Kid Criminals

As Channel 4 titles go, 'Kid Criminals' is a relatively loose term. It is certainly better than the Daily Mail's headline of 'Inside the Prison for Teenage Paedophiles', which is almost completely detrimental to the message portrayed by the programme.

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'Kid Criminals' is all about rehabilitation in an Indiana prison, it's about erasing an action that may otherwise, destroy these kid's futures. Although, perhaps that in itself is a bit of an oxymoron, as deleting a prison sentence on paper, certainly doesn't hold up against this televised admittance of their crimes.

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Despite the confused ethics of the programme itself, it was well-made, with the young contributors proving extremely self-aware throughout. 'Kid Criminals' learned to play on our morals more than once. We learned to sympathise with the kids, learned how teaching over punishment is favourable and how, in most cases, it works. The show provides the figure of 10% as the rate of re-offence, whereas in the UK, where the scheme is to punish rather than to rehabilitate, the rate is at almost 80%. So is this the way forward? Should we aim to understand those we call monsters, and work with them, rather than against them? According to the evidence here, yes, we should.

entertainment.ie

After episode 1 focused solely on the kids detained for sexual crimes, I expected there to be a thematic transition into episode 2. In ep. 2 however, I feel the programme took a nose dive. They could have separated girls and boys, they could have carried on with themed offences, but instead they only bothered to draw differences between 'kids who fight' and 'cho-mo's which I feel is not helpful for the kids on either programme and is not empathetic to the range of crimes from offenders in episode 2 either.

It felt a little rushed, and there were so many stories crammed in to Episode 2 that it was a little hard to keep up. We had no time to really connect with any of them. Episode 1 was far better than episode 2 because we were given the time to understand our characters and explore the way they came to terms with their crimes. We learned to like them.

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For example, we meet Clutter - who is halfway through his rehab programme that has helped him to leave behind ordeals like being shut in a washing machine by his father. He is clearly smart and often takes up the role of advisor to other inmates. We learn to like him quickly, as we watch him smile at his mother's encouragement, which makes it difficult to comprehend his crime. 

We also meet McNair, also 14yrs old and Clutter's cellmate. We watch as he finds it difficult to share with others what he has done. He finds it hard to forgive himself, and progress in dealing with his feelings. We watch him as he seems to vanish in his thoughts and we will him to complete his programme and wipe his slate clean - is this the future of rehabilitation, do we really take on the Indiana state initiative and 'forgive those who trespass against us'?

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I liked the idea of the two-part series, but in practice, themes were an issue and the structure of the two programmes could have been better. It is a really interesting approach to rehabilitation and I think we could have stretched to more air-time to really reflect the success of the prison programme. It did go further than ITV's 'Kids Behind Bars' though, in showing us something we DIDN'T know. I just wanted more.

You can watch the programme for yourself at 4oD: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/kid-criminals