Ian Manuel, survivor of excessive child punishment, tells his story
eji.org
eji.org
We are basically different people every 5-10 years and at that age even every 2 or 3.
A 13 year old committing this kind of crime is more an indictment of the country/county/city failing that it is a reflection of the person. Should there be a punishment? Certainly. Should there be rehabilitation and education as well (more so even)? Yes.
Put aside the moral and ethical cost here, just the shear financial cost or this punishment is unbelievable. The judge mustn’t have viewed this boy as a person, the only way you can doll out these kinds of punishment is to see the person as some kind of animal. I dread to think how many other cases they issued similar horrendous sentences on.
Yes, it is very odd. It seems like a lot of people have gone to a lot of effort to keep Ian Manuel in prison- but why? What is the motivation here? Profit? Revenge? Public safety? Who benefits when kids are incarcerated for decades?
Society does not have an answer to the more extrem cases of deviants, sadly.
But that consideration aside, putting a 13 year old into solitary confinement for years is a crime against humanity. The barbarian nation that does this should get a good old-fashioned regime change.
This society does have an answer and it's the same lazy answer it gives to every problem that it can't empathize with, lock it up and keep it out of sight for as long as possible. It has never cared to seek another answer.
Frankly, things only change when enough people do research and be obnoxious and cantankerous about the answer. I doubt there is much funding for that research as it takes no effort to see how little this society cares about those that need the most compassion.
To be clear, I'm not talking about non-violent crime or even most types of violent crimes - I'm referring to the most violent of offenders. There are 7 billion people in this world, I think society will carry on just fine if we remove the tiny fraction of people from society that commit the most heinous of violent crimes (i.e wanton murder).
So what's society get out of rehabilitating this person? Let's assume this person can add moderate value to society, such as being capable of working an average job decently well (thus bringing value to their employer, the customers they help, and greater society through taxes). Now weigh that value added against the fact that their victim will never re-enter society again. Is that value added worth it, and is it fair to their victim?
I am open to having my opinion changed on this topic so if you have a good argument for why we should be concerned with the most violent offenders, please do share and I will weigh what you say carefully. However, please make sure you are addressing the case of deliberate, unprovoked murder since my response is only addressing this form of crime.
Two college professors are walking along and chatting when they come across a man who has just been brutally beaten. He is bloody and groaning with pain. The professors look with horror upon the sight. Finally, one turns to his friend and exclaims, "We need to help the man who did this!"
There will be one or two long serving white child prisoners, but it will be far rarer. The UK had exactly one case of children being given effectively life imprisonment, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_James_Bulger , and that was for a horrific murder by 10-year-olds on their own initiative.
UK life imprisonment is not the same as American life imprisonment, as in the latter you will in most cases be dying in prison.
I.e. racism might not be as widespread as commonly believed, and, furthermore, perpetuating this belief will probably only make unscrupulous people behave more in line with what they think racists would want. It is, in theory, a self-perpetuating cycle.
Don't discount the role of ego and face saving. People wielding a lot of power hate being challenged publicly.
> They were sentenced to detention at Her Majesty's pleasure until a Parole Board decision in June 2001 recommended their release on a lifelong licence aged 18.[5] In 2010, Venables was sent to prison for breaching the terms of his licence, and was released on parole again in 2013.
Moving away from anecdote, black males receive on average 19% longer sentences for similar crimes compared to white males [2]. 0% would be better, but 19% does not strike me as over-the-top racist as we are told the system is. For comparison:
Black female offenders and Other Race female offenders also received shorter sentences than White male offenders during the Post-Report period, at 29.7 percent and 35.4 percent shorter respectively - page 9 of the report.
That's considerably more than the black-white male disparity. But is this piece of data going to convince you the justice system's anti-male bias is a bigger problem than its anti-black bias? Is it going to affect you at all? The next time someone brings up how viciously racist the system is, will you correct them and say it's only 19% racist, compared to ~30% misandrist?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28020253
[2] https://www.ussc.gov/research/research-reports/demographic-d...
