Our local paper ran the following headline this week: “We’ve been gagged!” A judge had ordered them not to name a fourteen-year old who stabbed another boy six times. The judge reportedly said he had to take the boy’s age into account.
Why? What possible excuse could there be for not naming this vicious little shit? The VLS, who was on bail for robbery, and wearing an electronic tag, was given a three-year supervision order.
“Broken Britain” in a nutshell! You’re on bail for robbery, you go out armed with a knife, you stab someone six times – and the criminal justice system let’s you saunter out of the courtroom, having first made sure the rest of us won’t be able to identify you. Because you’re just a little kiddie-wiinkle. Ahhh!
Now, executing a handbrake turn in the car I just stole “‘cos I felt like it, right?”, should schools teach citizenship and anger management and suchlike?
As a right-winger, I should be horrified at what seems pretty evidently another attempt by the Left to engineer new and improved human beings eager to hand over an ever-larger proportion of their income to Labour chancellors to piss away on the engorged public sector, and to more readily accept the repulsive anti-social behaviour of so many of its “clients”. I suppose if it includes teaching delinquents that they have responsibilities as well as seemingly limitless rights, it might not be a bad thing. I suspect in practice it’ll mainly consist of teachers giving the teenaged louts and trollops they have rendered ineducable yet more ready-made excuses for their ill-mannered, foul-mouthed, and increasingly violent behaviour.
But there is one important life lesson schools – and parents – might usefully teach their little darlings: “Actions have consequences”.
It sounds simple, doesn’t it? That’s because it is.
In some ways, I’m a relaxed liberal: I believe people should be encouraged to behave well, but given enough personal freedom to make wrong choices. Where I differ – it appears – from many modern liberals is in believing that, once you’ve made a choice to behave badly, the consequences for so choosing should be severe enough to have at least some chance of deterring you from behaving badly again, and deterring others from following your example.
What is the point of teaching civics lessons in school if the criminal justice system so often teaches exactly the opposite lesson? I’d be astonished if the lesson the VLS takes away from his little spot of bother is that his actions, no matter how disgusting, have absolutely no consequences whatsoever.
I’ve been bemused for years by the refusal to name teenage criminals, where there would be no adverse affect on their victims. Because it might affect the criminal’s chances in life?Their choice! Because it might embarrass their parents? Don’t care! Something to do with human rights? They’re the ones violating human rights!
Mind you, if you’re attacked in your own home, chase the criminal and attack them, thenyou’ll face consequences. Three and a half year’s worth. The man who attacked you, it goes without saying, walks away a free, if somewhat confused, man.
Funny old world. When it comes to making sense of it, kids, you’re on your own - the adults who should be teaching you that actions have consequences evidently don’t believe a word of it!
No comments:
Post a Comment