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Comment by j_walter | Hacker News Reader

Another oversimplification in the title of an article, but at least this one removed the term "black teenager" like the article I had seen on Yahoo. Author seems to have most information from the mother of the girl and less information from the side of the court/case worker, so I take most with a certain amount of skepticism. Does seem to be overkill especially in the time of COVID, but at what point do you just let youth engage in certain behavior without consequences? The girl seems troubled for sure and sees a therapist regularly.

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> at what point do you just let youth engage in certain behavior without consequences?

Uh, what? That's what you have to say about incarcerating a teenager with ADHD amidst an unprecedented global pandemic???

Edit: I got so worked up, I for got to add the punch line: ...for not doing their homework?!?!

You quoted half a sentence out of context and made the same point as the other half of the sentence which you removed.

If I agreed with your assessment, I wouldn't have taken the time to write my comment in the first place.

You should really read the article. Even though it is terribly biased, it is still clear that the teenager in question was put on probation for having been found guilty of having committed some crime, and as part of the requirements to be placed on probation the teenager was expected to attend school and meet academic requirements.

Yet, the teenager failed to comply with those requirements, and therefore violated the terms of the probation.

Consequently, the teen was jailed for having committed crimes.

I did read the article (I’m not sure what you mean by “it is terribly biased”). I don’t think anyone here is questioning the logical chain of events that led to this girl’s incarceration (I.e. arrest -> probation -> violation -> incarceration). Presumably, anyone participating in this forum is able to read.

The reason this is newsworthy is that the punishment seems completely out of proportion with the “crime.” That remains true whether you consider the crime to be not doing schoolwork (her teacher said, by the way, that her performance was similar to most of her other students) or fighting with her mother (pulling her hair and biting her finger) and stealing a fellow student’s cell phone.

What’s worse, although she was supposedly incarcerated for not doing her schoolwork, her caseworker filed a probation violation after she went back to sleep after checking in for the day - not even bothering to check whether she was keeping up with her academic requirements. Her caseworker also admitted that they knew nothing about the her educational disability or the accommodations she received because of it. Further, in response to Covid—19, the court that decided to lock her up was supposed to be hearing only “essential emergency matters,” and the governor of her state had encouraged courts to send children home. Despite this, her case (based on a misunderstanding) was apparently deemed an “essential emergency matter” and her presence in the outside world considered risky enough to defy the governor’s recommendation.

To me, this seems like an incredibly callous miscarriage of justice facilitated by ignorance, incompetence, and negligence at multiple levels. The fact that some authority has the power to exercise their authority in a certain way has no bearing on whether that exercise of power is morally justified, else we’d consider the actions of history’s most oppressive regimes just.

but at what point do you just let youth engage in certain behavior without consequences?

Much more often when they are not minorities.

https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/racial-dispar...

Juvenile placement ought to be reserved for those who pose the greatest risk to public safety, but national data show confinement is still used for less serious offenses. In 2003, 76 percent of all committed juveniles had been adjudicated on a nonviolent offense; by 2013, that proportion had barely changed and is now 74 percent14)

Except that the headline still doesn't mention that this was a teenager on probation--ie. already convicted of a crime and the probation conditions are part of the sentence and the reason why she wasn't incarcerated in the first place.

Do I think the judge was unfair in revoking her probation? Probably.

Sadly, that's fairly normal for probation conditions.

Nobody in the criminal incarceration system wants to be the one who showed leniency to someone who later turned out to commit some headlining crime. So, nobody is incentivized to help you out even for the most minor of infractions. They'll just revoke your probation and wash their hands of it.

> the probation conditions are part of the sentence and the reason why she wasn't incarcerated in the first place.

In this case, I think that she wasn't incarcerated in the first place because her crimes weren't severe enough to warrant incarceration. A 15-yr-old girl stealing (then returning) a cell phone or pulling her mom's hair and biting her finger isn't going to jail in the 21st century.

> They'll just revoke your probation and wash their hands of it.

In many states, violating probation can carry its own penalties in addition to those from the offense that led to probation. Therefore, probation being revoked doesn't have to mean restoring a prior term of incarceration (which may not exist), and punishment for probation violations can exceed that of the offense which led to probation in the first place.

> Nobody in the criminal incarceration system wants to be the one who showed leniency to someone who later turned out to commit some headlining crime. So, nobody is incentivized to help you out even for the most minor of infractions.

I think that understanding the incentives in play here is essential to understanding how the system works, and I also think those incentives go beyond not wanting to look soft on crime. In particular, both prosecutors and law enforcement officers can make themselves look better on paper by putting more people behind bars, regardless of the actual impact of their actions (or even their action's legality, in some cases). I'm reminded of a case in which a Florida police chief repeatedly framed innocent people in order to boost his department's clearance rate. [1] I don't see how we can make meaningful changes to the system without addressing that type of perverse incentive.

1 - https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/...

Going to prison for not doing your hw? And what does going to see a therapist have to do with anything? People with all kinds of problems go to a therapist.

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