A Blackout Ate My Blogpost - - Those Two Boys
Well there I was, post nearly completed, about to press Publish Post - - and there was a sudden power cut. It was over as soon as I thought - - hey, it's gone dark - - and there was the computer. OFF. In fact already coming back on.
And there was my blog post. GONE. I don't know why it didn't save the draft.
I was having a bit of a rant about those two boys in South Yorkshire who ferociously attacked two other boys for no reason at all.
The two attackers - brothers - were age ten and eleven. The two victims - who survived, but only just - were age nine and eleven.
The attackers were from a family known for their violence and lawlessness. The two brothers had been placed with foster parents, who clearly couldn't cope with them. The authority responsible said that "many important lessons" needed to be learnt.
Cases as extreme as this are, fortunately, rare - the last similar case to hit the headlines was the James Bulger case - where two boys murdered a toddler, having abducted him from a shopping centre: that was back in 1993 but I'm sure that everyone in Britain remembers it.
So, what's to be done? The two boys in the most recent case have received indeterminate sentences and will serve at least five years. There's talk of taking their parents to court, though I can't quite see how that will help.
"Could you become loving, kind, supportive parents please?"
"Okay".
Fining the parents wouldn't help - - they won't have any spare money. Imprisoning them might make the rest of us feel better for a bit - - but how would it help in the long term?
The thing is, this case is so extreme that all the usual punishments become rather irrelevant. We're not talking naughty boys here - we're talking children with no moral framework to their lives at all, ever, in any way. Children who have committed evil deeds because they really don't know what a good deed is.
And yes, of course I know all the arguments about people from terrible backgrounds who rose above them and became decent human beings. It just happened that this lot didn't.
Our first instinct here is for revenge and it is not the right thing to do. It helps nobody. If we treat these boys brutally all that happens is that they will become even more brutal, and we'll be paying for them in prison for ever.
So we need to minimise their destructive effect on society. Are we locking them away to punish them, or to rehabilitate them, or simply to keep them away from the rest of us?
Unless they're going to be locked away for ever - and that to me seems extreme for boys who are only ten and eleven - then we need to find some way of letting them back into society in a way that will help them become better members of it.
And that would mean lots and lots and lots of loving care and rehabilitation.
But that's not what we want to do, is it? As soon as we think about their victims, we want to hit the attackers very, very hard. The mother of one of the victims shouted in court, "I hope someone does that to you!"
Well, I can see why she thinks that and I expect I'd feel the same gut instinct if it was my child who'd been tortured in that way.
It doesn't make it right though. Treating horror with horror is wrong and it doesn't work.
So the right thing to do would be the rehabilitation method - to try to undo all the evil that's been done to these two attackers by the terrible or non-existent parenting that they have experienced. This seems to have happened to the two boys who murdered James Bulger. They had a far better upringing in custody in many ways than they would have had if left with their families, and it cost the taxpayer a fortune.
I feel the most sorry for kids who have terrible childhoods and - because they don't display such extremes of behaviour - get no help at all.
So, what would I do if I were in charge? I'd certainly be splitting those brothers up and taking them right out of the situation, for a start, and taking the rest of the kids in that family away from those parents who - to me - have relinquished any parental rights to them. They need to be with very experienced foster parents who can give them a strong, loving framework with lots of clear boundaries.
I couldn't do it. But I think there are people who can - - not many, but a few.
All very well. Yes, the right thing to do.
And I'd have the parents - and other similarly feckless, violent parents - forcibly sterilised too. That's not very liberal, is it? But oh boy, it would help.
Perhaps it wouldn't help. But even thinking about it makes me feel a bit better.
And there was my blog post. GONE. I don't know why it didn't save the draft.
I was having a bit of a rant about those two boys in South Yorkshire who ferociously attacked two other boys for no reason at all.
The two attackers - brothers - were age ten and eleven. The two victims - who survived, but only just - were age nine and eleven.
The attackers were from a family known for their violence and lawlessness. The two brothers had been placed with foster parents, who clearly couldn't cope with them. The authority responsible said that "many important lessons" needed to be learnt.
