An Old Codger’s Thoughts & Opinions

About one-in ten young people were referred to as chronic offenders who engaged in persistent offending behaviour throughout childhood, which continued into adulthood. They were responsible for one-third of all crimes recorded.

A major factor associated with many young people’s offending is their history of trauma within their family. Another factor is where young people come from disadvantaged and violent communities. Domestic violence is a big part of this traumatic scene. This can be sources of risk for offending because they provide children with a negative social environment. Many Queenslanders who have been regularly terrorised by youths are now turning their homes into virtual jails. Many of the older generation have also taken the decision to limit the amount of time they are away from their homes as they worry about being the victim of extreme violence. When a court sentences your child to time in custody, or if your child is refused bail, they go to a youth detention centre. Whilst there are some youth who need, for the safety of the remainder of our community need to be separated from our community. But simply sentencing youth to imprisonment only is not the simple fix.

Whilst juvenile crime cannot be stemmed entirely by governments and the state’s police service. Families and communities also need to step up to do their part in reducing juvenile crime.

Various governments have attempted to fix juvenile crime simply by “throwing money at it” without having a long termed plan or a statement of planned outcome and plan measurement. There need to be some consideration to ways of dealing with juvenile crime that may not be considered as requiring families of younger offenders to take responsibility for the youths actions. This responsibility could take the form of financial retribution, or where this is not possible physically completing community work. Maybe a system of limited detention whereby offenders live in detention centres which could be incorporated into farms or other industrial precincts and required to complete a number of work hours under supervision during the daytime thus earning free time to leave the detention centre for social activities.

In Queensland we have already found that a liberal approach to juvenile crime has not worked. Simply applying a bandaid to the problem is not the answer. All political parties have made the problem worse through using juvenile crime as a political football. By continually dividing into indigenous or white offenders does nothing but politicises the matter. Criminal behaviour is criminal behaviour irrespective of who commits it.

Truthful Jones says And he swears that it 100% true - No Bulls##t”

Truthful tells us about his neighbours young son who went to mass last Sunday. As everyone was leaving the church, the Priest noticed the young boy in the hallway, looking at a number of pictures on the wall.

The Priest said, “Well, hello, young man, how are you today?” The boy said, “Oh, fine thanks Father.”

The Priest then said, “I see you are looking at the pictures on the wall, do you know who the men in those pictures are?”

The boy said “No, who are they?”

The Priest said proudly “Well, son, those are pictures of the men from our congregation who gave their life in the service”.

The boy replied, “ Which service Father, the 10 o’clock or the 11 o’clock service?

Morale: Men serve their communities in many different ways. Not always serving in the military.

Take time to remember Ash Wednesday

On the morning of February 16, 1983, Australia was to see Victoria and South Australia be consumed by fire in which 75 people died as a result of the fires; 47 in Victoria, and 28 in South Australia.

More than 3,700 buildings were destroyed or damaged.

Over a 24-hour period, more than 180 fires were burning, tearing through 400,000 hectares of land, an area four times the size of metropolitan Melbourne.