I haven’t been keeping up with this situation, but you can’t help but hear about it. Something has been bugging me for a while … the reasons the judge gave for sending a teenager to jail until she is 21 for pushing a school employee (who may or may not have pushed her first).

In an interview with The Paris News, Superville said he chose the sentence because witnesses testified that placing Shaquandra back in her mother’s care was not the best decision.

“If Shaquandra had been white, the outcome would have been the same,” Superville said. “My decision was based on facts and law, and I am confident this was the correct decision based on the facts I was presented.”

So, wait … let me get this straight. We thought we shouldn’t send her home, because we think her mother is a poor parent (or whatever the reasoning is — abuse, drugs, etc.). Therefore, we will send this teenager to prison for a few years. To protect her from her bad home situation, I guess … right? Don’t we have some other system for dealing with this sort of thing? A few come to mind, but Child Protective Services comes to mind first. Do they really think spending the last years of your technical childhood in a youth prison, the system to which it belongs currently being under investigation for horrible sexual abuses of the prisoners by staff, is going to somehow miraculously convert a troubled teen into an up-standing citizen at the age of 21?

I’d like to have some of whatever it is they are drinking, because it must be good.

Our prison system (and to some extent that covers the legal system as well) is totally messed up. People can be rehabilitated. Not all of them, of course, there are some real nut-jobs out there, but many, maybe even most first time offenders could likely be rehabilitated. The system has to try to do that, as does the society that system works within. We don’t. Oh, we make token gestures, but the mission of our system of incarceration hasn’t been about rehabilitation for quite a while now. It’s all about locking them away where we don’t have to think about them and they can’t hurt us, and making them PAY for what they did. It’s all about retribution and revenge.

Anyway, not going to rant about it. Just an observation. Too tired to rant about anything right now … a mental tired brought on by reading too much legalese and trying to make the pieces of my bedroom fit together in a functional and pleasing way. Amazing how tired brain-work can make you.

If I weren’t doing laundry, I’d go straight to bed right now. Unfortunately, I realized I really needed to do laundry, and there was way more than I thought there was. If I can just make it to the point of getting the last load in the dryer, I can then pass out in peace. Folding can occur at a later date … like in the morning … after my brain has rebooted and my arms don’t feel like lead. :yawn: