Teenage Drug Dealers

[Charles Anthony]

OMG! the mom left the teenagers BY THEMSELVES for two days.

Oh, my God! is right. One of them is dead. Were the parties really worth it? Were the kids really ready?

I notice you bold the "mother (OMG!!) was spending time with a (gasp!) M-A-N!" And from Ontario no less!! -

Shameless-single-mother-whore that she is should have been at home looking after her children!

I notice that I quoted directly but you have read it by including YOUR own words.

Funny how people read what they want to read, is it not?

I used the words "possibly the culmination" and I made a point of identify "both sides, the perpetrator and the victim" in my statements.

My parents (my TWO parents) left us teenagers at home while they went on a weeklong holdiay! We could have died! How irresponsible of my parents.

That would depend on EVERYTHING ELSE that preceded their holiday. I.E. how they raised you.

I will suspect that possibly they raised you to become responsible adults-in-training. Would YOU GIVE YOUR PARENTS any credit for that?

Once a kid reaches a certain age you gotta give them things like "weekends by themselves". They are, after all, in training to become adults.

That would depend on how a kid was raised.

Yes, I am being repetitive so that you have more options to misinterpret my words.

This is tragic that one teen died, but you can't blame the parents for this one...

If you look to the "state" to dish out justice, somebody has to be responsible with respect to the parties involved in the actual event. We are not slaves in a communist totalitarian regime, therefore who else, but your parents, have first responsibility after the two kids??? Remember, they were all minors.

I would now use the words "possibly the kids were not ready" to be left alone or possibly the parents should have been more judicious with their decision to leave them alone.

I would also use the words that "likely" there are people who do not want to be very responsible with the raising of their kids.

Just as a trolling aside, what if you found out that I create little robots every 9 months and let them loose in my community? What if you found out that they were destroying other people's property and doing harm?

What would you do?

[Michael Hardner]

Charles:

Just as a trolling aside, maybe the people who promote subsidizing daycare for 0-2 year-olds have a solution??

I think that's one of the reasons that people do support daycare for infants - that there are parents out there like this. That being said, there are other people culpable for what happened here.

[Melanie_]

Just as a trolling aside, maybe the people who promote subsidizing daycare for 0-2 year-olds have a solution??

Give me a break. Parents are not absolved of their responsibilities as parents just because there is subsidized daycare available.

[GostHacked]

Bullshit. Legalisation has never stopped youth drug problems.

And making it illegal has stopped the drug problem?

[August1991]

If you look to the "state" to dish out justice, somebody has to be responsible with respect to the parties involved in the actual event. We are not slaves in a communist totalitarian regime, therefore who else, but your parents, have first responsibility after the two kids??? Remember, they were all minors.

I would now use the words "possibly the kids were not ready" to be left alone or possibly the parents should have been more judicious with their decision to leave them alone.

That may be true, or not true. But it's beside the point.

"If you're under 18, you're invincible, you're untouchable. What you're doing is you're giving [the boy] a second chance, you're giving him his vacation now," she told reporters.

The boy will also have to perform 150 hours of community service. The sentence was handed down Tuesday morning in a Valleyfield court.

CBC

This boy did something wrong, he took a large risk, that led to the death of a young girl. For this, the boy received no penalty.

The underlying message to young kids is that if you do it, and even if you're caught, you can get away with it. The incentive this case sets is atrocious.

[Michael Hardner]

If he was caught selling drugs, but nobody had died, should the penalty be the same as if somebody had died ?

[Charles Anthony]

This boy did something wrong, he took a large risk, that led to the death of a young girl. For this, the boy received no penalty.

The underlying message to young kids is that if you do it, and even if you're caught, you can get away with it. The incentive this case sets is atrocious.

I agree. It is a bad incentive and more kids are taking advantage of their legal invincibility to get away with crime.

The problem is ours (as adults) to fix it by both changing the laws and changing how we raise kids.

We can not legislate "raising kids" very well so it behooves us to change the laws for young offenders.

I do not understand why we do not have stiffer sentences. The cynic in me says that there are too many "rehabilitation" and "correctional" jobs at stake. There are too many people whose jobs depend on keeping bureaucracy complicated.

If he was caught selling drugs, but nobody had died, should the penalty be the same as if somebody had died ?

It all depends on intent. If all things were equal even if "somebody died" I insist that the penalties must be the same -- whatever they are.

[August1991]

If he was caught selling drugs, but nobody had died, should the penalty be the same as if somebody had died ?

Yes, absolutely. For the same reason that if a drunk driver kills someone, the driver will suffer a greater penalty than if the driver is merely arrested while locking the car door once safely at home.

If that's not clear, how about this: if someone aims a rifle at you, shoots and misses, should they suffer any penalty? After all, no harm was done.

Criminal law is not about justice; it's about setting incentives.

[BubberMiley]

Criminal law is not about justice; it's about setting incentives.

I've never agreed with fate determining sentences in criminal matters. I think an Ecstacy dealer who sells to kids is equally negligent, whether they live or die. Just as an attempted murderer is equally negligent. I don't see why a person who tries to kill someone should get a lesser sentence because they were incompetent.

[August1991]

I've never agreed with fate determining sentences in criminal matters. I think an Ecstacy dealer who sells to kids is equally negligent, whether they live or die. Just as an attempted murderer is equally negligent. I don't see why a person who tries to kill someone should get a lesser sentence because they were incompetent.

Fate is only part of the story. Competence gets closer to the issue at stake.

Fortunately Bubber, you don't write criminal law. In most jurisdictions, attempted murder leads to a lighter sentence than murder itself. Are all those jurisdictions wrong?

I'll let you puzzle that one out on your own. They say that the best way to learn is when you teach yourself.

