Suburban Decay

Everybody Up!

It is at this point that I have decided that Canada really isn't all it's cracked up to be. I recall at a young age, circa 3rd grade, that I was introduced to the way the laws worked. There was a presentation at my school about the then new "Youth Justice Act" which was created so that young offenders were not to face "unfair" punishment. Under this law, any person under the age of 11 can not be charged for any criminal act they commit, no matter the charge. This seemed suitable to me, after all...what child under this age would knowingly commit any crime worthy of a serious sentence? That is...it seemed suitable until lately. In my cynicism and conceit, I assumed that I'd seen it all. I've seen some incredibly disturbing things in my experiences...it's amazingly rare for me to be surprised by anything in the news. But something in the news lately had me stunned.

There was a case in Manitoba, here in Canada, in which a handful of young boys...aged 7 to 10, wheeled a handicapped boy into a wooden shed and locked him in. They then proceeded to set the shed on fire, in hopes that the wheelchair-bound boy would not escape. Luckily, a man nearby found the shed on fire and rescued the boy without any harm done. The boys were found soon after and due to the "Youth Justice Act", the most they got for it was a "Good Talking To"...

Well...Less than two weeks later another arson case went up in the same area. It was discovered that the arsonist was none other than one of the boys involved in the shed incident! WHAT THE HELL?! Well, we can be sure he got another "Good Talking To"...

I'm not even going to pretend I know what the answer is to this...but I know that we can first start by renaming the "Youth Justice Act" to the "Youth Legal Act", seeing as there's no Justice involved in it. I don't know where I'm taking this, but it was something that really got under my skin. I want to know what you think...My personal opinion is that it's bullshit that the government feels that it's fine to send police officers to chase me down for painting trains, yet we can't charge a child arsonist due to the simple fact that he's 9 years old. I'll never understand the way the beauraucracy thinks...

Acceptance of Graffiti is living in the trivial; an empty gesture; the dead commodity; an insipid cause. You can't win except through ignorance.

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