Yes, today I shall be airing my views on the recently announced government plans to increase the use of probation services to include those serving short-stay sentences in the hopes of reducing reoffending rates.
Now, don't get me wrong. Any attempts to cut crime statistics has got to be a good move, but I can't help but feel that maybe we're shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.
I mean, what do we really do, as a society, to try to reduce the types of crimes that receive these short sentences? Baring in mind that these are usually things such as drug offences, financially motivated crimes and low level violent crimes.
Well, I know that a lot of money had been spent on youth schemes, in the hopes of encouraging children not to enter a life of crime in the first place, but I fail to understand exactly how much good will be done by ploughing money into projects thought up by adults with no input by the kids and almost completely taken up by those less likely to enter the criminal world anyway!
When we're cutting the budgets for so many important services, things like child protection and therapy services, and reducing the welfare funds. When we live in a culture that glorifies selfishness and greed. When we take a juvenile, hedonistic, society and wring them through the pressures of austerity whilst bombarding them with all the wonders of capitalist commercialisation, are we not just setting ourselves up for more neglected, disenfranchised and frustrated youths and far more of these short-stay crimes? Are we not just saving pennies now only to face a massive bill in the future?
No comments:
Post a Comment