Role Models

[Box11]

Is now the time to stop ex criminals working with young people and calling them role models just because they have given up on a life of crime......

 

It's clear to see that it's not working,knife and gun crime is getting worse not better and hardened criminals are getting younger.....

 

I don't think it works having ex MURDERERS/DRUG DEALERS etc etc mentoring young impressionable minds.....

 

 

[Halibut]

No, I don't think it's time to stop ex criminals from working with young people. I think you've just plucked a vaguely controversial idea out of thin air with no facts or theory to back it up.

Rather than inventing spurious reasons, you might like to do some research around the fact that youth services have seen cuts averaging around 70% over the last decade.

[Pettytom]

5 hours ago, Box11 said:

Is now the time to stop ex criminals working with young people and calling them role models just because they have given up on a life of crime......

 

It's clear to see that it's not working,knife and gun crime is getting worse not better and hardened criminals are getting younger.....

 

I don't think it works having ex MURDERERS/DRUG DEALERS etc etc mentoring young impressionable minds.....

 

 

Why is it clear to you that it isn’t working?

 

Do you have access to research that assessed the impact of such schemes? Or are you just grumbling?

 

What would you replace them with, given that prison patently isn’t working?

[Guest]

Box11 I presume you didn't watch the Panorama documentary the other week on Scotland's Violence Reduction Unit - here is the link to watch on iPlayer if you are interested

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000gxgv#:~:text=Kate%20Silverton%20films%20with%20Police,in%20the%20past%2015%20years.&text=They%20call%20it%20a%20public,treats%20crime%20as%20a%20disease.

[Tomm06]

It's certainly fine to let ex criminals work with the young but they need to ensure that they're teaching them that the criminal path they chose was the wrong one. 

 

A lot of younger people idolise men and women that come from criminal backgrounds, they have a good platform to teach kids how to do it the right way instead of the illegal way - Kevin Hart does a lot of this. 

[Jeffrey Shaw]

If you want a role model, find someone whose virtues you wish to emulate.

So: not a criminal.

[Pettytom]

23 minutes ago, Jeffrey Shaw said:

If you want a role model, find someone whose virtues you wish to emulate.

So: not a criminal.

Unless the criminal is reformed and is working with child criminals. Then that would be exactly the virtues that you’d want them to emulate.

 

No harm in reformed criminals trying to help youngsters.

[Halibut]

39 minutes ago, Jeffrey Shaw said:

If you want a role model, find someone whose virtues you wish to emulate.

So: not a criminal.

Young people already involved in crime are far more likely to listen to and emulate people they respect and look up to, those who understand what it's like to be in their shoes. Who better than ex-cons? 

[El Cid]

MPs are the people that are 'at the top of the tree' socially, they should be good role models.

[Tomm06]

3 hours ago, Jeffrey Shaw said:

If you want a role model, find someone whose virtues you wish to emulate.

So: not a criminal.

The reality of it is that in all fairness, we all know the type of people that children should idolise and use as role models but the bottom line is - they just aren't popular or cool. 

 

More often than not children will idolise celebrities etc purely because they're rich and spend all day posting about their amazing lifestyle. Some of those include people who either broke the law once or were all out criminals till they either got caught or got a lucky break. The idea there (if we're going to talk about idolising these people) is to admire their work ethic and their character now as opposed to then.