Sounds like part of the cure would be getting the mother onto some alcohol treatment programme. I expect that would be near impossible, but without that how can the situation improve?
Sounds very frustrating.
Once upon a time ... there were always such people, but 'peer pressure' i.e. the negative judgement of all neighbours and everyone else who she came into contact with - would keep such cases to a minimum.
But now being judgemental is the greatest sin, and dividing clients into 'deserving' and 'undeserving' would end a social workers career, though they might have private views.
An interesting if not unique case. So how did it pan out? Can only bail to a council whos jobsworth officers have no part in the criminal justice system. Effectively release the criminal back into the community where even the most stupid Guardian reader must realise there "may be some risk of reoffending". Cant send him to a detention centre? Pity the poor general public eh? "Intense supervision from the Young Offender Team"! Dont make me laugh! The kid is a persistent offender already who's punishment for breaching the rule of the court and the law of the land is to be sent home! What a lesson! He must be quaking in his boots. Meantime he commits more offenses and makes normal everyday law abinding peoples lives a misery. And you have an obligation to protect! I hope you feel warm and fuzzy....
Of course maybe you can argue (with some validation) that the law ties your hands and that you'd like to deal with this, but can't. Perhaps you could clarify that you have exhausted all options, including custodial? Thanks in advance
If bad parenting were a crime, we might be all better off. Then again, there's that Nanny State thing again...
Mark,
I am afraid that you miss the point, which is that 10 to 15 year-olds are treated in law as damaged children, not as criminals. Of course in Iran they are quite happy to hang nine year-olds, but most of us will recoil from that. The public's thirst for locking people up would only damage these children further.
Your casual insult to council youth workers is offensive and wrong. Many of those whom I have had dealings with do the best they can with severely damaged children. They don't always succeed, but you can't undo a decade and more of indifference and cruelty in a few months.
I was going to suggest we sing a few hearty verses of "You've got to pick a pocket or two" but Bystander seems to have strapped on his boxing gloves. Firstly, Bystander, that crack about hanging nine year olds is a bit of cheap rhetoric and certainly beneath the bewigged. Either one is for letting deliquents run riot or one is a Hezbollah supporter? What an absurd false dichotomy. (I personally would hang no one under fourteen).
And let's not get started on social workers.
Someone whispers "hail Santa" and happy functional communities are torn apart wholesale, but we're fine with leaving this kid to go feral?
In lower Hamilton said:
If bad parenting were a crime, we might be all better off.
I assume you're childless yourself? 'cause I think there too little recognition of the difficulties of parenting nowadays, with little support from community and media, constantly suggesting the reverse of what a parent's supposed to teach. I too see a lot of criticizable parents around, and hear a lot of criticizing of parents. But very few people appear to be thinking " Even if it is not my kid, I have a responsibility to him/her": not to expose them to brutality or vulgarity, not let them think sucess and money are everything, not to make it evident with one's behaviour that it's perfectly o.k. to look after n. 1 first and last...if bad parenting were a crime, we'd almost all be accessories to it. We are a very bad parent society, constantly teaching the wrong things to the young and then taking them ( and their parents) to task because they learn them.
the court could impose a parenting order when the matter proceeds to sentence. However i must admit i have not yet seen such an order imposed at my magistrates' court...
"(I personally would hang no one under fourteen)."
Well thats the problem with you bleeding-heart guardian readers. Why should 9 year olds get special treatment? If you are old enough to do the crime, you're old enough to do the time (or swing in this case). Thats whats gone wrong with this politically correct society, nobody is willing to speak the truth anymore - we were a lot more civillised when 7 year olds hung from the gallows for stealing apples.
Bystander: "10 to 15 year-olds are treated in law as damaged children, not as criminals." fine...
Yet in your OP you stated "We had a look at his previous and he had a record going back to the age of 10 for theft, burglary, assault and suchlike."...
