Wrong again

The headline says; Preventing crime begins at school

Preventing crime does NOT begin at school. It begins at the family planning clinic or failing that, at home. Many, perhaps most, potential criminals are born under easily identifiable circumstances. To a young, particularly very young mother or as a younger sibling of a mother who started having babies early; with an absent father, especially one absent due to being in prison; to a parent dependent on welfare supplemented by black market income; with a parent(s) who has drug/alcohol/gambling abuse/addiction problem; to a parent or wider family member who will abuse especially sexually.

All this is going on before the child even reaches school.

Sadly even those children removed and put into foster care of some sort are still at much higher risk of becoming criminals although the earlier the removal happens, the better.

Putting psychologists into schools is not the answer. We didn't used to have the crime rates we now almost take for granted and we didn't used to have psychologists in schools.

Look, no-one can actively stop the wrong people, or wrong in their current lifestyle, having children. But there is so much more that could be done to discourage them and /or find alternative homes for those children who do arrive. Young men in prison have already fathered more than children than those not in prison. I am willing to accept that the UK research stacks up here. Most of those children will be on welfare. We have to get in there and change the incentives and how we deal with unsupported pregnancies/births where the issue is clearly going to be going home (if you can call it that) to all of the conditions I have described.

Expecting to turn these kids around when they reach school (but still spend most of their time in their shitty homes with their shitty parents) is pie in the sky.

As Oswald said so eloquently yesterday, Are these people mad??