Tackling crime: let’s start in the schools

YOUR excellent series on youth crime (Irish Examiner, August 22-25) raised many issues that need to be addressed if we intend to solve our rapidly worsening social problems.

It’s all too easy for people to cast the blame for all society’s ills on some hapless groups and then expect the Government to solve the problems with a collective wave of its hand.

These same people complain bitterly at the money ‘wasted’ on programmes designed to have long-term effects on difficult social problems.