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Tuesday, October 04, 2005
I didn’t mean it
I had a friend back in the bad-old-days who was apprehended selling LSD. He was the younger brother of a good friend of mine. A good looking white, suburban kid of privilege, he was not your typical drug dealer. I remember he brought a hell of a three-point shot to our pick up games on Sunday afternoon, and held down a couple of jobs during the week outside of school. I liked him a lot.
Unfortunately, he had made a connection with a dealer (probably through a Dead Show) and sold a couple of “hits” to a 16 year old at the high school. The 16 year old’s parents found the drugs and called the police. The police threatened this kid with serious punishment if he didn’t cooperate. So he called my friend and asked if he could buy three “sheets” (about 300 “hits”) of acid. My friend, seeing the profit in this exchange, did the deal. When he came to deliver the drugs the police arrested him. He did seven years in prison. He didn’t mean it. His story was not unique. Almost everyone I grew up with was involved in drug use, many with LSD. Be shocked if you want, but I hear heroin is the big thing in the suburbs these days. Public school kids do it. Private school kids do more of it, since they have more money. It is just a matter of time and fate before another kid like my friend goes off to prison for selling drugs. A life ruined for a bad choice, because of bad policy The Monday, October 3, 2005 New York Times includes a long, excellent article on young people who serve life sentences in this country. It turns out we are quite alone in our eagerness to put our young people behind bars for life. In fact … Life without parole, the most severe form of life sentence, is theoretically available for juvenile criminals in about a dozen countries. But a report to be issued on Oct. 12 by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International found juveniles serving such sentences in only three others. Israel has seven, South Africa has four and Tanzania has one.As a teacher, and a recipient of a Masters of Educational Psychology I think I can speak with some authority about the decision-making skills of young people. They rarely have any. They often make decisions based on impulse and regret their decisions shortly after. They often don’t really mean to do what they do. Politicians are always looking for an angle, something to set themselves apart from the pack, as it were. It has long been considered political suicide in this country to be “soft on crime”. While this phrase is essentially meaningless, thousands of politicians have picked up the mantle of “tough on crime” and campaigned on the promise to reform the “lenient” penalties that some criminals receive. These politicians often win (fear is a strong motivator) and over the last 20 years this country has seen an increase in mandatory sentencing, the kind of thing my drug-dealing friend faced. But did these politicians really mean it? Do they really want every criminal sentenced the same way? Studies have proven that “tough on crime” doesn’t work. So why do we continue to ruin young people’s lives for mistakes they have made? Do we really mean it? Do we really want to throw people away because they have made mistakes? How far down in the pit would each of us be if we had every mistake, every sin judged before a court of law? How eager are we to be forgiven, and how eager are we to forgive?  
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15 Comments:
He didn't mean it? He didn't mean to sell 300 doses of LSD? You gotta be kidding.
If you can't do the time, don't do the crime.
It's not a 12 year getting mad and hitting someone and killing him by accident, this is a privileged college kid who sold 300 doses of LSD, and you say he didn't mean it?
You must have cut a lot of class in grad school on your way to the Masters of Excuse Making.
If that is truly your position, "he didn't mean it" you have no credibility, no sense at all.
So you would be in favor of mandatory sentencing - no discretion?
My position is that no, he didn't mean it. Not because he was caught, but because most kids who commit crimes don't consider the consequences of what they do.
And I'd be willing to be that you, Mr. Anonymous, have been cut a few breaks in your day. You might not even remember them anymore, but I'd bet you have.
It's scary to imagine what would have happened if those breaks hadn't come your way, isn't it?
I never sold 300 hits of acid to a high school kid.
Sure, a cop once wrote me a warning for speeding.
But no felonies. Drug dealing to high school kids felonies.
I rasied my kids to not commit felonies. I am a smart parent. I have smart kids. They are not felons.
An uncontrolled act of immature rage, give the unformed mind of the kid a break. Sell 300 hits of acid (where did he get 300 hits of acid, from another drug dealer, or not?) isn't lack of control, or lack of understanding, or anything else you want to mollycoddle about. It was calculated, by an experienced drug dealer.
Now, I don't really care if he sold the acid. What I do care about is the whining, "He's just a child!! He didn't know the consequences!" BS. He knew something could happen, what? Win a prize?
Of course not, or he would have set up a stand on the curb with a big sign, "Acid for sale!"
Yiour masters is in... excuses. Not in teaching personal responsibility.
So you would be in favor of mandatory sentencing - no discretion?
He wasn't an experienced drug dealer - he was a middle man. And don't get me wrong - I am not excusing what he did, not saying it wasn't wrong.
It was wrong, and he should have had consuquences.
But seven years in the joint for a first time offender is also wrong. I am sure your kids are wonderful, and you are a good parent. But sometimes people get mixed up in things they don't understand - make really stupid choices they wish they hadn't made. Don't take this the wrong way, but it could happen to one of your kids too.
The world I live in is the world of forgiveness. If someone hurts me I can lash out in anger, or I can approach the situation from a place of forgiveness and Grace. Someone steals my laptop I can bring the long arm of the law down on her, or I can try to forgive. I don't do this particularly well, of course, but I do try.
We aren't perfect people. My opinion would be that our inability to empathize, and our inabiility to forgive is actually a bigger crime than the kid who sold the 300 hits of acid.
But that's just me. I would rather live a life modeled after people of peace. Others would rather live lives modeled after people of punishment. I get that.
And congratulations - it seems your government gets that too.
yes, 7 years is harsh. Especially for a youthful first offender. When his story hit the papers, I suppose it gave pause to others who might think about making money as criminals. That's called deterrence.
