The Sentencing Council, consisting of various legal authorities, has told judges and magistrates to consider, when sentencing the young, their ‘difficult and/or deprived backgrounds or personal circumstances’. To what end?
To induct the young into proper moral behaviour, Aristotle thought that family discipline should go hand in hand with the community’s laws, customs and education. But it was also possible for the young to receive bad training, on which Aristotle thundered: ‘It makes no small difference whether we form habits of one kind or another from our very youth; it makes a very great difference, or rather, it makes all the difference.’
Aristotle took this view because he thought it was extremely difficult for anyone to change their conduct since ‘virtue or excellence depends on ourselves, and so does vice.
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