00:00 Pictures
of housing estate in Sighthill in Edinburgh, and school kids
leaving school Edinburgh.
Guide Voice: Crime is a
youth problem. Two thirds of British children have admitted to some
form of delinquency. Important new research from Edinburgh
University has found that young offenders are much more likely to
become victims of crime themselves. The Edinburgh Study of Youth
Transitions and Crime will follow the life histories of 4,300 young
people in Edinburgh from age 12 to 30. The survey began in 1998,
and has been funded by the Economic and Social Research
Council.
00:37 INTERVIEW David Smith,
Professor of Criminology, the University of Edinburgh -
"What we find in this study is that in fact, being a
victim of crime and being an offender are very closely linked, so
closely linked that if you want to predict which young person is
going to be an offender, one of the best ways of predicting it is
by finding out whether he has been a victim of
crime."
00:56 Pictures
of school children, Edinburgh (anonymous)
Guide Voice: The report
also looked into reasons for the link between victimisation and
offending.
01:03 INTERVIEW Susan McVie, Senior
Research Fellow, University Of Edinburgh -
"Because people tend to group together with other like
minded people, if you have a group who are high offending group
because offending occurs within groups, you tend to find that those
people within that group are not only more likely to offend but
also more likely to be offended against by others that they
consider to be their peers and their friends".
01:29 VOX POP girl with pink
hair - "The hurt and the pain its not
going to go away is it, you just want to hurt and give someone else
pain, you pass it on and they'll probably pass it on to someone
else, they pass it on till they pass it on, all these people get
hurt".
01:46 Pictures
of students leaving school (anonymous)
Guide Voice: The study also
uncovered how parenting style is important to stop young people
becoming delinquent, but it cannot be looked at in isolation.
01:58 INTERVIEW Paul Bradshaw,
Research Fellow, The University of Edinburgh -
"What perhaps may be a successful parenting strategy in
one neighbourhood might not work in another neighbourhood because
of the local dynamics that operate, and the local culture and the
local practices".
02:14 INTERVIEW -
"If you have a family or parents who advise their children
to avoid getting into fights and not to defend themselves if they
are attacked and so on, that might be advice that works perfectly
well in some areas but not so well in a tough working class
area".
02:35 INTERVIEW Hilary Sangster,
Juvenile Liaison Officer, Lothian and Borders Police -
"The parenting is important to look at as part of the
community and quite often the influences of those that are
respected by some of the younger kids in the community, their
opinions are, what they think has a huge and better impact
sometimes on how a kid's going to progress in their
life".
02:50 VOX POP Boy in baseball hat
- "It's not good to grow up and see crime,
because you'll either do it or want to do it
yourself".
02:58 VOX POP Bandana boy -
"One of my friends who will remain un-named, his parents
just, he'd go out and nick pens, anything he could get his hands
on, and when the police caught him, I've seen his parents just
basically turn a blind eye. So he went out and did it again. Last I
heard he was in Doncaster prison."
03:23 Pictures
of housing estate, Sighthill, Edinburgh
Guide Voice: As the debate
over crime and punishment remains high on the political agenda,
home office figures show that 92% of under 21s who serve a short
custodial sentence are re-convicted within two years. What does
this new evidence suggested in the treatment of young
offenders?
03:42 INTERVIEW David Smith,
Professor of Criminology, The University of Edinburgh -
"Most of the time when you're dealing with young
offenders, you're also dealing with young victims, and equally most
of the time when you're dealing with young victims you're also
dealing with young offenders, so you can't draw a clear line
between helping people who are in need and punishing people because
actually, both process are involved all the time."
04:03 Pictures
of Children's Hearing panel (simulated)
Guide Voice: The next stage
of the Edinburgh research will study the Childrens' Hearing Panel,
a juvenile justice system unique to Scotland. The Children's
Hearing system seeks to tackle the problems that lead young people
to offend in the first place, with an emphasis on welfare rather
than punishment.
04:26 INTERVIEW Malcolm Schaffer,
Reporter Manager, Children's Hearing Centre - "We
see it as a crucial piece of research because it enables us to more
fully understand the causes of why children offend, and we can
therefore use our strategies of agency support and decision making
vto try to look again at why children are getting into trouble and
intervene at an earlier stage."
04:45 ENDS
