Juvenile Justice

I loved this!! Such an eye-opening series on juvenile cases and juvenile court in Korea. I never knew there are juvenile judges to handle such cases. I thought judges are judges, and they handle all kinds of cases without specification.

There are a few things that came to my mind when I was watching this series; 

To abolish the juvenile law and punish the kids using the existing law may seem the easier way to handle things but the law itself exists not to simply punish, but mainly to protect and teach, especially the young offenders. 

I couldn't help but to concur when the presiding judge said they couldn't simply abolish the juvenile law, despite the pressure from the society, but to take a deeper look what can be improved in the existing law, so that things can be revised. Looking at the crimes those youngsters committed, they left us burning in rage and complete distress but other than the question what's the best way to teach the offenders is, what drives them to commit such crimes at the first place. 

This reminds me of the certain points from the book In Defense of Flogging by Peter Moskos, on how incarceration isn't the best option in a long run for a lot of reasons. Building more and more prisons to incarcerate offenders might seem the best and easier way but without actually dive deeper to the root cause of why such crimes happened at the first place will only repeat the broken system. 

Without a better plan and system by the policy makers, there's a high chance those offenders will keep repeating their crimes. 

And this truly makes me think of how everything, truly starts from home. 

We notice how these young offenders usually come from broken family or absent parents, and this realisation should make us ask the question, do we really know what a secure childhood and home can do to youngsters? If we truly understand the science behind that, the chances of us to see the consequences of taking this matter lightly is steep. 

Even wealthy people doesn't always get these things right. 

Like it was stated in The Body Keeps the Score book, there are countries like Netherlands and Norway seem to aware the bigger picture of this alarming issue. Their government realised what a secure home can truly do to the well-being of the children, to families and later will be reflected to the state of society. These countries don't only provide high-quality childcare, parental leave but they also invest in sending their people home to home, helping families to raise their children in a safe and predictable environment. And their efforts actually reflect on how their kids' test score and achievements at school and how they have such a low crime rates in comparison with other countries. 

Doesn't matter which hierarchy in this society we are belonged to, it always starts with the drive to learn to build awareness, at least in ourselves and our circle.

p/s: This series (ten episodes) is available on Netflix or you can just watch it online on DramaCool. Besides, I'm super excited as it was confirmed  that there'll be a 2nd season!