Noodles on a Bike

Rights group sues youth hall
That's the first thing you read on the front page of the Metro section in today's Sac Bee.

Well, I'm sitting there, happily eating my leftover tilapia and white rice and decide that instead of staring at the refridgerator I'll read this article.
And now I want to punch myself.

This rights group is suing Juvenile hall in Sac County because of neglect and abuse.
Okay, I think well, maybe, yeah. If they aren't getting enough to eat, aren't allowed to read, have to sleep on the floor, I can see this as neglect...
So I read on.

Okay.
They have food.
They have beds.
So, it's a little overcrowded, but hey, so are our schools! And they want money to go into reforming this place?!
I mean, c'mon, sure the food may not be great, but why don't we just stick the criminals in a third world country? Then they don't have any food!
These kids have a place to sleep, without jail maybe some would be sleeping on the streets! Without a mattress, without a pillow.
And yet, the rights group is complaining.

So the neglect.
Pepper spray, sometimes routinely for no apparent reason.
That's not nice, admittedly that should probably be stopped, but when they say no apparent reason, do we really know the exact background and what's happening here?
No.
And this thing called, "dipping" where gaurds twist the arms behind the teens back and push them to the ground.
Mkay. As far as I'm concerned this is a dominance excercise going a little to the extreme.
Sometimes you have to do that kind of thing with a dog that bites or growls at you.
Asserting dominance.
Kids need it too.

What's totally awesome about this article is how they refer to them as "teens," which is funny because they're in jail for a reason. They can be called criminals as far as I'm concerned.
Or how about "teens that have committed crimes terrible enough to get them into some sort of correctional facility"?
But no, just "teens." They even choose to use the quote, "Mommy, I tried to kill myself." for the top of the next page.
Jeez.

So, what's one of the reasons that this suit got started?
A mother who visited her son had her son tell her that he attempted sucide.
The mother wasn't told becaue the son wasn't successful.
HA!
WEll, firstly, yeah, this sounds pretty bad. THe kid tried to kill himself and the mother wasn't informed, but wait... what else do they say about this kid?
He has epilepsy and bi-polar disorder.
Well, I don't know much about those two conditions so I looked them up.
Epilepsy has to do with seizures, caused by brain injuries (can you say, dropped on your head when you were a baby!?), or family tendencies, and bi-polar disorder is a manic-depressive illness.

Okay, so the kid has some problems.
And he's sixteen.
And he's being tried as an adult.
Why?
Five felony charges including burglary, robbery and rape.
Yeah, that's exactly where I want my tax money to go. TO a kid who's raped someone, stolen from someone and robbed, I want him to have better beds and to not have to be shoved around by a few authority figures.
NOT.
I mean, what the fuck?
Rights groups are great, I mean, woman's sufferage, that's huge, but, spend more of state money on teenage criminals when at my high school there were nearly forty kids in a classroom for just one teacher?!

No.
For me, education of kids who didn't choose to fuck up their life is more important than fixing the kids who already messed up.
Maybe if the schools had more money in the first place they could better teach the kids how not to end up in jail.
TEACH THEM NOT TO RAPE.
TEACH THEM HOW ROBBERY IS WRONG.

It's nice to fix something that's broken, but I've got a better idea. Let's just make things stronger in the first place.
Then you won't have to fix something, because it won't be broken.