Many children who end up in prison as young adults grow up in families that experience poverty, isolation and marginalisation. Such families often perceive themselves to have been very poorly served by the State, or arms of the State, and sometimes voluntary agencies too.
I have no doubt that the principal reasons why people perceive this (through many generations) are to do with unfairness, inequality and injustice and (from their perspective) the impenetrability of institutions that constitute the system.
Very often, the child protection/criminal justice systems are entities through which they get to know the State.
Many families find such systems either punitive or coercive or both. While they might work well for some families, the system contains many design elements that hamper progress in respect of families on the margins.
Some of these are obvious and some are far more subtle and hard to spot.
It is not by and large my intention to criticise what works well for many families who avail of existing services (i.e. mainstream-type provision).
Rather, my intention is to promote new thinking, and thus different ways of tackling age old problems that have always beset our communities and society at large.
Of course there may be examples of what I would consider to be disrespectful or wasteful practices that I may mention to act as a contrast, or emphasise, or give weight to the opposite, i.e. respectful and/or economical, cost-effective models that I believe are much better.
And I believe that any proposed new ways or methods should be grafted onto and complement, rather than replace, existing efforts that do work well.
The first proposition that I would like to make (in the context of families who perceive themselves to be neglected), and a clear motivation for writing this website, is that crime is a solvable problem in society.
This ‘core belief’ is an important jumping off point! If you believe this also, the website will make a lot of sense. (If you do not believe it yet, you are invited to continue reading anyway and see if any of the content interests you).
When I say crime I am referring to the kind of crime that is linked to addiction, and that arises from the mixture of trauma and alienation that families who have the characteristics that are described in the next Chapter (in the Sub-Chapter on the Focus Group) experience.
And when I say solvable I mean that it is reduced to the level that would be typical in a mainstream middle-class kind of family or community.
I often think that our attitude to crime is very like our attitude to poverty. Both are so universal in our human experience, (in space and time), that they appear impossible to solve, never ending, or infinite. This infinite quality that crime possesses leads us to believe that we can only contain it, try and alleviate suffering caused by it, etc. and not ever solve it, as no agency or organisation would ever be able to access the extent of the resources needed to solve it fully.
And – also important – as I say at the bottom of this post, saying that crime is solvable does not mean that I am the one that will solve it – now ……..
But crucially – and this is the starting point, really – we all know that both crime and poverty (which are closely linked anyway) are caused by the behaviour of human beings.