CRACK wrote:
heh, you got a point. I have been led to understand that the UK has had some serious problems with troublesome teenagers, in part because the justice system over there can hardly even touch kids.
This is unfortunately true. There is almost a sort of void between ages ten and 19 approx, where children can pretty much do wtf they like, and the justice system has trouble actually punishing them. Some of it is legal culpability.. ie the younger they are, the less responsible they are considered for their actions. Some is the responsibility of the parents.. ie theres a mindset that society shouldnt have to deal with it, the parents should. (Obviously these people have never had a rogue teenager for a child.) Then theres the odd belief that because its only kids, its no big thing. There are some large and dangerous KIDS out there, who hunt in packs, so even a well-built and competent adult can find themselves in trouble when 15 odd kids attack them.
Judges and magistrates appear to be diometricaly opposed to incarcerating juveniles.. but then they have developed the same attitude towards adults recently. its damn hard to get locked up these days. Instead they hand out anti-social behaviour orders, and make these gits make promises not do do various things. This of course fails. Being told you cant hang out in gangs near the local shops makes no odds, because common sense dictates you shouldnt have been doing it anyway.
Add this to the "the victim is a suspect" mindset prevalent, and you have a whole generation of mindless little bastards in some vast macrocosm of lord of the flies.
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"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart,
that you can't take part" [Mario Savo, 1964]