I'm sorry, to me he doesn't look like a "damaged child" he looks like a hardened career criminal started young. The law would do the rest of society a favour by locking up little sh*ts like this, whether in proper prison or other "secure accomodation" I care not. Perhaps he *might* reform once he reaches the age of criminal responsibility and can get sent down for real (after his 30th or 40th conviction), but in the meantime keeping him off the streets (and out of other peoples' property) would be the best thing to do.
I take the old-fashioned view that one of the law's prime functions is to protect the law-abiding, not to be a social service for those who are the predators upon society.
Oh, and I missed this bit... "The public's thirst for locking people up would only damage these children further."
FFS look at his record! How on earth could being locked up - where, if nothing else, he'd be getting three square meals a day - do him any more "damage" than has already occurred?
Perhaps sentencing should include the parent who is responsible for the minor i.e. Enforced parenting classes. I'm not convinced that sending parents to jail for the indiscressions of their ferral youths would help.
sae, what you are preaching is the abandonment of personal responsibility, as I don't think there is any greater responsibility than having children.
What those parents do in my opinion is nothing short of abuse, and that should be punished, or at least made to recognise the consequences.
The bottom line is however stupid you are, there is no excuse for having children nowadays if you are not ready or capable to raise them.
I would not hold that boy responsible if I was one of his victim (well, maybe not in the heat of the moment), but I sure as hell would want to beat the crap out of his mother.
I think the answer is some sort of borstal school. Whatever happened to them?
Pascal, you took the argument right out of my mouth. The point of my first post was that when a kid has gone wrong this early, the parent should be held responsible. The burden of enforcing responsiblity has to fall to neighbours and family, the ones who have the greatest contact with a family. The state only has the ability to step in in extreme cases.
The neighbours and family ARE being punished. They live in the same "open prison" as the kid. It's their houses he'll burgle and their purses he'll steal his drug money from...
sae,
you don't know my daughter's "friends". They've got an attention-seeking four-year-old daughter.
This girl is never told off. Indeed, her mum had a go at my daughter because she told her off - for wrecking my daughter's sofa!
I said the little girl was never told off - in fact she's pretty much never told anything except "go to your room". No wonder she's such an attention-seeker - she certainly never gets any from her parents!
Cheers,
Wol
"but dedicated and professional as these are, they cannot overcome such appalling parenting as this boy has received. "
If the little darling were being physically abused, would he not be removed from his mother and put into care? If he is not to be held responsible for his actions then his mother is responsible, and is guilty of abuse by neglect - so isn't returning him into her care rather like returning a phyiscally abused child to his home for more of the same?
These are deep waters. Apart from being a father and grandfather I don't know a lot about child care, but I do seeem to recall that experience shows a bad family, with help, is better than the best 'care'institution.
The high percentage of children who go from 'care' to prison is a scandal.
What Laban said ('Once upon a time ... there were always such people, but 'peer pressure' i.e. the negative judgement of all neighbours and everyone else who she came into contact with - would keep such cases to a minimum.') got me thinking about some of the ways that society has changed over the last few decades.
I believe that a lot of changes, for good and bad, have come about gradually because of an increased acceptance of various circumstances/states/conditions. Examples (apologies for sweeping statements, but trying to illustrate my thoughts):
1) Society is more accepting of different races, creeds, colours - a good thing.
2) Society is more accepting of bad language. When did we ever hear 'bastard,' 'bollocks' or 'shit' on the tele 20 years ago, but today it's a 'fuck' a minute - to me, with a young child, a bad thing.
3) People are generally more understanding of and accepting of homosexuals - a good thing.
4) Anti-social and criminal behaviour in some levels of society is condoned to a greater extent as Laban points out - a bad thing.
My point is that these changes resulting in an increase in youth crime are part of a bigger picture and that there is no easy solution. So, for example, I am pleased that my daughter knows about gay people and does not have a predudice against them, but I am not pleased that people will talk about gay sex (or any sex) in a crude way at 7pm on the box.
