some people like to use to excuse their unwillingness to accept that it might just be a bit more complicated than "yoot = thug".

Put it like this: right now, in your community, there will be a number of cutely amusing 8 year olds. Too young to start causing any real trouble, they're probably already known to the police/social services/other agencies, but their misbehaviour will be laying the groundwork for 5-10 years' time. And the environment in which they are growing up will be reinforcing those behaviours, as they will have done since birth.

This 15 year old is not just an individual, he's part of a system - a production line of disadvantaged, disenfranchised, resentful, criminal outcasts who has no reason not to hate his community, starting with his family, just as much as they and he hate himself. There's plenty more where he came from, all the time we focus purely on his behaviour and not the behaviour of those who made him like that, and are busy making more of him for the future.

 

[likesfish]

Unfortunately helping people like the lad in question is incredabily difficult and they have usually burned every bridge by the time jail becomes a possabilty.
So the community will breathe a sigh of relief he's been jailed.

 

[SpookyFrank]

So the community will breathe a sigh of relief he's been jailed.

Until the next kid goes the same way, because nothing was done to address the causes of the first kid's behaviour.

 

[Steel Icarus]

There's always an assumption that "nothing has been done". Which is in this case completely incorrect. It might be truer to say that the things Urban would like to have been done haven't been, but that's not the same thing.

 

[dylanredefined]

A good friend of mine was a probation officer in central London for 23 years, upon retirement, his conclusion? Prison doesn't work.

So what is the answer a headshot and a mass grave for those who won't behave?
Dealing with crime needs a mixture of rehab and punishment. Unless you want to encourage vigilantism.

 

[BigMoaner]

explain to probably the vast majority of people who experience crime that the criminal should go unpunished - see how well that goes.

 

[dessiato]

explain to probably the vast majority of people who experience crime that the criminal should go unpunished - see how well that goes.

There does need to be an element of punishment. I'm not sure that this is a case for pure punishment, there needs to be something else too.

 

[BigMoaner]

There does need to be an element of punishment. I'm not sure that this is a case for pure punishment, there needs to be something else too.

dont disagree.

 

[purenarcotic]

I think good support automatically includes boundaries and consequences to actions. I think it is bizarre to think that just because people are arguing for better support that means they don't think there shouldn't be boundaries or consequences.

The issue really is that we know that prison is, in the vast majority of cases, unsuitable at giving both. Either sentences are so short nothing can be achieved anyway or there's a serious lack of resources to achieve much when there is time.

 

[Steel Icarus]

There does need to be an element of punishment. I'm not sure that this is a case for pure punishment, there needs to be something else too.

Like the "training" mentioned in the article?

 

[existentialist]

There's always an assumption that "nothing has been done". Which is in this case completely incorrect. It might be truer to say that the things Urban would like to have been done haven't been, but that's not the same thing.

Perhaps what people mean is that "nothing effective has been done". Which is self-evidently true.

Because the implication of "something has been done" and "the kid's still being antisocial" are that enough has been done and that it is therefore the kid who is solely responsible for ending up where he has. Having been privy to, and part of, the process of "something being done" on quite a few occasions, it's usually a well-intentioned but half-arsed mishmash of inter-agency meetings, arguments about funding, and miscommunication - all the hallmarks of stretched, fragmented, and under-resourced services trying to do the Right Thing in the face of a largely media-driven campaign all about punishing wrongdoers, not trying to stop them being wrongdoers in the first place.