Revealing identity of 16-year-old who admitted inciting rioting will achieve nothing but a short-lived burst of media exaltation A court has decided to name a young person for his involvement in the recent riots. This is unusual in all but the most serious cases, such as the notorious Bulger murder . In the magistrates court, youths are meticulously kept separate from older offenders, and it is good practice for courts to have separate entrances and waiting areas for youth court users including defendants, their parents or carers, and witnesses. Youth courts are closed to the public, but the press may attend and report subject to strict limitations. Magistrates can only sit in the youth court after careful selection and training, and must sit in a mixed-gender bench (but this does not apply to the burgeoning ranks of district judges). Sometimes, because youth courts do not sit every day, a youth will come before an adult court, that will probably remand him or her to the next available youth court. As chairman, I will address the young person by their first name, and routinely make a section 39 order that prohibits publication of anything that might serve to identify the young person involved. The youth will be accompanied by a parent or a so-called appropriate adult, who might be a social worker or someone similar. There is a reason for all this, which is to keep the young away from avoidable contact with their potentially experienced and corroded elders. Young offender institutions segregate the under-16s from the 17s to 18s, and the younger ones are subject to a different regime. The law shelters young people not out of sentimentality or soft-heartedness, but because parliament has rightly decided to give young offenders a chance, however limited, to grow out of offending. Time is far and away the most effective agent at rehabilitating the young offender, as Shakespeare knew more than 400 years ago: "I would there were no age between ten and three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest; for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the anciently, stealing, fighting."  In today's world of short attention spans and media-fed indignation where opinion polls reveal a public thirst for heavier punishments in a vain search for deterrence, people forget that to be deterred you need to have an imagination and an intellectual ability that allows you to connect behaviour with its consequences. So how will the naming of this young man achieve anything other than a short-lived burst of media exaltation, and a chance for politicians to swagger as hard men and bask in Daily Mail-led approval? If he gains notoriety, it is less likely that he will grow out of crime. If he becomes a mocked pariah, it is less likely still that he will do so. I hope that the naming of young offenders will remain a rarity, only done in extremely serious cases. Richard Bristow has been a magistrate in west London for 26 years UK riots Crime Young people Sentencing Youth justice Richard Bristow guardian.co.uk © 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds