Post: #1

To me, the fact that we incarcerate people for decades in these horrible prison systems, send prisoners to die, and prosecute minors as adults, are proofs of our inhumanity to one another.

The American penal/prison system (conveniently personified by the D.A. in this video) is arcane, unjust, expensive and ineffective.

A man commits a crime and rather than make an earnest attempt to rehabilitate him, we rob him of his dignity, throw him to the wolves, cage him like an animal, ruin his life in every way, and we expect this to somehow improve our society?

Surely there's a better way...

Post: #2

What do you suggest, VincentVinturi?

Post: #3

Delete all the victimless crimes.

Post: #4

(08-30-2015 01:09 AM)VincentVinturi Wrote:  To me, the fact that we incarcerate people for decades in these horrible prison systems, send prisoners to die, and prosecute minors as adults, are proofs of our inhumanity to one another.

I sympathize with this emotion, but how is feeling that way going to help you or anyone?

If you seek out "proof" of our inhumanity, I have no doubt that you'll find it, but this phrasing suggests it is going deeper than just observing an injustice in the world. There is also plenty of proof in the world of the gentler, more compassionate side of our nature. I personally witness it on a daily basis - in fact, I'd wager you can find evidence of it even in supermax prisons.

Humans, and therefore the world, are far from infallible, but we won't find our solutions by demonizing each other or ourselves. This paradigm (the idea that humans are largely malicious by nature) is ironically a significant source of the problem you're highlighting to begin with.

Post: #5

The American prison/justice system is just completely incomprehensible to me.

Post: #6

(08-30-2015 01:09 AM)VincentVinturi Wrote:  



To me, the fact that we incarcerate people for decades in these horrible prison systems, send prisoners to die, and prosecute minors as adults, are proofs of our inhumanity to one another.

The American penal/prison system (conveniently personified by the D.A. in this video) is arcane, unjust, expensive and ineffective.

A man commits a crime and rather than make an earnest attempt to rehabilitate him, we rob him of his dignity, throw him to the wolves, cage him like an animal, ruin his life in every way, and we expect this to somehow improve our society?

Surely there's a better way...

What the hell? Fast forward to 7:30. This kid was firing handguns out in public and thrown in prison and you think this inhuman?

Are you kidding me?

I like how you didn't even include an argument in your main post, you just throw in a bunch of emotional platitudes about inhumanity while glossing over the fucked up shithead who was thrown in jail. I don't give a fuck if he's 16, firing handguns at people in public is something that goes beyond age.

Post: #7

(08-30-2015 01:11 AM)storm Wrote:  What do you suggest, VincentVinturi?

I honestly don't know what a better alternative would be.

I haven't studied this topic enough to speak with any authority but there are probably other countries who are doing innovative things in the criminal justice field, who we can learn from.

(08-30-2015 01:38 AM)Phoenix Wrote:  Delete all the victimless crimes.

Definitely.

Especially drug offenses.

Actually, legalize ALL drugs, but that's another conversation.

The problem is the drug war is HUGE business for the government, for many governments,

And the single biggest contingent of incarcerated persons are non-violent drug offenders.

That's no coincidence.

(08-30-2015 01:39 AM)Beyond Borders Wrote:  

(08-30-2015 01:09 AM)VincentVinturi Wrote:  To me, the fact that we incarcerate people for decades in these horrible prison systems, send prisoners to die, and prosecute minors as adults, are proofs of our inhumanity to one another.

I sympathize with this emotion, but how is feeling that way going to help you or anyone?

If you seek out "proof" of our inhumanity, I have no doubt that you'll find it, but this phrasing suggests it is going deeper than just observing an injustice in the world. There is also plenty of proof in the world of the gentler, more compassionate side of our nature. I personally witness it on a daily basis - in fact, I'd wager you can find evidence of it even in supermax prisons.

Humans, and therefore the world, are far from infallible, but we won't find our solutions by demonizing each other or ourselves. This paradigm (the idea that humans are largely malicious by nature) is ironically a significant source of the problem you're highlighting to begin with.

Yes that's a good point BB.

And I don't think humans are necessarily malicious by nature, nor benevolent.

We're just self-interested for the most part.

So the question is: whose interests are supported when we lock up people for insane lengths of time?

The prison system, the police, the courts, the politicians.

And taxpayers fund the whole racket.

And they all clamor that it's for society's good, all the while ignoring the reality that there is no society.

There are only many individuals.

So to try kids as adults (just as an example) when it's well-known that our brains aren't fully formed for good decision making until we're in our late 20s is a masterpiece of hypocrisy.

Like I said above, I don't know what the better solution would be, but this much I know: the current system is broken.

(08-30-2015 07:23 AM)CrashBangWallop Wrote:  The American prison/justice system is just completely incomprehensible to me.

You and me both, brother.

(08-30-2015 07:46 AM)Samseau Wrote:  What the hell? Fast forward to 7:30. This kid was firing handguns out in public and thrown in prison and you think this inhuman?

So first off, he's a kid, you said as much yourself.

Kids do very stupid things.

To lock him up for 13 years in a cage like an animal because he was young and didn't know any better? How does that help anybody?

Quote:Are you kidding me?

Yes, I am.

Quote:I like how you didn't even include an argument in your main post, you just throw in a bunch of emotional platitudes about inhumanity while glossing over the fucked up shithead who was thrown in jail.

I didn't include an argument because I was expressing a sentiment and encouraging replies, not writing a thesis.

This a forum.

I admittedly don't know what the solution is and there are many smart people in this community, even people with backgrounds in this field, who can help us to clarify our thoughts and feelings on an issue that ANY man feels strongly about (his freedom).

Quote:I don't give a fuck if he's 16, firing handguns at people in public is something that goes beyond age.

Then we're fundamentally in disagreement because I do give a fuck.

Have you never done anything stupid?

Do you not believe in second chances, learning from your mistakes, rehabilitation?

Is it not enough that one person's life is negatively impacted, we have to ruin another life because "I don't give a fuck" about any extenuating circumstances like the fact that he's about a decade shy of being able to make solid decisions?

Lock him up because gun. Throw away the key because society.

Should American taxpayers have to shoulder the burden of maintaining the largest prison population in the world, some 3x larger than China, who doesn't exactly get a gold star in the human rights department, because we're too lazy to apply some mental energies into actually solving the problem and rehabilitating criminals?

The whole notion of trying a juvenile as an adult is very strange indeed. Hypocritical.

If he's a juvenile, then he must be tried as a juvenile.

Otherwise, he's an adult and ought to be tried as an adult.

Again, the question is whom does this approach benefit?

Society?

I doubt that ruining a kid's life, and forcing the public to pay for his decades-long imprisonment serves the common good, because he is part of that 'common' entity.

This kind of approach benefits overzealous district attorneys who build their careers by seeking the harshest sentences possible.

It benefits the court system which couldn't exist without it (at least not in its currently overblown state).

It benefits police and politicians, who can point to incarceration rates and say "See? you need us. See what a good job we're doing putting all these 16 year old monsters behind bars? More funding please!"

Post: #8

(08-30-2015 10:38 AM)VincentVinturi Wrote:  

(08-30-2015 07:46 AM)Samseau Wrote:  What the hell? Fast forward to 7:30. This kid was firing handguns out in public and thrown in prison and you think this inhuman?

So first off, he's a kid, you said as much yourself.

Kids do very stupid things.

To lock him up for 13 years in a cage like an animal because he was young and didn't know any better? How does that help anybody?

I don't follow why you think this particular case isn't justifiable. He was engaged in banditry. From 7:30 it says 'armed robbery'. In other cultures, bandits are or were summarily killed. Nothing breaches the peace worse than banditry except murder.

You can't call this a 'mistake' or 'he should know better'. 'He should know better' applies to touching a hot stove, or petting a strange dog. It doesn't apply to threatening someone else's life to compel them to give you their property. That's only an act of malice. It cannot be considered a 'mistake'.

It helps society generally because it stamps out breaches of the peace. If he gets away with it, it sends a signal to others who were on the fence about this, and who's primary restrain was the fear of retribution. Even in countries where there is no formal, state dispensed law, banditry is severely punished by natural law. Typically the kid's father would have to make severe and extensive amends, and the kid would have to engage in a sustained and solemn demonstration of paying his debt to his community, or the kid would just be killed. Like I say, traditionally bandits are just summarily killed, so this sentence is actually liberal.

Post: #9

(08-30-2015 10:59 AM)Phoenix Wrote:  I don't follow why you think this particular case isn't justifiable. He was engaged in banditry. From 7:30 it says 'armed robbery'. In other cultures, bandits are or were summarily killed. Nothing breaches the peace worse than banditry except murder.

You can't call this a 'mistake' or 'he should know better'. 'He should know better' applies to touching a hot stove, or petting a strange dog. It doesn't apply to threatening someone else's life to compel them to give you their property. That's only an act of malice. It cannot be considered a 'mistake'.

It helps society generally because it stamps out breaches of the peace. If he gets away with it, it sends a signal to others who were on the fence about this, and who's primary restrain was the fear of retribution. Even in countries where there is no formal, state dispensed law, banditry is severely punished by natural law. Typically the kid's father would have to make severe and extensive amends, and the kid would have to engage in a sustained and solemn demonstration of paying his debt to his community, or the kid would just be killed. Like I say, traditionally bandits are just summarily killed, so this sentence is actually liberal.

Good points Phoenix.

I especially hear what you're saying in terms of this being a liberal sentence relative to what natural law might dictate.

But I'm not sure that this kind of thing really stamps out breaches of the peace or sends a signal that's actually received.

Theoretically, yes. But does it really?

I mean, how's that working out in the USA?

It's a police state which has the highest incarceration rate in the world, locks up non-violent drug offenders, publicizes court proceedings (Europeans think Judge Judy is the weirdest thing ever), but people are still committing plenty of crimes.

Is it that Americans are particularly crime-prone or do we just throw the book at everything and everybody in the name of the common good?

Post: #10

(08-30-2015 11:17 AM)VincentVinturi Wrote:  But I'm not sure that this kind of thing really stamps out breaches of the peace or sends a signal that's actually received.

Theoretically, yes. But does it really?

I mean, how's that working out in the USA?

I think the signal is clear, but it's not the only one. It's clouded by many other contradicting signals. The first is negative attitudes towards the law. This stems from the law being a mixture of peace keeping (punishing murder, rape, robbery etc) and peace breaking (the drug war being a good example). When people see the law as form of control imposed upon them, rather than formalized retributive punishment, they lose respect for it, and are more likely to engage in crimes generally. After all - if you get punished for not hurting people, some people figure: may as well get punished for hurting people too.

Then you have certain cultural aspects that glamorize crime, as can be observed in certain music and film genres. When young men are watching movies and listening to music all their youth, in which the highest ranked males are thugs who shoot people, rob people, and generally get what they want through intimidation rather than mutual agreement, that affects their concept of how to attain success in life.

Finally you have the more indirect effects, for which the causal chains are more difficult to describe, caused by other government policies. It's pretty clear that destroyed family structures, government welfare, and special treatment of certain demographic groups, boost criminality. Nuclear families are the core of social order, and without them people are much more inclined to behave like wild animals. Furthermore, when people are encouraged to think that their quality of life is outside their control, and that it is 'given' or 'owed' by someone, it damages their sense of self-responsibility.

Post: #11

^^

Post: #12

(08-30-2015 01:09 AM)VincentVinturi Wrote:  



To me, the fact that we incarcerate people for decades in these horrible prison systems, send prisoners to die, and prosecute minors as adults, are proofs of our inhumanity to one another.

The American penal/prison system (conveniently personified by the D.A. in this video) is arcane, unjust, expensive and ineffective.

A man commits a crime and rather than make an earnest attempt to rehabilitate him, we rob him of his dignity, throw him to the wolves, cage him like an animal, ruin his life in every way, and we expect this to somehow improve our society?

Surely there's a better way...

