Distorted Reality – Dream the new beginning.

I appeared on the Drivetime show on Premier Radio today.  This was really exciting – it was my first ever live radio debate and I think it came off well.  The subject was really interesting too.

Grace Idowu, the mum of David, a 14 year old boy who was murdered in 2008 had made some comments in The Sun newspaper about youth offending in Britain.  The Sun are running a scare story series about ‘Broken Britain’ and she had asked the question:

I am waiting for the moment in this country when parents go to jail with their children.  It’s only right they take responsibility for how their children turn out.

I profoundly disagree with this idea.  Parenting does have a huge affect on young people with regard to offending, but the answer is far more likely to be in education, rather than punishment.

And besides, prisons do not work (especially for young people).  Somewhere between 70-80% of young people who have been in custody re-offended between 2003-08.  Custody seems to be ineffective – a waste of money and lives.  I believe that we need to be a little more imaginative about the youth offending/custody process.  I’m interested in the way that Scandinavian countries deal with young people who commit crimes – through the welfare system (see the abstract of this book).

Anyway, I was told Grace Idowu might be appearing on the programme.  I was scared.  How do I disagree, live on air, with a mum who has been through that?  It turned out that she wasn’t on the show.  I was actually with a guy called Barry Mizen, whose son, Jimmy was killed in May 2008.  He seemed amazingly gracious when he spoke about young people, including those who murder.  He seemed like a good guy.

I’m interested in how the debate with continue.  I hope that the whole thing isn’t co-opted by the likes of Rupert Murdock and certain right wingers.

I was really pleased to get an email from Premier Radio today, asking if I’d be able to take part in their debate on the Premier Drive show.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to, but they might have used some of the blog anyway.  Apparently, they were discussing the Jon Venables case that I blogged about here yesterday.  I’ll try to catch the debate on their catch up service when I can, but I hope it was interesting.

The Bulger case is really emotive for most people who were around at the time or know much about it.  I was a child when the murder happened (I’m only a couple of years older than the boys who killed Jamie), but I remember Jamie’s mum appealing for people to help find her son, and then to help find his killers.  I remember the trial and Michael Howard’s, intervention which reduced the age of criminal responsibility to ten, so that the two boys could go to prison.  By the time I was studying for my degree, this case had completely changed the way that children and young people were dealt with in the UK – in everything from law and the media to parenting.

Well, watching the footage of people proclaiming judgement on Venables over the past few days on the news, I’ve been amazed to see how one case can so affect society’s idea of justice.  Numerous people have been calling for his life to be ended while I’ve been watching.

I guess I’m saddened but unsurprised by people’s inability to see past their (justified) anger and take a stance founded in real justice.  ’Street justice’ is a devoid of justice and I’m thankful for the relative temperance of law in the current situation.  There is obviously a huge emotive punch that comes from knowing that a vulnerable child has killed an even more vulnerable child, but this emotion should not guide our judgement.

It seems that, while a mother might be allowed the right to proclaim her grief-fuelled anger, the rest of us must, surely, need to temper our justice with mercy.  If we do not, we must have to expect the fair judgement of our own acts, with no mercy.  Who would survive in that situation?

And, if we use this mercy, within the confines of justice, might it even lead to forgiveness?  A friend texted me today with a great phrase:

Forgiveness releases the Forgiven and the Forgiver

I think that there will never be justice in this lifetime.  True justice would demand all our lives.  In the end, I believe, justice can only be in the gift of somebody free of fault, so I’m thankful that that’s how my God revealed himself.