I have spoken with a former high Court Judge, a Chief Qld Magistrate, other Magistrates, Police Officers & a few do-gooders.
My question to them was who can actually change law in this country ? i asked what the Law reform Commission was actually doing & I got the unanimous reply of we'd like to know too.
Other answers included only Parliament can change laws.
We're now at a stage where juveniles can literally get away with murder & yet still the same inadequate laws apply. How can we change that ? You can't grab hold of one of the little mongrels because you'll be the one getting charged yet no-one pays you compensation. I am pushing for juvenile crime to be knocked on the head but can not find any way of who to contact without being told to try somewhere else. Apart from making it an election issue I can't see any out of this intolerable situation. Anyone know better ?

Individual, how would you suggest the laws should be changed in order to 'knock juvenile crime on the head'?

Would you lock them in jail forever? (Very expensive).

Would you give them all a 'good thrashing'? (Shows them that violence is the answer to our problems).

Would you fine all their parents? (What if they are all poor and/or on the dole? Should all their siblings pay the price as well?)

Would you send them all to the gallows and be done with it? (The rest of the world's civilised societies would be a little upset with us).

No, we can only work towards trying to stop this criminal behaviour early in their lives.
Early intervention in disadvantaged families has helped, but the Government needs to throw more money at these initiatives and help stop the problems before it starts.

individual,

Perhaps you should start by examining the sort of society we have constructed for ourselves. A society where organic community involvement has by and large disappeared. We centralise shopping precincts, institutionalise our children from an early age. We no longer have recourse to a social paradigm that allows our youngsters to learn morality in an organic way. There is a huge disconnection between social mores and their delivery.

You can't legislate for decent human interaction where young people learn to value responsibility because its in their interest to do so.

Suse,

Governments throwing money at something has never worked - especially when it's a problem dealing with intrinsic disadvantage. The more complex our society becomes in the modern world, the more useless is the "money throwing" option because it ignores the root causes of the problems.

The laws are all there in relation to crime, it is in the application of those laws. But there are reasons why there is some flexibility within the legal system and why each case should be presented on it's own merits. That is the idea that there are different circumstances that might be applied to similar crimes that affect the application of 'justice' as opposed to just 'law'. It certainly is not a perfect system.

Suse and Poirot have made excellent responses.

The best thing as a society we can do for crime is prevention and that sits firmly around disadvantage. It starts from birth.

How about some Indonesian law enforcement.

Then a few prisons run along their lines would help too.