We Need This Bloke For The New Prison

[P.K.]

I absolutely agree we need a substitute for failed parents or this situation will never be turned around. There are two problems. Firstly the more feral scrotes you produce the more handouts you get. Secondly by the time you know the parent(s) have failed it is already too late.

 

I read this article a couple of weeks ago in The Times on the murder of Sophie Lancaster. It stuck in my mind as it demonstrates all too well what is going wrong. It doesn't make for pleasant reading - find it here.

[Skeddan]

The most effective rehabilitation would start with a rehabilitation of schools and the education system as well as social ills that play a huge part in generating these problems in the first place.

Whilst I do not agree that this is not an important element of the approach, the fact is, that schools are not currently resourced or equipped (in fact have been stripped of many of the disciplinary type measures such as corporal punishment) enabling them to deal with many unruly elements - mainly thanks to the PC brigade. These are the so called do-gooders who think you can reason with all children, when the plain fact of the matter is this is patently untrue - ....schools have no recourse other than to 'deal with it' or expel.

...

The fact is schools fail many children, and conversely many children fail their schools. Many parents too fail many children in the UK. Schools are about education, not about bringing children up in the world, and simply do not have the facilities, resources and space needed to deal with problem youngsters and take over parental responsibilities.

 

AT - schools could address the problem of 'problem kids' - but would need to have resources. It is cheaper long term to invest in that than to pay £30K a year cost of imprisonment on and off - let alone other damage and cost.

 

Lack of disciplinary measures is sometimes not the issue - harsh discipline might only make some of these children more disaffected and hostile. Most schools have no recourse other than to discipline or expel. However your claims that it is 'patently untrue' that problem kids can be dealt with other than using disciplinarian techniques is - well, patently untrue. One of the case studies you might consider is Summerhill school. Many of the kids there had been expelled and were 'Brat Camp' feral scrote kids 'beyond redemption' in traditional type systems - even with corporal punishment. Most - if not all - went on to be 'reformed' with sometimes phenomenal turn-arounds in a few weeks.

 

Perhaps more schools along these sort of lines would be a good thing. But less radical schools would be just as good where kids had not been developed into being a problem in the first place by schools that fail.

 

Smaller classes (as is now being recognised as more effective), and a range of other changes are needed, and will cost more than the cut-price mass production system which is meant to serve the children. However it is also an investment - better educated better adjusted kids - with higher skills abilities and lower crime rates and burden on social services.

 

I also do very much agree with the parenting issue - that is one part of the mix - and an important one. However kids are also very much influenced by other kids - and peer pressure rather than 'authority' can often work better with rebellious ones. (Which is why a Summerhill type approach can have results). When the peer pressure is negative - join gang, do drugs, petty crime etc., authority and parenting cannot be expected to be a panacea.

 

It's not too hard to identify the 4% or so who probably should be streamed into other types of schools. This would go a long way to changing the 'conventional schools' (which still should have smaller classes etc.), and the peer-group environment there. These 4% would also benefit and instead of becoming serious long term troublemakers, could well turn out to be well-adjusted valuable members of society.

 

Yes it would take a lot more money to be invested - but the cost is minor compared to the cost of approx £1m per long term re-offender that this would avert - let alone loss of the contribution they might otherwise have made.

[Lonan3]

The answer to my mind, to both prison rehabilitation and behavourily-failed pupils is similar - rehabilitation centres.

 

For toe-rag children who have run out of chances these would be properly run and resourced boarding type schools, with all staff vetted (preferably run by educated ex-forces types). They would have to eat, sleep and be educated there for 5 days of the week - picked up on a Monday morning by a bus and taken there (forced to stay there by court order if they took measures to avoid missing the bus etc.). The emphasis of the curriculum would be on social responsibility, self-discipline, anti-bullying, the consequences of actions, teamworking, comradery, physical education, reading, writing and arithmetic etc. - with military style discipline and activities at the core, but providing opportunities to avoid additional physical education or other military type discipline by undertaking social projects. Pupils behaviour would be graded, so that the most unruly were grouped together and those with improved behaviour seen to be treated differently and better and rewarded for their improvement. This stuff works with the majority of people, I have seen it first hand in the military.

