The new boy racer bill being proposed in Parliament, to crush the cars of persistent offenders even if the car does not belong to them, is ridiculous and ominous.
Ridiculous because it punishes the car, not the person. Yeah, that'll stop the car from racing again now that it's crushed. Justine has been served, not. Shades of "Christine*", there.
Oh, oh, but the boy racer is being punished. He'll be so upset that his pride and joy has been consigned to oblivion, not to mention the waste of money involved, that he'll reform his life and never race again! Err, yeah ... how does that work again? Especially the part where the car doesn't belong to him?
In days gone by, people used to get punished, not their things. If the crime wasn't too bad, a fine would suffice. If the crime was of a type that was criminal rather than just parking for too long on the side of the road, imprisonment was the order of the day.
Surely street racing, when obviously dangerous, ought to result in imprisonment, not car crushing? That way there is absolutely no danger of penalising the wrong person (ie crushing the car of Dad, because his son is a boof-head and keeps borrowing it and racing). The guilty party gets punished.
But in the case of crushing the car that has been onsold to another person - just who exactly is getting punished?
The car, obviously. And that makes this law completely ridiculous.
This law is also ominous, because, rather than actually doing the sensible thing and building more prisons so that those who should be jailed are jailed, they are deflecting the problem of increasing lawlessness onto populist vendettas.
Related Link: Boy-racer bills fight shy of crushing ~ Dominion Post
*See Steven King's novel, Christine.
Ridiculous because it punishes the car, not the person. Yeah, that'll stop the car from racing again now that it's crushed. Justine has been served, not. Shades of "Christine*", there.
Oh, oh, but the boy racer is being punished. He'll be so upset that his pride and joy has been consigned to oblivion, not to mention the waste of money involved, that he'll reform his life and never race again! Err, yeah ... how does that work again? Especially the part where the car doesn't belong to him?
In days gone by, people used to get punished, not their things. If the crime wasn't too bad, a fine would suffice. If the crime was of a type that was criminal rather than just parking for too long on the side of the road, imprisonment was the order of the day.
Surely street racing, when obviously dangerous, ought to result in imprisonment, not car crushing? That way there is absolutely no danger of penalising the wrong person (ie crushing the car of Dad, because his son is a boof-head and keeps borrowing it and racing). The guilty party gets punished.
But in the case of crushing the car that has been onsold to another person - just who exactly is getting punished?
The car, obviously. And that makes this law completely ridiculous.
This law is also ominous, because, rather than actually doing the sensible thing and building more prisons so that those who should be jailed are jailed, they are deflecting the problem of increasing lawlessness onto populist vendettas.
Related Link: Boy-racer bills fight shy of crushing ~ Dominion Post
*See Steven King's novel, Christine.
I'm not sure if this post is satire.....
ReplyDeleteAnyway "car crushing" is brilliant branding for this piece of legislation, something that will make it easily identifiable to said boof-heads, so maybe they will take notice this time. Fines haven't worked to date (they just don't pay them) and imprisonment for being a public nuisance is excessive.
Sean,
ReplyDeleteNo, not satire.
This sort of legislation makes me nervous. It sets a bad precedent. And deflects the "punishment" to potentially innocent parties.
If boy racers are just being a public nuisance, then why bother? Really. Letter box smashers are also a public nuisance, yet they are not being specifically targeted by the politicians. However, if the boy racers are endangering other by their racing, then yes, we should imprison them.
The advantage of imprisonment is the state has to consider whether or not the crime is serious enough to put time and effort into the cost of imprisonment; therefore there would be in a sense safety for spurious prosecutions, and innocent parties would not suffer.
While as the only reason I see for car crushing is that the car has committed a crime, ie it's modified in such a way to make itself illegal.
No Sean, at best this legislation is posturing - using a politically impotent segment of the population as a convenient target of opprobrium to advance personal political ambitions.
ReplyDeleteAn old trick of demagoguery
What Andrei said. There are enough laws on the books already to cover any offences the racers may be guilty of.
ReplyDeleteThis is draconian, unnecessary grandstanding. And I don't see any move to crush the cars of third-time drink drivers...
Boy racers irritate the hell out of me, but of the close calls I've had in the past year not one of them was caused by a racer. All were due to inattentive and simply incompetent drivers.
Lucyna, sorry if I sounded cheeky asking if it was satire. There's just so much on this blog, I have to be cautious...
ReplyDeleteAnyway, in response: I don't see how the car is an innocent party. It isn't a party. As for the example of the father, well these parents need to take responsibility for their children, especially since they are clearly brats (the kids). If the car was taken unknowingly from daddy then a bigger family crisis for dad to deal with.
I didn't mean public nuisance to be taken lightly, but in terms of prison time, it still seems excessive for most boy racer behaviour. For the more life threatening instances only then should imprisonment be considered (as I am sure it is now), and maybe also for repeat offenders, but the car crushing is a good earlier step that will have an impact on a larger number of miscreants. Bring the legislation on!
Andrei - very skeptical of you. However I disagree, and political impotence shouldn't be relevant. This issue is well known and been in the news since who knows when. People are sick of them, the police are fed up, the councils have been powerless for too long. This is not opportunism; this one is popular for a reason and it sends a signal that the offenders can relate to.
Sorry- Crime is easy. All are equal. They break the law, boy racers, Maori gangs, the man in the street, whatever, they get arrested, they get a trial, they get fined or jailed.
ReplyDeleteThis is merely unfairly targeting a particular sector in an attempt to garner the political support of knuckle draggers.
Look Judith, I don't really give much of a damn about "boy racers.
If we're really to start targeting particular sectors, nobody, except perhaps child molesters and mainstream media journalists, piss me off more than politicians.
What say, every time they lie, we cut their damn tongues out??