Restrain, Rebuke, Punish

"You work a lifetime just to get by. Why would somebody break in and destroy everything I worked so hard for?"

These are no first-time offenders. With a streak of previous anti-social acts behind them to identify them as repeat social deviants of the criminal variety. Representing sociopathic tendencies that no one would willingly accept within a neighbourhood. All the more so those individuals who have been victimized by the truly grisly viciousness the unnamed louts perpetrated upon the security and comfort of the homes they stupidly and with obvious malice aforethought, penetrated.

Four break-ins on the same street, in the same day. One in which a pet gecko was incinerated in a microwave. Another where a small family dog was covered with paint. Where, upon entry to peoples' homes, the excitement-seeking youths whom the Youth Criminal Justice Act protects from identification, proceeded to trash. Where cans of paint were sloshed over furniture, over floors and walls. And where human excrement was flung about to ensure that the residents, on returning to their homes would be utterly repulsed by the filth.

These 'boys', guilty of previous incidents of assault, possession of weapons, breaking into school properties, made it their business to excavate food from refrigerators and freezers littering it about just as they did bedroom furniture; punctured television and computer screens, consumed food and beer, smoked marijuana and left the homes they invaded in a state of complete, disastrous disrepair. And the owners of those homes in despair, some with inadequate insurance to cover their losses.

So what kind of deviant mentality equates fun with wasting peoples' property, and hoping to succeed in wrecking peoples' lives? Is it possible to hope to teach such people who have no consideration for others - who feel that to break peoples' hearts by destroying what they've built up in a lifetime of work is great fun - that each and every one of us has a social and moral obligation to be decent human beings?

One of the victims of these break-ins appears to feel this way. She is herself a single mother, whose own work has been with helping troubled youth, as a professional counsellor. And who is appealing that these youth offenders not be sentenced to prison, nor to probationary time, but rather that they be committed to a year and a half of remediation. On the other hand, the lawyer representing one of the offender's interests feels a slap on the wrist would be just fine.

"We're not talking about a heinous crime where this young person has committed murder and chopped the body up", claimed the lawyer piously. Insisting that his client committed what is not considered to be violent offences under the Youth Criminal Justice Act; in which case the sentence, according to his logic, should a sentence of two years' probation and community service. And the add-on of an essay of regret for youthful indiscretion.

As an observer, seems to me what these young thugs did, should certainly qualify as violence perpetrated against others. Frying an innocent animal isn't exactly an act of kindness. What's that old adage? Do the crime, do the time...? And where the hell are the parents of these criminals-in-training? If they're too young to prosecute as adults for the crimes they've committed, then they should still be in the care of parental authority.

Where was that parental authority when it was needed? Prosecute them for lack of due diligence as supportive parents.