individual:>> I find it difficult to drum up sympathy there but of course I feel for the parents.<<

Indi, particularly because of the folks shelving the kid (and he is a kid) to the police. Who then told the feds who then told the Indonesians hence he got the death penalty because he was apprehended in Indonesia. The guilt must be intolerable, did they do the right thing, who the hell knows.

If you are rich/famous, you can do what you like. Drive around drunk, bash the missus, overdose in the car... pretty well anything you like as long as you can demonstrate you are somebody special. At the other end of town, poor people are being run through like cattle, represented by legal aid (uni students).

My guess, is that a lot of Aborigines and Lebanese people would be fried, but rich kids will be let off with a warning. Kind of like what happens in the States...

@Fester, “So you are suggesting that a group of kids growing up in isolation would naturally form a lovey-dovey Utopia? More like Lord of the Flies I would think.”

I didn’t say that it was innate and not without any conditioning. It’s a big topic to cover in 350 words. Sheesh! But heaven forbid that you should request clarification or elaboration, when making an asinine assumption is so convenient for you.

“Could I proffer the quaint ideas that no-one is perfect nor without hope of improving himself?”

Of course no-one is perfect. But everyone is not without hope of improving themselves? I appreciate your optimism, but that’s unfortunately not so. The vast majority yes, but there are some that are beyond self-improvement in relative terms for a variety of reasons, but mostly their own attitude towards life, the universe and everything, and their own personal history of social conditioning, before we get to any bio-physical abnormality. There is such a thing as the lost cause. As I said, admittedly, it’s a very small few, but they do exist, I assure you. I have worked in the institutions that house them, treat them, manage them, re-admit them, or house them permanently, and that’s not the prison system, but the mental health system. Even if we had perfect conditions and funding, we would have some “lost souls”, as that’s the nature of the variance in humanity.

Utopia? I’ve read Thomas More’s book, and it is the nature of humanity and its variance that this idyllic world cannot be so. It’s why Communism turns into totalitarianism, and why Capitalism turns into oligarchs ruling groups of nations. Systems are not corrupt, people are corrupt.

And finally, who is “them” that you so colourfully make other presumptions about?