Youths hold up North Lyneham Minimart with whopper knife

Sadly, it is difficult to blame these young upstarts for their crime. No doubt a lack of parental supervision, discipline and teaching about obedience of the law has led to this extreme risk taking. If from a young age you just did what you wanted without repercussions, those behaviors would carry through to adult life.
We see adults walk into court and spill a sob story of being from a violent or broken family, leaving them with no proper role models to follow. Their childhood beatings and neglect are then used as an excuse for the current predicament and psychologists reinforce this with their examinations and declare that it wasn’t entirely their fault they turned out so bad, so the judge shows some leniency as it was their first offense. What isn’t known to the judge however, is the sordid history of bullying and petty crime that the delinquents got away with for most of their childhood.
If you can get away with things at home, you will then carry that mentality to school. You can get away with anything in school grounds nowadays, because teachers can’t punish you. If you run riot in the halls, they will simply lock everyone in the classrooms, teachers included. After you calm down, they will simply get your parents involved and you will have your life analyzed. That is if your parents bother to come to school. It won’t be your fault you’ve turned into a bully, it’s your parents fault or you have some condition that you were born with – it is in your genetics. You get to be part of special groups where instead of learning you run around and pretty much do whatever you want, just to keep you away from everyone else so that their education isn’t disrupted. It’s all about reward, not punishment. No matter what happens, you don’t get into trouble. If you do, they take you away from the class to cool down so if you really don’t want to do maths for instance, just muck up and they’ll give you some I-pad time.
How counter productive is this? What does it teach, except that doing wrong will not have dire consequences.
Once out of the school system and into the world, little seems to change. If you can’t make a living for yourself because you failed school, you just turn to crime. If you get caught, a slap on the wrist is the worst you get. Repeat offenders are just put through the revolving courtroom door because there just isn’t time to concentrate on one person and the jail system is overflowing.
Life is hard. Jobs are scarce and hard to get. Cost of living is constantly on the rise. If you didn’t have a great upbringing and flunked at school, what can you do to survive but turn to crime? Even ordinary folks are doing it tough and as our intrepid leaders push the country into a downward spiral economically, all that is left is unemployment, homelessness, hunger and then poverty. As the middle class become lower class, the lower class become destitute. When you are helpless and have nothing left to lose, morality is no longer an issue. Is this the state of the two offenders we see in the video? Have they lost everything and now have to steal to survive? Obviously not, if the pack of premixed alcohol is supposed to be their meal for the night. They have just learned that if they get caught, they will walk out with a good behavior bond for first offense.

It is not their fault they turned to crime. It’s their childhood, it’s an illness, it is because they can’t get a job, it is the influence of the gang they hung around or the drugs and alcohol they got addicted to at the age of thirteen. Is it ever their own fault they broke the law? There are way too many excuses and society is just accepting them because the problem is too difficult.
Hard labor in a drug free camp would straighten them up and deter them from re-offending. Why, oh why, do we keep being so soft on these cretins?

If that image was 20 years old I would say for sure it was Beavis & Butthead.

HenryBG said :

PJPentony said :

Unfortunately this happens all to often at this little shop, the poor family who own it have to put up with continual break ins and robberies. The perpetrators have no fear of the law of the prospect of going to jail. It would seem that our Jail system neither; rehabilitates people or give them any real fear.

I’m not really sure what the answer is but as a previous small business owner I’m pretty sure we need to change something.

If you look at recent court reports you will notice that the courts are continually dealing with offenders who have hundreds of prior convictions.
This is what’s wrong. Nobody should even have the opportunity to commit any 4th offence, let alone a 200th.
For example, a man with a history of criminal convictions gets told during sentencing for his latest crime spree:
“…he must know that the degree of leniency that is being extended to him today will not be repeated.”
I think what he must by now know for sure is that our justice system is a joke.

It used to be allowable for a shop owner or someone who carried large amounts of cash in the course of their business in the ACT to obtain a concealed firearm licence. This is normal in other countries and it may still be the case here so why doesn’t the owners of the store investigate it and possibly the next time some thug tries them out with a big knife a little piece of lead will sort it out and that will be a disincentive for others to try it.

About 30 years ago there was an armed holdup in a bank in Fyshwick (I won’t mention the bank) and unknown to the robber one of the customers in the chamber was a plain clothes detective with a service pistol who knew what had to be done.

There were no armed holdups in Canberra for a long time after that.

PJPentony said :

Unfortunately this happens all to often at this little shop, the poor family who own it have to put up with continual break ins and robberies. The perpetrators have no fear of the law of the prospect of going to jail. It would seem that our Jail system neither; rehabilitates people or give them any real fear.

I’m not really sure what the answer is but as a previous small business owner I’m pretty sure we need to change something.

If you look at recent court reports you will notice that the courts are continually dealing with offenders who have hundreds of prior convictions.
This is what’s wrong. Nobody should even have the opportunity to commit any 4th offence, let alone a 200th.
For example, a man with a history of criminal convictions gets told during sentencing for his latest crime spree:
“…he must know that the degree of leniency that is being extended to him today will not be repeated.”
I think what he must by now know for sure is that our justice system is a joke.

Unfortunately this happens all to often at this little shop, the poor family who own it have to put up with continual break ins and robberies. The perpetrators have no fear of the law of the prospect of going to jail. It would seem that our Jail system neither; rehabilitates people or give them any real fear.

I’m not really sure what the answer is but as a previous small business owner I’m pretty sure we need to change something.