Silly choices result in jail time

Police investigate a robbery at Westshore recently.

As events in Hawke's Bay courts highlighted this week, considerable numbers of Hawke's Bay children will be without dad at Christmas because of what were some fairly silly decisions, even if desperate.

The jailing of young men for service station and dairy robberies are the early signs of the consequences of a spate of dairy, service station and bar robberies that plagued Hawke's Bay from May to October this year.

And they seemed to resume this week.

In all, there've been more than 20 in probably the worst year for this form of crime in Hawke's Bay.

But fortunately several offenders have been apprehended and are now being dealt-to in the courts for a crime that ticks all the boxes in terms of penalty and the prime purpose of criminal incarceration - public safety.

All being accompanied by the presence of or threatened use of weapons - and most involving at least two offenders - they elevate to the status of "aggravated" robbery, maximum penalty 14 years in jail.

Courts, quite rightly, see prison sentences as almost certain, regardless of the success, or lack of success, of what are often amateurish mind-explosions.

Almost none of these robberies started with severe risk for likely little reward.

And any sense of adventure can soon be lost in a realisation that, really, hiding behind a disguise and threatening someone who is often just struggling to make a living, is far more a display of cowardice misadventure than a way to advance one's pathway in life.

Frankly, they slot into the no-brainer department, which is where things get even more enigmatic.

By and large the young men committing most of these offences do not shape as unintelligent or hopeless individuals, often they don't have the long lists of precursory escalating crime.

Often as they reflect while standing in the dock, there in the public gallery is the rock in their life - the distraught girlfriend or mum, often feeling the most let-down of all.

Time to think again, guys.