On the wall in my office I have a quote, which I clipped from some newspaper many years ago. Amos E. Reed, retired Secretary of the Department of Corrections for the State of Washington, wrote it. I do not know when he wrote these words, but they expressed a truth when he wrote them, and they are even truer today. The article below is entitled, No Simple Answers:

“This is not the kind of problem even the best-intentioned people, with  unlimited resources, could ever expect to solve….

I don’t find any simplistic answers, but if there are any at all, they have to do with establishing a healthy living environment for children and adolescents beginning in the home and in the public schools and the community where there is a good self-image and a concern for others … and avoiding this anomie … this… ‘I’ll do my thing, let everyone else do theirs.’  This is the self-serving kind of society we have developed.

You just have to turn on your television and see the violence and filth and selfishness and glamorizing of drugs and violence. Then people wonder that this can influence their children. To me, it has become an idiocy….

We have all these terribly damaged persons, psychopathic personalities, people with problems with drugs and alcohol, and then people think they can send them to prison and change them for the better. That’s stupidity … absolute stupidity.”

Our society is faced with problems earlier generations never faced. Many children growing up today get their values from television and movies and violent media games. One of the most popular games portrays the scene from behind a gun as the “player” shoots and kills his enemies. There is plenty of digital gore that accompanies the action.

Adults can see these things and reason that it is not real and is simply a depiction.  But children who are exposed over and over to these scenes lose that ability to distinguish between reality and this virtual world.  We become what we experience. Children learn from what is around them.

We know abused children are much more likely to become abusers.  Children who are exposed to violence in the home are much more likely to be violent when they are adults.  Jails and prisons do not make most people better, but we have to have them to protect ourselves from the violent and dangerous among us.  I agree with Mr. Reed, there are no simple answers.