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15-Year-Old Set On Fire By Classmates
Just one of the heartbreaking details in this story is that it began on the boy’s 15th birthday. Terrified of going to school, his mother called and set an appointment with the safety officer. He never made it. Her tears lay bare the horror of it.
I believe we all should share in that horror. We carry some blame. This kind of violence, like the recent Chicago beating death of a 16-year-old caught on cellphone video, is a side-effect of our punishing culture.
Ours is the highest incarceration rate on earth. We’ve abandoned all pretense to rehabilitation. And while we’re quick to claim we put our children first, we are every bit as quick to send our kids to trial as adults.
The graphic below has been circulating around the internet (click to enlarge). While I cannot vouch for its accuracy, I can say that I’ve seen enough like it over the years to affirm that it rings true to me. When Obama said he valued empathy in a judge I thought, I do, too. But more, even, than that, I want an empathetic culture.
27 Responses to “15-Year-Old Set On Fire By Classmates”
No other civilized country is even remotely close to our rate of incarceration. Why here??
J Spencer i was listening to an American Zen Buddhist teacher today and he suggested that America has become a Nation of hungry ghosts. . .this incident and your question leaves me contemplating that statement. . . .
i don't know. . . but would love to hear what you or others have to say about your question. . .
Joe, I am concerned about both facts: high incarceration rate and the attack on the boy. However, I don't see the connection between the two. Can you explain further? I don't see yet how incarcerating people leads to throwing flames on others.
Is it that by not treating convicted felons decently the teens have failed to learn to treat others decently?
This kind of violence… is a side-effect of our punishing culture.
How do you figure?
“What makes us so different???“
This is a perpetually difficult question, but speaking as someone who has lived in a couple of other countries (including the Fillipeans and Kenya) I can offer a couple of observations.
First, there is no question – in my opinion – that we overincarcerate, at least in certain areas like marijuana convictions, three strikes laws for some relatively minor offenses, and a couple of other categories. Some reasonable reform in drug laws and a return to flexibility for judges in common sense matters cut go a long ways to cut it down.
With that said, though, there is another side to this coin. It's very easy for many of you to look at the figures cited above and say, “Oh, America incarcerates at a vastly higher rate than most any other country. We must be terrible!” But in a lot of these other countries, the lower rate of incarceration reflects the fact that they simply don't go after criminals with the same level of aggressive enforcement and they have much higher crime rates. It's a *lot* more dangerous to walk the streets in some of these cities I've visited in other nations, and you're not much safer in your home. If you go to Malaysia or several countries in South America (including our neighbor Mexico, by the way) you will find a lower incarceration rate than you do in America. You will also find places where kidnapping seems to be the national sport, rapes, assaults and robberies are the order of the day and people have to barricade themselves in their homes.
What's being highlighted in this post is a problem to be addressed, no doubt, but flatly declaring us to be some sort of incarceration crazy, bad country is not realistic. It's a very complicated issue. For example, we can't just solve the incarceration issue by legalizing all drugs. While drug *use* itself may be a victimless crime aside from the user, drug use (particularly crack cocaine and meth) spawns a host of other violent crimes upon innocent victims when desperate addicts badly need cash for their addiction. These things are pretty hard to deny.
As I said, it's complicated. And it's not a pretty picture. But looking at the raw numbers is not a valid basis of condemning our social and legal structure.
If Cocaine was legal, a kilo would not cost much more than it does in Colombia…;
Perhaps we have too many laws?
Perhaps our punishments are too light to be a deterrant.
Perhaps our jails are too plush with climate control and entertainment.
Perhaps we spend too much time playing up criminals as victims.
I don't know. Lots of possibilities.
I'm quite sure that punishments in other countries are more severe, the jails are very unpleasant, and their criminals are not coddled. That may not be the case in the so-called “enlightened” countries of the 1st World, but it is true in others. I think we could agree that our criminal justice and incarceration system in this nation needs serious help.
These are all very good points, Jazz, but the graph suggests that decent enforcement isn't the whole issue. Namely, why does the graph go flying upwards for the U.S. starting in 1980? If it's just enforcement, that would require the U.S. to be 4 times better at preventing crime now than we were in 1978.
