Member

The key theme is the focus on education, rehabilitation and child welfare. As we well know, we have different standards for children and adults because children are developing, which represents the perfect opportunity for rehabilitative measures in the first instance. Criminalisation and, by extension, criminal records, undermine such rehabilitation. To be branded a criminal in year 5, as you are being assessed on things such as handwriting quality, only to be prevented putting that terrible handwriting to good use by being blocked from being a doctor or a lawyer later in life, is plainly self-defeating. Further, given their biologically driven lack of foresight, punishment by way of the criminal stigma is unlikely to be effective if its effects are meted out only 10 years down the line.