Prisoner numbers

[DanaC]

the State let these underachievers down?

Patterns of illiteracy form at a very young age. The education system lets down a lot of kids, and particularly boys. In order to reach them the work needs to be put in at primary school level, long before the word 'under achiever' should ever be applied to a child. If a child is not learning at the age of seven the fault lies with the educators (or the system in which they operate) and family not the child.

The second huge swathe of prisoners I mentioned was those who are actually suffering from mental illness. The state has let them down because instead of giving them appropriate psychiatric attention, treatment and in some cases that will mean enforced in-patient treatment, they've been dropped into the prison system. part of the problem is that psychiatric health is the cindarella service in britain. Another part of the problem is the severe social stigma attached to mental illness which puts people off seeking help or information before they reach a critical stage. The state could alleviate this situation by: better funding and organisation of mental health provision; a more concerted effort to educate the public about mental health issues and a more concerted effort to educate local magistrates (who are often instrumental in the early stages of someone's entry into the criminal system) about mental illness thereby better equipping them to delineate between simple criminality and someone in crisis.