Law & Justice: April 2017 Archives
Apparently bandits are running wild in California. I put "teen" in quotes because who really knows how old these bandits are?
BART police are beefing up patrols at Oakland stations after dozens of juveniles terrorized riders Saturday night when they invaded the Coliseum Station and commandeered at least one train car, forcing passengers to hand over bags and cell phones and leaving at least two with head injuries.The incident occurred around 9:30 p.m. Saturday. Witnesses told police that 40 to 60 juveniles flooded the station, jumped the fare gates and rushed to the second-story train platform. Some of the robbers apparently held open the doors of a Dublin-bound train car while others streamed inside, confronting and robbing and in some cases beating riders.
I feel like the police and media are being pretty quick to blame "juveniles" because it makes the horrendous failure of the government seem less scary. How do they know this mob of bandits consisted of kids? Did someone check all their IDs? What proportion of the bandits were kids? Were there some adults present leading the banditry?
Saying "teens" and "juveniles" makes it sound like this attack was some kind of misguided prank rather than a victory for chaos over the forces of law and order.
"I've been there 24 years and this is the first time I've heard of anything like this happening," said Keith Garcia, a BART police officer and union president.
So, things in California are getting worse.
Alicia Trost, a BART spokeswoman, said Monday that seven people were robbed -- with the victims losing a purse, a duffel bag and five phones. Six people were robbed inside the train car, with a seventh confronted on the platform, she said. Police received no reports of guns or other weapons being brandished.A police summary prepared after the incident said that at least two victims suffered injuries to the face or head that required medical attention.
How many people reported injuries or assaults that didn't require medical attention? I bet it was a lot.
The attack was so quick, police reported, that the teenagers were able to retreat from the station and vanish into the surrounding East Oakland neighborhood before BART officers could respond. The train was held for about 15 minutes as authorities interviewed victims and witnesses and tended to the injured.
Bandits running rampant. Law enforcement has completely lost control of a swathe of territory right in the heart of one of the richest areas of the country. How humiliating.
Trost said police arrived at the station in less than 5 minutes, but that the robberies took place in just seconds.
When seconds count, the police are only minutes away. The outcome would have been different if some of the victims had been armed, and the bandits would think twice before trying again if a few of them had gotten shot. As it is, if all 40-60 aren't arrested, prosecuted, and punished then the government in California has basically given up its sovereignty.
(HT: Althouse, who is surprised that the police aren't releasing the surveillance video of the attack because the criminals are "juveniles". I guess it would be an invasion of their privacy.)
I've written about alternatives to imprisonment several times over the past... 14 years. Wow.
Now Ross Douthat is asking similar questions: why should imprisonment be our only official form of punishment?
Our prison system, which officially only punishes by restraint, actually subjects millions of Americans to waves of informal physical abuse -- mistreatment by guards, violence from inmates, the tortures of solitary confinement, the trauma of rape -- on top of their formal yearslong sentences.It is not clear that this method of dealing with crime succeeds at avoiding cruel and unusual punishment so much as it avoids making anyone outside the prison system see it. Nor is it clear that a different system, with a sometimes more old-fashioned set of penalties, would necessarily be more inhumane. ...
We tell ourselves that we have prisoners' good in mind, and the higher standards of our civilization, because we do not offer them this choice. But those standards may be less about preventing ourselves from becoming like our sinful ancestors, and more about maintaining the illusion of clean hands -- while harsh punishment is still imposed, but out of sight, on souls and bodies not our own.
If given the choice, I'd rather face pain and humiliation than years in prison... and it seems like such punishment would be better for my mental and physical health as well, not to mention that of my family. I agree with Douthat that "civilized" imprisonment is more for the benefit of a society that doesn't want to think about punishment than for the protection of society or the benefit of convicts.
(HT: Instapundit.)
