The Supreme Court decided today that judges do not even have to determine if a child "incorrigible" before imposing a life without parole sentence on that child.
Before looking at what is wrong with that opinion, it may help to see what other countries allow this.
None.
The core problem with the opinion is that the question it's asking should not even be asked.
The question: do judges need to make a formal finding of "incorrigibility" before sentencing a child to die in prison.
But that question... defies asking.
The Court ITSELF admits we can't really answer it. That we simply lack the ability to predict whether a child is beyond hope at the time of sentencing that child.
The solution, then, is... to make it EASIER for judges to do... what we know... they can't do well?
Mind-boggling.
Now, the reality of things.
While some ppl are more prone to violence than others, violence is phase: we age into and age out of it.
It's true all over the world. These graphs are from Boston, Chicago, Canada, and Holland. Can you tell the difference? (Nope.)
Are there some kids who will be more violent over their lives than others, even as they follow that bell-shaped curve? Of course.
Are some going to be seriously violent? Probably.
But few. And we are bad at predicting them. So how many lives do we destroy to "be safe"?
The Court's take is beyond Alice in Wonderland logic.
Because we are terrible at predicting whose lives to completely throw away, in part because so few kids exhibit persistent violence, the Constitution requires FEW safeguards, and we can just let judges do what they want.
I mean, none of this is surprising, given the fearmongering start to this opinion.
TWO INSTANCES PER DAY!
That means... 0.0003% of Americans were murdered by kids under the age of 18, and that stat includes all types of murder and manslaughter.
And, of course, that Kavanaugh didn't just agree to this opinion but had the GALL TO WRITE IT is... amazing. Stunning.
I can't help but think this is a giant middle finger to his detractors.
Will his defenders criticize this, for the same reasons they defended him??
The long-run impact of this case may be slight: states are changing on their own, and DAs are increasingly refusing to charge.
But this is still a deep injustice, and deserves all our condemnation.
I don’t have a SoundCloud, but I was able to describe in more depth in @PostEverything the moral and scientific bankruptcy not just of the majority in Jones, but the very debate in it:
Fair—it wasn’t right of me to say that the “we’re being silence” intellectual-dark-web McKinsey-is-too-woke types are annoyed solely over their inability to state certain racial views publicly.
They’re also annoyed they can’t dehumanize trans ppl openly too.
But it is fair, and not cynical at all, to point out that a HUGE chunk of what the “forbidden knowledge” types complain about boils down to not being able to openly dehumanize certain marginalized groups.
Thus their need for safe-space echo-chambers in which to do so.
Like I said when it came to opera-watch SCOTUS buddies, I can be friends and politely debate anyone over tax policy or the goals of punishment.
The “I don’t want to hear it” only comes up when they start making it clear that they don’t see certain ppl as full ppl.
I’d add, without sarcasm: I think I see a way to push for SCOTUS retirement.
Congress surely CAN pass a law saying that justices can receive $0.00 in royalties, honoraria, etc while in office. Prob can limit above-market returns on housing sales, etc.
It’s clear that outside payments—whether direct cash payments or cozy “teaching” gigs overseas or sudden land sales—are a non-trivial form of SCOTUS compensation.
A chunk unprotected by Art III.
Cut that off, maybe lifetime employment is less appealing.
“Won’t that reduce the quality of ppl who apply?”
1. The what now? 2. Short terms as a philosopher-king followed by big bucks? Think lots of quality ppl will be fine with that.
“What abt the incentive to look to that future payment?”
I’m not saying that the causal story here isn’t true, but I feel like at this point we should basically just ignore studies that are purely correlational with—AFAICT here—absolutely NO identification strategy beyond “we control for confounders.”
Like, this is an issue where reverse causation is really, really plausible—the vulnerability to schizophrenia CAUSES the self-medicating use of marijuana. Which makes correlational-only so so risky.
And that it may align w other such studies tells us nothing, if all are biased.
Given all the alleged benefits of weed, it shouldn’t be hard to create an ethically sound RCT that simultaneously tracks for these sorts of risks.
They did it for Vioxx with heart risk. Surely can do for weed.
Thread, on the murder--it was a murder--of a homeless man on the F train this week: on how we have consistently failed to provide adequate services, disrupted effective self-support the homeless have devised in their absence, and thru it all dehumanized them.
The coverage of this, from every source, has made the consistent, deadly, dehumanizing error of equating disorder with danger.
The claims of "threatening behavior" are simply asserted, although nothing I've read suggests he *actually threatened* anyone.
Can it be somewhat scary when someone in a mental health crisis acts erratically on the train? Sure.
But the time between stops on the F in Manhattan is ~1 minute. If you're scared, that's more than enough time to just ... change cars at the next station.
Moreover, by going to the opera w Scalia rather than shaming him, those who went w him failed to impose any costs for this racist behavior, despite being among the few anywhere who could. Which only likely encouraged him more.
(This applies to his takes on homosexuality too.)
Also, honestly? If you could go and laugh and have fun with someone who thought like this, it makes me wonder about the seriousness of one’s commitment to the rights of Blacks or gays.
How was this sort of thinking not repulsive on a personal level?