Thoughts Mindesque - Gareth - Crime Control

Housing Trust Disaster Families

nospam@example.com (Gareth) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 23:21:51 -0700

The news that South Australian police today removed and hospitalised six children from a state housing trust home that sometimes holds 21 people comes as no surprise to the majority of citizens. We know perfectly well that such homes exist. We view the charging of the mother with criminal neglect as a positive step.

Families and Communities Minister Jay Weatherill commented that it is not the responsibility solely of child protection agencies to protect the children of such families but is rather everyone's responsibility including neighbors and the wider community. That statement will strike a very raw nerve with a great many citizens who are sick to death of having politically convenient arguments thrust in their faces.

The average parent does a good job of raising their own children under what are increasingly difficult circumstances. They personally do far better than to have a dozen children who go unclothed, unwashed and unfed. They know perfectly well that the more responsibility they accept on behalf of what they regard as 'ferral' families, the more those families will neglect their own responsibilities, leaving it to someone else to solve their problems and meet their obligations for them. The average parent knows also what is even worse, that helping those disaster families will without doubt cause them grow and multiply, and that they are a primary source of trouble and criminal behaviour.

We are told that crime is a community problem and it has to be solved within the community. The only possible interpretation of that statement we can ascribe any common sense to whatsoever is that crime is largely a function of certain individuals within certain types of micro-communities.

We want to know why it is then, that we are being told we must act in a fashion that will encourage the growth and multiplication of micro-communities that are well known to be breeding grounds for criminal offenders.

Politicians such as Jay Weatherill are trying to have it both ways. Either we are working to eliminate conditions under which offending becomes prevalent or we are not. Insisting that we ought to act in a fashion that that encourages those conditions to grown and multiply exposes their government's approach to crime control as hare-brained.

If that government truly believes their own spin about the origins of crime they will spare nothing whatsoever in direct intervention to prevent disaster families from growing, thriving and perpetuation the cycle of child abuse. They have flagged the problem. They must now provide strong, decisive leadership to stamp it out or they must shut up.

Gadgets Do Only Half A Job

nospam@example.com (Gareth) — Tue, 20 May 2008 22:08:18 -0700

South Australian premier Mike Rann is investigating FBI gadgetry for use in the war against crime. Fair enough. Every bit helps. But we get a strong idea that SA police know who the offenders are anyway. They have been arrested and released again countless times.

Gadgets may help to catch them in the act but to what avail? The bottom line on crime control is that only the sending of a pointed message to the community through very stiff penalites, particularly for unprovoked crimes of hostility, violence or property destruction, will achieve anything worthwhile. Without that, catching offenders (time and time again!) is meaningless. The purchase of gadgetry will simply amount to more illusory showmanship on the part of a government that is unwilling to act proportionately to its talk.

Cabbies Hit Back

nospam@example.com (Gareth) — Mon, 19 May 2008 13:06:22 -0700

Taxi drivers are striking because another cabbie was bashed in Adelaide yesterday. Good on them!

It is clear that a lot of people are cynical about taxi drivers. However, that only serves to increase the amount of violence against them, since it is considered less of an offence to bash someone who is 'on the nose'. That in turn will make it impossible to get more responsible individuals to become cabbies. The public cannot win like that.

Violent crimes are getting out of control. They are all too often committed by people with long histories of similar offences, released on the ridiculous basis that if they are gradually bashing people less often then their rehabilitation program is working. Everyone in society needs protecting against these rat-bags, not just cabbies.

Criminal Lack Of Justice

nospam@example.com (Gareth) — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 12:48:29 -0700

Last night in Adelaide yet another police car was rammed in yet another car chase, after being pelted with objects from the car by four occupants fleeing from a liquor store raid.

No matter how cutting-edge innovative and humanistic justice officials may think they are being in giving these individuals chance after chance, they present themselves to the general public as imbeciles and expose public protection as a non-event.

Whether or not they consider that to be an unfair assessment of their efforts and their worth is irrelevant. It remains the right of the public to judge according to their own perception. Efforts by justice officials to change that perception have largely failed. The public mind is not quite so easily programmed. It perceives far more than some professionals give it credit for.

When street crime explodes justice officials blame it on a barrage of social factors without ever considering that failings on their own part may be resulting in unnecessary injury, death and property damage. Social control is a psychological thing. The public must believe in or it is lost. People cannot believe in the pile of rubbish we are currently witnessing.

Neither do we believe the arguments that are being flung in our faces. They are spurious and they amount sophistical reasoning.