The killers have repeatedly had their identity revealed and, one of them, after serving time for child pornography charges the police were seeking to move abroad; I'm not sure how all that works with the sex offenders registry, seems like the police are keeping hidden a known sex offender in order to protect them from potential consequences of a prior murder.
What makes you say that? I find that in cases like this, people are generally incentivized to do the least possible, out of a combination of laziness and fear of liability. I haven't read the book, but from the article, I don't think anyone had an agenda to keep him locked up. It's just that nobody in the system cared to get him out.
And this for a 13-year-old, who was sentenced to life without parole. WTF.
Torture is not punishment. Torture is torture.
Also: why not teach them to be better, do you think 13 year olds are incapable of learning?
The US has a violent minority population that persists in offending.
Germany is importing a similarly violent cohort. I'm sure your teens will catch-up.
Edit: she's "Elizabeth Crafton" in this article https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alexcampbell/these-moth...
I do think the criminal justice system in the US is deeply flawed and needs lots and lots of reform... But I'm not really seeing the problem with a conviction for a woman who would expose her children to this. Is there additional context you can add?
"The child was literally beaten from head to toe... She was bruised on the top of her head to the bottom of her feet.
The girl, who suffered some brain damage, had cigarette burns, a skull fracture and a broken wrist...
https://www.oklahoman.com/article/3521061/man-kills-self-aft...
https://www.enidnews.com/oklahoma/how-laws-meant-to-protect-...
Regardless, I can't see how in a just system she would get nearly twice the sentence of the man who actually did it, especially when even the prosecutor admits she didn't abuse the children and wasn't in the house when it occurred.
Look, I get it. We want to believe that if someone gets 20 years, it must be reasonable in some way. I'm probably biased, but I just can't see it, here.
I don't think I'm looking at it from the "Someone who gets 20 years must deserve it" perspective. In fact, I was predisposed to support her. You referenced her as being mistreated by the Justice System, which I already doubt, and linked to an article describing her the same way and without any detail. It's only when I read the horrific abuse that she allowed a person she knew to be a violent abuser to inflict on her fifteen month old daughter that I changed my mind. I wasn't on the jury and I don't know nearly all the details, but there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with what I do know - a mother who lets her daughter be brutally tortured should be in prison.
As an aside, I also noticed that you write as if a single instance of abuse occurred. The news articles describe it as a pattern of abuse over time. Eventually Elizabeth decided to take the baby to the hospital. It's not like she was out one day, came home and saw her injured child, took her to the hospital, and was blamed for it. Instead, she ignored bruises and wounds on her baby, after leaving that baby in the company of a man who regularly beat her. Eventually she did take the child to the hospital, which is good, but it doesn't exonerate her.
> The news articles describe it as a pattern of abuse over time.
Neither article does this. Or, if I'm wrong, I'm sure you can post a quote directly from from the article that avers this. Or maybe it's from another article? Could you post this please?
> It's only when I read the horrific abuse that she allowed...
The only quote about that is from the prosecutor, talking to the press:
"The child was literally beaten from head to toe," said Ben Loring, assistant district attorney. "She was bruised on the top of her head to the bottom of her feet. The girl, who suffered some brain damage, had cigarette burns, a skull fracture and a broken wrist."
Truly awful. But nothing there about a repeated pattern of allowing torture. Nothing there about Elizabeth knowing about it.
Even that same guy, Loring, mentioned in both articles, thinks Elizabeth has done her time.
----
She alleges that the violence against her went from choking to punching to death threats, and says it continued after they were both arrested on child abuse charges.
Still, she never imagined he would lay a hand on a child. He wanted her kids to call him “dad.” During their relationship, which lasted just under a year, though, she sometimes noticed her daughter had some bruises. One time, her daughter fell off the bed.
When she asked Good about it, “He always had a story for what happened like … He was holding her and you know, she slipped and fell or that she slipped and fell or the dog knocked her down. You know, he always had something,” she said. “And honestly, I believed it because nothing in my mind at that time ever fathomed that anybody would hurt a child.”
