Stick 'em in juvie

I haven't posted in ages, but I read something that I just couldn't keep to myself. The bastard judge, Mark Ciavarella has been sticking kids in juvie and kiddie 'boot camps' for some pretty pathetic crimes, and skirting around the pesky issue of proper legal representation for the underage "criminals". I remember how scary it was bad being harassed by the police as a teenager and I was generally a pretty good kid.

I'm not saying that kids shouldn't get in trouble for the things that they do. Of course they should. In London, kids know that the cops are powerless to do anything about their behavior and they take full advantage of it. Baaad situation. The other night Aaron and I were walking down to the Turksh shop and saw an ambulance and couple of cop cars with a few hoards of 13-16 year old kids milling about. I initially thought that they were just hanging around to check out what was going on with the ambulance and maybe see some blood in "uh-oh squad" style. Turns out they were all threatening each other and enjoying the cops' presence. They were cursing each other out and criss-crossing the street while threatening each other. The cops decided to go away and the kids followed them! Something's wrong if the cops can't instill any fear into kids. At least we're living in a decent neighborhood now and nothing really kicked off while we were out. I remember calling the cops when we were living in Bermondsey and they completely blew me off. Take a look at one of the wonderful developments we witnessed while living there, now with improvements: (Image copied from Google 360)The boarded up blue window was broken along with a load of other windows by a bunch of kids kicking a soccer ball as hard as they could at the windows in broad daylight. There were about fifteen kids, all having a go. The local council hadn't painted it blue at the time and it was yet to boarded up, but all we heard from our flat across the street was Crash! Shatter! Wayyyyhayyy! That might not have seemed that bad if we hadn't gone through an attempted break in (so greatful the deadbolt held up!), been threatened with being knived and seen mass destruction and chaos a few nights before as a crew of kids stormed through the whole neighborhood breaking absolutely everything in sight. We later found out that the major supermarkets wouldn't even make deliveries in the area because the drivers kept getting assaulted and the trucks were getting looted. Nice. Good thing the cops have whistles and absolutely no authority to do much of anything. No wonder a toff like Boris Johnson was elected as London's mayor.

In any case, I can't imagine getting locked away for 600 days (and counting!) because I unknowingly bought a stolen bike off a relative. Nice little scheme between Ciavarella and contracted detention centers to keep Ciavarella in pocket money and the centers receiving government cash. What absolute assholes. What's messing up 2,000 kids' lives next to a bit of cash, aye? I sure hope that Obama's "fine-tooth comb" is going to extend beyond defense and take good look at this kind of contractor corruption. Seriously, what do you think the punishment should be for stealing a $4 jar of nutmeg? Do you think you should get 11 months for slapping someone in the face during an argument...at 14?
(Jason, if you're reading this I'm really, really sorry by the way.)

End rambling rant.