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U.K. government policy inspired by a film?

Helen Pidd

The movie Minority Report seems to be behind the proposal to screen every child in Britain to assess how likely they are to turn into criminals.

SOMEONE AT the U.K. Home Office (Ministry of the Interior) has been watching too many Tom Cruise films. Its latest proposal — screening every child in Britain to assess how likely they are to turn into criminals — seems to be inspired by Minority Report.

In the film, set in 2052, a crack squad of police officers, led by Tom Cruise, use genetically modified "pre-cogs" to foil "pre-crime." The pre-cogs use psychic powers to predict not just those who will commit murders, but also the exact time and place they will err.

The Tony Blair Government's bright new idea, unveiled this week, is to carry out universal checks on all children throughout their development to identify those most at risk of offending. The scheme, would look at factors including school marks, truancy rates and substance abuse.

Opposition Tories lambasted the plans as the "nanny state gone mad." And it does seem a bit sinister to brand people too young to tie their shoelaces as the murderers and rapists of the future.

Claire Nee, a forensic psychologist at the University of Portsmouth in south-west England with a special interest in criminality in children, thinks it is a bad idea. "I don't think we are good enough at assessing risk to be able to accurately pinpoint the children who might become offenders," Dr. Nee says. "It is going to potentially stigmatise a lot of people who might just need support." Plus, she says, 11 or 12 is typically when children try out a lot of antisocial behaviour, which they later grow out of.

But Robert Goodman, professor of child psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, thinks that the government might be on to something. "As long as it's part of a universal programme, I think it's good to detect problems early on," says Professor Goodman. The key, he thinks, is that all children are forced to take part, just as all have to do SATs. "If they only pick out the `problem' children to begin with, everyone else in the class will quickly work out that it's just a programme for delinquents." — © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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