13 years for Armed Robbery....maybe that's on the high side. The kid comes off as mischievous but not heartless for the camera - We'll never know.

I've worked with clients that could turn that on and turn that off. I very much doubt that the justice system really pays attention to that kinda stuff, unless there's physical evidence.

But putting a 16 year old into SUPER-MAX prison, where you've got drug king pins, serial rapists, and mass murderers is OVER-PUNISHING for the crime. And I doubt that this is an isolated incident. Not invested enough to watch the rest of the program because i've seen this dumb shit 2 decades.

And once a kid is in, if the system greases the rails for children to put themselves in solitary aka administrative segregation - that's a one way ticket to insanity.

Over-Punishment is what that a lot of "law and order" conservative types don't seem to understand. (or maybe they do understand it, but it's one of the many things that they don't want to think about it or acknowledge)

Maybe if we called this kid Abdul and changed the country to Saudi and called it Sharia law - they'd start to understand, but I doubt it.


The US incarcerates more people than China. Think about that.

As for what to do when you have young boys that commit heinous crimes, do it just like the school system.

Put them in age appropriate prisons.
If it means building more prisons/tax money, believe me, voters and legislators always come through to equip the justice system with more tools to keep the "barbarians" at the gate.

Anyway, You don't lock up a 16 year old who's doing a 10 year bid, with a 30 year old who's there for life. A just society condemns you to a cage a criminal for a certain amount of time, not send him to a life of ass rape and brutalization or insanity.

And I'm willing to be plenty of people here are gonna be like, "he shoulda thought of that before.." - and then will defend some frat boy who put his wiener in a drunk freshman bitch.

The "brother" from Pi Kappa Alpha will be facing the exact same thing, if his daddy can't put a second mortgage on the house to pay for the defense. (I see that too)

But the way these things play out, they'd rather keep the punishment, prosecution, and policing as HARD AS POSSIBLE, and hope they can wiggle out if the noose ever comes for them.

WIA

Post: #13

If anyone else has ever worked in this field before as well the younger someone has their first crime and the more violent it is the more likely they are going to be in the revolving door criminal justice system. I'm sure he will be right back in with a crime like that at that age.

This individual case was over charged though. Kid should be placed in juvenile home and spend a few years there. That way he can get his GED while getting locked up and get some employment training and a job before he is released. If he shows positive progress then release him once he hits 18.

If he doesn't and shows the behavior that got him locked up send his ass to prison.

One of the issues with the United States is it creates a unique type of criminal that other countries don't see. The level of greed and worship of money as a religion makes crime more attractive. Plus since the age of Prohibition, criminals have been romanticized in our country.

With the destruction of the family unit crime will always increase as well as young men will look to someone else to get a male influence and there happens to be a lot of negative and criminal male influences where father figures are not.

Post: #14

(08-30-2015 11:17 AM)VincentVinturi Wrote:  Europeans think Judge Judy is the weirdest thing ever

Haha To be fair, I think Judge Judy is pretty retarded too.

Post: #15

Yet...when a female teacher grooms and expolits a preteen male student, teacher might only get a suspended sentence or probation.That's the miracles of the feminist and gynocentric justice system.

Post: #16

The modern system of incarceration is indeed stupid and counterproductive. The original idea behind prisons was that they would rehabilitate offenders in order to send them back into society as law-abiding citizens, but obviously that isn't the reality these days, with sky-high recidivism rates, publicly traded prison corporations and multi-generational inmate families. The problem is fundamental: locking criminals in cages with other anti-social and violent men only makes them worse. It would be like trying to "fix" an SJW by sending them to a lesbian women's college to major in Queer Studies. Putting bad men in prison is just a waste of resources.

In my opinion, there should only be three types of state-enforced punishment for criminal behavior:

1) Corporal punishment - Public beating with a whip or a cane. Employed for relatively minor or first-time offenses, i.e. theft, vandalism, etc...