---
That pretty clearly establishes that abuse was a pattern, he was beating and choking her. That abuse of her daughter was a pattern, the daughter had multiple bruises that required multiple explanations. That also establishes that the pattern of abuse continued over time.
If the story was just that she went out, came home, discovered her beaten daughter and took her to the police - then I, and I hope everyone else, would agree that she didn't deserve to go to prison. That doesn't really seem to be what happened though. At least not as far as I can tell from reading news articles.
I'm probably being more charitable to her than a stranger would, but it sounds like a woman in denial to me, not a person who intentionally allows her boyfriend to beat her daughter. To my mind, a case could be made for a harsh sentence if a mother deliberately allows her boyfriend to torture her children, but in the case of an abused woman in denial, I would hope a justice system would not be so harsh. Remove the children to safety, probation, mandatory therapy, sure; but a 20 year sentence in that case helps no one: not her, not her children, not society.
Your interpretation is the least charitable, in my opinion, but I won't try to talk you out of it. Given what you gathered from the article, I still don't understand supporting a 20 year sentence, but I definitely understand being horrified by the descriptions of the abuse. When I first heard about this, I also thought surely there must be something wrong with Elizabeth and the situation to have earned such a sentence, but I no longer believe this.
Anyway, thanks for replying in good faith and being honest about your interpretation! Sincerely appreciated.
Civilized society is just an illusion. Imagine. How many people with power and authority must have known about Ian Manuel, and did nothing about it. What is civlilized about that?
And finally the action had to come from a non-government body, even after the POTUS banned the thing?
It's a fragile, flickering flame, for sure. Many don't understand how fragile. I don't think it's an illusion, personally, but I can see that in more situations than not it's non-existent.
Here's to hoping you left the US altogether.
(Of course the answer is, I’m sure, is selective enforcement. So they can lock up black kids and let white kids off the hook.)
https://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/violence-in-rio...
Stories like this aren't too uncommon. The ability to charge kids as adults can potentially prevent people from trying to side step the rules.
Edit: if you give a child the keys to your car and they hit someone with it, who is at fault?
>Edit: if you give a child the keys to your car and they hit someone with it, who is at fault?
Obviously both - you and the child.
What on earth? Solitary confinement starting as a child, potentially for life? What a weird way for this to hash out.
Strictly speaking, not being around others may be good, but solitary is an overadjustment.
If you shoot someone in the head you should be tried for murder. It's what you intended to commit.
Did you pull the trigger by accident? You assumed the risk the moment you decided to cock the gun.
Did you cock the gun by accident? You assumed the risk the moment you decided to engage.
All that said, I don't believe in punitive justice. For me, justice should be reparative.
It's great if he has recovered and been pardoned by the victim.
I also don't think isolating someone as much is good either.
However, I can understand how you might want to isolate someone who does such wicked action. It's a shame nothing else was done during incarceration, though.
Thankfully death penalty wasn't applied. We can't trust the state to decide who lives or dies.
Not only are there too many victims of wrongful convictions, but the cost of a single miscarriage of justice is unbearable.
- trying a minor as an adult is ridiculous - isolation is torture - the death penalty is unethical and ineffective
> With few contacts on the outside, Ian reached out to the shooting victim, Debbie Berkovits, to ask for her forgiveness, which she gave. A remarkable relationship emerged in which Ms. Berkovits became a supporter for a reduced sentence for Ian. But courts were nonresponsive.
One of the reasons for incarcerations is vengeance, and another one is protecting the community from further crime.
If the victim forgives the perpetrator, you could argue no vengeance is necessary anymore; however, this person could still be a danger to future victims.
A life sentence for a 13yo is harsh of course, I am just trying to explain why the courts not letting him go after the victim forgave him is not as surprising as one might think at first.
That none of them would, or could, do anything to ease his suffering even in some small way is disappointing. I hope I could do better in a similar position of authority.
