NOTES ONLY, B#%&
EXCLUSIVE: 12YO bandit and the ‘dumb people who breed’
A 12-YEAR-OLD boy allegedly held up a Gold Coast service station with a 20cm knife, telling the attendant: “Notes only, bitch”. He escaped on a BMX bike and buried the $215 in the garden of his home. The latest Queensland Courts data shows 866 minors appeared in the Southport Children’s Court in 2015-16, up from 577 the year before. Bond University criminologist Wayne Petherick said research showed “less intelligent” people were outbreeding “smarter people”, leading to problem children.
MORE than two children a day are appearing in court on the Gold Coast as “less intelligent” people breed more and parents choose drugs over their kids, experts say.
The latest Queensland Courts data shows 866 minors appeared in the Southport Children’s Court in 201516, up 50 per cent on the 577 who fronted the year before.
A 12-year-old was yesterday charged with holding up an Upper Coomera service station with a knife and last week, three girls – aged 12, 13, 16 – stole a car and went on a druggie joy ride to Taree in NSW.
The Queensland Courts figures come two days after Bond University Dean of Medicine Professor Peter Jones asked whether the government must consider “developing policies that encourage disadvantaged families to have fewer children?”
In June 2015, 43,399 children were in out-of-home care, each costing about $70,000 a year, he said.
Bond criminologist Wayne Petherick yesterday echoed his colleague’s comments, saying research showed “less intelligent” people bred more in economic hardship than “smarter people”.
“Less intelligent people look at it from the point of view of ‘great, let’s have sex’.
“People of lower intelligence are breeding and people of higher intelligence are not. This effect has been happening now for … probably two to three decades.”
Gold Coast defence lawyer Michael Gatenby, of Gatenby Criminal Law, said a high proportion of juvenile defendants were in some form of foster care or not living with their parents.
He said children in foster care were “probably already in a prejudiced situation” when it came to offending, given they have often been removed from unstable family situations.
The State Government said about 650 children were in out-of-home care on the Gold Coast.
Mr Gatenby said many of those children did not want to be in foster care and run away, trying to return to their parents, who are committing offences themselves.
“I think (the drug) ice is the worst thing that has happened to families on the Gold Coast,” Mr Gatenby said. “A lot of parents are addicted to ice and they can’t care for their kids.
“You say to them, ‘ You need to give up the drug or you’re going to lose your kids’. Inevitably, they just can’t give up the drug. People act so irrationally on ice and they don’t care about anything else but the drug.
“There is no half-way with ice. It takes hold almost instantly and it must be a very powerful drug to cause people to consistently forsake their children.”