2) Indentured servitude - For more serious offenses, criminals would be sentenced to a period of one to ten years of forced labor, with the goal of learning a money making trade. The value of the inmates' labor would be used to cover their expenses and pay restitution for their crimes. This would not be like modern prison as offenders would be split up and living in small groups working together. And if they fucked that up? See:

3) Execution - For heinous crimes or repeat offenders, or criminals who refused to undergo rehabilitative servitude (see above). Execution should be much more common than it is now, and no one should be sitting on death row for 20+ years. Three strikes of felony convictions should mandate an imminent appointment with the hangman. If you're really unable or unwilling to learn to play by society's rules, then society has no obligation to keep you around.

Not surprisingly, this is pretty much how criminals used to be handled prior to the modern era. As usual, our ancestors had things figured out fairly well. We try to reinvent the wheel in our modern arrogance and end up screwing things up.

Post: #17

I chanced across an essay from Theodore Dalrymple's Life At The Bottom around this subject. The whole book can be read online for free here.

The most relevant excerpts can be found in the first essay from the book, said essay being The Knife Went In. Bear in mind that while Dalrymple was working in the UK context, he was a prison doctor and psychiatrist, who had a chance to see up close and personal exactly how prisoners thought.

Quote:Man has always had a capacity for deceit of others and for self-deception, of course. It was Nietzsche who famously observed that pride and self-regard have no difficulty in overcoming memory; and every psychic defense mechanism known to the modem psychologist makes its appearance somewhere in Shakespeare. Yet one’s impression nonetheless is that the ease with which people discard responsibility for what they have done—their intellectual and emotional dishonesty about their own actions—has increased greatly in the last few decades.

Why should this occur just when, objectively speaking, freedom and opportunity for the individual have never been greater?

In the first place, there is now a much enlarged constituency for liberal views: the legions of helpers and carers, social workers and therapists, whose incomes and careers depend crucially on the supposed incapacity of large numbers of people to fend for themselves or behave reasonably. Without the supposed powerlessness of drug addicts, burglars, and others in the face of their own undesirable inclinations, there would be nothing for the professional redeemers to do. They have a vested interest in psychopathology, and their entire therapeutic world view of the patient as the passive, helpless victim of illness legitimizes the very behavior from which they are to redeem him. Indeed, the tangible advantages to the wrongdoer of appearing helpless are now so great that he needs but little encouragement to do so.

In the second place, there has been a widespread dissemination of psychotherapeutic concepts, in however garbled or misinterpreted a form. These concepts have become the currency even of the uneducated. Thus the idea has become entrenched that if one does not know or understand the unconscious motives for one’s acts, one is not truly responsible for them. This, of course, applies only to those acts which someone regards as undesirable: no one puzzles over his own meritoriousness. But since there is no single ultimate explanation of anything, one can always claim ignorance of one’s own motives. Here is a perpetual getout.

Third, there has been a widespread acceptance of sociological determinism, especially by the guilt-laden middle classes. Statistical association has been taken indiscriminately as proving causation: thus, if criminal behavior is more common among the poorer classes, it must be poverty that causes crime.

Nobody, of course, experiences himself as sociologically determined—certainly not the sociologist. And few of the liberals who espouse such a viewpoint recognize its profoundly dehumanizing consequences. If poverty is the cause of crime, burglars do not decide to break into houses any more than amoebae decide to move a pseudopod towards a particle of food. They are automata—and presumably should be treated as such.

I did not realise until I had read Dalrymple's work exactly how deeply this intellectual reflex -- that a person is somehow not responsible for their own behaviour and their own choices because of their upbringing -- has been driven.

If we're going to argue here about the severity of the sentence, that's one thing. I think 13 years for an armed robbery -- in isolation, and if that's all there is to the story -- is probably on the high side where I come from.

But arguing that he's a kid and that therefore excuses him of responsibility? Well, no. That's the concept of doli incapax, which outside the pretty Latin italics means "age of reason" roughly. It's why in most nations you don't charge a kid up to about the age of 10 with a criminal offence, simply because they are, truly, kids, and don't know the difference between right and wrong. After that point, though, it's another matter. By 16 even the most brain-dead parents will have managed to pass on the fact you're not meant to go waving a fucking firearm around in people's faces. Young people fuck up -- your frontal lobe biologically does not finish forming until age 25 -- but they're capable of reason and of self-deception and rationalisation as much as any of us. Moreso, in fact.

