Quote Originally Posted by Dashing Bob S View Post
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Agree with this up to a point, but it's ultimately a limited and thus facile analysis. We obviously have to do these things you suggest, but we also have to try and determine cause rather effect. If something is rotten at the heart of our society and is a root contributor to anti-social behaviour, we have to take steps to indentify and alter or eradicate that, otherwise we are just fighting fires and throwing more and more people in prison at the taxpayers expense.

In the 80's we restructured the economy, promoted the cult of individualism, created mass unemployment and low-status, part-time jobs. In doing so we also created a hopeless underclass who's only real chance of advancement was in the black economy, dealing drugs to their peers; people rendered miserable by no education, housing or employment opportunities. Now we are dealing with the children of this class of people. You can't rip the social fabric out of a nation and pretend that nothing has happened and that people are behaving badly or carrying knifes or getting wasted on drugs because there's something in the water.

As far I'm concerned, the youths who perpetrated this attack are probably way beyond redemption and rehabilitation. I don't care what punishment they recieve, I just don't want them walking the streets. What concerns me is that many parts of our city, many homes and many families have been written off by us a society, and the children they spawn are basically being bred for this behaviour. We've set up these anti-social behaviour factories, and we can devise all the grotesque punishments we like, it won't deter anyone who is so alienated and emotionally brutalised that they feel they have nothing to lose.
You're correct in that we're just fighting fires if we don't get to the root cause. The people who are committing these crimes now should be put away, you've outlines reasons for this behaviour and IMHO there is no way to change or rehabilitate these people.

In relation to all your points regarding the class created and the associated problems, there's no easy way to reverse that, that's even if there is a way which I very much doubt. We can plug away at it but these people should be locked up for a long time.