Youth or consequences

In response to ongoing street violence in Sydney, New South Wales Police Commissioner Ken Moroney has issued a dire warning to young people:

"What I'm saying to young people that seek to engage in this level of criminal behaviour or anti-social behaviour is you need to understand the consequences of your actions."

"Clearly for some young people, they are placing their future in great jeopardy because it may well involved the imposition of jail periods, and the ramifications of that really need to be thought through."

Commissioner Moroney says parents must accept some responsibility for solving the problems.

"The most fundamentally important group within the community are the families," he said.

"The critically important issue is respect, self-respect and maintenance of role models within the family. I think much can be gained by a reinforcement of these traditional values."

Which consequences are you talking about Ken? Being allowed to riot unmolested until they've worn themselves out? Getting arrested and almost immediately released? Being sentenced to community work they don't have to do if they don't want to? These young thugs know exactly where they stand with the law and that they aren't likely to face any real consequences. Ken just said this to placate the public: to make it seem the police take this matter seriously, which they probably do. The problem is the youths involved know they don't have to take the police or the justice system seriously.

It was also pretty silly to bring up the family and role modelling aspects of the youth crime problem. Lots of these kids engage in criminal behaviour because they've seen peers or family members, probably both, model criminal behaviour for them.

The street thugs have the NSW government on the back foot and they know it. Any future street violence must be put down quickly and very firmly.