Going back to the origins of this case, we don't how many times this kid sold ecastasy before he sold the fatal dose. The fatal dose, of course, we know about. [The more I think about this case, the more offensive I find the sentence. As an incentive, it's a travesty.]

[BubberMiley]

In most jurisdictions, attempted murder leads to a lighter sentence than murder itself. Are all those jurisdictions wrong?

That depends whether you think criminal justice should be based on punishment or retribution. I don't think a dumb drunk necessarily deserves a manslaughter charge if the kid with whom he has a wrestling match in the bar parking lot has a heart condition. I think punishment should be based more on sheer negligence and callous disregard for others rather than the bad hand you're dealt.

So a .1 blood-alcohol guy, who speeds 7 km above the speed limit and accidentally runs over a kid, should be given a lesser punishment than the .3 blood-alcohol guy who went 130 km in a school zone but didn't hurt anybody.

It should be consequences for actions, not consequences for consequences.

[mcqueen625]

Geoffrey

You wrote- " This is a good reason to have mandatory minimums in drug trafficking as well."

You know you probably would not see this story in print or stuck in some corner of the newspaper if the Liberals were in power as they support the drug culture.

But from my experience the problem lies with the parents in a lot of cases by basically being negligent concerning their own children's welfare and safety.

But I agree harsher sentences are necessary relating to drug trafficking.

I spent a number of years working as a youth worker with young offenders and those young people who are out there wearing the heavy gold chains around their necks and carrying the cell phones and pagers are doing their own thing, and the parents have absolutely no control over these individuals whatsoever. These young adults know exactly what they are doing and they also know that the system will not make them accountable if and when they get caught, because they are young offenders.

When I was growing up, myself and several of my friends were caught driving cars around a used car lot on a Sunday afternoon (the keys were left under the floor mats), anyway when the police detectives arrived we were lined up, our ID's were determined, and the two detectives scared us shitless by playing good-cop/bad-cop. One threatened to march us straight to juvenile detention at a training school, but the other kept saying we deserved a chance. Anyway they decided that we had been sufficiently scared so they told us we could leave, but to never come back there. Me being the smart-ass plastered a big sarcastic smirk on my face, and the bad-cop asked me if my father's name was George, and before I could answer him he drifted me with a boot in the ass, and then told me I should go home and tell George that Detective so and so gave me a boot in the ass. Needless to say, I did not ever tell my father, and I never returned to that used car lot. To this day I still remember that tough lesson, and although I have never laid a hand on my kids (now adults), whenever I caught them doing something they suffered the natural consequences of their actions, and they actually thanked me for that. As an example my oldest son used his BB gun to break the windshield out of our neighbour's car. This is the same neighbour who regularly tipped him every week when he collected for paper delivery. My son was made to go next door and admit what he had done and offer to pay for the damages. He was astounded that windshield replacementy cost was $379.00. It took himnearly 6 months to pay off this debt, and he has never forgotten it. He is about to have a son of his own and I'm sure the same values he was taught will be passed down.

Unfortunately today most kids are being brought up with an attitude of entitlement enabled by the parents who continually intervene so that the children do not have to live with the natural consequences of their actions. What is this teaching our young people? In my estimation it is teaching them that they can do as they please, when they please, and only if it pleases them to do it, and we wonder why many of our youth have no respect for themselves, let alone any respect for others of their possessions.

One yuoung offender I spoke to that had been convictred of B & E's had absolutely no remorse for what he had done. For some reason he thought that this was a victimless crime, because nobody got hurt. His comment was that if the people were too stupid to not have insurance that was their problem. when I expalined the concept of the deductable on those insurance policies and the fact that if he stole their $500.00 stereo and the deductable was $500.00 the onus was on those people to either not replace the stereo or replace it with their own money. This information did not seem to impact his attitude one bit, because he left the group home and continued doing B & E's. I tols one kid it was his choice to come to a group home. He denied that and asked how I figured that. I asked him if he committed the crimes he was convicted for, and when he answered yes, I told him that once he made that choice to break the law he made that choice.

Parents today seem to be too busy developing careers and doing their own things to be bothered with what their children are up to, and the system in place has no provisions to make these kids accountable for their own choices. Every time the Liberal government tinkered with the Young Offenders Act they made it more difficult to make kids responsible for their own choices, and progression to the present version is the worst of all.

[BubberMiley]

As an example my oldest son used his BB gun to break the windshield out of our neighbour's car.

If your son had shot another kid in the eye with his BB gun, you might have been criminally charged because of the gross negligence of giving your kids weapons to play with unsupervised. I think your negligence was the same, whether or not someone got hurt, and so the punishment should be the same.

Ultimately, the kid selling the ecstacy wasn't even as negligent as you were, because the likelihood of someone dying from taking that drug is relatively small. There is a much greater likelihood of someone getting hurt from giving a kid a gun and telling him to go play.

[Melanie_]

Parents today seem to be too busy developing careers and doing their own things to be bothered with what their children are up to,

I have to take exception to this statement, mcqueen. You're setting up a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario by blaming kids' criminal activity on parents who hold down a job. The alternative is welfare; do you think that kids whose parents are on welfare are better off, or better supervised, than kids whose parents work?

(And while I'm taking exception, Bubber, as a Winnipegger I have to say that signature is going to buy you a one way ticket to Flin Flon soon!)

[BubberMiley]

(And while I'm taking exception, Bubber, as a Winnipegger I have to say that signature is going to buy you a one way ticket to Flin Flon soon!)

Oh, it's from a love(/hate) song to Peg City by the Weakerthans. Nobody loves Wpg more than the Weakerthans.

And the Guess Who really do kind of suck.