And I am a bit cynical about the Healing Power Of Rehabilitation in general. In my experience -- which was directly in criminal law, and with young offenders in particular -- the best shot at rehabilitation happened when the kid was charged with his first ever offence, the first shoplifting or stealing or whatever. It happened because the kid had never been arrested or never been in a courtroom before, and the fear was still there to be used as a lever. After that, though, when the kid was familiar with the setup and knew by dint of his legal advice how unlikely it was that he'd go to prison? Much less so.

Post: #18

(08-30-2015 09:56 PM)scorpion Wrote:  The modern system of incarceration is indeed stupid and counterproductive. The original idea behind prisons was that they would rehabilitate offenders in order to send them back into society as law-abiding citizens, but obviously that isn't the reality these days, with sky-high recidivism rates, publicly traded prison corporations and multi-generational inmate families. The problem is fundamental: locking criminals in cages with other anti-social and violent men only makes them worse. It would be like trying to "fix" an SJW by sending them to a lesbian women's college to major in Queer Studies. Putting bad men in prison is just a waste of resources.

In my opinion, there should only be three types of state-enforced punishment for criminal behavior:

1) Corporal punishment - Public beating with a whip or a cane. Employed for relatively minor or first-time offenses, i.e. theft, vandalism, etc...

2) Indentured servitude - For more serious offenses, criminals would be sentenced to a period of one to ten years of forced labor, with the goal of learning a money making trade. The value of the inmates' labor would be used to cover their expenses and pay restitution for their crimes. This would not be like modern prison as offenders would be split up and living in small groups working together. And if they fucked that up? See:

3) Execution - For heinous crimes or repeat offenders, or criminals who refused to undergo rehabilitative servitude (see above). Execution should be much more common than it is now, and no one should be sitting on death row for 20+ years. Three strikes of felony convictions should mandate an imminent appointment with the hangman. If you're really unable or unwilling to learn to play by society's rules, then society has no obligation to keep you around.

Not surprisingly, this is pretty much how criminals used to be handled prior to the modern era. As usual, our ancestors had things figured out fairly well. We try to reinvent the wheel in our modern arrogance and end up screwing things up.

Post: #19

(08-30-2015 07:23 AM)CrashBangWallop Wrote:  America is just completely incomprehensible to me.

Edited

Post: #20

Actually, for young offenders the best way to reduce crime would be to punish the mother. For older criminals the girlfriend or wife.

This may sound a little strange, but the fact is that these boys and men are not acting entirely independently. Basically the women in their life carry about 50% of the responsibility. No, I'm not off my rocker. As we all know here women achieve their goals and achieve "power" differently to men. Indirectly. Basically, a mother carries at least half the responsibility of her sons crimes. When they get older some of the mothers half gets distributed to girlfriends or wives. And I don't mean that, for example, this boy's mother encouraged him to commit the particular crime he was charged with. It's much more subtle than that. Could be something as indirect as that she "seeks" the drama of a criminal son. Something to wail about to the other church ladies, for example. Anyway, I should stop there, because my own view is that nothing is co-incidental, and it's a bit difficult to describe and get agreement on.

There are very few penal systems I know of that punish the offenders family, but it is fairly easy to understand in terms of "Natural Law" so I'm sure there must be some. Especially in the Muslim world. The only one I can think of is what the Israeli's do to the families of suicide bombers. Bulldoze their house. Publicly humiliate the mother and sisters etc. As horrible as this sounds, it is what a person wanting to prevent further bombings would do.

Lastly. Actually the most effective way to reduce crime is simply to have a detection ability so good that the likelihood of a criminal being caught is very high. The average criminal is usually pretty thick, but not so thick that they can't weigh the likelihood of being caught against the potential gain. That's why, unfortunately, civil liberties laws actually increase both crime, and the punitive effect on criminals when they are caught. Despite obviously being promoted in order to achieve the opposite effect. The added liberties emboldens criminals, who are subsequently caught and...punished. Whereas if they had a more realistic view of whether they would be caught or not they wouldn't do the crime, and therefore wouldn't be punished.

