Can young offenders change?

Text 1: The Training Ship, by Philip Garrod

An original essay written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

I was rowed out on Saturday to the training ship which lies at anchor in the estuary below the town, an old wooden man-of-war that once fought the French and now houses some two hundred boys sent from the police courts of the county. As we came alongside I heard a whistle, and in an instant the rigging was alive with boys, swarming up the shrouds to the very mast-head as nimbly as squirrels, where they stood along the yards in a line, perfectly still, against the grey sky.

The Captain, a bluff old sailor with a voice that could be heard on shore, presented to me a boy of thirteen named Daniel, who eighteen months ago had been a pickpocket in the worst street in the city, with three convictions to his name. He now stood before me in a clean blue jersey, looked me in the eye, tied for me a bowline, a reef knot and a sheepshank in less time than it takes to write the words, and told me that he meant to go to sea in a merchantman and be a mate before he was twenty-five. I believed him.

I do not pretend that every boy aboard is a Daniel. The Captain admits that one in ten will run away, and that some will be back in the courts within a year of leaving. The discipline is stern, and I saw a boy caned for insolence with a severity that made me wince. But I came away persuaded that a great many of these boys are not wicked at all, only neglected, and that given food, work and a reason to be proud, they will climb as high as any mast-head.

Text 2: One Reliable Adult, by Nadine Kerr

An original contemporary article.

I have been a volunteer mentor with our local youth justice team for six years. Each young person I am matched with has been in trouble with the police, usually for something like shoplifting, criminal damage or fighting, and we meet for an hour a week, usually in a café, for six months. I am not a social worker or a therapist. My job, as the training put it, is to be ‘one reliable adult’.

I would love to give you a list of transformations, but the truth is messier. Of the eleven young people I have mentored, I know that four have been back in court. One stopped turning up after three weeks and I never found out why. One, a fifteen-year-old called Kai, spent our first two months answering every question with a shrug, and then got arrested again the week I thought we had made a breakthrough. I went home that night and seriously considered giving up.

I did not, and I am glad, because Kai is nineteen now and working as an apprentice mechanic, and last month he sent me a photograph of an engine he had rebuilt with the message ‘not bad for a shrugger’. Did I change him? I doubt it. What changed was his circumstances: a new foster placement, a teacher who believed in him, a garage owner willing to take a risk. I think young people change constantly; that is what being young is. The question is never whether they can change, but whether anyone is still around when they do.

‘Both writers are optimistic that young offenders can change.’

How far do you agree with this statement?

In your answer you should:

• discuss what we learn about the young offenders in each text
• explain how far you agree that both writers are optimistic about young offenders changing
• compare the ways the writers present young offenders and what helps them to change.

Support your response with quotations from Text 1 and Text 2.