My relating the two was instinctive; I'll try to think it through and spell it out a bit more clearly here. If I was to rewrite the sentence that you quoted, Dr. J, I would add brutal and unforgiving to say “this kind of violence is a side-effect of our brutal, punishing, and unforgiving criminal justice system.”
Our culture is implicated in that it sanctions that system. I'm struck by the police-state feel of much of what we take for granted — surveillance cameras, tasers, debating the definition of torture, even those new menacing police cruisers so popular these days. They look like something out of Blade Runner's dark dystopian future. Our actions as expressed in our incarceration rate model an attitude that has to be soaked in by our children. How can we think this has no impact on our kids?
It is not just the high rate of incarceration or the increasing mandatory sentences we pile on, it is the fact that we apparently no longer believe that rehabilitation is possible or even a goal worth striving for. I take Jazz's point and agree completely with him even as I say that we have moved clearly and completely to a retributive justice model and as far away as possible from anything anywhere near a restorative justice model. Again, modeling a callous, judgmental standard for our young. Do you doubt that the kids who killed in Chicago or burned the boy in Broward County thought they were acting out of some kind of deluded justice?
I do know well how brutal and dangerous and bad some kids can be. I sit on the advisory board of a YDC; I have worked with and interacted with incarcerated and deadly dangerous criminal kids. But I've also sat with parents who had no idea what they were doing when they thought they'd teach their out-of-control kid a lesson by involving the police, only to learn that once in the system there was no way out. I've sat with the burned out public defenders that represent them, too.
I don't imagine an easy answer. I do believe, though, that the retributive incarceration regime we have been using adds to the problem rather than solving it.
Well, Joe, I don't think it was your fault. Or mine. Or society's. To look for causes in police cruisers or the incarceration rate implies we've veered from some path on which horrifying things like this don't happen.
I find it helpful to keep historical perspective in mind. Violence has always been part of life, and society's struggle against it is a huge success story:
I think it's natural to read a story like the one you posted and ask “what are we doing wrong?” but we shouldn't lose sight that we're doing many, many things right. We just need to keep at it.
BTW I do agree our justice system could use an overhaul, but it seems like a separate topic.
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Some really interesting comments there. I agree with you Jazz that we over incarcerate when it comes to non-violent offenses, and it's hard to believe (for example) that we still (after all this time) throw people in the hoosegow for pot.
Also it appears that both you and JD seemed to be making your comparisons with countries not listed on that graphic of 25 or so countries, and your reactions (comparisons) were correspondingly more extreme in nature. Sure, there are many more dangerous countries then the USA; fortunately we don't set our standards on such a low bar. I suspect it's pretty safe walking down the streets in Canada, New Zeeland, Spain, Iceland, Norway, Portugal, etc.
Thanks Dr J for the perspective and the interesting link. Good reminders to be sure. As a cat lover I found comparison of historical sensibilities using the cat burning anecdote particularly shocking. I would hope that even in that time such attitudes were far from universal.
Thanks sparrow for sharing the teachers comment, something to think about…
Agree with many of the points above. Sending people to jail for simple possession of pot seems silly. Fine them and let em go. Also the point about some countries not going after criminals aggressively is a factor.
But here are three more I see.
One is the sheer number of lawyers in this nation. Compared to other nations who use more arbitration to settle disputes we turn to the courts and that of course results in more people in jail.
The second is the large amount of diversity in our nation a source of strength and weakness depending. With more of a myriad of cultures and various religious and ethnic groups than are found in most other nations there is little surprise that conflicts would arise.
The third is freedom. People in this country enjoy a larger degree of freedom than in some states where the government or religious authorities curtail and repress behavior. We surely enjoy not being ruled by say sharia law, but make no mistake about it, sharia law does tend to keep order.
Europeans go after criminals like we do…yet they don't have the same amount of crime which translates to lower incarceration rates. Sure, 2nd and 3rd world countries don't, but lets not start lowering the bar. It is low enough already.
In response to the article and why we have these problems…greed. All of our problems revolve around greed. How can I take what I want and how fast? If I don't get what I want, I'll set you on fire. We see it in kids and we see it in adults.
