Back in the day when discipline meant something and if you were disobedient, cruel or lying you were punished with the use of physical force like the wooden spoon, hair brush, or Dad’s belt or hand so that you would remember it and choose not to do it again – or else, writes Ruta Mave.

If you were grounded as a teenager, it meant you stayed at home and you did chores like mow lawns, weed the gardens, clean the toilet or ironing. Then as time and education progressed, the disciplining of children was reviewed and ‘smacking’ was no longer acceptable or allowed.

Politically correct pampering some call parenting, brought in the naughty chair where the child sat inside, in a corner. They were talked to and reasoned with, to never do it again.

And at the ripe old age of three they agreed.

Then some of these PC children grew up and vowed to never put their children through the hardship of having to do chores, or help around the house or contribute to the functional running of the family by being part of family meal conversation. Their children demanded and they received. There was no working towards a new bike by doing the lawns and saving pocket money. No, they gave their children debit cards with access to their accounts and an I-Phone to keep in contact – which they never do, unless you tik tok them.

Now we have a society that demands the world look after them, the last lot expected it. Either way no one is teaching them you have to work for what you want. You have to give to get. You have to be accountable for your actions. Or if you do the crime, you must do the time, this used to mean something. 

Now we have politically connected people who have committed a money crime and the amount of money they are charged for can only be the amount the law can prove in black and white. There is always more money that goes unchallenged. 

The thieves were charged with 70 thousand dollars.

The celebration that the court had a judge with enough consciousness to uphold the charge as they deserved, regardless of their inflated political public persona, has been short lived.

Now we hear that sentencing to prison in the Crook Islands, is just a sleep over. 

Kata feeds the eyes and minds of the public with drawings of small dank cells with a toilet in the corner and the public feel vindicated that the criminals will learn from their mistakes.

Wrong. Criminals are being taken to breakfast or go home every day like normal innocent people.

When Diane Charlie-Puna was headlined as having breakfast in a café while out on work detail, no one asked what work was she doing before breakfast? Most jobs you work first then have a break. Was she doing night work?

If you go straight to breakfast from prison, that is not a work detail, that is a jail break out. And who would allow her family to be the hirer and no one thought that would be a conflict of interest? The public see this farce as a bucket of water in their faces?

Meanwhile, has Robert Tapaitau been going home every day morning to evening so he can live a normal life with no time to sit and regret or contemplate the error of his ways?

Both he and she go home to work on their businesses and make more money than the innocent tax paying, hard working families of the health and police departments are making.

This is outrageous, but if an ex-criminal is the Minister of the Corrective Service, then of course they are going to have a reaction of: I’m not going to let prisoners suffer like I did.

Instead, we have, a man for the people who lets convicted criminals out for conjugal visits or allows them to work when they are convicted of manslaughter.

What happens with rapists and pot growers, do they get the same go home allowances?

Yeah, nah, no one believes there is any restorative justice being done here. No one believes they who commit crimes against the public are actually going to be detained in the naughty corner long enough to learn the lesson. 

What these prisoners are going to learn is when they are free from their nightly sleep over paid for by the state, they can go back into the community and become politicians. 

The only difference is they have learnt when they spend money on hotels and trips, if they get the secretary to book it, they take the fall instead of the minister.

This is a joke not justice.