posted on October 1, 2002 11:12:40 PM new CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) - A judge was wrong to order a teenager convicted of vandalizing a school to wear a sign that said "I am a juvenile criminal," the state Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday.
The 14-year-old admitted breaking into a middle school with three other juveniles in October 2000 and doing about $60,000 worth of damage.
She was ordered by Iredell County District Judge James Honeycutt last February to wear the square-foot sign whenever she went out in public for the rest of the school year.
The girl's lawyer, William Willis, said she wore the sign for about 10 days before he appealed and got a stay of Honeycutt's order.
"Even that 10 to 15 days she had to wear it had the effect that (the judge) wanted," Willis said. "I'm sure she'll never forget."
The three-judge appeals panel said the sign violated the state's prohibition against publicizing the names of juveniles involved in criminal cases and exposed her to public embarrassment.
posted on October 2, 2002 08:15:41 AM new
Perhaps that vandalizing is not acceptable? Saying "Now, honey, you know that it isn't nice to do that" and giving time-outs obviously hadn't been doing the trick...
posted on October 2, 2002 10:15:58 AM new
I read the first sentence and knew what would happen.
I can't think of a better punishment, myself, except public service (though most kids don't show up and probation officers don't really care, at least the ones with whom I've dealt) with the sign around her neck.
When you compare 60,000 worth of damage, rising school insurance costs and the loss of education to other students to what the poor little thing had to go through I just can't get upset.
posted on October 2, 2002 10:16:05 AM newA judge was wrong... Well, at least he was trying to do something to teach this teen a lesson.
If I were the judge I would have ordered her to pay back her share of the damages in some way. If she didn't already have a part time job, maybe she could have been ordered to help the janitor after/before/during school to begin to work the debt off. Anything along those lines.
posted on October 2, 2002 11:17:26 AM new
Were all the juveniles female?
Maybe the judge had just read THE SCARLET LETTER.
Wonder why he chose this particular way to
have "community supervision" of the child
after she was expelled?
Has he been giving this punishment out regularly? Has he given this punishment to boys as well as to this girl? The paper said this child was the only one of the four to say "enough."
She was expelled from the 9th grade in February and was to wear the sign the REST of the school year. Until June?
Maybe with southern conservative’s help we can go allllll the way back. Maybe we will
start using the pillary, stoning in the streets, etc. These were all supposed to facilitate community supervision, weren't they?
Most newspapers ran the same story. This one gave a little more info:
"Willis said all four of the juveniles were ordered to wear the signs, but only his client appealed."
<snip>
"Essentially, the State is arguing that (the girl) has a choice between public
ridicule and de facto house arrest," wrote Judge James Wynn."
"The appeals judge also dismissed the state's argument that public wearing of the sign would facilitate community supervision of the juvenile while she was expelled from school."
posted on October 2, 2002 11:44:08 AM new
I think that the only likely outcome from such a sentence, especially considering the length of time that she was to wear the sign, would be that the child would become more anti-social than she already is.
There are many forms of punishment and rehabilitation available that might make a difference in modifying her attitudes and future behavior but this isn't one of them. The sentence is not motivated by any genuine desire for deterrence on the judge's part, but rather political grandstanding. His office is elective and such a bizarre sentence is certain to gain the media attention that it has, resulting in the superficial appearance of dealing with crime, giving him his 15 minutes of fame and local celebrity, and probably reassuring his re-election.
posted on October 2, 2002 05:13:32 PM new
Looks like political grandstanding to me. We had a similar case here 2 years age. Three 7th graders, 2 boys and a girl broke into one of our district's schools. They trashed computers, broke windows, splattered paint on walls...had a gay old time and caused over 20,000 dollars worth of damage.They testified that they had ingested methamphetamines that they were given by an older sibling prior to sneaking out. They were expelled from school and the district in addition pressed criminal charges. The kid's parents, who had testified that they "didn't know" their children were out of the house at 1:30 a.m. on a school night,(caught on tape by security cameras) were ordered by the judge to arrange for their kids to earn and repay the full amount of damages, or face contempt of court charges. It took over a year of washing cars, cutting grass, cleaning pastures, pulling weeds EVERY weekend and all summer long by the kids AND their folks, but the damages were paid for. They came all the way out to our place looking for chores to do, at whatever we were willing to pay...I think those kids learned a much better lesson than if they had been forced by some bozo politician to wear signs around their necks. Everybody knew who they were anyway....
posted on October 2, 2002 05:15:40 PM new
Interesting points, all. Today I was reading about Willie Bosket -- the "tender touch" didn't work so well with him.
posted on October 3, 2002 03:01:14 PM new
healthy shame and guilt comes from within the individual and needs no-one to force it on them. Either an individual is able to feel guilt, or they have a personality disorder and can't feel guilt regardless of what anyone does to them.
what happened here, is it discipline (direction) or punishment (hurt back)?
