My Name Is Not Emo

Once a person committed a crime and sentenced to prison, regardless whether
they were going to be rehabilitated or not is irrelevant. The public would still
have the bad perspective towards them as long as they stepped into prison
before. Thats the way it is...

Speaking of news that 3blups just wrote few hours ago, theres a quite important issue that he forgot to include, ie, the manaces of Mat Rempits (Hereinafter referred as MR ) in Malaysia. For those who doesnt know what MR is, they are a bunch of bikers which normally associated with abuses of drugs, robberies, and other social illment activites. Someone told me that perhaps its became more rampant these days due to recession and stuff like that. I told him, no, its not. MR problems have always been there, regardless whether we are facing recession, or armageddon.


There has been like 2 separate incidents regarding the rampancy of the MR involving snatch thieves and series of robberies that went reported on the newspaper last week. These assholes would not operate alone, they go in groups. One of the lady who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, she was surrounded by 15 of those MR in the morning while she was walking towards LRT station, she was robbed and subsequently got herself injured when one of those MR dragged her from his bike for a few metres. Sigh..

My concern is, what is happening to the country atm? What has it becoming to this country where i, myself cant even enjoy the basic sense of security when walking on the street. As the matter of fact, sometimes i do felt that my life is like a Russian Roulette, not knowing when i might be ended up as one of those victims.


The police force has been repeating on the press that they have been trying to clamp down on all these MR activities. But my question for them would be, is 'trying' enough? No, its not. Something drastic need to be taken. Of course, i was hoping that someone from somewhere will be taking up some vigilante actions like those superheroes in movies. Again, it is just a hope afterall, ya? At least now, we have elicited the fact that these MRs are not intimidated with police force.


Anyway, i wont be talking much about MR today. I am just highlighting whats happening recently and what i am going to talk today is about a concept/theory which has some relation to what i discussed above.

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Okay, lets face it, one of the most effective way to curb crime rates from going up is by way of imposing heavy sentencing. In order to have a bigger picture, first we need to know the mechanism of sentencing. Em.. Lets take the example given above, MR. As far as i am concerned, theres no such offence of being a MR though. But it is their actions of being a MR that can amount to offences,eg: drugs abusing, snatch thieves, robberies, extortion, speeding while doing stunt actions on their bikes... etc.


IF the MR that were involved in the incident that was reported in the newspaper were caught and being charged in the court, for example... under s384 (extortion) of the Penal Code which it is punishable for up to 10 years of imprisonment/fine/whipping.


Under normal circumstances, even if the perpetrators were found guilty of that said offence, chances are, after all the mitigation factors being put forward to the judge, the sentences imposed would not be the max penalty. And if the perpetrators were to plead guilty ( it saves the courts time ) when the charge was first read to them, normally there will be a reduction of 1/3 of the sentence. ( the reduction is not based on the max penalty given, but rather based on the sentence which will be given IF the perpetrators were to be found guilty in the later stages where they claimed trial ).


For example, Ali was found guilty of extortion under s384 of the penal code. The judge made a 1/3 reduction from the initial amount of sentencing that he would impose on Ali due to the fact that Ali pleaded guilty, lets give and take... 6 years of imprisonment. After 1/3 reduction, Ali would have to serve in prison for 4 years. And there would be a further reduction of 1/3 of his 4 years of imprisonment by reason of good behaviour. Well, perhaps in total of years that Ali would be put behind bars would be around 2 years+ and he would be release back to the arms of the public. Sorry for the convoluted explaination given , i did my best to simplify it and i hope you readers can understand it.


To be honest, with all the reductions here and there that can be given, i personally think that the sentencing that being imposed on them (MR) are perhaps too lenient and it does not proportionate to all the troubles and hardship being caused by them. Mind you that a large number of them are considered as 'child offenders' which below the age of 18. And as a child offender, he would not be sent to a normal prison per se, but he will be ended up in a special 'prisoners school' ( Henry Gurney Prisoners School - located in Malacca ) That would basically sums up that if you are a child and committed a crime, the sentence that you going to get is even more lenient than what i have discussed above.


Another example that was given to me by a lecturer of mine, if a child offender (eg, aged 17) committed rape and were found guilty, he would be sent to this prisoners school until the age of 21 and he would be released.


My first reaction was like... wtf??! only 3 years??! (sorry, not that i dont know how to count but one can only sentenced to this approved school for max 3 years only ) How about the victim who is going to be traumatised for her rest of her life by the incident? Seriously... something doesnt sounds right to me though, i guess it is high time for the parliament to actually amend the law to lower down the age further to be considered as a child. The rationale behind this whole idea of giving child offenders a more lenient sentencing is because it is presumed that these 'children' do not have full mental capacity to weigh as to what is right and wrong, what they can do and cannot do. HELLLLLLOOO?! when i was 17 years old, i can think like any ordinary adult does. We might be able to justify it for about 30 or even 20 years ago. But with the changing of the landscape of the society atm, children tends to grow mature even earlier. Then how can we now say that these so-called 'children offenders' do not have the mental capacity to think??


But one would come and argue that there is such a concept called the Rehabilitation Sentencing. The idea is to rehabilitate the offenders to turn them to a new leaf ( lesser sentencing -such as community service ) because just by imposing heavy sentences on them, once they were released, a number of them would be going back to the same way they were and start committing crimes again. It is for them to actually being welcomed back to the society after they served their time in the prison/community service and hopefully would not face any discriminations from the public.


However, I would personally find that this argument is rather flawed. Once a person committed a crime and sentenced to prison, regardless whether they were going to be rehabilitated or not is irrelevant. The public would still have the bad perspective towards them as long as they stepped into prison before. Thats the way it is. Yes, on one hand, it might be unfair to those who actually did change for the better cause, but on the other hand, he would have thought on all the consequences of his act before actually did it ended up in the prison.

However, thats not always been the case though, the offence of Drug Trafficking (s39B Dangerous Drugs Act ) carries death penalty but it is still rampant these days. T_____T


Dont get me wrong, sometimes i do believe the idea of rehabilitation do work at certain situations, i'm just not a fan of it as i would rather prefer Retribution or Deterrence type of sentencing. At least by imposing a heavy sentence to the offenders, it will send the clear signal to the public that crime does not pay! This will also shows that the courts disapproval on behalf of the community pertaining to the particular type of criminal conduct. For me, its simple, the longer we put the offenders behind the bars, the better.


How if we change the law to a very stiff and heavy penalty such as imprisonment up to 20 years as opposed to 7 years max atm or with additional of 10 times whipping even for petty crimes like theft? Or for those who found guilty of incest (something which i CANT tolerate at all), his penis would be chopped off? I think the number of incest cases in this country would drop drasticly to the extent of near non-existent. I guess if all these were being exposed to ALL LAYERS of the public, i would genuinely think that the potential offenders would have think like 10 folds more than he would now before committing a crime.


Of course, there are other factors and policies to be taken into account as well, but the basic arguments for today's post can be summarized as 'Retribution sentencing vs Rehabilitation sentencing'. With all the rampancy of crimes going on, i would hope that the courts will be taking cognisance about it and start imposing as heavy sentence as possible everytime they found any accused guilty of a crime.





p/s:Yes, i know it is another lenghty post of mine, but what to do? = ) sorry if theres any typo mistakes here and there though, its 4am in the morning now and i am darn sleepy atm. Good night~~


= Mr Zhong =