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Comments:
Laura - 2005-02-15 11:46:15 Your comment about the "violent and unstable prison environment that effectively creates a plateaued, equalized savagery of punishment for all inmates, regardless of their crime" reminded me of a Freep story I read yesterday about how, due to budget cuts, one youth detention facility is being closed and the young offenders are being put into adult prisons. Can't seem to scout that one up, but here's a related story on a 14-year-old girl in an adult prison.* * * * * * * * * * * * Dan Arbor - 2005-02-15 14:39:20 That is indeed a sad story, but all too common. We really need another tier of incarceration status to house juveniles convicted of violent or serious crimes. For many of these kids (and yes, despite the serious nature of the crime, a 14 year-old is a kid), a secure-level juvenile facility would provide just the sort of wake-up call needed. This is a chance to catch them before they graduate to the big leagues, which is everyone's best interest. By placing juveniles into adult prisons, we're bascially giving up on them; it's sink or swim. The ones who sink will be brutalized by the older inmates, and the ones who swim will likely exit the prison a much more hardened individual. In either case, the person will have been changed forever by the experience, and likely for the worse. Man, talk about manufacturing criminals...* * * * * * * * * * * * Dan Arbor - 2005-02-15 14:47:02 Hmmm, if this can be taken as a portend, the Prozac guy may not have much to hope for...* * * * * * * * * * * * Laura - 2005-02-15 14:47:18 I agree. Bad idea to lump kids in like that, to say the least. A little off-topic: isn't it true that we have the highest segment of our population imprisoned, of any industrialized nation? Also, has anyone ever explained why that is so?* * * * * * * * * * * * Laura - 2005-02-15 14:54:44 (reads Dan's linked article): Whoa! Good heavens! This 15-year-old boy got 30 years for killing both his grandparents...good Lord. I note he torched their house afterwards and then stole their car and later told police the grandparents "deserved it." Such actions would certainly seem to weaken a "Zoloft defense." And...just a minute, here--the end of the article says that Zoloft is the most commonly prescribed antidepressant, with 32.7 million prescriptions. In a country of 290 million, that's one in 10 people on this stuff. That's one in 10 truck drivers on the highway, heavy equipment operators, air traffic controllers...I find that a tad scary.* * * * * * * * * * * * raymond - 2005-02-15 15:16:02 Studies indicate that the brains of teens are not wired sufficiently to expect them to drive like adults at all, but when it comes to some violent act, drugs or not, we say of the 12 year olds, "Oh, they were thinking like an adult" and we try them without regard to their childish brains.* * * * * * * * * * * * Dan Arbor - 2005-02-15 15:18:50 It is scary. What's even scarier is that despite all of the warnings about the potential for suicide and other behavioral anomolies particularly among juveniles (!!), this was officially disregarded, and now he'll spend half his life in prison. Look, I am not trying to come off as someone who has a lot of sympathy for people who commit cold-blooded murder, because I don't. I do believe those people exist, but I also believe that we, as a society, have blown the actual numbers of these sociopaths way out of proportion. Now, it seems, all offenders are in their right mind, so sentence away. This does not seem to me to be statiscally possible. But, it requires less thought to send people to prison. And after awhile, I think people just develop a sort of "battle fatigue" about the whole thing, and they want closure, whatever it may be. * * * * * * * * * * * * Laura - 2005-02-15 15:25:01 Raymond: yes, you're right; I heard that somewhere on NPR recently, about the minds of teens not becoming wired like adult brains till after age 20 at least. Dan: Less thought, and less money too. And we only have one side of the story, here, after all. For all we know he may have been mistreated by his grandparents. Maybe, maybe not...but as you say, now he'll spend half his life in jail.* * * * * * * * * * * * add your comment: |