1.) You brought up the concept of individual cases "proving" a trend. Specifically this.....
I countered that sick individuals is not some new thing, and very clearly showed that insane sicko's have been throughout history including "the good ole days".
I Know it's nothing new and there's been various extreme crimes all over the world at all kinds of different dates. But exactly how old was the character in your example? I didn't quite catch his age. Was this a youngster (Which is kinda the topic to begin with) or was this just some adult?
The other issue, is your situation could be easily related to being a little loose in the head and it seemed right. The examples I used were teenagers who either commited their crimes for pretty much popularity and rep.... there are no underlying mental issues like licking toasters when they were young, most explinations are just for the sake of being a bad ass to your friends.
It's not that these teenagers don't understand what they are doing, it's that they just don't give a rats ass, which is the main problem. They know they can get away with what they've done by just getting a warning or being sent back to their parents who didn't do a damn thing for them in the first place.... so where is the treatment for the problem?
2.) You bring up the case of Halifax.
Yep, youth crime is spiking COMPARED TO 10 YEARS AGO. The implication has not been raised on this thread that "My day" included 10 years ago when many youths of today were in fact, still youths at that point as well.
Youth crime is still alot lower than it has been when looking over the last 30, 40 or even 50 years.
Im not sure if you know how percentage drops work, but a raise of 76% percent does not negate the fact that youth violent crime rates are less than half of 35 to 40 years ago.
Oh well excuse me all to hell.... why with that logic, I could say that the crime rate 800 or 900 years ago in North America were non-existant, since we never landed here.... now there's a drastic change from today.
I seriously don't care what it was like 40 or 50 years ago.... I'm not living in that time, I'm living right now, and these are the current problems. My understanding of your logic in this seems more like you're claiming "Well it was much worse in the past, so be greatful it's not as bad today" AKA: "I see no real problems."
Get randomly jumped by some of these punks wanting to be cool and tell me otherwise. Be that old lady who got beaten up by a couple of girls with table legs.
Actually if I wanted to and had the time, I could probably list you off every article of news and reports about youth related crimes here in just the Halifax area along in the last three years and you might see an overall trend.
Every morning I wake up to the radio before I head to work and the night before there was usually at least two assaults, or stabbings, or shoootings.... all usually relating to people under the age of 18. When I first moved here, it was all parties, universities, drinking and for the most part, no worries by anybody. There wouldn't be anything on the radios in the morning except the odd traffic accident or something foolish someone did. Now it's all high school gangs and kids trying to get in them by trying to get their crime mentioned in the news.
See that's the new trend.... they can't release their name, and if they never found who did it in the first place, so much the better. Then they goto their half-ass gangs, tell them that they did the crime on the radio, they go "Yeah right, prove it" and then they'll explain the details nobody else would know, and then they get in.
If they get caught, even better.
Oh yeah I almost forgot about the girl who got the snot beat out of her late at night by her school friends, who set her hair on fire and beat her so badly her eye socket required surgery.
Crime overall in the country has been dropping, but if you looked into your own statistics you too will see that crimes involving youths have been increasing. And the level of violence within each case has been getting worse and worse.
In the late 60's and 70's youth violence rates in north america were about 50 per 1,000. At the end of the Millenium they were about 20 per 1,000. So even with a 76% increase, that would put them at 35 per 1,000.
Thus youth violence rates are still lower today then while alot of the people on this board were young (thus refering to, in their day).
You also fogot to calculate that those times you are citing were during the baby boom generation which were also a lot more of a younger population then there is today.... yet another flaw in statistics and how they can relate to a subject.
You're spouting off %'s compared to every 1,000 or so people.... how about you look at the bigger picture of the overall population numbers of the time and the total number of youth related crimes of those times and you will see that those examples can not even come close to relating to todays issues.
If you are like 25 praxus, then I suppose your "good ole days" was 10 years and this would seem like quite a jump (of 76%), though if thats how old you are, you know the young offenders act and its ilk were in place at that point as well.
My age is irrelevent. If you took the time to even talk to the kids in schools today, the level of violence they are facing is much worse then what I went through in school.
And if things have improved since 30-40 years ago, why do you seem to give off the impression that it's alright for us to fall back some in our progress?
Anyone in their mid to late 40's though, this is still far below their youth violence rates.
As for a solution, solutions are for problems. you will never eliminate crime, only reduce it. Crime is being reduced already with current changes in society.
A general response which does not relate to a specific problem presented.
So I take it your final stance is that there is no real problem with youth related crimes or the level of those crimes, because crime overall has still been dropping? Even though I supplied sources stating otherwise?
Crime can not be completely removed from society, I never said it could be. But that doesn't mean we can turn a blind eye on big spikes in short number of years and not bother to take notice. If crime has been dropping for so long, and then all of a sudden has been spiking in the last two or so years, isn't it a tad prudent to take a look into why?
And then we all fall all the way back to the parents and the responsibility placed apon them to at least put an effort into their kids so they have some decent morals.
Do parents always know what they're kids are doing? No.... will I? No... but even growing up I knew the differences between my friends and their relationships with their parents and what they ended up doing with their lives. As mentioned before, I know of several kids I grew up with who gave their parents no respect, and their parents bent over backwards for them. Last I checked they were all on their way to jail for either theft, assault, sexual assault, or something else similar in fashion.
I don't need numbers and statistics to see what the real world is like.... I just open my eyes and ears.