But, 7 years is in the range of penalty. What did Scott Peterson get in California for his first offense? Well, it was a bad crime, and he got a penalty withing the range, he got the death penalty. I don't necessarily support the death penalty, but every time someone says "it was his first offense" I ask, was it speeding, murder, or something in between? "First offense, so give him a break" carries no weight with me.
Forgiveness comes after the sentence is complete. The kid should be able to rehabilitate himself, and go on to lead a productive life, but if he was sent the pen for 7 years, it must have been serious. Very serious.
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Censorship. The last refuge of the shrill.
You can delete from the page, but not from archives.
And you can delete your "laptop" post from your blog, but not from archives. Or from my printer.
So, I'll call UPD later this morning, and see if you turned over that confession.
Have a nice day.
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synopsis:
foleyma: go ahead, I don't care, you're an ass.
anon: I've chosen not to do it, but you're a hypocrite and a jerk who doesn't think things through.
foleyma: anon is right - I am a hypocrite, jerk, liar and an ass. Thank God I am forgiven.
At last we are back to the point.
Hey, I feel really bad I missed this. I tend not to read blogs much.
I read that NYT article and I remember being pretty upset. Particularly telling were the stories of people who were accomplices to murder and who were not really much involved in it - probably just scared kids who might have tried to do something about it if they could have, but they weren't really emotionally mature enough to take the stigma that would have come from such.
It's also a good thing that when I was a kid most of the cops knew we didn't really mean to be complete idiots and they gave us warnings instead of Miranda Rights. I was pretty dumb on more occasions than I can count. It's also a good thing that when I was at UHS most of my teachers were smart in that fashion too.
Attention, Folé- that article concerns murder cases. The NYT's coverage was not as good as you're interpreting it. These situations may have been questionable, but both involve direct, apparently conscious acts of brutality that could have been avoided. This has little relevance to drug sales, which directly ties into economic conflicts more often than not. Plus, the article mentions 54 kids being in without parole last year- with that in mind, is it really that harsh? Personally, I believe our prison system is overcrowded and functionally outdated, so yes. By the law, that's not harsh. A person's life is a right given to them in almost every society, and unfortunately it's not one that can we can recover if it's taken away. It's not in the ballpark of LSD tabs. If it were, those people would not be in there under serious offense. How can a person mistakenly kill, rape or rob a place with a gun?
Anyway, that wasn't my main point...I had an off-topic note on drugs.
Isn't it ironic that Afghanistan produces most of the world's heroin?!
Heroin is not the big thing in school now- though it ranks, as usual, higher than most opiates. However, prescription drugs and DIY drugs are taking more prededence once again as top drugs considering suburbanite America has become increasingly isolated with the technological age, and with that increasingly self-dependent (not self-sufficient). 1 in 10 kids in our country, at the very least, have TRIED precription drugs illegally with the intention to become intoxicated in the past year. Sure, some will still reach for the hardcore drugs, but I believe that's due to their habit-forming nature and an inability to detatch themselves from usage.
With that in mind, the likelihood of a "war on drugs" (if you will) is unlikely to be successful if it is, unfortunately, set in motion- and arrests such as the one made on your friend are probably less likely to occur.
For me it's just hard to believe that we are ushering in a time where anorexia is commonplace social standard, anti-depressants are an economic badge of how sheltered you are in your bubble of chemical safety, and education is a burden of glaring reality followed by idle calamity- probably thanks to our Paxil.
What bothers me the most is that the kids who can't read are us, we are growing up, and Bush is cutting the critical developmental programs- he's ruining things that will take years to fix partially due to my apathetic peers who miss coverup after coverup and won't (or can't) take the power they have. That hurts the most, being among them.
Yet it's funny how hypocritically he's trying to charm Hispanics and Tejanos with slightly biracial cons (even though the propaganda is as see-through as swedish food and as soon as he's off a plane every protest shouts in their language "WE HATE YOU"). Oh how history repeats itself.
Also, if you're not sure whether to believe the pathetic Rx trend- who would know better than one of their own?
Just a thought on your nice post (and yes, I do read this thing from time to time),
David Bowie
Mr Bowie -
The distinction between violent and drug crimes is legit, for sure, though I continue to contend that kids in high school (or middle school) are typically not what I would call responsible for their actions. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be punished if they kill someone (obviously) - just that we should take their immaturity into consideration.
I think my bigger point is that the judicial system is out of whack. I've seen too many nominally "bad" kids sent away for crimes that were fairly minor, only read about a re-arrest for a serious crime a couple years later. Going to prison seems to be the worst thing that can happen to a kid - they come out hardened criminals more often than they come our reformed.
I'm really intrigued by the RX addictions in young people. I'll try to post something about the connections with recommended drugs like ritalin and paxil (among others). We send a pretty strong message to kids when we tell them to take this little pill to fix their problems. No surprise they take that message to heart, though it is a bummer.
I won't even go into Bush. It is too depressing. Though recent developments have reaffirmed by belief that politics is a circular sport, and hubris is always the downfall of the powerful. Our little system works better than I give it credit for. The trick is patience and perspective.
Finally, if you're the Bowie fan I remember from years past - give me a call or e-mail sometime. I am lining up an hour of music spinning on WRFU and could use your advice. So, if you're the one who used to correspond with Peter Murphy then we need to talk.
Cheers!
Foley, I don't know how you have the energy to argue with these self-righteous anonymous tools. Great essay by the way hippie :)
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