As someone who has worked with the kind of 'problem' kids you describe, I have to tell you that your proposed 'solution' is complete and utter bollocks.

Most of these kids have spent their whole lives being shouted at, being blamed for everything that goes wrong (whether its their fault or not) and generally made to feel inferior - and your proposal simply seeks to reinforce this. They have often been disenfranchised from both society and their families; they frequently have mental health issues that they were either born with or have developed as a result of their surroundings and influences.

I have watched, and occasionally helped, dedicated professionals turn such kids around and become useful members of society - not by punishment, but by encouragement; by slowly building up their self esteem, giving them some belief in themselves and developing whatever latent talents they may have.

If more resources were directed towards the caring professionals - or 'do-gooders' as you might prefer to call them - then the problems might be tackled, properly, at source. You may well 'have seen it first hand in the military,' but you have to realise that many of those were once the kids who needed who needed help and didn't receive it.

[Albert Tatlock]

I have watched, and occasionally helped, dedicated professionals turn such kids around and become useful members of society - not by punishment, but by encouragement;

I am NOT talking about punishment, just re-enforcing discipline and encouragement - i.e. rehabilitation (getting back on course) - by supplementing poor parenting skills and correcting anti-social behaviour. I spelled out in earlier posts in this thread the clear difference between rehabilitation and punishment.

 

Don't forget this thread is about prisons and reducing criminality. Skeddan moved the debate into what schools can do, and yes that is part of the process - but only a small partial solution IMO. Already overworked teachers should not be expected to have to act as psychiatrists or social workers half the day to unruly, sometimes downright evil, vandalising, bullying kids that clearly need discipline and in some cases, agreed, more specialist help. Lots of kids have 'problems' and yet don't turn into criminals, but I am talking about the ones with all of the ingredients to make up a future criminal.

 

However such separate schools and facilities may operate, they need to involve removing these potential criminals from poor parents and schools - schools which with a fixed number of teachers and classes cannot cope with them - and which as a result disaffect, and even influence other children. At separate schools/facilities they can throw as many professionals at them as they like, away from the influence of poor parenting (perhaps by boarding). I'm not trying to design such schools/facilities, only argue that they should exist and be resourced, because rehabilitation is the only answer. People in life do have to learn the basics, and whilst some people have problems, some are just scrotes, and if they don't get the basics from parents, then someone else will have to provide it - if we are to lower the prison population and turn out useful members of society instead. Of course there should be a major assessment programme operating in parallel with all of this to ensure the correct action is taken in each and every case.

[La_Dolce_Vita]

Rehabilitation requires actually understanding the offender. For a start a prison regime will have different outcomes with different people. Some people (roughly speaking your standard respectable fairly conservative type) find a prison sentence a deterrent. For them the harsher the sentence the greater the deterrence. Hence if they think that everyone is alike - and just like them - they see the problem as a straightforward one of 'soft' sentences.

 

However some people are not put off in this way (roughly speaking your non-conformist creative type). To rehabilitate them requires positive reinforcement of good behaviours, not punishment of bad. Punishment can make someone even more resentful and hostile towards 'the system'.

 

The same rehabilitation strategies will not work with the type of undeterred offenders. These can often be the 'idealistic' type who has become cynical, jaded and angry and resentful at a system which has failed and excluded them - in effect making them into 'anti-heroes' of a sort. (perhaps a bit like orcs in Lord of the Rings who were elves who had been turned into orcs by abuse and torture).

