Crime of Youth

It is heartbreaking to hear about young children committing a crime where they don’t even know the reason why.  One of the perpetrators, when asked why he beat up an old man, answered “because”.  Because why?  Because you are tougher than that old man and can do it?  Because you think it’s a lark to have power over another human being?  Because you have been desensitized to violence because you have grown up in a violence torn home?  Why knows why this 15 year old answered that way.  Answered as if he doesn’t care a whit about what he did and now feels like a BMOC because he is committed of a crime and sentenced to 4 years in a juvenile facility and when he gets out he is going to do something else again and go to “big boy’s jail”.  This is his rite of passage.

It breaks my heart that many kids are growing up with role models who are thugs on the streets rather than folk who value life and can teach good life lessons.  It breaks my heart that the community does not fight for these kids and cuts the education funding so the schools they go to are unimaginative, uninteresting places.  It breaks my heart that government is putting more money into prisons rather than putting that money in programs that will prevent people from going to those prisons. 

We really have ourselves to blame.  We turn our backs on the people who really need help.  We close our doors to the outside and concern ourselves with only those who are in our homes and not fight the good fight for the things that matter and for the things that can prevent more of the same.  I guess it’s too much work.  I guess it takes too much time.  Well I guess there will be more of youth committing these kinds of crimes.