IHOPE your readers will join me in supporting the Howard League for Penal Reform’s campaign ‘Growing up, shut up’. All children should be treated equally and what a child has done should be separate from who they are. The campaign is highlighting the child behind the crime. Youth crime is not a disease rampant across the nation, but individual acts by children that need appropriate responses.

The campaign seeks a safe home for every child released from custody. Too often they are abandoned to bed and breakfast accommodation only to get into trouble yet again.

There is more information on www.howardleague.org and I do hope that your readers will get involved in campaigning for children and making our local community a safer place.

C Mahoney, Woodcrest, Blackburn