To:  contact@justice4victims.org
Subject:  Why have our teenagers started killing?
Date:  Fri 30 May 2008 16:09:35

Dear justice4victims.org,

People rant and rave in the press about the lack of proper punishments as a deterrant to violent crime (including 

this website), but in truth the damage to the mentality of violent teenagers goes back further than that.  

When asking why kids aren't scared of the consequences of their actions, it's natural to blame the consequences.  

Well, just for now let's blame the kids.  For once, let's look at an internal, not an external factor, and say it 

is an issue of mentality, not disincentive, that makes them indifferent to the consequences of crime.  But why now?

I grew up on a North London council estate in the 1980s, and when I was a teenager we never wanted to kill each 

other.  Sure, there was violence, and there were single mums and there was the benefits system - all the same 

external factors that are blamed for violent culture, but with one big difference.  What there wasn't was the 1989 

Children Act.  More specifically, section 20 of the 1989 Children Act.  Since its implementation any parent in the 

country can walk into a council office and literally hand their child over to the local authority if they decide 

they don't want it any more, or evict their pregnant 15-year old daughter, knowing she'll be given housing.  And 

parents can do this with no social stigma or legal consequence.  

And the result?  An entire generation of young people being "raised" by strangers - social workers and volunteers, 

in shifts - with no concept of attachment.

Attachment is essential for children to develop any sense of empathy or emotional consequence.  Without it, they 

become the soulless, self-serving nomads we're seeing on the news day after day.  Disagree?  Check how many violent 

criminals have been brought up in care - the correlation will astound you.  

And why should kids who have already spent their development in care be afraid of detention? In their mind they 

have grown up in detention.  Furthermore, without the care or benefits system most of them are homeless anyway. 

Attachment is home, in every sense of the word.

Want to stop teenagers killing each other?  You can start by amending Section 20 of the 1989 Children Act, and 

start enforcing parents, legally, to bring up their own kids... at home.

Mr. M. Matthews
Finchley
London
N3

justice4victims.org