They say "crime is a community problem and it has to be solved within the community". That statement is ultimately true, but what should it translate into? Should it mean the public have no right to protection? If so, it amounts to a reasonable argument being used as a clever dodge.

There is a disgusting accusation implicit in that statement. It is this. "You, as a victim of a heinous crime, are a part of a community that tolerates social injustices and inequalities and therefore you have no right to demand the incarceration or severe punishment of the offender who is themself a victim. The sin rests upon your own head".

Therefore, the death of a granny knocked down heavily onto the footpath during a savage bag snatch is her own fault. The government, courts and penal system were under no obligation to protect her against that. Therefore the knifing death of someone's son while he was being robbed of the expensive sneakers he worked for was his own fault. Therefore the brutal abduction and rape of someone's teenage daughter was her own fault etc. We are essentially being told that if inquality is tolerable then so is crime so don't complain, just look in the mirror.

It's not that we can't see the point, but we can also see where they are bending the argument to their own ends.

Each of us as an individual can do only the best we can towards being a decent citizen. None of us can wipe out inequality even if we find it abhorrent. It never escapes us that there are great failings common to people who live on society's bottom level but when we point that out and suggest that they themselves need to change we are rubbished for unfair criticism and told to shut up.

Jails are expensive. It is far cheaper for governments to let offenders out. If they are kept locked away governments can be held directly accountable for that. On the other hand, if a released offender kills or maims someone governments cannot be held directly accountable. It is therefore politically safer for governments to have offenders released even if they pose a danger to innocent and defenceless members of the community.

The public mind isn't stupid. It can gather these things. And it can also gather momentum to hold accountable governments, justice officials and lawyers who hide behind shabby arguments in order to protect and advance their own interests while the public are left at the mercy of dangerous offenders who roam free to threaten lives and property.

Neighborhood What????

nospam@example.com (Gareth) — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 21:23:01 -0700

I was never a believer in Neighborhood Watch programs. I see them as helping to facilitate government cop-outs on crime control. I can see their worth as an adjunct to effective crime control policies. As a substitute, which is what they have tended to become and were always going to become, they are useless.

This month the St Marys (South Australia) Neighborhood Watch newsletter confirmed to me that my assessment is spot on. The front page feature article is a generic spiel about - would you believe - the wearing of seatbelts in cars! It is a mirror of the current advertising campaign. What BS is that? What does that have to do with crime control?

Oh, yes! I see the point alright. Failure to wear seatbelts is a crime because it causes needless deaths. And in response to that I say to the Neighborhood Watch coordinator and the fans of this half-baked club of committee-lovers - Belt Up!

Worthwhile though they may be there are places for road safety articles and Neighborhood Watch newsletters isn't it. These periodicals were initially purported to be dedicated to locals helping to prevent mainstream crimes by keeping a sharp eye out and reporting anything suspicious. Admittedly, the results of that appear to have been dirigible volumes of hot air and little else. Since criminality is highly evolutionary criminals adapt quickly to changes in their environment. The public knew that well from the start. Criminologists and justice officials somehow didn't know it - or chose not to know it.

Perhaps the failure of this program to achieve anything sensible accounts for the complete lack of articles about local heroes and the deeds they have done in helping to curb crimes in the area. That is the sort of content we expect to see. Where is it?

To make matters worse, the remaining three pages contain nothing more than a few pages of generic crime prevention tips and a list of crimes reported in the area last month so tiny that it couldn't possibly reflect the true picture of local crimes.

And here is the final insult. A four page insert crammed full of advertising! Frankly, I found the advertising to be the only worthwhile content in this dismal rag that was stuffed in my letterbox. Since the advertising is clearly paid for and since the main content was nothing whatsoever new, just what exactly is money being raised for?

I know personally of many instances of cars and property being damaged overnight. What does Neighborhood Watch offer in response to that?

Next month's guest speaker at their meeting is from the Adelaide Youth Court. The subject is Juvenile Justice Family Conferencing. That news hints, to me at least, that what I have always suspected is true. That Neighborhood Watch programs are a tool for governments and justice officials to brainwash public minds with their own preferred crime control policies. Those policies are the ones that work for them.

Speculative Justice

nospam@example.com (Gareth) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 23:07:28 -0700

The lawyer for Thomas Towle, the driver responsible for running down and killing six teenagers at Mildura, argued that it was unproven that Towle's driving with his son on his lap contributed to the accident. He additionally insisted that eyewitness claims to the effect that Towle was speeding were speculative.

I am not in a position to disagree with this claim since I wasn't privy to the evidence. However, it would seem to me that that lawyers are hell bent on wrecking every prosecution and short-circuiting all attempts to punish offenders. The suggestion that in doing so they are contributing anything useful to society in the way of improved justice are similarly unproven and even more speculative. The fact that their chief motive appears to be money and prestige greatly increases that suspicion.

Mandrake Arrest Proves A Point

nospam@example.com (Gareth) — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 23:20:45 -0700

Today we read on Adelaide Now website that an 18 year old Aboriginal youth believed to be a Gang Of 49 member has been arrested in relation to a recent spree of serious crimes. He was on 'home detention bail' at the time. This is basically good news. However, it does support a claim made by a large percent of the community that clashes violently with the opinions of justice officials. They say that putting these individuals in jail doesn't work. We say that letting them out doesn't work.
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Graffiti Vandals Need Tagging

nospam@example.com (Gareth) — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 11:27:31 -0700

The news that a German tourist has been forced to repair his own graffiti damage to New Zealand's Franz Josef glacier is welcome music to the ears of disgusted citizens. According to a news report the culprit spent a day and a half chipping his 'tag' off the ice. However, this avoided his being charged with willful damage. That is a mistake. It fails to tag the offender with an appropriate label. If he goes elsewhere and offends again, which is a reasonable presumption, what record will there be of a previous conviction?
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It's Prime Crime Time Again

nospam@example.com (Gareth) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 14:08:30 -0700

The crime rampage detailed on the Adelaide now website on this page cannot be considered an acceptible hazard of trying to rehabilitate offenders. It's odds-on that these culprits are well acquainted with the justice system. They are either being released when they ought not to be or released without sufficient supervision and control over their movements.

Is It Realistic To Blame Bouncers?

nospam@example.com (Gareth) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 01:18:43 -0700

I recently watched a fight at a well known Adelaide hotel in which two bouncers were being outrageously attacked by three young men. The bouncers did well to hold the attackers off for around four minutes, but when no help had arrived they began fighting back. What else could they do? But if someone had been killed, there would have been hell to pay. That approach is of dubious worth. When traditional policing was swapped for community policing, there were some hard facts that needed to be faced.
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A Knife Into Crime Control Policies

nospam@example.com (Gareth) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:43:04 -0700

I recall reading a recent news article about a stabbing at a large party in an Australian capital city. I seem to recall a police officer stating that the culprit may never be identified because "a lot of kids carry knives nowadays." What, then, is the point of rehabilitating an offender if any one or more of "a lot of kids" will simply be the next in line? Soft options send soft messages to the public in place of pointed ones. Perhaps justice officials know something I don't, but I don't recall a lot of kids carrying knives in the days when tough crime control methods were used. Perhaps this can be smartly answered by the criminologist who ingeniously stated that violent crimes are becoming more prevalent because society is becoming generally more violent. I thought violence was a crime.

'Rehabilitating' The Truth

nospam@example.com (Gareth) — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 15:35:53 -0700

Would someone kindly tell me how it can be possible to 'rehabilitate' an offender whose behavior and mentality clearly confirm that he was never habilitated in the first place. Granted, it's a convenient term that conveys the truth to a reasonable extent. But does it paint a rosier picture than the truth is really worth in some instances? Is that one possible reason why we see offenders convicted and released many times who still continue to commit serious offences?
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Criminal Statistics

nospam@example.com (Gareth) — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 15:29:14 -0700

Criminologists who advocate releasing offenders back into society for rehabilitation tell us that we complain about their failures but fail to notice their successes. Fine, but if the wings fall off only one jumbo jet in five hundred, should we call that a victory? This approach clearly ignores the nature of failures in favour of statistical prettiness. People being knived, bashed, raped and murdered is surely worth more than a game of ticks and crosses.

Another Rock-Attack On Crime Prevention

nospam@example.com (Gareth) — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 09:41:15 -0700

Another rock attack on a moving vehicle. Last night a female passenger in a taxi had her face sprayed with glass. I recall a former senior police officer saying with all the flair of a used car salesman "I reckon crime prevention is the way to go". So, who exactly is at fault for failing to prevent this crime? Car manufacturers for failing to install armour-plate glass on all vehicles? The public for allowing such dangerous weapons as rocks to exist in society? Is it possible that some advocates of crime prevention have rocks in their heads?

Judges: Are They Selling Snake Oil?

nospam@example.com (Gareth) — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 20:37:10 -0700

Just how long can judges continue spinning a line that is highly discredited in the public's eyes?

Recently a South Australian judge apparently made statements connecting the release of an offender with protection of the community, seemingly to advance the notion that one necessarily leads to the other through the intended outcome of rehabilitation. From the public's point of view that is a mere nostrum.
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