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2:58 p.m. | Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2003
rant, rave and ramble I just finished reading the book Cries Unheard: The Story of Mary Bell by Gita Sereny. It tells the story about an eleven-year-old girl who killed two toddlers in her hometown, the trial afterwards, her life in prison and finally her life outside of prison. It is told mostly in interview form of Mary Bell thirty years after she committed the crimes. There is a book before this one by the same author written 2 years after the trial. In any case after explaining all that I must say that this book has yet again brought to my attention things that I feel needs to change in society. Call me a bleeding heart liberal or whatever you like but I honestly think that we are blind to these things, sometimes deliberately because nobody can think of the proper solutions. I can't say I know what the solutions are either but maybe more people should be pondering the problems. One of the problems is treatment of children who commit serious crimes. I know that in Canada and the United States that the system set up for those under legal age is just about laughable. There is more and more push towards treating children (increasingly younger children) like mini-adults, responsible in the same ways for what they have done. I honestly think this is wrong, children think differently than adults about many things and their ideas about things such as right and wrong, lying, and death are very different. They haven't developed fully in mind and body and to treat them as if they have is not right. That said, I think the older the child, the more that they can be considered developed and a teenager of sixteen shouldn't necessarily be treated the same way as a child of ten. I'm also very curious as to why nobody even thinks to ask why children commit serious crimes. The media and the justice system seem to want to go right into punishment not wondering why a child would kill someone else or commit other serious crimes (such as rape). Children are not necessarily born good or bad, they have to get the emotions that lead up to such crimes from somewhere don't they? Serial killers, rapists and people who murder strangers are scrutinized up and down for things in their past for something that might have caused their behavior. I�m not saying that anything that has happened to anyone might be an excuse or a reason not to be punished for a crime, children should be punished and made to know the consequences of their actions, but shouldn't their family life, the influence of caregivers and teachers also be looked at. Since children still have growing and developing to do, it's possible that with punishment there could be help and reform. In the book I read the woman Mary Bell, against all odds I might add, went on to lead a fairly normally existence. Obviously there are victims to consider, but eventually we also have to remind ourselves that children are not adults, they don't think or act like them and therefore should not be treated like them. Children who commit serious crimes often make attempts at asking for help before they actually hit the point of committing the crime. Mary Bell showed signs of doing so as well as the boys in Arkansas who arrived at their school heavily armed and killed four girls, a teacher as well as wounding thirteen others. Close scrutiny into their lives usually reveals abuse, neglect, lack of any kind of self-esteem, and serious problems with the parents themselves. First of all, there should have been someone out there who could have noticed these cries for help and averted the loss of life and helped the children. Also, I think there is a deep lack of caring about children in western countries. People who shouldn't be having children are having babies left and right. Drug addicts, teenagers, people who have no time to raise a child, people who don't give any thought or care into the idea of what it takes to raise a child, people who are abusive and unstable. I don't want to get into the idea of regulating who gets to have children because THAT is an argument a person could spend years having, however, the children raised in families that are abusive and neglectful tend to be those children that go on to be runaways, criminals and later, possibly abusive to their own children. I think a lot of problems in society can be traced back to how children are raised. I'm not saying that everything is a parent's fault, especially when adults are involved in crime, but children learn by watching and imitating. I find it hard to believe that the parents are not at all involved when children turn to crime. People get their attitudes mostly from who they were raised by, good or bad (I keep thinking of that statistic that says 60% of males in college would rape a woman if they felt they could get away with it). Finally it has always struck me as bizarre that people are surprised about the justice system not working. Especially in view of the way prisons are run. The United States keeps building more and more prisons and people wonder why. I have to say look at the prisons themselves, they just teach people to be more criminal. If you want people to come away from a crime and the subsequent punishment and lead lives of an upstanding citizen then I would think that you'd have to expect to teach them to do that. If you don't change the way someone behaves then you aren't going to get different behavior. One of the definitions of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Isn�t that what we have been doing with our society? Doing the same thing with the same problems and not changing anything on either side. I can't say I know what the solutions are but I do know that we need to try something different.
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This is my blogchalk:
Canada, Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, , English, , Female, 26-30, Reading.