citizen calling: an e-democracy initiative

This is one of the latest initiatives from the Hansard Society and the Home Affairs Select Committee, in case you have missed it. Citizen calling, in a nutshell, tries to get young people think about crime and the Criminal Justice System, and feed their opinion using text messages.

This is 'Citizen Calling' - an experiment to see whether mobile phones are a good way for people and Parliament to interact.

The topic is young people and the criminal justice system. The Home Affairs Select Committee wants your help to define how Parliament and the Government should look at the issue.

Thought bubbles

The MPs on the Committee have set 5 questions for you to think about:

1. What are your experiences of crime in your area?
2. Are some groups of young people more likely to be involved in crime than others?
3. Which factors lead young people to break the law?
4. What can be done to discourage young people from committing crime?
5. How far do the public's opinions about young people and crime reflect reality?

The idea is that you use your mobile to send your views in as either txt, video, audio or image msgs. Here's more info 'about how it works'.

This is a great opportunity for young people in the UK and very important to the MPs.

Sort of what we have been trying to do with Criminology students here, only the medium was a dissertation... Maybe in medio stat virtus, we need to find somewhere in between 165 characters and 10K words as an ideal space for engagement. Uhm, I will give that some thought.