Crime A Mental Health Issue.

A quarter of young people who end up in court may have been damaged by their mother's drinking during pregnancy - and should be treated differently, visiting experts say. Foetal alcohol kids 'require court rethink.'

After all, punishment has always been an ineffective means of correcting behaviour ... just ask parents, teachers, police and others involved in skills training. It is ironical that at this point in time, a time of the disempowerment of those people/services charged with teaching skills or effecting socially appropriate change, that our penal institutions shoud be named Departments of Corrections ... this doesn't quite reflect their reality.