Photo: Mehrad Vosoughi/Unsplash
TLDR version: An 18-year-old approached a stranger in a supermarket asking the latter to buy him some cigarettes. When the man repeatedly refused, the teenager attacked him with a knife.
The teenager was found guilty of using a knife to cause grievous hurt and being in possession of a weapon in a public place, and was sentenced to 3.5 years’ jail and 8 strokes of the cane.
More thoughts: This young offender was just 13 years old when his parents filed for a “Beyond Parental Control” (BPC) order against him.
Such an order is usually filed by parents against their children below 16 years old who display serious behavioural problems; they are then placed under court-mandated supervision.
In the 2020 amendments to the Children and Young Persons Act, BPC orders have been renamed “Family Guidance Orders”, which changes the focus of such orders to the provision of extra guidance for both the child and his or her family.
The article also mentions that the boy had previously committed robbery with hurt when he was around 15 years old and on leave from his mandated residential home, and as a result was sentenced to reformative training at 16 years old.
Reformative training is a structured form of detention, and also the most severe (short of imprisonment), that young offenders aged 14 years old and above can be sentenced to.