This is not okay

[trinityvixen]

Why does it take the judge being corrupt to make this not okay?

The kids are all right. Until a bunch of self-righteous pricks overcriminalize them. Then we create problems that we didn't have before.

Listen to some of the audio from the victims. The last two are especially frightening. These were two kids who hadn't done anything wrong at all, and they got punished.

Comments

[jendaby.livejournal.com]

Wow. That is just terrible. OMG, those poor kids and their families! *rage*

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

It's pretty much a given at this point that punishing kids--or even "scaring them straight"--works less well than other kinds of admonishment (community service, etc.). Criminalizing them does not work to reduce juvenile crime.

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

The judges certainly have a place in the special hell, but we have the current system of juvenile courts (extremely high trial judge discretion, limited appealability, fewer procedural safeguards) out of an attempt to be more forgiving to juveniles. Juvenile judges get a lot more sentencing leeway because we expect them to need to modify down; we limit appealability to protect children's privacy. That system does have the problem that it relies on judges not being corrupt.

I don't see much of a need to change the system. But anything short of life in prison (and maybe even that) is too lenient for these judges.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I agree with one of the people on the audio diaries: these judges should get as much time added to their sentences as they gave the kids who came through their kangaroo court.

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

When the story hit Volokh, there was a lengthy debate over whether one of the capital federal charges could stick (a statute that made acts along the lines of "forcing people into involuntary servitude under color of law" a capital crime). I liked that idea.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Would be nice, but the articles I read didn't seem to think it would ever get that far. Alas. A real lesson could be learned here if they did.

[chuckro.livejournal.com]

I think what really gets me is that fact that everyone just seemed to accept this as "Oh well, it's the way it is, there's nothing we can do about it." This isn't the goddamn weather, it's the actions of a few corrupt people. The fact that there's no mechanism to prevent this sort of abuse (of justice, rather than arresting them for abusing the system for monetary gain) says that something is horribly wrong here.

I wonder if the corrupt judge sentanced the wrong kid--and by that, I mean one whose parents had money and/or connections--and that's what set off the actual investigation.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

The fact that there's no mechanism to prevent this sort of abuse (of justice, rather than arresting them for abusing the system for monetary gain) says that something is horribly wrong here.

My thoughts exactly. There ought to be some kind of referendum that wasn't entirely left up to voters or what not as to whether people like this keep their jobs. But there didn't seem to be.

I don't know whether it would have been better if they'd have been caught by someone with money's lawyer or the way they were--budgetary concerns, it seems. Neither seems all that laudatory given that you would have hoped someone who saw how hopeless this system was would have raised a fuss long before the outright corruption got these men in trouble.

[chuckro.livejournal.com]

See, I can totally understand that the vast majority of people screwed by this had no recourse--the majority of juvenile offenders come from poor families, after all, and it's pretty much a given in our society that the poor are fucked. I think it's particularly telling when the relatively rich/well-connected have to shrug their shoulders and say, "Oh well, they win, bend over and take it."

[moonlightalice.livejournal.com]

And this is what we get for letting private, unregulated detention centers decide what happens to kids.