We can start too by questioning the parents of young kids wandering the streets at night and causing all kinds of trouble.
Not in every case, but in many cases parents should be held responsible for their underaged kids' criminal behaviour.

Sometimes kids are very well aware that the law cannot touch them and they can more or less do as they please.
I wonder if parents can be held responsible, would they think twice before they vandalise, steal, rob or assault?

What about those three boys (two 15 year olds and an 18 year old) last year, who tortured a kitten?
What were they doing at a railway station at 2:30 am?
They should have been at home in bed.

"A Sydney teenager has been sentenced to four months of home detention for torturing a kitten.

Christopher Lee Herreros, 18, was one of three youths captured on closed circuit television abusing the kitten at Seven Hills Railway station in Sydney's west earlier this year.

He was filmed throwing the animal against a brick wall on the platform and then running it over repeatedly on his bike.

He then left it on the railway tracks to die.

In Blacktown Local Court, Herreros was sentenced to home detention and ordered to undergo rehabilitation for alcohol abuse.

But the New South Wales Opposition says the sentence is totally inadequate and the teenager should have gone to jail.

Opposition justice spokesman Andrew Humperson says the punishment is no deterrent.

"Being forced to stay at home enjoying backyard BBQ and cable TV is not a punishment, it is not even an inconvenience," he said.

"Punishment for a crime of this nature is to spend time in jail and participate in rehab programs whilst you're behind bars.

"The message is simple, if you torture an animal, you should go to jail."

The 15 year old boys? I couldnt find what happened to them, perhaps they got off with a warning or some counselling??

Why are parents not held responible for their kids' crap acts?

What do others think about that?

From a legal standpoint most jurisdictions that accept insanity pleas define insanity as a mental state in which the accused either did not know what he was doing or was unaware that what he was doing was wrong. In practice this is only applied when the accused was acutely and severely psychotic at the time of the offence. Other types of mental illness, such as depression or addictions might be taken as mitigating circumstances in sentencing, but the criminal is still regarded as culpable.

Deinstitutionalisation of the mental health system (without adequate community based services to replace the old institutions) has led to prisons having to deal more than they used to with the seriously mentally ill, however the vast majority of prisoners are not psychotic, and most people with psychosis are not criminals.

In my experience, the major factor underlying criminal behaviour is antisocial personality traits caused by various forms of social deprivation. Such poor socialization has multiple antecedents including dysfunctional parenting, mental immaturity, poverty, disrupted education, and, increasingly, intellectual disability. Mental illness actually plays a direct role in very few crimes, with the exception of the group of mental illness called addictions. Indirectly, of course, poorly managed mental illness may exacerbate poor socialization. Substance abuse and intoxication is a major factor in many, if not most crimes. For the majority, getting out of cycles of crime means fostering social maturity, and especially tackling substance abuse and dependence. You can’t prevent crime without addressing questions of social justice.

True psychopathy is rare, and most psychologists reckon you can’t treat it: the best you can do is manage the “sufferer” to cause as little damage as possible.