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Thursday, April 19, 2007

3 months for two lives


There are few times that a sentence is handed down and I feel angry at it, but this has to be one of them. A dumb, dumb, dumb 16 year idiot kills two while speeding away from Police who were chasing him because he stole a Mercedes. The kid has been given 3 months, what angers me is that this 16 year old is a serious problem who is now being taken into a system where the very obvious counseling this kid needs will just not be available – my bet is that we will see him at 18 having done something even worse. The sentence is totally inappropriate for taking two lives, but more than that, the services that are supposed to be there to deal with kids like this are either too late or not adequate enough, if this kid has a string of offences already – where was CYFS? Longer sentences only work if the facilities people are being put in can rehabilitate them, if they can’t we risk only warping people even more from the experience of our corrupt prison culture. None of which can be any comfort to the families of the two people who died.

Crash survivor: toughen youth sentences
A crash survivor has called for an overhaul of the youth justice system after the youth who caused a smash which killed two people was sentenced to nine months' supervision. Karen McGregor-Dawson, 39, was left with a broken femur, collarbone and wrist after a 16-year-old youth fleeing police in a stolen Mercedes smashed head-on into her Toyota RAV as she drove along State Highway 1 in the Dome Valley, north of Auckland. Two passengers in the stolen car, a 34-year-old hitchhiker and a 17-year-old youth, were killed. A boy, 14, was seriously injured.

3 Comments:

At 19/4/07 10:19 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Anger towards this ratbag kid wil not help, I am not a tree hugging soft cock do goder BUT hey what about this mongrells parents, Do they not have a responsability as well. Nobody has addressed the fact that he has had priors. Maybe he should be put in the Garden Of eden Along with all the other lowlifes in there and left to rot.
But maybe the bigger picture is successive Govt that cannt see the bigger picture.

 
At 19/4/07 5:21 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I would be interested to see the evidence on the efficacy of counseling.

My understanding is the research is just not there. Seems to me it’s like praying or faith healing – it ‘works’ but only for people who had nothing much wrong with them in the first place or where the real cure was, in fact, natural remission.

‘Get counseling’ has become a lazy cliché.

As I get older and look back I am convinced it all (or most) comes down to bad parents, either from neglect, over-indulgence, laziness, stupidity, to much ‘love’ or not enough.

We see the effects everywhere. This is an extreme example but most of us can look in the mirror or around us and see the useless mummies boys, the obese whose mummies and daddies are to stupid or lazy to provide appropriate nutrition for their family, the useless partners who were taught nothing by their parents about growing into a responsible adult, the abuse of religion feed to children by parents, the junior thieves and vandals protected, encouraged and enabled by their parents, the dole blungers who have never seen an example of a parent going to work, the list goes on and on.

In my experience people very rarely face up to it and change. Most people live in a delusion about their parents, this kid is doomed and sadly so are the innocent victims.

I just wish people would think before they breed.

Government curing families I think not.

 
At 27/4/07 11:05 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

The truth to this case is the arresting officer miss-charged the boy. Had he charged him with vehicular manslaughter the case could have been moved to adult court. However a driving charge can not be moved and had to remain in the youth court. The blame here should be on the inexperienced officer who laid charges without first checking all his options. This however will never be let known to the pulic. I see this happen every day and have to keep quiet.

This is just like the Liam Ashley case, in which Chubb security signed a form which explicity said "DO NOT PLACE WITH OTHER INMATES". They blatently ignored this order. However corrections have "taken one for the team" as Chubb are the only company in NZ able to provide the transport service. If Chubb were to take the blame they would lose their contract. This would leave Corrections without a reliable criminal transportation system.

There's always a reason, and it's never usually what you think.

 

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