8 ms·

There was one case where the mother was arrested for letting the kids play outside. So, the obvious first step to fixing this problem in the U.S. would be to m

There was one case where the mother was arrested for letting the kids play outside. So, the obvious first step to fixing this problem in the U.S. would be to make it explicitly legal. Something like "letting children unsupervised in public space for less than 5 hours shall not, by itself, be construed as child abuse or neglect." Plausible? Any downsides? Can any town do it by itself, or is an act of Congress needed?

galfarragem 9y ago
Common sense could not be erradicated anyway: it's not the same to allow them to be alone for 5 hours in the neighborhood, in Times Square or somewhere in a high crime area.
- mamon 9y ago
  The problem is, US law has long eradicated "common sense" as a legal category. That's why you can get a compensation from a microwave manufacturer when you kill your dog , trying to dry it in microwave after bath, because microwave manual does not explicitly forbid putting live animals inside. Appealing to common sense in the court of law is a lost cause.
  - naasking 9y ago
    FALSE: https://www.snopes.com/horrors/techno/microwavedpet.asp https://www.snopes.com/horrors/techno/microwavedpet.asp https://www.out-law.com/page-3396 https://www.out-law.com/page-3396 It seriously pisses me off that people think the law and rulings made by judges and juries are absurd without knowing anything about the cases or rulings in question. It seriously smacks of arrogance, because these people are your peers, so you are implicitly claiming that you are smarter than all of them. I assure you, that's probably not the case, and in that same situation, you probably would have reached the same conclusion. There are always exceptions, but check your facts before assuming you're less of an idiot than others.
    - aduitsis 9y ago
      Thank you. Anecdotal reports from counter-intuitive court rulings are subject to heavy survivor bias. I.e. there might be a million cases where justice (correctly) deemed absurd to prosecute a parent for letting the kids play outside. But they'll never make the news.
    - coldtea 9y ago
      >It seriously pisses me off that people think the law and rulings made by judges and juries are absurd without knowing anything about the cases or rulings in question. It might piss you off, but there's a point to these stories. Italian's say "se non e vero, e ben trovato" (Even if it is not true, it is a good story). This is not about it being an entertaining story -- it's about it expressing a real fault in the legal system and its attitude, despite doing it using a non-factual case. In other words, the US legal system might not have THAT law, but the story remains true in a deeper level, in the sense that it is indeed the kind of system were such a law could be conceived or be remotely possible.
      - quesera 9y ago
        I think you just validated Sara Huckabee Sanders, to the extent that she speaks her independent thought.
        coldtea 9y ago
        I might. Don't know who see is, not an American, had to google her. Do you have anything that can be considered an argument? Because my point, that a story doesn't have to be factually correct to still be indicative of a larger truth (and vise versa: a factually correct story might just be an outlier that doesn't prove anything universal of what it suggests) has been known since time immemorial.
        dragontamer 9y ago
        > Because my point, that a story doesn't have to be factually correct to still be indicative of a larger truth At the moment, American Politics is all F'd up because Mr. Trump and his Press Team (led by Huckabee Sanders at the moment) relies on this. They plant false ideas like "The Crowd Size at the last rally was huge" into the American Public's mind, and then MAKE UP the larger truth in such a way that most benefits them. False stories are the bread-and-butter of Mr. Trump's press strategy right now.
- CydeWeys 9y ago
  The biggest risk in Times Square used to be vehicle traffic. That's true of most places, but it was especially so in Times Square. However, now that it's been turned into a pedestrian plaza, I'd say your biggest risk is being detained by the police for being an unaccompanied minor. There's always lots of police there, and a young child that was perceived to be alone or lost would quickly be put in custody. Other than that, it's just full of tourists from other parts of the US and abroad, mostly families. Can't see any real risks to children there now that the vehicles are gone.
lsc 9y ago
The problem here is not the law, it is the people who think the fact that one person (out of over 100 million families in America) got arrested for doing a thing that sounds reasonable is a reason to change your behavior. We need a reasonable threshold below which we do not worry about an event. Figuratively speaking: "If it makes front page news, it's not how I'm gonna die." The threshold is going to vary from person to person; for me? if it's less likely than me dying or becoming disabled in a transport accident today, then the effort to prevent that thing is most likely better spent preventing transport accidents. I mean, my point here is that you want the best return possible on your "prevent bad things from happening to me and mine" efforts, and there are a lot of low-hanging fruit that you can grab in the area where there is the most danger. Transportation and health are huge killers, much bigger than terrorist and crazies. I think this might be the biggest problem with America today; this idea that systemic action needs to be taken for a 1 in 100 million chance seems like the systemic problem with our society. Systemic action should be reserved for things that happen frequently. Even in America, the biggest danger to children is transport accidents; the chances of getting killed or disfigured are so much higher in a car than in a train that it almost certainly makes up for any "stranger danger" on the train.
- galfarragem 9y ago
  In the end "rulers" are just afraid of being expelled for "bad service" so they reduce risk as much as they can: mass media might pick a particular case (that 1 in 100 million) and distort it until society perceives it as 1 in 10.
  - robbiep 9y ago
    I understand your angle. That approach is very shortsighted, the inefficiencies created going after such black swan event risk prevention opens up gaps in other services that basically makes society go to hell in a handbasket
  - lsc 9y ago
    Of course, the goal is to reduce risk of bad outcomes as much as possible.[1] I'm just saying, with the same level of effort, you could save a lot more lives by solving transportation problems than by preventing the more rare kinds of crime. I submit that learning how to evaluate these sorts of statistics, and this sort of risk management is an important part of the basic education that is essential to all citizens of a democracy. [1]And nobody has brought it up, but it's possible that the average person just thinks that a child being kidnapped by a stranger is an outcome that is thousands of times worse than that same child dying or being mutilated for life in a transportation accident. In that case, maybe society isn't acting irrationally; they just place a lot more value on 'manner of death' than I do.
_0ffh 9y ago
> Any downsides? Anything above 5 hours might then automatically be seen as neglect.
- emiliobumachar 9y ago
  Good point, but it would still be a step up.
chrischen 9y ago
Pretty sure making frivolus calls to the police is already illegal, especially if you spin it as the neighbor trying to prank you.

