Da Vinci’s exploration of proportion                          L’Uomo Vitruviano c1490

When something doesn’t function as intended, it seems plausible to fine-tune or alter its operation; no?

Imprison as punishment or for punishment? What occurs but uninterrupted refinement of criminal skills?

Juries determine guilt, judges utter the sentence, the felon sails off to prison for half the due term. Having served their time in Crim Academy, an unsurprising proportion opt to use skills honed whilst inside the penal system and lo, within 14 months are back behind bars.

The Home Secretary announced this week mandatory time served shall increase. Oh joy: greater cost to the tax payer while the dispossessed continue perfecting all manner of nefarious craft.

How would it be were prisons to shift their perspective from being criminal Finishing school to that of Boarding school? Material alteration would be minimal while the refocus could entail wholesale evolution: use-fully occupied days where learning skills valued by Society was timetabled as 9 – 6.

Reading, Listening, growing self-esteem, developing minds to grasp the impact criminal action has on the victim, accumulating measurable achievement all take time – a commodity  that slooshes as Tsunami along prison landings.

The absence of vision in reframing the picture criminals have of themselves incurs exorbitant emotional cost on the country in macro and families in micro.

And nothing changes for the better.

Here at the Materials, we’re interested in causes rather than symptoms: it seems that returning to simple beginnings may hold a key to unlocking the depleting vacuity of what propels crime and its perpetraitors.

Teaching children that if they like a thing happening to them it’s probably right: and if they dislike something then it’s probably the wrong thing to do it to others. Perhaps start by teaching the parents?

Absence of empathy clatters through crime. Absence of empathy enables crime.

If you haven’t been taught to stretch your mind to try to understand others’ lives / perspectives / traumas …, then what you do to them won’t matter to you. It takes dismally little to slough off the veneer of civilization.

And this is how we seem to exist currently. Gorgeous manners and everyday courtesy are ridiculed. Kindness, a virtue which ought to be as unusual as breathing, has become a prudently used weapon aimed at what it might elicit. Generosity of spirit is taken for weakness. It seems all is out of kilter&proportion.

1. Teach the young self-discipline, self-respect and self-confidence.
2. Lead by example of kindness, trust, Please, Thank you and putting hands in front of coughs and sneezes.
3. Proportionately reward all that is good- and punish poor-behaviour.

By such laughably simple means, ends are reached with equanimity and offer a return to Peace. Listen to what’s known at the cellular level and act accordingly. Unbearable chaos in the national heart has led us to the edge of our ability to cope. One wonders how long will be the wait for nuclear winter’s debris to enshroud us?