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| Iranian FM: Iran Ready for Uranium Fuel Swap U.S. dismisses the proposal, saying it is inconsistent with draft IAEA agreement www1.voanews.com |
Colombian governor seized in raid The Caqueta province governor is kidnapped by armed men dressed in uniforms, in an attack officials blame on Farc rebels. news.bbc.co.uk |
Picasso, Rousseau works stolen in France MARSEILLE, France (AP) -- About 30 works of art, including paintings by Pablo Picasso and Henri Rousseau, have been stolen from the home of a private collector in southern France, police said Saturday.... hosted.ap.org |
Shares in Japan Airlines dive 81% Shares in the troubled carrier Japan Airlines continue to fall on mounting speculation that it will file for bankruptcy. news.bbc.co.uk |
Doncaster's many victims | Loretta Loach The perpetrators of these appalling crimes have suffered terribly. It is no time to cry retributionIt says a lot about the state of child protection in Doncaster that the sentence given to the two brothers who carried out the brutal attack could be the beginning of a new and better future for them. Not only had social services failed to intervene in the distressing circumstances of their earlier home life, despite having information stretching back over 14 years, but also numerous opportunities were missed to intercede in ways that could have prevented the nightmare of their violent behaviour.Of course, there will be those for whom this is no excuse. They will argue that the court has not gone far enough. Cries for retribution, however, are likely to be a lot more muted than at the time that James Bulger's killers were sentenced in 1993. Appalling though the crimes in Doncaster were, there is a prevailing sense that the perpetrators had been failed by the system.Some might go so far as to say that it is inappropriate to subject these children to a hearing in a criminal court, let alone issue them with a custodial sentence. Again, like the Bulger case, this raises the question of whether children so young should receive punishment for such crimes when the evidence shows they are profoundly disturbed.Other legal systems are often invoked in this context – Norway, in particular, where there are no criminal proceedings for young children, regardless of the crime. In a case where two boys attacked a five-year-old girl and left her to die in the snow, the policy pursued involved placing the boys, with psychological help, back in their schools and community. Believing that the young killers had also been involved in a traumatic event, the authorities wanted to return them to as normal a situation as possible.Examples like this inspire us to rethink our practices, but there is no simple process of transplantation. Any system is inseparable from the cultural context from which it has evolved and the less urban, less complex society of Norway produces a very different ethos.It remains a difficulty in serious cases of this kind to reconcile the need to punish children who have caused such terrible suffering with the pressing need to reclaim for them a childhood they never had. In sentencing, there has always been a problem in balancing the principles of justice for the victim and family with the welfare and potential of the child who has committed the crime.Mary Bell was failed miserably in 1968. She came from a family where instead of love she got cruelty, and instead of education, her body was pawed by clients of her prostitute mother. The judge had difficulty finding a suitable place where she could serve out her long sentence and she ended up as the only girl in the secure unit of an approved school staffed by men. She received no therapeutic help and as soon as she was old enough, she was taken to an adult prison. The Bulger killers, on the other hand, fared better. They received intensive psychological intervention and were released amid controversy before the age at which they would have been transferred to what the lord chief justice called the "corrosive atmosphere" of prison.Fortunately, the judge's conclusions in the Doncaster case have been made relatively free from political pressure. During the heightened alarm over levels of crime in 1993 it was easy for the two main parties to invoke the tragedy of James Bulger's death to make generalisations about the moral sickness of our "feral young". In an atmosphere where crime is decreasing, David Cameron will have difficulty making this case serve his Âbroken Britain agenda.What is different in this case is that our understanding of childhood in both its ordinary manifestations and its extremes, has changed. The secure children's centre these boys will go to is their best hope of getting the protection and psychological help they need. But equally it is hoped that no resource should be spared in supporting the two young victims and their families who will live with the effects of this tragedy for a long time to come.CrimeChildrenChild protectionYouth justiceLoretta Loachguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |