h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

One bit of (ahem) gallows humour, though.

As a native of The Peoples Republic of Merseyside, I liked a bit in the same interview when he said that a neighbour in Fleetwood had jokingly asked him:
'You're from Liverpool. I bet you've been in prison.'
'Yeah,' he replied, 'But only for fraud.'

As Woody Allen said (of something else) 'What's so 'only' about it?'

naming Venables won't stop that guys problems. Heck, as mentioned earlier, the fact he is a free man currently and thus *can't be* Venables isn't stopping the idiots. Nothing stops them except for the next thing they can use as an excuse for a bit of anti social attitude and violence.

'That guy' is innocent and needs the law to protect him from the minority of society. On the other hand the law proved Jon Venables guilty and needed to consider what had to be done to protect the majority of society from him. The 'professionals got it wrong'
Jon Venables is now old enough to have his identity revealed, be judged for his new crime and if found guilty locked up again. The 'professionals' need to reconsider there priorities and hope that this time they get it right.
This action would also solve 'that guys' problem.
Unfortunately all this has to be paid for but that's another problem.

I'm puzzled, AB. Are you objecting to my use of the word's 'that guy'? No offence was intended.

By the way - why the quotes around 'professionals'?

Not the monkey - You've got the idea regarding the use of quotes.

Raise age of criminality, children's commissioner says

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8565619.stm

Maggie Atkinson said the killers of James Bulger should have undergone "programmes" to help turn their lives around, rather than being prosecuted.


Hmmm. All very laudable I'm sure but we already have a generation of young people who are *extremely* street smart and whom the law can't touch. Why do you think very young kids are often seen hanging around gangs of older kids? It's because when the police show up, any drugs and/or knives are quickly passed to the kids to hold as they can't be arrested. Why is it when so many studies show that people are maturing earlier than ever due to better nutrition etc, we insist on infantilising people to a greater and greater degree?

It may have been a while ago, but I'm reasonably certain that when I was 10 years old, I knew it was wrong to kidnap a toddler and batter him to death on a railway line.

If his world needs to be turned around at the age of 10. Then he needed to be taught the difference between right and wrong 2 years earlier, not given 2 years longer to fester.
Perhaps basic manners and respect would be a more appropriate subject than sex for the junior schools.

The main reason why most people don't commit horrific crimes is not that they know they would be wrong, but because they have no desire to commit them.

When I was ten, I knew that murdering a toddler would be wrong, but more importantly I had no desire to murder a toddler - I would get no pleasure or satisfaction from the act, therefore I was not tempted to do it. Issues of right and wrong are secondary. I *was* tempted to steal sweets from Woolworths at aged 10, because I liked sweets. I can't say whether the fact that I didn't was more to do with knowing it was wrong, or fear of getting caught.

This is the truth that some people seem unwilling to face. The fact that I am not a 'monster' is not primarily because I make moral choices and because 'monsters' make immoral ones, but because - fortunately for me - I do not share their desires and do not take pleasure from the pain of others. Maybe if I did have those dark desires I would have the willpower and the insight to realise that they were wrong and not act on them, but I've got no way to be sure of that.

Teaching right and wrong is important, and developing the skills of moral reasoning and the ability to reflect on the effect of one's actions on others is important. But this won't address why certain people have this abhorrent desires that most ordinary people don't have. That's what needs to be addressed....

Otto Fisch - There is doubt at all about what you say.
Did you read post 6 ?

AB:

You may be right in in post 87.

But what do you do about the fact that, due to his parental environment, he *wasn't* taught these things? Your idealism is laudable - but in this case the Real World failed.

Re: 'They knew they were doing wrong'. What does that actually mean?

a) It was A Naughty Thing

b) A two year old would feel immense pain, his life would be permanently (*permanently*) extinguished and his family would feel intense grief for the remainder of their lives.

c) The perpetrators of b) would have their freedom taken away for a very long time.


I absolutely agree that most ten year olds know a). I'm less convinced that all of them will fully understand concepts such as b) and c) - or if they do, will necessarily process them in all situations. Hell - it is reliably known from work with adolescent and adult offenders that many of them simply don't weigh up the consequences of their crime for their victims or themselves.

Oh absolutely. Adult offenders often don't consider the consequences far less children.

Which is why every parent should be telling the story of James Bulger as a warning to their kids a) not to be victims and b) to demonstrate that there are consequences to illegal acts.

Unfortunately, b) is repeatedly undermined as the public hears how prisoners serve sentences, if they serve sentences at all.

A speculation...not relating to Venables, but hypothetically.

All crimes of a motivation. The perpetrator gains in some way - materially, in terms of sexual gratification or psychological power (possibly reduction of their own feelings of psychological inadequacy)...etc.

That's true of even the most monstrous, unfeeling criminals, surely? No crime is purely random.

So what might be the possible motives for a - hypothetical - ten year old to kill?

Power, peer-pressure, status? Notable that there were two killers, each playing up to the other? Would either have killed alone? Too many variables.

Plus - we do have to take their (lack of) upbringing into account. Surely?

