juvenile offenders

Rip Immunity Away from D.A.s and Law Enforcement

by on November 30, 2011 @ 12:09 pm · 2 comments

in Legal System, Police Statism

What happens to a justice system when it grants legal immunity to those in power for their malicious acts toward the innocent and vulnerable? A 6-year-old boy is charged with first-degree sexual assault for playing doctor with friends; the Class B felony can be punished by up to 60 years imprisonment.

PLAYING DOCTOR BECOMES A FELONY

Last fall, a six-year-old Wisconsin boy played doctor with another boy and girl, both of whom were 5. Depending on whose story is credited, some touching of the girl’s bare buttocks occurred and/or a finger was inserted into the girl’s anus. (The girl denied the penetration to police.)

On November 15, 2011, the parents of the boy filed a federal lawsuit against Wisconsin’s Grant County district attorney, a social worker and a now-retired Sheriff’s Office investigator. The reason? The boy, who is now merely known as “D”, was charged with first-degree sexual assault. He has been so vigorously pursued by Grant County officials that D’s attorney Christopher Cooper states, “I think his life has been ruined, and I think it’s been ruined by reckless conduct by the defendants without any regard for the little boy and his future.”

At 7 years old, D cannot currently be prosecuted or even named in court records. But the parents accuse county officials of using threats to force them to sign a Consent decree (a blanket permission to deal with their son). They claim officials harangued them and D to admit his guilt and to have him receive social and protective services. If a confession was not produced, then the parents were told that D could be listed as a sex offender when he turned 18. That would label him a second-class citizen, both legally and in life’s important opportunities such as career, education, and residency.

If accurate, the parents’ lawsuit reveals a tale of arrogant power, political favors, malice, and utter disregard for a child’s welfare. [Keep reading…]

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Life Sentence at 11 Years Old?

by on February 18, 2011 @ 6:00 am · 1 comment

in Legal System, Police Statism, Private Crime, Private Security & Law, Totalitarianism

Good’s Cord Jefferson asks: “Should an 11-Year Old Boy Go to Jail for Life?” Read the account. It is horrifying that a boy could do something so evil. My own daughter is 11. I could simply not imagine her doing anything like this. I am sure many of you feel the same. Indeed, the sense that this boy is completely alien to our own experience is one of the reasons it is tempting to support locking him up and throwing away the key. Despite this, however, such a move would do far more harm than good. This is not simply a matter of him being too young to punish. That is perhaps true, perhaps not. Rather, it has to do with the evils inherent with the state monopoly on justice and punishment, and the particular evils introduced when we combine that monopoly with a child offender.

The state, through taxation, separates the consumer of goods, such as roads and schools, from the buyer of those same goods. None of us are customers of a public school in the sense of being able to take our money elsewhere if we get bad service. This causes people to lobby legislators and other public officials and causes a lot of the aggravation that people express when they need the state to do something. But it also, through the criminal justice system, separates the recipients of justice — the victims and families of victims — from the criminals and tortfeasors. This separation has some very significant evil effects of its own.

[Keep reading…]

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