How does one improve society without throwing the baby out with the bathwater?
Mr. Borg,
It is well established that it is much easier to enforce laws against the generally law-abiding. If someone puts up a Christmas display on public property, it seems likely that he has a fixed address, employment, a bank account, &c., making him easily threatened by the police and easily susceptible to fining, imprisonment, and the confiscation of property. To put it another way, hoodies don't usually put up Nativity scenes freelance.
A feral youth, on the other hand, may prove utterly immune to the social sanctions of which the law was once the highest degree. If he can't be made to feel ashamed of theft, violence, and drunkenness, then the law has no power to do anything to him except to lock him up and perhaps confiscate the proceeds of his most recent burglary. As prisons are now to be humane, the law cannot threaten him with violence beyond, perhaps, an unofficial and now highly restricted 'summary punishment' sure to be milder than what he voluntarily undergoes every time he glasses someone in a bar.
Bystander - this is the crux - HE IS A PERSISTENT OFFENDER - he may have various excuses as to WHY he is a persistent offender, but nevertheless he spends his free time preying on innonocent victims, he is law breaker who already has intense "supervision" which by any measure HAS FAILED TO PROTECT THE PUBLIC. These are simple concepts, he needs to be detained. What couselling/supervision he receives whilst detained is another matter, but the over-riding responsiblity is to protect the public.
I ask once more - have you exhausted all options or can you still commit him to some kind of detention?
Time maybe to "bring back the birch" for predatory feral kids? Might make them think twice about their criminal activities if they knew that the consequence of being caught, instead of "counselling" or "intense supervision", was (to quote a character from "The Knight's Tale") "Pain, lots and lots of pain!".
And I'm only half-joking! 
For all sorts of reasons (many well intentioned) we have become afraid of being judgemental. The upside is that people who live different lifestyles are not (so) subjected to moral disdain and abuse. The downside is that excuses are found for poor behaviour, and the poor behaviour is not addressed until far too late to change it.
In my view it would be far better to punish bad behaviour early and less heavily - then address the reasons for it. Only punishing heavily later on sends the wrong message.
By punishing a little, early on, we set expectations about acceptable behaviour. If we allow 'behaviour cheats' to get away with it, the general standard of behaviour falls as everyone else becomes more blase.
Why do you think speeding or drunkeness has become more prevalent? Why to groups of young people (sometimes) become groups of yobs? Why do gypsies, or squatters, or tax evaders, or welfare abusers (pick your favorite group you like to hate silently) think they can get away with their antisocial activities? Because no-one is prepared to challenge their behaviour early.
In the case of your young repeat offender he should have been dealt with early on. If this means the rest of us have to stump up additional tax to fund the proper institutions/agencies so be it.
But the first requirement is to be prepared to set limits on what is acceptable behaviour, no matter what the excuse.
You said those underpaid and under-appreciated professionals have your admiration - I detest their very existence.
In my experience, they cover their inadequacy with well rehearsed double speak, always blame a lack of resources or supervisory support, they are restricted by procedure and protocol from actually being useful and worst of all - they blame the young person adding to the problem rather than alleviating it.
These "professionals" are only professional in their dealings with other bureaucracies and the judiciary. In other words, they tell you exactly what they know you want to hear. If you want to get to the truth of a young person's situation, sit them in your chambers, take off your ceremonial battledress and TALK to the young person. Find out what the young person perceives to be the cause of their problem - whom does the young person blame? Find out how the young person thinks, discover to what the young person aspires (if anything at all) and after an hour of conversation with one of these youngsters, use your experience to judge for yourself whether or not those professionals are even remotely connected with reality, let alone their "client".
The hand-in-glove appearance of the government appointed social workers and the judiciary sickens me to the very core. It's one arm of government covering the arse of another arm of government in order to prevent the emergence of the awful truth that neither party has the first clue what it's doing with and to these young people.
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