<<<but I'm reasonably certain that when I was 10 years old, I knew it was wrong to kidnap a toddler and batter him to death on a railway line.<<<

But can we be reasonably certain that those children intended to kill him?
Couldn´t we think that those children were reproducing with the little one the violence they were suffering at home?
In any case,I think it´s a big mistake to treat children as adults.

<<< Why do you think very young kids are often seen hanging around gangs of older kids? <<

Shouldn´t those kids go under a kind of control, protection programme to prevent them from getting into bigger problems?
They are in risk. It´s not normal that a kid hangs around with knives and drugs. It´s not normal that nothing is done about it untill something wrong happens. And then, some people will demand that all the height of justice falls on those children, instead of demanding why nobody acted to prevent a crime.

Prevention is essential.
A way of dealing with it, in my opinion, would be to apply specific programmes similar as those intended to children diagnosed with discapacity. Saving the differences, they have something in common, their "adaptative conduct" fails, but in terms of social adaptability,not motoric or cognitive. They need protection they are lacking emotional balance and maturity. Their upbringing represent a risk for themselves and for society.

A Spanish social reformer from the 19th century said "open a school and a prison will close" Well, it´s not as easy but she wasn´t too far from reality. Prevent and protect children in risk, and the possibilities of commiting a crime will decrease.
And once they have committed a crime, try to recover them for society. They are still children, a lot can be done.
Treating them as adult criminals isn´t the best way.

<>

We can't. But a Judge and a court has access to all the professionals required in order to make a judgement upon that. They did - they considered the evidence and they decided, beyond all reasonable doubt, that the boys knew what they were doing.

<>

Drugs are so commonplace that it is indeed normal for kids to have them. Dammit, if you want to know where the best weed is to be had, ask a schoolkid. How did it get to that stage? Well, I remember a kid at my school was caught with a tobacco tin full of joints. He was hauled out of class by the Deputy Rector and removed from school. He disappeared from our neighbourhood. I met him a few years ago and he's now a surveyor. Whatever the authorities did back then, it worked. My step-son's friend however was caught dealing amphetamines and hash in school. He was given "counselling" and a social worker. He's in prison now I believe.

Go figure.

As for knives, it is perfectly normal for kids to carry knives. They carry them for protection because they're more scared of the kids whacked out on drugs than they are of the police. And it was perfectly normal when I was a kid for boys to carry knives. Every kid I knew had a penknife in their pocket and out of school I had an 8" sheath knife permanently attached to my belt in case I was ever caught out and had to whittle a liferaft or a beefburger or something.

I agree we have a problem with how we approach juvenile delinquency. We have a system that repeatedly back-pedals on the kids when they're 12, 13, 14 etc. They get "counselling" and "help" for problems and get advised on "coping strategies". All along they're told it's not *their* fault, it's society or their parents or where Pluto was in their birth charts. Then they turn 18 and, when they commit the self-same offence they've been getting away with for years - BANG - it's into the adult courts and off to the Bar-L. Poor sods.

<> Why? Are we short of people or something?

>>We have a system that repeatedly back-pedals on the kids when they're 12, 13, 14 etc<<

With boys, and most girls, that's too late. Most lads, if they're going to disengage from education, tend to do it at 10/11. The majority of lads who are still engaged by the time they're 14 will continue in education happily.

My current job is working with boys, trying to get them into university by encouraging them at school. Problem is I only have a mandate from Year 9 upwards, by which time the damage has been done and there's really very little I can do.

I think part of the problem is with the secondary school system: I'd split Years 7-9 from Years 10-13. Means lads aren't competing to grow up so quickly.

<<they considered the evidence and they decided, beyond all reasonable doubt, that the boys knew what they were doing.<<

I think there are reasonable doubts, but even if they had planned the consequence of their action, they can´t be treated as adults. Do we need to be experts on child psychological development to appreciate the difference between the mind of an adult and that of a child?


""<> Why? Are we short of people or something?""

First, you have omitted the two sentences that follow that one and that summarises my point. And second... well, what can I say? I know you are joking or trying to be provocative or whatever.

So, I´ll get frivolous too and will tell you that I´m going to watch Messi´s last perfomance. He´s a genious. Besides, I´m repeating myself a lot here.

<> Why? On what grounds? Have you got access to more information than was made available to the courts? I may have mis-remembered Ed from earlier in the thread (and I apologise in advance if I did) but I'm sure he cast the same aspersions on the professional capabilities of the judiciary but spoke in defence of those who decided to release Venables.

Why this rush to defend a criminal? Why the need to portray a killer as a victim? Our whole society is a victim of people like Venables, little thugs and hoodlums who have an army of do-gooders and social workers to speak for them. But who speaks for the dead? Who speaks for the maimed and the disfigured, the real victims? Criminals get informed of every twist and turn in a trial. They get appointed expensive legal representation to try to get them off or to barter down their sentences. What do the victims get? Too often the Procurator Fiscal (or CPS) treats them as an annoying inconvenience. They have no right to be told anything.

We no longer have a justice system in the UK. We have a legal system. A system built by and for the convenience of lawyers whose real clients and money earners are the criminals.




But yeah, Messi is a bit special