THE FUTURE OF BOXING AND ALL SPORTS IS DEPENDENT UPON THE YOUTH POPULATION. BOXING ACTION MAKES NO APOLOGIES FOR DRAWING ATTENTION TO THE BLIGHTS ON YOUTH SOCIETY THAT ARE BEING MANAGED BY FAILED METHODS.
Wandsworth Prison 
Eton College 
BOXING ACTION FIRMLY BELIEVES SPORTS AND SPORTS FACILITIES ARE A MAJOR ANSWER TO THIS GROWING MONSTER PROBLEM. A three part series.
It is the belief of Boxing Action that boxing people have to join forces with those that seek to find alternative interests for young people to street gangs and criminal activities.
At the risk of being told a dedicated boxing website is not the place for community and neighbourhood problems, we firmly believe that the interest of young people is of concern to everyone.
The sign that the welfare of troubled young people is escalating is not politics but a distress signal that requires to be heeded by every responsible adult person.
The growing concerns of young persons becoming involved in crime continues to escalate and those who are paid to solve this serious matter appear to remain lost in confusion on how to remedy or contain this extremely worrying trend.
The respected think-tank, The New Economics Foundation (NEF) unequivocally confirms what has been known for decades that alternatives to custody should be used for youngsters because locking them up makes it more likely they will re-offend on release.
In its report Punishing Costs, the NEF questions Labour and Tory plans to invest in new prisons, especially at a time when drastic cuts are necessary if the UK is to extricate from the extravagant and reckless manner in which the once bastions of society band and other finance houses have brought devastating chaos to the once very wealthy UK.
The study claimed the official estimate that it costs approximately £55,000 to imprison a young person for a year this does not account for other factors such as pension, insurance and capital costs, which means the true figure is £100,000.
Once the added costs are calculated, in addition to the reduced chances of employment and higher risk of reoffending after being in prison, the total annual estimate comes to £140,000, which one author Aleksi Knuutila, a researcher at NEF, said is six times the cost of sending someone to Eton.
Eton College Pupils. -- University Graduates
As of February there were 2,195 aged as young as ten to 17 years in custody.
The report concluded that those serving prison sentences are more likely to continue offending after they have been released, rather than have their problems addressed with community based sentences, and that time spent in prison makes it more likely for children to be unemployed in the future, to have lower income, be disconnected from education and have unstable living conditions
It said local authorities could reduce the use of imprisonment by 13 per cent by better co-operation between local agencies and courts, and using interventions of restorative justice that allow offenders to repair the damage they have caused in the community. It is claimed these changes can result in over £60 million of savings in England, and over £2 million for some local authority areas.
The author added: "What really makes our obsessive use of prisons even more of a tragedy is that those resources could have been used to tackle crime much more effectively. The resources we now waste on locking children up could be spent on measures that would really keep our streets safer.
"All the research shows that prison is failing to rehabilitate offenders and isn’t steering them away from crime. At a time when public services are being cut everywhere, we need to ask whether our spending is really delivering on safety in our neighborhoods.”
But John Fassenfelt, deputy chairman of the Magistrates’ Association said: "Justice should never be governed by cost and it is vital that sentencers and the wider public have confidence in community sentences and that the youth offending teams are well resourced to provide a wide range of facilities appropriate for the variety of young people with complex backgrounds and needs.
"Custody really is the last resort and only used when all other measures have been tried and exhausted. It is worthwhile noting that in December last year the number of young people in custody was the lowest since the establishment of the Youth Justice Board.”
Sadly due to past exposures of similar statistics being proven to be unreliable and often creatively massaged to give a wrong impressions, now, even if they are true, they fail to convince. TO BE CONTINUED.
