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> Just to be clear, Mr. Sullivan was 13 years old. In most of the world (apparently not Florida) that's an age where there's at least some questions about you b

> Just to be clear, Mr. Sullivan was 13 years old. In most of the world (apparently not Florida) that's an age where there's at least some questions about you being responsible for your own actions. He raped an elderly woman - regardless of any questions about whether he should be responsible for that in a philosophical sense, don't you think it'd be incredibly reckless to let him back into society?

rms 17y ago
I think that is up to psychiatrists decide, judges don't have the proper education to determine whether or not Mr. Sullivan is dangerous.
ojbyrne 17y ago
I think it's incredibly reckless to write him off at 13 years old. There's plenty of examples out there of people who committed horrendous crimes as teenagers, paid appropriately for their mistakes, and went on to productive lives.
- lionhearted 17y ago
  > I think it's incredibly reckless to write him off at 13 years old. Serious question - what percent of repeat offenders would be acceptable to you? Because if 95% of the extremely brutal, violent people we lock up forever could've been rehabilitated, but the other 5% would've raped/murdered/assaulted/brutalized someone innocent, that seems like a tradeoff worth making. If you let extremely violent criminals go, some of them will repeat. I'm okay locking up someone who does such heinous thing forever, and I don't feel that's reckless. Put this way - if one elderly woman isn't violently raped by a repeat offender, and 99 violent criminals spend their lives behind bars who could've been rehabilitated, that's a fine tradeoff to me. So in such a horrific incidence, I'm not okay with a repeat rate of 1%. You?
- ezy 17y ago
  I don't want to be a complete turd, but you haven't given any examples of such people -- or even really made an argument that whatever examples you would have given are a significant proportion. I can think of a few, and in all but one case, their "conversion" is rather suspect. Or "horrendous" means some form of not-so-violent larceny (e.g. about as far as brandishing a weapon to intimidate) -- not rape or violent assault. One uncomfortable thing you have to face in life is that some people are worth significantly less than others. I'd rather save an animal at the shelter than save the examples of utter trash the article mentions. There are billions of people on the planet, you're not going to miss these bits of broken humanity (and no, I don't particularly care about their families). Would you really trust some of these people you talk about in the abstract? It's one thing to say that you read about Joe Thug turning his life around in Salon. It's quite another to trust your life around this person.
bhousel 17y ago
I know the crime is pretty terrible, but we really don't know the whole story. Mr. Sullivan might have been raped daily by a crazy uncle. He might have had crack put in his baby formula. He really might have been subject to all kinds of terrible abuse - you just don't know. This is why law is complicated, why we have trials, and judges, court psychologists, social workers and other professionals whose job it is to figure out what to do with kids like this. I really wanted to comment because I work very closely with the NYC Juvenile Crimes division - I actually built their case management database and work with their prosecutors almost daily. You rarely hear the whole story, especially in these unusual types of cases, so it's best to leave it to the professionals. I've learned that the answer to every question in law (and actually in engineering too) is always "it depends".

rms 17y ago

I think that is up to psychiatrists decide, judges don't have the proper education to determine whether or not Mr. Sullivan is dangerous.

ojbyrne 17y ago

I think it's incredibly reckless to write him off at 13 years old. There's plenty of examples out there of people who committed horrendous crimes as teenagers, paid appropriately for their mistakes, and went on to productive lives.

lionhearted 17y ago
> I think it's incredibly reckless to write him off at 13 years old. Serious question - what percent of repeat offenders would be acceptable to you? Because if 95% of the extremely brutal, violent people we lock up forever could've been rehabilitated, but the other 5% would've raped/murdered/assaulted/brutalized someone innocent, that seems like a tradeoff worth making. If you let extremely violent criminals go, some of them will repeat. I'm okay locking up someone who does such heinous thing forever, and I don't feel that's reckless. Put this way - if one elderly woman isn't violently raped by a repeat offender, and 99 violent criminals spend their lives behind bars who could've been rehabilitated, that's a fine tradeoff to me. So in such a horrific incidence, I'm not okay with a repeat rate of 1%. You?
ezy 17y ago
I don't want to be a complete turd, but you haven't given any examples of such people -- or even really made an argument that whatever examples you would have given are a significant proportion. I can think of a few, and in all but one case, their "conversion" is rather suspect. Or "horrendous" means some form of not-so-violent larceny (e.g. about as far as brandishing a weapon to intimidate) -- not rape or violent assault. One uncomfortable thing you have to face in life is that some people are worth significantly less than others. I'd rather save an animal at the shelter than save the examples of utter trash the article mentions. There are billions of people on the planet, you're not going to miss these bits of broken humanity (and no, I don't particularly care about their families). Would you really trust some of these people you talk about in the abstract? It's one thing to say that you read about Joe Thug turning his life around in Salon. It's quite another to trust your life around this person.

bhousel 17y ago

I know the crime is pretty terrible, but we really don't know the whole story. Mr. Sullivan might have been raped daily by a crazy uncle. He might have had crack put in his baby formula. He really might have been subject to all kinds of terrible abuse - you just don't know. This is why law is complicated, why we have trials, and judges, court psychologists, social workers and other professionals whose job it is to figure out what to do with kids like this. I really wanted to comment because I work very closely with the NYC Juvenile Crimes division - I actually built their case management database and work with their prosecutors almost daily. You rarely hear the whole story, especially in these unusual types of cases, so it's best to leave it to the professionals. I've learned that the answer to every question in law (and actually in engineering too) is always "it depends".