Cases like this are not uncommon. People slip through the cracks, get stuck fighting the legal system, and eventually with enough luck and media attention the government can go "oops" and reverse a decision that often has ruined people's lives. There's no accountability and this keeps happening.
[1]: https://news.law.fordham.edu/jcfl/2018/12/09/the-american-pr...
That’s just simply untrue. The value of labor of prisoners is so low that it wouldn’t cover the cost of imprisoning them, even if all of the prisoners actually worked full time (and the actual figures are well short of that).
Now, to be sure, a lot of people make money on prisons, mostly government employees (as great majority prisons are government run), but also some private businesses too. However, the causation goes the opposite way to what you seem to argue: majority of people in prisons are there, because they committed a serious crime, usually violent, not because the prison industrial complex has somehow snatched them from the street for cheap labor. Even the private prisons make most of their money on contracting with government, not on products of prisoner labor (which, again to reiterate, is worth very little).
But that isn't how it is: the prisons charge companies or the government for labor and charge the taxpayers a day rate for the service of incarceration - additional prisoners mean additional profit.
Like most graft in the US, the issue is that private companies get to make a profit on public expenses. This is "more efficient" than having the government do it at cost (see also: medicine).
The practice in this case disincentivizes rehabilitation, means people lobby for things like 3 strikes, or trivial parole violations, mandatory minimums etc. The incentive structure creates systemic reinforcement. You go in to the system and it doesn't particularly want you to come out.
> Now, to be sure, a lot of people make money on prisons, (...) but also some private businesses too.
In fact, it would be beyond strange to expect a private company to provide a useful service to the people indefinitely at a loss; that’s not how business works.
> Like most graft in the US, the issue is that private companies get to make a profit on public expenses. This is "more efficient" than having the government do it at cost (see also: medicine).
The problem is that “at cost” is not some sort of objective, physical notion. Most things that government does are “at cost”, but this means little to the taxpayers who foot the bill, if they end up paying more for government services provided “at cost”, than for private services, the providers of which end up making good profits. The entire point of private prisons is that they are cheaper to taxpayers than the government ran ones. In all, I see no problem whatsoever with private companies get to make a profit on public expense, if taxpayers benefit compared to the alternative.
> The practice in this case disincentivizes rehabilitation, means people lobby for things like 3 strikes, or trivial parole violations, mandatory minimums etc. The incentive structure creates systemic reinforcement. You go in to the system and it doesn't particularly want you to come out.
3 strikes, mandatory minimums etc are not a product of private prison lobbyists sneakily instituting them, while the public is kept in the dark. The actual history of those policies is that they were instituted with wide public support, during a time of large increase in crime compared to previous periods, when many of the offenders were found to have offended many times before, and got away with slap on the wrist. For example, first state to introduce 3 strikes law was Washington state, not exactly known for private prisons, or population hell bent on punishment. It was introduced by public ballot measure, which passed 75% to 25%. The voter pamphlet argued that under current law, a violent robber, who has two earlier violent felony convictions, is recommended only 5 years in prison, not even considering early release for good behavior. Not exactly what you would call a trick pulled on the public by sinister private prison lobby,
I wasn't implying there's some big conspiracy where the State _wants_ more prisoners because it's profitable. According to this[1] the average cost of incarceration is around $35k/y, much higher than the $6-14k that can be generated from each inmate, according to the article I linked above. Still, the incarceration cost is covered by taxpayers, and there is a lot of private and side business that also benefits. The bail bond system alone reeks of corruption, where the wealthy can walk away while those unable to pay get to wait for trial in jail. And let's not forget the racial and ethnic discriminations, "war on drugs" and similar farces...
It's a complex topic and we can argue about the details, but there's not much worth defending about the current US prison system. Disclaimer: I'm speaking as an outsider with layman familiarity, but please include links to backup any counter arguments.
[1]: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/04/30/2018-09...
I'm confused, did he shoot her or not?
https://www.goalcast.com/2020/08/04/woman-frees-man-who-shot...
Which actions did Mr. Manuel do that resulted in his arrest?