Also, parents are not teaching children how to properly resolve conflict…nor are they teaching respect. We will continue to see acts like this…more of them and worse, if worse is possible.
The attack on the high school students explains why the U.S. is different. Look at Chicago versus Iceland, Norway, etc. None of those low crime countries have a high school that is 100% black and thus, black culture just does not exist in Iceland. Second, look at the student set on fire. The five attackers include one black, two hispanics, and two whites. I doubt if Iceland, Sweden, or Portugal have such mixed race gangs.
Shannonlee is right on the money! (no pun intended) Greed is the subversive god that has given rise to so many issues we suffer from in modern day America. When profits and material goods are seen as the primary goals to aspire toward, above all others… when this is the measuring stick by which we determine what is and isn't a success, what is and isn't worthy, then it's no wonder our country has turned into such a parody. It is a false god and has made us dumber, less sensible, less compassionate, and less likely to seek greater knowledge and meaning in life.
“I doubt if Iceland, Sweden, or Portugal have such mixed race gangs.”
Hi there SD: All have a racial mix of peoples: Portugal in particular, like other Iberian countries, because they dealt so heavily in the kidnapping and enslaving of Africans, also expelled their Jews as Old Española did, etc. Iceland has its own immigrants, and Sweden also, many Turkish people who come from several bloodlines themselves. There are a few places on earth where it appears there are still small tribal groups that may not have 'outsiders' nearby. Amazon, Matte groso, tiny bits of Polynesian islands, perhaps.
I'm completely befuddled by the connection drawn in this post between a heinously violent act and our excessive incarceration rate. How in the world does it stand to reason that a society that may be going too far in punishing victimless crimes like drug use would lead to children growing up without a conscience so that they would set another child on fire? It makes no sense to me whatsoever to connect those two things.
“I'm completely befuddled by the connection drawn in this post between a heinously violent act and our excessive incarceration rate.”
It's total nonsense. Anyone with a working brain will proceed immediately to identify the two real issues present here. The first and most evident (and obvious!) is the “code of silence” and associated “punish snitches” behavior present among so many (not only in this case, but, for example, widely reported with the recent beating death of an honor student in Chicago, about whom nobody, among the many shown in the film of the incident, or anyone they knew or who knew them, came forward to authorities or to anyone else to report anything). The second is the more general problem of violence, which has been a problem for decades, but which at times is seen as getting worse, as many youth are growing up not only undiciplined but with a decreasing amount or level of conscience, empathy, sympathy, any kind of concern for anything besides themselves and what they want (often impulsively, no long-term thought).
Also, Joe W. kudos for not neglecting this story, which is more important than the circus act with the balloon in Colorado the teevee world (including all the teevee viewers) were obscessed with yesterday, as well as the big effort by the trashiest elements of society and others who were not much better, to attack and hope to defeat the prospect of Rush Limbaugh becoming an NFL club owner.
The additional points you raised in particular illustrate why I think the post was so odd. This case (as well as the Chicago beating as you point out) had to do with a culture that uses bullying to PREVENT incarceration of sociopathic youths. At best I can struggle to find some very tenuous logical connection that perhaps was intended, that the mindset of these kids includes general distrust of law enforcement because of its overreach or something along those lines…still doesn't even begin to explain why real crimes of assault or property theft shouldn't be vigorously prosecuted. At first I thought maybe I'd missed some angle to this latest story, that perhaps Joe W. was trying to point out that these particular kids had become hardened by previous experiences in prison (since he seemed to focus on our current lack of focus on or faith in rehabilitation) but I don't see anyone saying that that's the case here.
“This case (as well as the Chicago beating as you point out) had to do with a culture that uses bullying to PREVENT incarceration of sociopathic youths.”
(and the bullying itself is additional misconduct)
Notice what Joe W. had said earlier, with a pale echo by J. Spencer:
“a side-effect of our punishing culture”
This not only is false. If anything, it is a clear inversion of the truth, given the lack of discipline and failure of people to behave responsibly and accept (or provide information to lead to) the consequence of one's actions!
