by Sarah Frankton

Created on: July 07, 2009

I strongly believe that in the UK today, too many fines, punshments and prison sentences are ineffective as a means of deterent for criminals. If you have ever watched the ever increasing number of cops with camera type programmes on TV you will have seen an assortment of young offenders, slobs, benefit thieves and yobs re-offending countless number of times. A young boy of say 14 is caught drunk driving, and his punishment, a fine, that he can't pay as he has no income and .. a driving ban. Considering he is 3 years under age to drive already and felt ok with breaking the law, a driving ban isn't going to make a blind bit of difference. The cost to the public purse of arresting this youth and processing him through the system to come out with this punishment is simply insane. It would be far better and cost effective not to bother. So what should be done. Well instead of fines and bans, offenders should be put on mandatory military style training camps, where they spend their time doing hard labour, digging pipelines, re-surfacing roads, manual work on building sites, or simply cleaning up our many parks and public places that have fallen into disrepair. It should be a centre based away from home, where they have to cook for themselves, wash, iron and clean. Two weeks in such a centre for crimes such as theft, burglary or 'twoccing' would be much more of a deterrent than a driving ban, and would provide a useful body of people, for menial tasks. They could even help out in emergencies, gritting roads in the winter.

Of course in an ideal world, the young would have more to do and occupy themselves. Britain suffers from overcrowding and lack of space. Children and teenagers, especially those from built up inner city areas, often have little access to pleasant parkland and sports fields. Their houses are often not big enough to invite all their friends to, and they are too young to go to pubs and clubs. Britain in many ways fails the young, by providing them no facilities. There needs to be much more investment into local youth clubs, that offer training, or skills such as music lessons to young people. Activities need to be organised and sports clubs set up. It is the responsibilty of the local adult generation to make this happen. If children have a safe, fun and interesting place to spend their evenings and weekends, where they can play football, basketball, pool or table tennis, they will be far less likely to be on the street outside your house, or the local off licence.

Britain needs to re-think its social policies. Investing in the future of our children is essential, but also it is important to have realistic and workable deterrents to prevent crimes and punish those who commit crimes. Re-offending happens far too often and is a waste of police and public resource. Hopefully by providing more facilities for the young and stronger, more relevant punishments we can clean up our society. There is good our youth, we just need to provide them with the tools for them to find it.

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