There have been further depressing examples in the courts in recent weeks of children committing horrendous crimes.
In one case a 16-year-old boy was convicted of murdering a 14-year-old boy with a hammer in Co Laois, while two days later four Limerick teenagers were convicted of the gang rape of a woman in Co Clare, and the vicious assault of her boyfriend. The perpetrators ranged in age from 14 to 16 at the time of the offences.
Across the Irish Sea it has been no different. A court convicted a 17-year-old boy of killing a 14-year-old with a hammer and a knife in Leicester. Another court convicted a 16-year-old of stabbing another 14-year-old to death in a school corridor in Lincolnshire.
What these cases have in common is a degree of predictability, if not relating to the specific crime, then of some serious crime. The Laois boy has not been sentenced and evidence of his background has yet to be heard. The court was told that his father had not been part of his life until last year, and he had been living with him in the six months leading up to the crime. The Limerick teenagers were described in court as all coming from difficult backgrounds. The ring-leader, Thomas O'Neill, had 35 previous convictions and was said to be "seriously disturbed".
In Britain the 16-year-old from Lincolnshire had earlier held a blade to another pupil's throat, and had threatened his victim's life many times. His mother died when he was four and his father was rarely at home. The 17-year-old from Leicester was described as a disturbed loner with a liking for very violent computer games.
The conclusions of these cases coincided with the publication in The Irish Times of further reports in the series from the Children's Court by Carl O'Brien. They revealed a litany of distress calls. "This goes back to when he was in third class," one distraught mother told the judge, describing her delinquent 16-year-old son who kept running away from home and who had been beaten severely by his father. An 18-year-old had 35 previous convictions and his mother had reared six children alone following the death of their father from a drug overdose.
Yet time after time these children were released onto the streets with no suitable place for them to go. Indeed, for many it is probably already too late to avert a criminal lifestyle. As a society we can only hope that their future offences are not as serious as those seen in Laois and in Clare. The authorities must grasp the need to provide serious resources to identify such children even before they get to "third class". A preventative approach is in all our interests.