The other week, I was on a panel at a major conference for social workers. I made the case for criminalising far fewer children and young people, rebuilding informal, community-based controls and restoring to the police greater discretion to divert.
An academic, fellow panel member argued that while the message of Andrew Rutherford's 1986 book, Growing Out of Crime, was applicable in the 1980s, it didn't exactly cut the mustard with today's kids involved in inner-city gangs, where close relations with adult offenders, the drugs trade and serious use of weapons apply. They wouldn't be growing out of crime - on the contrary. Without highly skilled intervention they would likely graduate to deadly serious, organised, adult, career criminality.
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