galfarragem 9y ago

Common sense could not be erradicated anyway: it's not the same to allow them to be alone for 5 hours in the neighborhood, in Times Square or somewhere in a high crime area.

mamon 9y ago
The problem is, US law has long eradicated "common sense" as a legal category. That's why you can get a compensation from a microwave manufacturer when you kill your dog , trying to dry it in microwave after bath, because microwave manual does not explicitly forbid putting live animals inside. Appealing to common sense in the court of law is a lost cause.
- naasking 9y ago
  FALSE: https://www.snopes.com/horrors/techno/microwavedpet.asp https://www.snopes.com/horrors/techno/microwavedpet.asp https://www.out-law.com/page-3396 https://www.out-law.com/page-3396 It seriously pisses me off that people think the law and rulings made by judges and juries are absurd without knowing anything about the cases or rulings in question. It seriously smacks of arrogance, because these people are your peers, so you are implicitly claiming that you are smarter than all of them. I assure you, that's probably not the case, and in that same situation, you probably would have reached the same conclusion. There are always exceptions, but check your facts before assuming you're less of an idiot than others.
  - aduitsis 9y ago
    Thank you. Anecdotal reports from counter-intuitive court rulings are subject to heavy survivor bias. I.e. there might be a million cases where justice (correctly) deemed absurd to prosecute a parent for letting the kids play outside. But they'll never make the news.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    >It seriously pisses me off that people think the law and rulings made by judges and juries are absurd without knowing anything about the cases or rulings in question. It might piss you off, but there's a point to these stories. Italian's say "se non e vero, e ben trovato" (Even if it is not true, it is a good story). This is not about it being an entertaining story -- it's about it expressing a real fault in the legal system and its attitude, despite doing it using a non-factual case. In other words, the US legal system might not have THAT law, but the story remains true in a deeper level, in the sense that it is indeed the kind of system were such a law could be conceived or be remotely possible.
    - quesera 9y ago
      I think you just validated Sara Huckabee Sanders, to the extent that she speaks her independent thought.
      - coldtea 9y ago
        I might. Don't know who see is, not an American, had to google her. Do you have anything that can be considered an argument? Because my point, that a story doesn't have to be factually correct to still be indicative of a larger truth (and vise versa: a factually correct story might just be an outlier that doesn't prove anything universal of what it suggests) has been known since time immemorial.
        dragontamer 9y ago
        > Because my point, that a story doesn't have to be factually correct to still be indicative of a larger truth At the moment, American Politics is all F'd up because Mr. Trump and his Press Team (led by Huckabee Sanders at the moment) relies on this. They plant false ideas like "The Crowd Size at the last rally was huge" into the American Public's mind, and then MAKE UP the larger truth in such a way that most benefits them. False stories are the bread-and-butter of Mr. Trump's press strategy right now.
CydeWeys 9y ago
The biggest risk in Times Square used to be vehicle traffic. That's true of most places, but it was especially so in Times Square. However, now that it's been turned into a pedestrian plaza, I'd say your biggest risk is being detained by the police for being an unaccompanied minor. There's always lots of police there, and a young child that was perceived to be alone or lost would quickly be put in custody. Other than that, it's just full of tourists from other parts of the US and abroad, mostly families. Can't see any real risks to children there now that the vehicles are gone.

