WHERE'S PERRY MASON WHEN YOU NEED HIM?

The Phnom Penh Post reported the other day that prison authorities here in Cambodia are in a bit of a bind, given that there aren't, in fact, any laws on the books forbidding prisoners from breaking out of prison.

Kind of a Catch-22 thing, I guess. You're put into prison for doing something bad. You're not supposed to break out of prison, but if you do, well, there's not much we can do about that, because it's not against the law.

Sorta defeats the whole point of a prison, doesn't it? Having a sort of 'revolving door' policy and all.

Just one more example of how seriously twisted the Khmer justice system is.

Where I work, a lot of the, like, really smart and important and talented people are actually working on important and relevant stuff, a lot of which has to do badgering the Cambodian government, pleading with them, cajoling them, convincing them that, yes, laws are, contrary to what you might believe or have heard, important. (I've never used the word 'cajole' or any form of it in a sentence before. I swear. I don't know what got into me. I try not to use words that sound totally strange and ridiculous in everyday conversation, but I think I just violated my own oath.)

Case in point:

A lot of the tsunami coverage has focused on the fact that (gasp) orphaned children may, in fact, be sold into the sex trade.

Guess what? It happens all the time. Every day. Every hour.

And a lot of these kids that are kidnapped or coerced into working in Cambodia or Thailand or Vietnam eventually, for various reasons, find themselves trying to sneak back into their native lands any which way they can. (I also try not to use titles of Clint Eastwood movies in my writing, but I think that that last phrase was the title of a flick featuring Clint and an ape. And wasn't it a sequel, too? But I promise there'll be no 'pink cadillacs' or 'magnum force' phrases.)

You know what often happens when the authorities catch them? The kids are charged with being illegal immigrants! (As if they had any say in being, I don't know, sold.)

Back home, if you're a kid, and if you do something bad, no matter what it is, they can charge you with something. Here, there's no, I repeat no, laws for young offenders. They receive the same sentences as adults, and, not only that, they're put in the same prisons.

Scary stuff. As functional and seemingly thriving as Phnom Penh is, it's little details like that that can make you shiver, if you think about them too long, if you ponder them too much.

Lots of work remains to be done here. Lots of rules to be written up. In the meantime, lots of boys and girls wait. Crossing borders, passing through hands, travelling over unfamiliar roads to destinations they'd rather not think about, as the indifferent machinations of government continue their creaky ways.