 

Do you really think that some people, the respectable and conservative, etc., really do find prison sentences a deterrent? Or is it the case that these people do not commit the crimes in the first place, simply because they have nothing to gain by that specific behaviour (of course it does depend on what crimes we are talking about here)? I do think, however, the conservative morons who see the problem as one of 'soft' sentences and there being a need for tougher sentences to solve the problem of crime believe in deterrence.

With deterrence, is not the problem that people take a more short-term view when committing crimes and do not really appreciate the long-term consequences of their actions.

 

What do you mean by an idealistic type? I don't see any form of idealism in what you describe.

 

Whilst I do not agree that this is not an important element of the approach, the fact is, that schools are not currently resourced or equipped (in fact have been stripped of many of the disciplinary type measures such as corporal punishment) enabling them to deal with many unruly elements - mainly thanks to the PC brigade. These are the so called do-gooders who think you can reason with all children, when the plain fact of the matter is this is patently untrue

 

But doing away with corporal punishment was a good thing. The reason it existed was to enforce discipline in a severe way by physically punishing those who step out of line. I don't think the teacher has any more justification to use violence on a child as a child does to use violence on the teacher. Besides I think the teacher would risk reprisal from the child if the teacher used the cane. The clock can't be turned back to the 50s or the 60s. I might suppose that some of the issue is that children today do not accept the authority of their teacher or wish to challenge that authority, as they do in other aspects of their relationships with people.

 

For toe-rag children who have run out of chances these would be properly run and resourced boarding type schools, with all staff vetted (preferably run by educated ex-forces types). They would have to eat, sleep and be educated there for 5 days of the week - picked up on a Monday morning by a bus and taken there (forced to stay there by court order if they took measures to avoid missing the bus etc.). The emphasis of the curriculum would be on social responsibility, self-discipline, anti-bullying, the consequences of actions, teamworking, comradery, physical education, reading, writing and arithmetic etc. - with military style discipline and activities at the core, but providing opportunities to avoid additional physical education or other military type discipline by undertaking social projects. Pupils behaviour would be graded, so that the most unruly were grouped together and those with improved behaviour seen to be treated differently and better and rewarded for their improvement. This stuff works with the majority of people, I have seen it first hand in the military. The latter years at such schools would be all about vocational training, or gearing up improved pupils to get into the course of their choice at college or even university. (All this in conjunction with far better facilities, such as well equipped youth centres, for children in everyday life). At the end of each full year at the school, the opportunity for kids to get out of the school and back to their 'normal' school could be made available (based on improvement).

 

I think it sounds a great idea to teach social responsibility, anti-bullying, and learning about consequences, but this sound like a military barracks. By essentially forcing them to accept the authority of a military people, forcing them to be at the school, and forcing them how to learn it seems more a shift from school to prison.

 

I think it is important to determine what crimes were are talking about in all of this. What are the aims? Because most drug-taking is criminal behaviour but majority of it, I think, is acceptable and the law has no jusitification in criminalising it. I just don't think there is a panacea that will sort out the problem of criminality as a whole, as fundamentally criminal behaviour is determined by the law. Am I right in saying that the issue we are talking about is just delinquency?

[VinnieK]

I think it sounds a great idea to teach social responsibility, anti-bullying, and learning about consequences, but this sound like a military barracks. By essentially forcing them to accept the authority of a military people, forcing them to be at the school, and forcing them how to learn it seems more a shift from school to prison.

 

I share a little of your skepticism with regards to Albert's overtly military model for such institutions (I'd prefer to see any schools dedicated to "problem" kids founded along the lines of Lonan's comment regarding how to turn them around, with punishment and disciplinary methods employed as a last resort), but I do think there has to be an element of compulsion when it came to ensuring that such kids attended them and took it seriously. Without it there'd be no reason to expect many difficult children to take it any more seriously than regular school. I do also think that such measures are within the state's responsibilities: ultimately the state has the authority and the right to employ coercion in order to deal with genuine threats and disturbances to the public wellbeing, which I'd say includes serious delinquent behaviour.