Post: #21

A good way globally of evaluating a society is looking at how they treat prisoners. America is pretty damn bad.

Post: #22

Wait, how many people watched the video.

Did anyone catch that the kid had some family problems and left home/ran away to vent.
He was gone a couple days.

He ended up being taken in by a actual criminal that fed and groomed him. Then put a gun to his head and told him to rob the store.

Even then he had no intent to fire the weapon. It was said that the weapon was fired accidentally when he was tackled and in a struggle.
A experienced person with a gun usually doesn't know that you don't actually place your finger on the trigger.
It sounds more like it was a negligent discharge.
The kid also had no previous record or mentions of run ins with the law.
In the end, no one was harmed. People with money and better lawyers have gotten away with worse.



Those statements alone are enough to realize that the kid wasn't a hardened thief or even criminal.

It appears more that he was tried add an adult.
1. Because someone had to take the fall and be the example.
(He was the first kid to be tried under the law in California)
2. He was well into puberty and looks much older than his birth and mental age.
( I plenty of kids I went to school with liked like adults when they barely hit high school. They went straight to the football team)

The kid didn't need super max.
He needed juvenile detention and a mentor/father figure.

Post: #23

(09-13-2015 07:17 PM)Sourcecode Wrote:  Wait, how many people watched the video.

Did anyone catch that the kid had some family problems and left home/ran away to vent.
He was gone a couple days.

He ended up being taken in by a actual criminal that fed and groomed him. Then put a gun to his head and told him to rob the store.

Even then he had no intent to fire the weapon. It was said that the weapon was fired accidentally when he was tackled and in a struggle.
A experienced person with a gun usually doesn't know that you don't actually place your finger on the trigger.
It sounds more like it was a negligent discharge.
The kid also had no previous record or mentions of run ins with the law.
In the end, no one was harmed. People with money and better lawyers have gotten away with worse.



Those statements alone are enough to realize that the kid wasn't a hardened thief or even criminal.

It appears more that he was tried add an adult.
1. Because someone had to take the fall and be the example.
(He was the first kid to be tried under the law in California)
2. He was well into puberty and looks much older than his birth and mental age.
( I plenty of kids I went to school with liked like adults when they barely hit high school. They went straight to the football team)

The kid didn't need super max.
He needed juvenile detention and a mentor/father figure.

You're damn straight about the father figures. They are in short supply, is it over 50% of sons born to single mom's nowadays?

We can blame feminism and the nanny state for this bullshit. It's never ending.

However, despite the fact that these kids never had a chance, we cannot let them go around robbing stores and fucking people up. Unfortunately they were doomed from birth. It makes my blood boil but there aren't any other solutions.

Post: #24

(09-14-2015 09:45 AM)Samseau Wrote:  However, despite the fact that these kids never had a chance, we cannot let them go around robbing stores and fucking people up. Unfortunately they were doomed from birth. It makes my blood boil but there aren't any other solutions.

Bro what are you talking about?

There were several other solutions proposed in this thread.

I don't even know why you bother contributing if you're unwilling to ever hear others out and revise your understanding.

Post: #25

(09-15-2015 01:07 AM)VincentVinturi Wrote:  

(09-14-2015 09:45 AM)Samseau Wrote:  However, despite the fact that these kids never had a chance, we cannot let them go around robbing stores and fucking people up. Unfortunately they were doomed from birth. It makes my blood boil but there aren't any other solutions.

Bro what are you talking about?

There were several other solutions proposed in this thread.

I don't even know why you bother contributing if you're unwilling to ever hear others out and revise your understanding.

Goin to start saying I agree with what sourcecode said. The kid had some very unfortunate circumstances, and his life is now fucked because of that.

But why, when I read your post, does it sound like you're telling him how to think. And not to post unless he agrees with your way of thinking? I'm probably just tired from the lack of sleep and partying too hard after my buddies wedding. But after reading it and then coming back a few minutes later it still sounds like that to me.