John Carter

Of course, I believe it's better to not gain the disease in the first place.

OK, firstly I'll address the stealing the Mars Bar thing. In my view of things, stealing food from a shop isn't to be compared with burgling someone's home. The shopkeeper hasn't had his personal space violated because he allows all and sundry INTO phpbb_that space during his normal course of business anyway. Thus this wouldn't fall INTO phpbb_the "disrupting people's lives" category (unless, of course, there was a sufficient number of Mars bars stolen to disrupt the shopkeeper's essential cashflow).

But the parental responsibility and "must have" society take is also simplistic. For example, there are plenty of criminals who've been brought up by parents who did care (of course, it's becoming increasingly hard for parents to control their kids these days as we appear to be banning every form of chastisement available to them).

In the case of a child being brought up INTO phpbb_society by a parent who doesn't care, isn't it the state's responsibility to impose hard and fast rules for the resulting adult? By perhaps punishing people instead of trying to "understand" them?

How do we stop the "must have" society? This is a difficult one with many causes which go deep deep down INTO phpbb_all areas of society - for example, perhaps we need to slow down technological progress? I'll give an illustration...
As a musician, I've had my eye on a synth for a while, a Roland XV-5080. So I've been saving up for it 'coz I don't like hitting the credit card. While I've been saving up for it, Roland have discontinued it in favour of the newer, "better" Fantom-XR. I don't like the new one on account of it having a screen so small it'll make me go blind (amongst other things). I don't like second-hand music gear as there's usually a reason why it's been sold - so eBay (a den of evil if ever I saw one) is out of the question. So what do I do?

With this "progress" being the default behaviour of most companies in this accelerated world we're currently in, we're encouraged to get everything on the never never - so we can actually get it before they replace it with something "better" (see the lack of Concorde replacement for details of "better").
Do I go hit the CC to buy a lifetime supply of footwear before they start making them all in silver-only and I have to walk around looking like an extra from the Buck Rogers disco scene? Or do I wait and see if what they produce next month won't be too horrendous? (are there any DECT phones in the current Argos catalogue which don't have silver somewhere on them?)

So, this progress works both ways to get us to exist in a "must have" society. People like me who don't like the "next big thing" are forced to go buy what we want now because it soon won't be available. The more fashionable people out there who do like the "next big thing" will go and buy it because it's the "next big thing" - replacing their 3-month old mobile phone 'coz Paul Merton tells them that they need to be ashamed of it and get a new one.

How do we stop it? We can't - not without damaging the economy in a huge way. Of course, this is just a minor cause of the "must-have" society which is itself just a minor cause of crime.

Wouldn't it just be easier to build more jails and give more time out than to address each and every underlying cause of crime? The task of addressing the underlying issues, I think you'll find, is never ending.

B.A.Ware

Okay you are right people can be born with what I would class as a deformity of the brain perhaps some wires have got crossed. I would class these people as a general exception to the rule. As for family’s with two or more children and one of them going off the rails. I think this is more likely to produce a criminal, siberling rivalry, pecking order, hand me downs, jealousy and favouritism to name but a few problems that arise in family’s, mix that lot in with un-caring parents and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. I am not saying this is the sole reason why criminals exist but I think it plays a big part. This is one of the reasons I believe in corporal punishment in schools, if your not getting discipline at home at least you were getting it at school. Could this be why some of today’s children have no respect for age or other people’s property?