Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Rough Draft Synthesis Paper


Kourtney Kramer
English 2010
Writing Proposal
How to Better Young Offenders and Their Future
Can we trust the young offenders of today to work for our companies, and our business’?  A recent article by Adrian Bailey, talks about how in order to help reduce the number of young offenders of reoffending, we need to give them the opportunity to work.  He states that if we strengthen their speech and language therapy that we can help better them to be hard workers, and to be more determined.
We would start by looking at who was at risk of becoming an offender because of the way they were raised, who they were and the kind of environment they were raised in. In my very first article they preformed studies on each individual in a juvenile center and tested him or her to see where their education level was at, to reinstate their suspicion about speech and language troubles being the cause of teens that become young offenders.  To better categorize each of them and to also see if they were eligible to be in a working environment they categorized each individual as eligible for having speech and language therapy or not being eligible.  This is important because then you can better see who needs the language therapy that the facility can provide for them.  Helping them in the future of feeling more confident and lowering the opportunity of them making the mistake of reoffending again.
Yes, you can give them the opportunity to work but they are going to need to be able to succeed in their new career, to prove that they can work hard and better themselves.  If they do not take the time to work on their speech impairments then they are going to always have the struggle of either that being the reason they do not get employed or if they do get hired the reason they probably wont keep their job.  If you are going to be setting them up to be able to work, they are going to need to be able to fully communicate by themselves.  We want to teach them to be independent so that they can fend for themselves and work harder as an individual.  Considering their background as having committed a felony, they will probably start towards the bottom of the company and with helping them improve their speech impairment we can help them climb the corporate ladder and create a more successful future for them.
There is however, still the hiring part of this whole situation.  Hughes said the tick box excludes applicants at the very first part of the recruitment process as a previous criminal conviction was often seen as "shorthand" for bad employee.  "We need to change the perception," she said. "We need to say that, actually, one in five adults in the UK has a criminal conviction more serious than a driving offence. So get real: you're already employing people with criminal convictions whether you want to admit it or not."  The fact that businesses are already hiring people who have committed felonies yet we are shutting out teens that have this same background needs to change.
When you look at it, you want these teens to have a better chance.  Anyone with a heart would understand that every child needs a chance.  These teens are the next generation, the next in line to work in our stores, to run our businesses and to help mold the next generation.  If we don’t give them a fighting chance then we are setting the future up for failure.  From multiple people you will hear the constant reply that we can fix the problem before it ever happens.  We could strengthen the communication help in our school programs to prevent their language disability from holding them back but we need to realize is it’s the child’s decision.  In the end they chose to except the help or to fall behind with their disability.  So no matter how much we strengthen the educational department we are still going to be dealing with this problem.  So we should focus on strengthening all places that the teen or child can find help.
The second article mentions how we need to fix the Tick Box in Juvenile Centers so that more teens have opportunities to get job interviews even though they have committed a felony.  Edwina Hughes, campaign manager at Business in the Community, which will next month launch the "ban the box" campaign urging companies to drop the tick box that demands applicants disclose criminal convictions in recruitment forms, said the campaign would "ensure people are assessed on their skills and abilities first, rather than their convictions".  The author insists that if you look at the person and see who they are rather then a piece of paper that states what they’ve done wrong, you can see them for who they truly are giving more teens a chance to work and create a better future for themselves.  It’s hard because we live in a world that would be very hard to trust, and the constant worry for how the employee would represent you and your company.  But even the smallest job and opportunity for them to work is giving them a fighting chance in this world.  I know that a local grocery store in my hometown takes the time to hire individuals who have speech and language disabilities to work in the day at a less busy time.  Even though they are smaller jobs around the store they still give these individuals a chance to work for themselves probably giving them a sense of accomplishment.  This is contradicting though, because we want to also help them improve their disability so that they can improve from where they are rather than accepting that they will always have this speech and language disability.
            I very much agree with what this article has to say to some extent.  On one hand I think that giving them a hard working job is going to better them and help them in so many aspects but on the other hand I don’t know how I would feel if my co worker has committed a felony or multiple felony’s considering the person.  It is hard though because it is all very depending on the individual and the situation.  Considering where I work at a bank, the hiring process is more difficult seeing as the bank is trusting you with their customers’ personal information and dealing with the banks money.  But I do, however, agree that there are jobs out there that are better suiting.  I think that through working their hardest to prove that they can be trusted that they can be hired and become successful like those who do not have a speech disability or felony in their past.

No comments:

Post a Comment