Cases as extreme as this are, fortunately, rare - the last similar case to hit the headlines was the James Bulger case - where two boys murdered a toddler, having abducted him from a shopping centre: that was back in 1993 but I'm sure that everyone in Britain remembers it.
So, what's to be done? The two boys in the most recent case have received indeterminate sentences and will serve at least five years. There's talk of taking their parents to court, though I can't quite see how that will help.
"Could you become loving, kind, supportive parents please?"
"Okay".
Fining the parents wouldn't help - - they won't have any spare money. Imprisoning them might make the rest of us feel better for a bit - - but how would it help in the long term?
The thing is, this case is so extreme that all the usual punishments become rather irrelevant. We're not talking naughty boys here - we're talking children with no moral framework to their lives at all, ever, in any way. Children who have committed evil deeds because they really don't know what a good deed is.
And yes, of course I know all the arguments about people from terrible backgrounds who rose above them and became decent human beings. It just happened that this lot didn't.
Our first instinct here is for revenge and it is not the right thing to do. It helps nobody. If we treat these boys brutally all that happens is that they will become even more brutal, and we'll be paying for them in prison for ever.
So we need to minimise their destructive effect on society. Are we locking them away to punish them, or to rehabilitate them, or simply to keep them away from the rest of us?
Unless they're going to be locked away for ever - and that to me seems extreme for boys who are only ten and eleven - then we need to find some way of letting them back into society in a way that will help them become better members of it.
And that would mean lots and lots and lots of loving care and rehabilitation.
But that's not what we want to do, is it? As soon as we think about their victims, we want to hit the attackers very, very hard. The mother of one of the victims shouted in court, "I hope someone does that to you!"
Well, I can see why she thinks that and I expect I'd feel the same gut instinct if it was my child who'd been tortured in that way.
It doesn't make it right though. Treating horror with horror is wrong and it doesn't work.
So the right thing to do would be the rehabilitation method - to try to undo all the evil that's been done to these two attackers by the terrible or non-existent parenting that they have experienced. This seems to have happened to the two boys who murdered James Bulger. They had a far better upringing in custody in many ways than they would have had if left with their families, and it cost the taxpayer a fortune.
I feel the most sorry for kids who have terrible childhoods and - because they don't display such extremes of behaviour - get no help at all.
So, what would I do if I were in charge? I'd certainly be splitting those brothers up and taking them right out of the situation, for a start, and taking the rest of the kids in that family away from those parents who - to me - have relinquished any parental rights to them. They need to be with very experienced foster parents who can give them a strong, loving framework with lots of clear boundaries.
I couldn't do it. But I think there are people who can - - not many, but a few.
All very well. Yes, the right thing to do.
And I'd have the parents - and other similarly feckless, violent parents - forcibly sterilised too. That's not very liberal, is it? But oh boy, it would help.
Perhaps it wouldn't help. But even thinking about it makes me feel a bit better.
posted by Daphne at 10:39 pm
6 Comments:
I don't blame the children because you can't blame 10 and 11 year olds. But I blame the parents in spades. They should be put down; really.
Both sets of children are victims. The attackers' parents need to be removed from society.
There is excellent rehabilitation available for young offenders in this country. I hope these two have access to it. They're little boys still.
The paradox with James Bulger's killers was that to be rehabilitated they had to come to terms with what they had done. Then, to re-enter society and not be vilified, they have to deny it was ever in their past.
I've never worked that one out.
Lucy
Lucy: Wouldn't it be nice if they could come out of prison as healthy young men and *not* be almost immediately lynched by a vigilante mob who don't know what a paediatrician is?
having worked with children for over 40 years I kept comig back to the fact that I though there were 4 child victims in this tragic case. I know there will not be many that agree with me.
How can you show love etc if you never ever had it?
One of these boys will find himself locked up in a children's secure unit in Sheffield's suburbs. It is luxurious and well-staffed. Running costs are astronomical. One of the James Bolger killers was also locked up there. The brothers prove that the driving force in wrongdoing is usually nurture - not nature. We could blame the parents but how did they come to act that way? How far back should the threads be followed?
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