" Bali 9 " : What is the real story ???..... more information , please

[spacejunk]

Ive not been to Bali, but i have no desire to anyway.
Draconian drug laws and corruption are only a part of that... If you could call that a boycott?
Then again plenty of countries worth visiting are just as corrupt and have capital punishment and crazy drug laws. And that wouldnt stop me going there.

 

[SixBuckets]

Do you think they would have been model citizens if they hadn't been caught and made it back to Australia with all that smack? Do you think they would have turned their life around if suddenly they had $5million at their disposal 10 years ago?

They were career criminals, wannabe gangsters who no doubt would have continued to be a menace to society. All the Australian justice system would have done was created a cycle of repeat offending and slaps on the wrist.

I don't see how anyone's status as a 'menace to society' or a 'wannabe gangster' can be predicted by how they attempted to make some money one time. We know they were willing to break a law against moving drugs across borders. It doesn't necessarily follow that they would be willing to break laws relating to property or bodily autonomy, any more than it follows that someone breaking laws about drug possession would do so. They're really very different crimes.

Making excuses for criminals ignores the fact that the majority of people from disadvantaged homes don't actually resort to crime.

And plenty of educated, middle class people do. I'm not really sure I understand where anyone on this thread is coming from with the disadvantage/crime link.

They manage to suffer through their poverty without having to break the law. It's only the selfish and evil who turn to crime, who bully, assault and murder, who chose the quick fix by stealing or dealing drugs.

Again, those are really different crimes. I don't see how dealing is a quick fix (my observations are that it's actually a crap ton of work and annoyance) or evil? Selfish, maybe, but couldn't that describe anyone doing anything to make money? And while there may be a Venn diagram overlap of 'drug dealers' and 'murderers', I'm pretty sure it's only a tiny sliver. I doubt the vast majority of people who sell or transport drugs are killers, even under a prohibitionist system that criminalises their actions.

It's easier to blame your parents in a sob story of woe when you finally get caught, than accept you were in the wrong. These guys didn't make a mistake, they knew exactly what they were doing as they strapped millions of dollars worth of heroin to their mates. They knew as well as we all do that a death penalty awaited them if they got caught.

It's sad that they chose to waste their lives at such a young age, but that's the risk you run when you gamble your life trafficking drugs in SE Asia.

*shrug* I did some pretty stupid things when I was a teenager. I'm certainly glad my future being alive wasn't resting on my juvenile and incompletely developed risk assessment capacity.

 

[One Thousand Words]

Incompletely developed risk assessment capacity? What a fucking cop out. At 19 you are old enough to drink, marry, vote, join the army and shoot someone dead. Hell even at 15 most sensible kids still know right from wrong. If anything Australia's weak justice system probably enables too many juvenile delinquents too many excuses. Is the crime any worse if you are 25? 45? Some people are immature and make poor life choices. Sad, but that is life I'm afraid.

I'm glad I got away with my misadventures when I was 19 too. Then again I also was raised to respect the law, or at very least know how not to get caught.

 

[SixBuckets]

Risk trajectory peaking in adolescence for a large percentage of the youth population is a demonstrated phenomena - the only disagreement is on what causes it. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3445337/

We do know that the human brain doesn't mature until the mid-twenties. Additionally, the 'experience hypothesis' poses that conscious decisions around risk are made by comparing current situations to previous experience, and adolescents do not have the experience bank to accurately assess risk.

I had done a lot of those things by 19 plus some extras that would indicate being a responsible adult (er, no murder, though). I still look back on my teenage self and recognise that I had no freaking idea how to weigh up the risks of various activities or make informed decisions about my safety. I reckon most of us are pretty lucky to live past 19 even if we aren't being murdered by an oppressive state regime.