IF the cranky old toad who lives three blocks down the road had his way, we’d be bringing in the death penalty for 10-year-olds.
I understand youth crime is an issue, but I’m not sure his embellishment rose-gate of makes the cut.
He was animated in his enthusiasm, rage bulging from the veins in his neck as he explained how a primary school girl – which he knew due to the colour of her uniform – had snuck her youthful hands through the holes in his fence and picked a rose.
Multiple roses, he said.
Let’s assume she was creating a posy, maybe for her mother who had taken ill.
But no, the rambunctious old fool hadn’t given thought for why she’d taken an interest in his garden. He just wanted her taken to the river where they dunk the witches.
I may have even seen his point if I’d ever seen him pick the roses for himself. To the contrary, they fall after three days, making a hell of a mess on the adjacent footpath.
As outrageous as the buffoon’s tirade against a defenseless school girl had been, it did get me thinking.
What if the roses had been a car, and the girl been 12 or 13?
The neighbourhood would all have been out with their megaphones, calling for the Queen P and her hive to be drafting a new list of penalties to be imposed by judges and magistrates across our fair land.
They’d be ranting about the way youth crime is treated with leniency, how parents are not held to account for the actions of their ratbag children, how serious criminals – no matter their age – should be treated as equals.
When I was at school, we’d cop the cuts, in our case a four-foot piece of bamboo that made a whooshing noise as it pierced the air around it, right before the “thwack” as it hit our legs or buttocks.
I only ever copped it twice, and I maintain to this day they were both worth the pain. Once was because I’d stood up for a mate and belted a bully square on the nose, and the other was because I was caught kissing the most beautiful girl in the school behind the bike shed.
I wasn’t given a fair hearing on either occasion, but neither do I necessarily felt I deserved one.
I’d clearly broken the rules, and I knew the consequences. Risk versus reward, as they’d say in a closely contested sporting match.
Any 13-year-old who steals a car and puts their joyride on social media knows the consequences, but to their band of mates who’d encouraged them to commit the crime, they would come out heroes, regardless of the outcome.
If the car was burnt and they’d escaped without detection, they’d see it as a win for the team and an excuse to raise the stakes.
If they’d been hunted down by police, they’d be expecting a good talking to by a 20-year-old constable before being assigned a duty lawyer who’d extract the back story that had led to the child becoming evil in the first place.
They’d go to court and wear it as a badge of honour as the presiding worship threatened jail time if they did it again, and perhaps again, and maybe even again.
So those with the megaphones might have a point. Yet, so do those working in social justice who argue circumstance is often the driver of wrong-doing.
Like the little girl who came from a poor family and just wanted a posy of flowers for her sick mum.
How different is she to a boy, aged 10, who’s urged by “friends” three years his senior to steal Tim Tams from the corner store?
Because that boy was probably the same one who – when he turned 13 – started taking luxury cars from driveways.
Is it because we turned a blind eye to his early petty crime that he upped the ante? Maybe. Or maybe it’s just that our morals and values have changed over the years.
