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Editorial
Why we need a softer approach to the youth justice system.
For the past few weeks, newspaper front pages have been dominated by two contrasting images. One is of a wide-eyed ten year old boy being charged for the offence of murder. The other is of the angry and hurt mother of his victim. It is impossible for anyone to view these pictures without an emotional response, and, sure enough, have caused a furore on message boards and letters pages across the country. In 1993, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, two ten year old boys, were charged as adults for the murder of toddler James Bulger. Venables has recently been recalled to prison amid claims that he was caught with child pornography.
The reappearance of this case has caused much debate on whether the youth justice system works and on the effectiveness of rehabilitation. From what has emerged so far, it appears that our methods of trying and imprisoning children are shockingly bad. We have one of the lowest ages of criminal responsibility in Europe, only surpassed by Scotland where it is 8. In most of the EU it is between 12 and 16, with some countries going as high as 18. We are imprisoning more children than ever before, and, most worryingly, 80% of young people re-offend. If this system has such an incredibly low success rate, it begs the question of why we still use it and further, why is it increasing in severity?
The answer is that these issues only ever emerge within the context of cases like that of James Bulger. These provoke a visceral, gut reaction from the public - and understandably so - but this reaction should not be dictating political policy. By ignoring research the government panders to the public appetite for punishment, and we are left with a hate-filled, vindictive youth justice system that does not work. How can it be logical to take a child from the dysfunctional atmosphere which has provoked them to violence, and place them in one even worse, filled with violent role models, and then be surprised when they continue such behaviour?
In Norway, 1994, two six year old boys committed a similar murder to that of Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, but were not punished in any way. Instead, counsellors treated them with compassion. Both boys have since shown remorse, something neither boy in the Bulger case is known to have expressed.
Recent research into child psychology has revealed that trauma can actually re-orientate a child’s brain. Camila Batmanghelidjh, the founder of the “Kids Company” a charity that deals with vulnerable children, believes that children who have always been abused will naturally feel a desire to harm. Punishing these children will only make them feel despised for feeling something that they cannot change. “A child’s brain is highly malleable up to their mid-twenties” she writes “Early signs are that robust mother love is coming up top of the list for reparation in the lives of profoundly disturbed children.” To many it may seem unthinkable not to punish someone who has murdered, but what is important here is not what people think child criminals “deserve”, but what will allow them to regret their crimes, and then to overcome them.