The Glade 4.0

That's dumb. Punishment must have a point. You can come down hard on these kids, deter them from doing something similar, deter others from doing something similar, and still promote them becoming the most productive members of society they can be.

Don't **** up their ability to get jobs. Don't **** up their schooling. **** up their weekends and summer for as long as you feel is necessary. These are not dangerous individuals who need to be put away to keep us safe.

I completely covered the entrance to my High School with toilet paper. Completely!

I cleaned it up too. Was there with bags ready to go.

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Memento Vivere

I have local knowledge.
That sandbar was not there yesterday!

Make them pay the costs of the clean-up, and give them a summer of community service. Once completed, expunge it from their records.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

They've already paid for the cleanup, though, and now people are trying to stick a felony on them. That's a little more harsh than community service.

The felony is bullshit.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

"Friend" of mine was the ringleader of the senior prank at my HS. He and the other students who were caught (not me) had the book thrown at them under Ohio law.

And yet, here he is a licensed educator.

Getting charges against you is not the end of the world. The jury is there to moderate prosecutorial zeal. Throw the book, if the jury is reasonable at all, the book doesn't stick. End of story.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

DFK, why do you think it's ok for the jury to exercise discretion, but not for the cops, prosecutor, or judge to do so?

Speaking for myself, its the people who are actually judged under the law so should be the ones deciding if its just or applicable - judges and police get (ignoring that they shouldn't get) special protection and treatment from the law.

We are of by and for the people, not the employees of government.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Are you being serious here?

Yeah, that was an honest question, Midgen.

And Elm - The jury is empaneled by the government, and the its judgments are given weight by government force in the form of prison and fines. I prefer to have multiple checks before that force is brought to bear, starting with a person (the cop) who can choose to warn instead of arrest, a person (the DA) who can choose no to prosecute, people (the jury) who can choose to acquit, and a person (the judge) who can choose to reduce or waive sentence. In short, I don't see discretion on the part of cops, prosecutors and judges as giving extra power to the government; I see it as a means of limiting the frequency and severity with which government exercises its power.

You don't see giving them the power to let their friends off the hook and protect their own for the trade of favors as bad?

Combine that with the actual mechanism that is designed to protect individual (the jury) being willfully denied legal instruction and told their job is to only rule if the law is violated or not and those who attempt to inform them being held in contempt.

No, they are servants - not decision makers. If they want to make decisions they can turn in their office and sit on a jury.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

They may be servants but they are also decision makers. They absolutely should have discretion. The fact that some might misuse it is not an argument against this; some people will misuse anything, and no person could ever be trusted to do anything.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Don't they do all these things already? I'm fine with that. I like the idea of each case being looked at on it's own merits and the decisions being made at each step of the process.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Giving discretion to the enforcing body only yields corruption, it yields no true positive in the long run.

Laws must be clear and enforcement must be consistent for justice to prevail.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Kinda makes a strong argument for jury nullification, no?

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

This is nonsense. It does not "yield corruption"; corruption comes from a failure of character and will occur anyhow. More importantly, discretion always exists. The polie and prosecutors will always be the ones deciding if they have a reason to charge a person with an offense.

Clear laws and consistent enforcement are not precluded by discretion. In fact, they are enhanced by it. It is NOT just to charge juevniles with felonies simply to assuage the fears of adults that corruption might occur in completely unrelated matters.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Yes, in the sense that it is one more check. No, in the sense that it should not be the only check. Juries are highly imperfect.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

No more or less than any body composed of fallible men (pronoun used generically )

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Our Senior Prank was a ditch day. Pretty pathetic truth be told.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

Same. And I was out of the loop enough that I didn't know about it until third period...

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Holy shitsnacks!

And minimizing that discretion is key to minimizing corruption. Unless you wish to refute the nature of government and man for about 5000 years.



Perhaps the law should be changed, then, to exempt juveniles. Any other response undermines the system by reducing consistent application of the law.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

It isn't any such key, and I don't need to refute anything. "The nature of government and man" is not an argument.



No it doesn't. The system is in no way undermined. The law would only be applied "consistently" by applying it exactly the same in every case if every case were identical to begin with.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Any law that cannot be predictably and equally applied is unjust. giving discretion to enforcement officers only gives them the opportunity create a "pass" for those they see fit. Which has happened throughout history.

Hence, just law must curtail discretion in enforcement.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

You're not talking about predictability or equality. You're talking about doing things in blindly identical fashion which is inhernetly unequal, unjust, and unfair.



Which there is nothing inherently wrong with, your attempts to make it sound like some sort of problem with predjudicial language notwithstanding. It only results in problems when the pass is given for reasons unrelated to the incident itself. In that case, the problems are dealt with individually.



False. Your ideas of what is just are absurd.

Claiming that a 17 year old needs to be charged with a superfluous felony just so that your ideas of "just law" can be satisfied is ridiculous.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Wow this seems over the tops.

Had the authorities over reacted to pranks like this when I was in high school we would have gotten into some trouble.


What would the penalty be for slimjimming into someone's car and filling it to the tops of the windows with popcorn?