we’re all shocked and appalled at the sudden explosion of very serious violent burglaries – in the form of ram-raids or smash’n’grab attacks – being committed by the children of new zealand. it’s a sad and awfully fascinating phenomenon; why now? and for god’s sake, how?? they are children. this is horrible.
and yet what i find more horrible is the way so many people (primarily blues and right-wing nuts) are treating this issue. they talk constantly about how it’s a CRIME problem; horribble dangerous CRIMES being committed by terribly dangerous CRIMINALS that make us all unsafe, from which the innocent must be protected, and a heavily punitive response the only correct one.
oh come now. when children are committing crimes, that is a parenting problem.
now i don’t know this for sure, but something tells me that these kids don’t come from the happiest homes. for many of them, their lives are probably punishment enough. what usually helps problems like this? perhaps pay their parents higher wages, even if it’s at the expense of the boss’s/ceo’s paycheck. people tend to be happier when they have enough food and stay warm at night. perhaps make sure their health, dental and psychological needs are adequately met. perhaps engage people more in community groups with funding provided by those who have more than they need. so much could be done, by so few, and for so little… just organisation and a correct attitude.
it takes a village to raise a child. well, our kids are doing ram-raids. i guess we got some pretty shitty villages.
we do this a lot in our society. for instance, drugs are considered a criminal issue instead of a health one; and so we put drug users in jail instead of hospital, considering them to be criminals, not patients. we label them, and thus negate them. fifty percent of our prison population has dyslexia, and twenty five percent has ADHD. that is not a crime problem, it’s an education problem. but we call the learning impaired criminals; we label them and thus negate them. people with ADHD are twenty times more likely to end up in a jail cell. i’ve been in one myself.
it doesn’t pay to be diverse, does it?