Yoofs

[219]

... if you just took the stupid boys' bikes away, they wouldn't be able to do what they do.

Hence my suggestion of taking them down the fire station and chopping them in half .

 

[219]

More than golden.

True though - we always vote for left of centre government, so to end up with what we have other areas must be voting very right of centre .

 

[Bellow]

Going back through the thread, I'm struck by how well it illustrates that often, the law as it is nowadays gets in the way of justice. What happened to common sense? I can see the rationale behind (massive simplifications coming up...) both the 'lock 'em up' and the 'it's not really their fault' points of view, but if you just took the stupid boys' bikes away, they wouldn't be able to do what they do. Legally, of course, it's not nearly that easy.

The kids can't see the danger in what they do. The adults won't see the danger in letting them behave like this. Neither can see the consequences.
My concern isn't for the kids' immediate welfare (though no one surely really believes that them crushed under a truck solves anything) but how close they are to irretrievably becoming career criminals such is their current lack of respect for what society expects of them. Aggrieve them by taking their bikes from them, see the shoulder chip grow, and their solution be to steal another's bike. It isn't that the law can or cannot confiscate, it is what will the consequences be? It's their (kids) mind-set that has to be challenged. Seeing consequences of actions - that's for all of us. Resorting to 'more jail' is society's failure built in brick. Costly too - if we have to reduce this to economics as is so often the case.

Anybody remember the 'man on the Clapham omnibus' test of reasonableness? I wonder what he, now spinning in his grave, would want done about this sort of low-level, but very detrimental to people's quality of life, offending? I have a sneaking suspicion that first and foremost, he would just want them stopped from doing it; anything else would come a distant second.

Is he driving a black E-Class trying to sort out what he would have expected patrolling police to deal with?