I was watching the ABC news on TV, and saw the TV version of this story.
In essence: NSW is trying to crack down on graffiti. One of the “initiatives” from the clever clogs in charge of this banana State is to impose higher penalties. For example, a quote from the TV version was something like: “kids as young as 13 will face up to 6 months’ imprisonment for carrying a spray can without a legitimate excuse.”
Whuhhh???
The TV version also had NSW Attorney-General John Hatzistergos saying something like “since people aren’t being deterred by current penalties, we’re going to raise the penalties”.
Uhhh…
The stupidity of this knee-jerk statement is obvious: if people aren’t deterred by the penalties, it’s often because they’re simply not deterred by penalties full stop, not because the penalties aren’t fucking harsh enough. In other words, imprisonment is not a specific deterrent. Even The Australian gets that!
It’s a bad idea to imprison kids. Really, really fucking bad. We should only do it where it’s absolutely necessary.
And where a kid has been carrying a spray can (or even spraying a bit of graffiti, and I find that as annoying and sometimes distressing as many others do), it’s not precisely necessary.
