Archbishop says criminal justice system is failing children
-22/9/03
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, delivered a scathing attack on t
Archbishop says criminal justice system is failing children
-22/9/03
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, delivered a scathing attack on the criminal justice system this weekend in his most overtly political speech to date.
In a sermon at the National Festival Service of the Children’s Society in Canterbury Cathedral, Williams expressed sharp criticisms of the youth justice system and its inability to differentiate between adults and the young.
“It is still astonishingly slow to treat a child as a child and to face the question of how the emotional void that so often appears in ‘criminal’ children is to be addressed and healed,” Williams said.
The attack on the legal system is likely to spark further debate about the Church’s role in political and constitutional matters and comes shortly after Williams ignited a debate about religion and the young with a call for more religious schools to act as a counter to an increasingly secularised society.
Yesterday Williams said that there were “very serious questions” about a youth justice system in which “the welfare needs of children are still so often sidelined so that it is not too surprising to learn that the rate of reoffending among children who go into custody stands at something like eight out of 10 at present.”
The timing of the sermon, shortly after the Government unveiled a green paper heralding a shake-up of children’s services, is signficant. Williams, who is president of the Children’s Society, appeared to suggest that successive governments had failed generations of children.
“We are required to face the fact that, for all our corporate sentimentality about childhood and for all our well-meant protocols about the protection of children, thousands of our children in Britain are invisible and their sufferings unnoticed,” he said.
Too often society had noticed children’s problems too late, he added. “We can’t help acknowledging that we have not had the right habits of attention”.
Archbishop says criminal justice system is failing children
-22/9/03
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, delivered a scathing attack on the criminal justice system this weekend in his most overtly political speech to date.
In a sermon at the National Festival Service of the Children’s Society in Canterbury Cathedral, Williams expressed sharp criticisms of the youth justice system and its inability to differentiate between adults and the young.
“It is still astonishingly slow to treat a child as a child and to face the question of how the emotional void that so often appears in ‘criminal’ children is to be addressed and healed,” Williams said.
The attack on the legal system is likely to spark further debate about the Church’s role in political and constitutional matters and comes shortly after Williams ignited a debate about religion and the young with a call for more religious schools to act as a counter to an increasingly secularised society.
Yesterday Williams said that there were “very serious questions” about a youth justice system in which “the welfare needs of children are still so often sidelined so that it is not too surprising to learn that the rate of reoffending among children who go into custody stands at something like eight out of 10 at present.”
The timing of the sermon, shortly after the Government unveiled a green paper heralding a shake-up of children’s services, is signficant. Williams, who is president of the Children’s Society, appeared to suggest that successive governments had failed generations of children.
“We are required to face the fact that, for all our corporate sentimentality about childhood and for all our well-meant protocols about the protection of children, thousands of our children in Britain are invisible and their sufferings unnoticed,” he said.
Too often society had noticed children’s problems too late, he added. “We can’t help acknowledging that we have not had the right habits of attention”.