Justice?

In Hungary, a gypsy kid was sent to a reformatory (kid prison) for stealing a T shirt. After 11 months the jury´s verdict denied that he could legally defend himself at liberty, so he stays more. The reason that he gave the T-shirt to one of his friends to hide it got punished even further - the same as "organized crime". I agree that things cannot get unpunished, but years of prison for a 14-16 year old dude, separated from his parents, just for a T shirt?

 

I've heard reports like this before. One time, a mother called the cops on her daughter for stealing a pack of kids tattoos (like those ones you put on your skin by applying water to them). Anyways, the cops took the kid to the police station and put her in the cell. Sometimes, people aren't fair and reasonable. The 14 year old should know better, but it shouldn't have been taken that extremely.

 

a strange unfair planet we live on, huh? A kid was once suspended for trying to prevent another kid from stabbing someone with a sharpened pencil.

 

I got kicked out of school cuz i knocked out a guy that was molesting a little girl

 

It's very hard to define "justice" by prison years. My country has some peculiar punishments as well. You can be out of prison in like 5 years for murder, but getting 10-20 years for being involved in the drug business isn't too unheard of. I guess it's because with murder you can still think up of many excuses that may reduce your sentance (sentence?). But with drugs - it's just that. You don't accidentally sell drugs.

 

sentance (sentence?).

"Sentence".

 

Yeah, getting prison time for petty theft seems weird. But then again if you don't want to do the time, don't do the crime.

 

Waiting for 6+ hours in a hospital to get psychoanalyzed for a comment sure was fun.

Heh, here in Serbia patients would complain if they wait for an hour and all examination are 100% free. Btw. I think that the person who has sent you for psychoanalysis should have sent himself/herself instead.

 

It's required to make sure the child isn't mentally ill and a potential threat to other people, so it's kinda understandable

 

I don't see theft from stores as a big deal, if it's a big name retail store. A small-time shop, or someone's house, that's where I draw the line. But then again there's the topic of store shrink and lost money and shit and blah blah. I'm not too educated on this stuff. Putting some kid in jail for stealing a simple item is ridiculous. If it was a huge haul of stuff or robbing a bank I can understand.

I disagree with this sentiment entirely. Big store or small mom-and-pop shop, stealing should have the same consequences. It isn't more "right" or "wrong" to steal from one or the other.

Also if there was a lower sentence for stealing something cheap than something expensive, then people would have an incentive to steal candy bars or whatnot because they would just get a "slap on the wrist". Sure it's not a big deal if it's just a kid or whatnot, but the law is normally much more lenient on minors than adults, as it should be (with your criminal record being wiped clean once you come of age).

But yes the problem with creating exceptions like these is that then an odd sort of incentive is created to steal from one and not the other. Your idea makes sense if people were not to take this into consideration when deciding to commit crimes, but unfortunately that is not the case.

 

I wasn't saying there should be laws for whether you steal something expensive vs cheap/ mom and pop vs Walmart, I'm just giving my opinion on stealing in general

(Minor theft punishment with jailing is still silly though imo)

 

The problem I saw with explaining away stealing from big retail stores as not being as harsh to the people as stealing from a mom-and-pop sort of store is that the theft doesn't hurt the retailer: It hurts the employees. If employees report items going missing constantly, or the head of that store notes that sales are down because people are stealing, the money is more likely to be made up by cutting the pay of the workers or even firing them. While stealing from a local family run store hurts the owners directly, stealing from the big retail stores hurts local people much more than it does the owners of said company.