“the mindset of these kids includes general distrust of law enforcement because of its overreach or something along those lines”
That may account for some kids' reluctance to involve the authorities in the case of Chicago. We have no proof that this is so in Florida, and in any case the point is moot, for it is irrelevent; as with Chicago, the central issue here is suppression of and misconduct toward the reporting of crime to police, the “no snitches” or “snitches die,” etc., prison-mimicking phenenomon that even has acquired a name as well as become a specific subcultural and underclass-social pathology itself.
*** THIS *** is the real issue (compounded by discipline-and-punishment-lacking parenting, etc., which includes but isn't due solely to the abscence of fathers or positive role models, which include discipline and structure, i.e., direction, in children's lives)
http://www.zazzle.com/snitch+gifts
http://shop.cafepress.com/snitching?utm_medium=…
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-03-28-…
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/…
“our current lack of focus on or faith in rehabilitation”
Nobody is saying there is no need for prison or corrections reform. I just said this is a good thing, on another thread.
But this event has nothing to do with a “punitive” culture or society (or “oppressive” [sic] society), but with the opposite, a lack of control, discipline, in fact, a failure (even if children don't like it) to say “no.”
(That's a problem not limited to violent teens — it even extends to economics and to government policy.)
I posted this comment yesterday afternoon. For some reason it, and a reply from Dr J, are no longer in the queue. DLS & CStanley, you will be unpersuaded (as was Dr J in his fine retort), but I am as confused by your NOT seeing a link as you are by me seeing a link. Here's yesterday's comment:
My relating the two was instinctive; I'll try to think it through and spell it out a bit more clearly here. If I was to rewrite the sentence that you quoted, Dr. J, I would add brutal and unforgiving to say “this kind of violence is a side-effect of our brutal, punishing, and unforgiving criminal justice system.”
Our culture is implicated in that it sanctions that system. I'm struck by the police-state feel of much of what we take for granted — surveillance cameras, tasers, debating the definition of torture, even those new menacing police cruisers so popular these days. They look like something out of Blade Runner's dark dystopian future. Our actions as expressed in our incarceration rate model an attitude that has to be soaked in by our children. How can we think this has no impact on our kids?
It is not just the high rate of incarceration or the increasing mandatory sentences we pile on, it is the fact that we apparently no longer believe that rehabilitation is possible or even a goal worth striving for. I take Jazz's point and agree completely with him even as I say that we have moved clearly and completely to a retributive justice model and as far away as possible from anything anywhere near a restorative justice model. Again, modeling a callous, judgmental standard for our young. Do you doubt that the kids who killed in Chicago or burned the boy in Broward County thought they were acting out of some kind of deluded justice?
I do know well how brutal and dangerous and bad some kids can be. I sit on the advisory board of a YDC; I have worked with and interacted with incarcerated and deadly dangerous criminal kids. But I've also sat with parents who had no idea what they were doing when they thought they'd teach their out-of-control kid a lesson by involving the police, only to learn that once in the system there was no way out. I've sat with the burned out public defenders that represent them, too.
I don't imagine an easy answer. I do believe, though, that the retributive incarceration regime we have been using adds to the problem rather than solving it.
“Do you doubt that the kids who killed in Chicago or burned the boy in Broward County thought they were acting out of some kind of deluded justice?”
Do you think those kids have any idea of what goes on in our justice system or understand the realities of our penal system and jails? Of course not. Our children are taught greed and violence. If they don't see it at home, all they need do is turn on the tv or play their ipod. That being said, children could handle these influences if they had proper parenting….and that is where we should lay the blame….PARENTS. I wouldn't mind knowing if those kids had attentive fathers at home. I bet they didn't.
“Do you think those kids have any idea of what goes on in our justice system or understand the realities of our penal system and jails? Of course not.”
OMG!!! I can't believe you think they don't! The police and criminal justice system absolutely directly impacts the lives of kids each and every day. They are totally aware of it. The pervasiveness of our police and the intrusion of criminal justice into our schools and the daily lives of kids is exponentially greater than it was when I was young. Talk to the people in your school system. The teachers, administrators and students. I guess it's possible that where you live its different, but everywhere I've been and where I live today that is absolutely true.