The Telegraph published an article on September 22, 2015, with
the headline ‘Child criminals staged a ‘kangaroo court’ in Cookham Wood jail.’ Cookham
Wood jail is a local British prison. What does ‘kangaroo court’ mean?
Most people know what
a kangaroo is. It’s a large Australian native mammal with a pouch that holds
its young, called a joey. It has two smaller front legs and large powerful hind
legs, with a large tail. What does a kangaroo have to do with a court?
The first sentence of
the article is ‘Staff at a child jail failed to intervene when teenage
offenders staged a ‘kangaroo court’ against another inmate, the chief inspector
of prisons has disclosed.’ It sounds like something not-so-good happened. But
still, what does a prison offence have to do with kangaroos?
The second sentence
provides some clarity: ‘Inmates at Cockham Wood in Kent were shouting
aggressively at each other as they carried out the mock trial but their
behaviour was not challenged by staff until inspectors insisted they should
act.’ Therefore a ‘kangaroo court’ is a mock trial. What is a mock trial. It is
a pretend trial. It is not a real trial. In other words, as the article
explains, ‘the ‘kangaroo court’ incident involved boys shouting at another
inmate and ‘deciding what they were going to do to him the next day.’ They made
accusations against him and decided they would beat him up.’
A kangaroo court,
according to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is ‘a mock court in which the
principles of law and justice are disregarded or perverted.’ Therefore it is a
trial accusing a person, giving a verdict, and delivering a penalty that
carries no official status anywhere, in any land or territory. The verdict is
not official.
The phrase, kangaroo
court, still exists, especially in Commonwealth countries and in America. The
terminology was said to have originated in Australia during the convict years
in the 1850s during the gold rush, but others say that it actually originated
in the west coast of America at around the same time.
The phrase could be an
imitation of a kangaroo hopping from penalty to penalty or due to a kangaroo’s
pouch, in which jurors or the judge are said to place money inside (i.e. pay a
bribe to have the court case outcome that they want). Some say that the term
arose because kangaroos are known to box, and a mock or fake trial was nothing
more than a boxing match to determine the winner – or where a person was boxed
and beaten to confess to a crime that they did not commit.
Negatively, it
conjures up an unfair, biased trial with a harsh punishment. However, some
people use it ‘comically’ nowadays to judge people and determine what fine or
penalty they will pay – usually in sporting teams.
Scorecard for The Telegraph headline is 100%. A
kangaroo court means to take matters in your own hands, to determine someone’s
fate without the rules of law and order. And that is exactly what the juveniles
were doing in the prison at Cookham Wood.
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