lsc 9y ago

The problem here is not the law, it is the people who think the fact that one person (out of over 100 million families in America) got arrested for doing a thing that sounds reasonable is a reason to change your behavior. We need a reasonable threshold below which we do not worry about an event. Figuratively speaking: "If it makes front page news, it's not how I'm gonna die." The threshold is going to vary from person to person; for me? if it's less likely than me dying or becoming disabled in a transport accident today, then the effort to prevent that thing is most likely better spent preventing transport accidents. I mean, my point here is that you want the best return possible on your "prevent bad things from happening to me and mine" efforts, and there are a lot of low-hanging fruit that you can grab in the area where there is the most danger. Transportation and health are huge killers, much bigger than terrorist and crazies. I think this might be the biggest problem with America today; this idea that systemic action needs to be taken for a 1 in 100 million chance seems like the systemic problem with our society. Systemic action should be reserved for things that happen frequently. Even in America, the biggest danger to children is transport accidents; the chances of getting killed or disfigured are so much higher in a car than in a train that it almost certainly makes up for any "stranger danger" on the train.

galfarragem 9y ago
In the end "rulers" are just afraid of being expelled for "bad service" so they reduce risk as much as they can: mass media might pick a particular case (that 1 in 100 million) and distort it until society perceives it as 1 in 10.
- robbiep 9y ago
  I understand your angle. That approach is very shortsighted, the inefficiencies created going after such black swan event risk prevention opens up gaps in other services that basically makes society go to hell in a handbasket
- lsc 9y ago
  Of course, the goal is to reduce risk of bad outcomes as much as possible.[1] I'm just saying, with the same level of effort, you could save a lot more lives by solving transportation problems than by preventing the more rare kinds of crime. I submit that learning how to evaluate these sorts of statistics, and this sort of risk management is an important part of the basic education that is essential to all citizens of a democracy. [1]And nobody has brought it up, but it's possible that the average person just thinks that a child being kidnapped by a stranger is an outcome that is thousands of times worse than that same child dying or being mutilated for life in a transportation accident. In that case, maybe society isn't acting irrationally; they just place a lot more value on 'manner of death' than I do.

_0ffh 9y ago

> Any downsides? Anything above 5 hours might then automatically be seen as neglect.

emiliobumachar 9y ago
Good point, but it would still be a step up.

chrischen 9y ago

Pretty sure making frivolus calls to the police is already illegal, especially if you spin it as the neighbor trying to prank you.