Minors, as a special age group, have always been watched by society with all kinds of energy and attention. However, this age group does not have any respect for their impending actions or any appreciation for the special care they receive from society as a whole because of all the attention. As a result, tragedies happen again and again, and there is little we can do about it.
When many people think of minors, they think of a long-standing domestic law called the Law on the Protection of Minors, which basically protects the legitimate rights and interests of minors in every detail, and then provides for leniency for minors who have committed criminal offenses. In all fairness, the law does so with full consideration of the minor as a person who has not completed the normal framework of mind or reason, a punishment for any illegal and criminal behavior committed by him.
Because the minor is a minor, he will receive a lighter sentence than an adult. Theoretically, this is fine, because we have always been guided by the idea that a minor mind is immature, and that such an immature mind needs guidance and will eventually mature.
However, laws are made according to objective rules that gradually lose their usefulness as society progresses. When the meaning of punishment is no longer to limit the offenses of special people, or when special people do not have any respect for this limited punishment, the meaning of the law’s usefulness is diminished, and it may be time to change it.
Today, the film we present to you speaks of such a tragedy, a tragedy that needs to provoke us to think, but does not seem to provoke us to think enough. The film is called “The Wandering Blade” and is based on a novel by Keigo Higashino. It tells the story of a school girl who is brutally murdered and dumped by a group of minors with no real punishment after being violently assaulted.
The father of the victim, however, is a persistent man who gets closer to the truth and then, when the police are unable to punish the perpetrators, preserves his dignity as a father and takes revenge on the man who killed his daughter.
It is not a complicated story, yet in fact it once again throws this social problem at us. It’s a difficult problem, and one that doesn’t inherently have a good solution.
To get back to what we were talking about at the beginning, we were under the impression that we only knew about that one law, but there was another one called the Law on the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency. These two laws have always been talked about in life in a way that favors one over the other.
It is easy to focus on the first one and discuss it in relation to the many criminal cases that have been committed mainly by minors. However, it is the latter law that can really alleviate this phenomenon. But this one is always overlooked.
We have done enough in terms of protection, because over the years, every protection has increased the impunity of these minor offenders, while not much has been done in terms of prevention.
Many people easily find out that the offenders are minors and are therefore exempted from the law, but they ignore how this crime occurs. How do we prevent more of these crimes from happening in our lives? This is the essence and the core of the problem.
No matter how stable and united a society may be, crime is always inevitable. When crime cannot be avoided, the best we can do is to reduce the frequency of crime to a minimum. That is the best way to do it. It is up to each of us, the parents, the teachers and the social forces that come into contact with minors, to make sure that we can do that.
Have we done as much as we can to teach minors to obey the law and to behave as they may, in a variety of ways and with great frequency, at all stages of their development?
Have we ever cared more closely about the mental health of minors? Have we ever studied more deeply the interests of minors at a certain stage? It seems as if we haven’t done any of these things, or we’ve done them very poorly.
Whenever a juvenile criminal case occurs, we always agree that it is the law, but the real problem is that the responsibilities that each of us is supposed to fulfill are inevitably ignored in our daily lives. The law states that those who break the law will be punished, but none of us tells them what behavior is considered a crime. At what age and at what psychological level they already need to be guided and avoided.
Always emphasizing the severity of the punishment will not solve the crime completely. However, the things that we need to do in life for a long time without attracting the public’s attention are the most powerful ways to really reduce juvenile delinquency.
Severe punishment is only a result, but the process is worth studying and focusing on. If we rely only on harsh laws and punishments as a tool to end crime, crime will not be eliminated.
It is the process that should be taken seriously, and only by doing so can we influence the trajectory of potential offenders in the lives they touch and reduce the likelihood of tragedy. Few are willing to do this.
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