Crime wave

It is alarming that in these high-tech times we still cannot stop a gang of marauding criminals from wreaking havoc in the suburbs.

(see here)

Not in my backyard

I don't know that I can say anything new about whether or not paedophiles should or should not be housed in communities with children [as Tony Jones rightly said on q&a last night "What community does not have children?"] but there are a whole range of associated issues that are being obscured because they are short-circuited by that particular circumstance;

• the assumption, for example, that the penal system actually does rehabilitate people seems to me to be a bold one. If it is not a safe assumption then the argument that if a person has completed their sentence they should be left alone is a tenuous one at best.
• there is lots of evidence to suggest that the system in many respects aggravates people's criminalities
• if the system does not rehabilitate then surely the state needs to take some responsibility when it releases the unrehabilitated back into the community...put simply it has not done its job

There is also a whole raft of questions about the total undesirability of vigilante-ism. This is surely a bigger issue than this particular circumstance warrants. Vigilante-ism seems to me to be an enormous threat to a stable society. But it's not easy

Let's confess!

A very nasty case that is before the courts at the moment of alleged sexual abuse by a former Anglican priest (see here for The Australian's report) reminds us all that the ground has shifted in the reporting of these matters.
There is a bizarre caricature that alleged perpetrators might "confess" their sins to an authority figure and thus render the matter confidential. In an Adelaide court 'Archbishop' John Hepworth, a former Roman Catholic priest, and then Anglican priest...but now the leader of one of the many splinter groups (see here for a former blog about this) formed in the reaction to a whole range of issues...particularly the ordination fo women to the priesthood...
Any way Hepworth gave testimony at the trial revealing details of a phone conversation which once upon a time might have been considered privileged. I do not need to go into the nastiness of it here.
What is now the case is that people (by and large) cannot now claim that any conversation with a priest is 'confession' by definition.
To be covered under 'the seal of the confessional' the matter must be a deliberate and intentional confession, stated to be so before the event and not afterwards.
Some of the Anglican Church's guidelines (I don't know about Hepworth's mob...) suggest that in matters to do with child abuse that the 'seal' no longer holds any way. This has yet to be tested, but there is some sympathy with the idea that mandatory notification now extends into the confessional. (I would find this idea difficult and hope personally that I never have to test it)
This stuff is awful. But I think weare trying to take it seriously.

When, I ask, will the State actually adopt the same scrutiny to schools and institutions that it demands (and rightly) of the Churches.