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Comment by coolso | Hacker News Reader

> To shift it the other way, I grew up pretty privileged and never felt the need to steal things and steal them. However, I can easily determine that if I was homeless and poor I absolutely would have. There's no question.

OK, and I grew up the complete opposite and neither did I.

Do you actually believe that the under”privileged” simply can’t help stealing? That the poor are innately thieves? I find this astounding.

The problem is parenting and lack of family values, plain and simple.

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No, I don't believe that at all. Your straw-man argument is disrespectful and not a productive addition to the conversation. You've fabricated a narrative I didn't communicate nor suggest.

Would you mind, then, further explaining what you meant when you said there was “no question” you’d resort to stealing if you were poor, and how you can “easily determine” this? To me that implies one of two things: either you believe the only thing stopping you from stealing is not being poor - or you believe the same, but for everyone else who is poor as you observe them from afar in your state of comfortable privilege, to use your own term. (It also strangely implies that stealing is the only option for the poor in this country.)

Either way your statement as it stands is highly disrespectful of the millions who are fully capable of being dirt poor without resorting to theft and other crimes.

> The problem is parenting and lack of family values, plain and simple.

So we agree that Andre is blameless and should be given assistance, not punishment. Or is your position more like "obviously this guy's parents didn't love him, why should I?"

Perhaps I missed something in the article, but I believe Andre is already being assisted, which is simply resulting in his criminal behavior being subsidized by you and I. (Because we didn’t give him a basketball court too or something.)

The justice system simply needs to play the role his parents never did, disciplining him for his actions and then assisting him in making the right choices when his sentence is complete.

But blameless, no, he is not a child, much as you might like the system to treat him as one.

Do you mean real "family values" or is that the code-word version?

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