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When we talk about something that cannot be simply resolved, dealing with different factors, it would be better to abstain from criticizing a person, or an institution, with too radical manners. In an article appeared in The Sunday Times, we can find the brief account of a family's failure. It is the story of a seventeen year-old boy who has been rejected by his parents because of his continuous criminal behaviour. Such a dramatic evenement needs probably more reasoning, and not a drastic judgment .
However, we should avoid the choice of being too fatalistic, as in * The Fifth Child *. In this novel by Doris Lessing, the life of a quite and happy family is shocked and destroyed by the new born baby. He is phisically and mentally similar to an elf, an evil spirit of the forest, and the only person who will try to love him, that is his mother, will be defeated anyway .
When we have to face the case of Brook Saunders, which we find in the article, maybe it is right to search for some possible explanations. In a middle-class and learned family as the Saunderses, a child could be driven to an erratic behaviour by the excessive expectations of their parents. Andrea Saunders claims, talking of his son, that * I had wanted him to go to university and had great hopes for him *. She seems to put aside the real necessities of her, while talking of her own desires and goals .
At the same time, we know that the truth about a family crisis is often difficult to be understood. In Italy two or three years ago we read the case of a couple, both teachers of moderate left-wing ideas, whose son was becoming a * perfect * skinhead. In such situations, parents associations use to say the fault belong to the violence showed daily in television's cartoons and movies. We should observe that even Milton's * Paradise Lost * must have emphasized the importance of some evil characters - the fallen angels - but this does not mean that * Evil is more interesting than Good *, as Donald Sutherland said to his students in the amusing movie * Animal House *.
But society is a real and necessary institution, notwithstanding Madame Thatcher's illuminate opinion. So, what could a Government do in terms of improving the negative trend of youngsters criminality?
It could be useful to remember that not every teenager criminal has an affluent, wealthy family behind him. We should be blind not to see the ever-growing rate of one parent's families, based for their survival on mothers with low-paid jobs or unemployed. If we are still not satisfied with doubling the maximum sentence for juvenile crimes, are we going to keep in prison every person who is unable to pay for his son's illegal conduct?
As in the case of Martin Upshall, quoted in The Sunday Times' article, part of the problem deals with the lacking of responsability of the social services. Not casually the most part of the activities for teenagers with family troubles is done by volunteers associations, of Christian or non-religious orientations .
Again, everybody knows that young offenders institution are not idilliac places where youngsters are told fairy tales before going to bed. Very often a vycious cicle is the destiny of many of these boys, who will simply pass from reformatory to prison, after being eighteen. Social works, as in the project of French politician Jacquer Delors, could represent a choice for a better and honest future, not only for young unemployed, but also for those who needs to recover to their dignity and their duties .