“ 13-year-old Ian was directed by older juveniles to commit a robbery.
During the botched robbery attempt, a woman suffered a nonfatal gunshot wound. Ian turned himself in to the police and was charged as an adult with armed robbery and attempted murder.”
Are you well? Please take care pal, it seems you are having a tough time.
Strategic use of passive voice is a classic tool of narrative making. Instead of assuming people have agency in their actions, it is suggested that a gun he just happened to have in their hand just happened to discharge a projectile in the direction of the person who just happened to be robbed around the same time. It is all just something that happens to people.
That’s when 13-year-old Ian pulled the trigger and shot her right in the face. The outcome could have been fatal. “It blew out all the bottom teeth and the gums on the lower left side of my mouth,” she said.
Was he putting other people in danger? What actions was he doing that caused the police to get involved?
Great that he's happy now but would he have continued down a more dangerous path if left to his own devices?
What is the definition of "advanced nation"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solitary_confinement#United_Ki...
Oh look, the UK has 40 people in solitary confinement. I guess the UK doesn't qualify as an advanced nation then?
The reason I raised this issue is that solitary confinement in this circumstance, for a kid who clearly has shown some remorse and insight, and is a product of bad circumstances, doesn't seem very advanced.
To me, an advanced nation is one that minimises the suffering of all its people, maximises their potential for happiness, and is well regarded by the other nations it engages with.
A compassionate nation would take a kid like this and give him a second chance. An advanced nation would give him the coaching and the resources he'd need to succeed at it. How? It wouldn't happen in a vacuum. It wouldn't happen in solitary confinement. He'd need mentoring and coaching and some opportunities that only come through the social connections he didn't start with.
If being advanced was only a matter of being rich, people might say nah, that would cost too much.
But how much does it cost to leave things the way they are, with kids being locked up in solitary confinement, and ordinary citizens buying guns to protect themselves because they live in fear?
You can do the math. Well, I suppose society has done the math, and that's why it is like it is, and "advanced nations" have nuclear weapons, space programs, and sophisticated financial derivatives.
But what if the assumptions underlying the valuations of each of those things are broken? What if a more sophisticated social intelligence could rejig the value table in favour of a prison system that rehabilitates prisoners more than it rewards shareholders? Who would win from that?
Quite possibly everybody. The nation in 20 years might be more advanced than it is today. Can you imagine that?
True: it's _barbaric_, the complete opposite of advanced. However, this also highlights that a nation can be advanced in some areas, yet backward in others - and in fact I would argue this is necessarily the case for all countries, all the time, because the standard of being advanced in all areas all the time is an impossibly high bar.
Is the US an advanced nation? It's hard to argue against that: it has put people on the moon, invented the microchip, etc. And apart from technological advancement it has championed social ideas that are (or were) very different from much of the rest of the world, yet are arguably for the best: a government without a king, uncompromising free speech, etc.
But it's also a hard, harsh, uncaring country, inhabited by people that seem to have forgotten the word 'compromise', where a minor medical problem can cripple you for life (medically and financially), where a minor misdemeanor can mean life in prison. Its prison system is indeed a great example of that. I can only hope that it isn't 'advanced' in these areas; that the rest of the world will not eventually grow into the same state.
Ultimately, the two of us are having a completely different discussion. I'm simply pointing out that the author of the article is simply lying for dramatic effect when he says no other advanced nations use solitary confinement as a punishment; that he uses the word 'advanced' to hide behind in case someone looks on wikipedia for five seconds and finds out he is wrong. I don't really care about the word 'advanced', or what it means: he could have said "no other countries that have the color blue in their flag use solitary confinement as a punishment", as (to me) it would have had the exact same meaning.
You, OTOH, see an opportunity to advance the general state of affairs in the US. I agree that ending some of its more barbaric practices would be a good idea, but I'm not in a position to help, seeing as how I'm a citizen of another country, located on another continent. I don't have a congressman that I can write to, nor the ability to cast any vote in a relevant election. So I can only root for you, and hope you succeed in reforming the US prison system.