Tony Blair's plan to monitor the risk of individual children turning to crime is pointless and counterproductive — as the evidence shows.

A criminal idea

All Yvonne Roberts articles About Webfeeds March 29, 2007 10:00 AM | Printable version The way in which Blair, by the day, is spouting forth more and more initiatives makes him look like a mad, human equivalent of the lottery balls selector - with as much chance of hitting the jackpot.

Under his latest crime and justice plan, every child in Britain will pass or fail a new-style "11 plus", in which they are assessed to establish the risk of his or her turning to crime. Vulnerable children and those who are deemed at risk, including those whose parents are in prison and/or are alcohol and drug abusers, will be "actively managed" by Children's Trust social services staff and youth justice workers "from the earlier point".

Mr Blair and his advisers plainly haven't heard of the Cambridge-Somerville Study. In 1935, boys living in Massachusetts assessed as being at high risk of becoming delinquent were placed into two groups. One group had no intervention, the other had a specially customised long-term package of support for themselves and their families.

This included five years of counselling; summer camps; extra academic help if required; activities, sports and youth community programmes.

Thirty years later, the effectiveness of this intervention was assessed using four indicators of a bad outcome - alcoholism, psychosis, early death and criminality. The difference intervention had made was unexpected. The supported group had done far worse, than the group left to their own devices. Even more telling, the boys and families who cooperated fully with the interventions in all their aspects, did worse than those who had co-operated poorly.

Are Mr Blair's Bad Behaviour SAS squad - distracted by underfunding; low morale and overloading - likely to do any better? Will they really cost any less than providing what really counts - a decent education; activities in the community; a decent family income; sustained interest from an adult who can be depended upon and improved security in the neighbourhood so peers are protected from their peers?

Others may come up with a better list - whatever is suggested has to be better than stigmatising - and potentially damaging - large groups of children simply on grounds of what they might do - and who they might become.

Yvonne Roberts
29 March 2007

At the URL below you will find other comment's on Blair's idea:
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/yvonne_roberts/2007/03/the_way_in_which_blair.html

home / Previous feature