Bugs
Joined: 16 Dec 2009
Posts: 1945
  
votes: 5
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 Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2012 11:41 am Post subject: |
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The other side of it is that child-welfare officials sometimes use the system to prosecute people as kind of 'vendettas'. After all, this is a 16 year old girl who 'runs away' rather than to go 'surrender' to some level of incarceration. There's a history here, it is Kelona, where there are drug problems and general high crime. She may be an aboriginal girl.
From the article ...
| Quote: | | Between Dec. 19, 2011, and May 31, 2012, the girl was in and out of custody six times for breaching curfew at Knowles Centre, a treatment centre for troubled youth. Four times she was sentenced to time served, two times to community service work. The longest time she spent in custody awaiting sentencing was nine days. |
This column only tells half of the story. This girl might have been a ward of child welfare bureaucracies for a few years. She might have very good reason to feel 'disturbed'.
Judges know this. For the girl, it must be a Joseph K situation because she hasn't really committed any crimes, she has only disrespected the bureaucracy. Where a parent might be loving and firm, and help a child adapt to the realities of her life, a bureaucracy is impersonal and focused on rules.
I'd keep an open mind on this one. |
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