Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Give a dog a bad name

All children could be required to take a test to find out if they are a risk of becoming criminals, new government proposals unveiled today say.
The government plans to "establish universal checks throughout a child's development to help service providers to identify those most at risk of offending," the report says.

Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, said. :-
"Who, for example, can disagree with the idea of 'early intervention'? But are we talking about supporting and educating young people or bar-coding babies at birth?"

Neera Sharma, the principal policy officer at the chuildren's charity Barnardos said:-
"If this means that parents might get early help and support, if it means that issues such as poor school attendance were to be addressed, this has the potential to reduce crime and keep young people out of trouble. But if a child is identified as at risk, is that family going to get the support it needs? The danger could be that they are labelled and they live up to the expectations of them. There is a risk of stigmatising the child."

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