I just wish mental health was a more important issue in this country. If I were the first lady I think my pet project would be mental health for all!!!
posted on October 3, 2002 03:24:20 PM new
Virakech, like Rosalyn Carter.
I would think working for some form of restitution to the school would be more constructive. But, on the other hand, I would like to see Ken Lay of Enron walking about with a sign I am a scammer. You have the right to an informed opinion -Harlan Ellison
posted on October 3, 2002 04:57:59 PM new
Valleygirl,
It's true that parents are partially responsible for their children's behavior. Children who are "made to behave" by using humiliating techniques will grow up and use this technique in their relationship with others. I believe that virakech made a good observation about punishment with the question, "what happened here, is it discipline (direction) or punishment (hurt back)? "
posted on October 3, 2002 06:02:34 PM new
The plain fact is that sometimes pain of some sort is needed to get the message across or the lesson learned. Some people just don't pay attention to kinder, gentler methods. Who knows how many times this girl had pulled similar stunts?
And like the child who refuses to acknowledge "no" when it comes to touching something hot, now that she has been burned so to speak, it is doubtful she'll try it again. Unless, of course, her parents convince her that what she did wasn't all that bad & she didn't deserve to be punished...
posted on October 11, 2002 03:26:39 AM new Frustrated Judges Try Shaming ConvictsInto Good Behavior
By David B. Caruso, Associated Press Writer
PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Faced with an unending stream of unrepentant crooks, vagrants and addicts who shrug off short jail terms and scoff at probation, a small number of judges are returning to an old weapon in the war on crime: shame.
From the South Carolina judge who forced a man convicted of battery to carry a sign that read "I beat women," to the Ohio judge who sentenced two men who tossed bottles at a woman's car to dress in women's clothing, jurists have tried a variety of punishments intended to shame convicts into contemplating their crimes.
"The idea is that you are trying to rehabilitate someone, if in no other way than by reminding them and the community what they have done," said Mark Bergstrom, executive director of Pennsylvania's Commission on Sentencing.
Central Pennsylvania judge Charles Saylor of Sunbury drew mixed reviews this month when he ordered a man who had helped his girlfriend dispose of the body of her newborn baby to make monthly visits to the child's grave with flowers and a lighted candle.
County coroner James F. Kelley called the sentence, "a slap to the memory of that child" and said Scott Kinney's presence in the cemetery would be disruptive.
"So far, he hasn't shown any remorse whatsoever," Kelley said. "The judge seems to feel that maybe having him go there and see the marker will make him think about what he's done, but I'm leery. I don't think it's going to happen."
Kinney, 28, also served 204 days in jail while awaiting trial. His former girlfriend was convicted of murder for drowning the baby after giving birth.
Pennsylvania gives judges the power to set almost any condition on convicts who are placed on probation, as long as they are "reasonably related to the rehabilitation of the defendant."
This month a Carbon County judge approved a plea bargain that required a man who fled from police to run in a 5-kilometer foot race held to benefit a police union. Chad M. Eschbach, 21, completed the race Oct. 5.
"I was hoping it would be a deterrent," said District Attorney Gary F. Dobias. "I hoped that if he had a chance to interact with these officers, he would realize the danger he was putting them in when he fled."
Earlier this month, Lebanon County Judge Bradford Charles tried to plant the seeds of remorse by sentencing a man who destroyed a field of crops with his Jeep to serve community service on a farm.
Some of the cases have grabbed headlines and won praise, but lawyers and some experts say trying to embarass someone into reform can be risky.
Robert Sadoff, a psychiatry professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said research has shown that prisoners subjected to shaming tactics often react by becoming more violent. Other people punished in humiliating ways can be left embittered and likely to re-offend, he said.
"I don't think you can really manufacture remorse," he said. "It has to come from within."
Charles has tried creative approaches before, once ordering a woman to wear a badge that said "convicted shoplifter." The Superior Court overturned the sentence in June, ruling the badge had no value in the woman's rehabilitation.
"In that case, it didn't really help to rehabilitate her. She had a drug problem, and that is why she shoplifted," said the woman's attorney, Scott Stein.
Temple Law School professor Edward Ohlbaum said those and similar sentences are following a long-established legal tradition.
"I remember hearing in the 1980s about judges sentencing drunken driving defendants to work as volunteers in hospital emergency rooms," he said. "It strikes me that shaming somebody like that is on some level an act of revenge ... but it could also be a sign that the judge is saying, 'Can I do something that can turn this person's life around?'"
posted on October 11, 2002 05:22:22 AM new"...to the Ohio judge who sentenced two men who tossed bottles at a woman's car to dress in women's clothing, jurists have tried a variety of punishments intended to shame convicts into contemplating their crimes."
Wouldn't it be nice it judges didn't have to slam half the population while making names for themselves? The judges intention to "shame men" by wearing women's clothing should be insulting to all women.
Unless of course he/she makes men wear high heels. That would be well deserved torture.
A stupid invention.
posted on October 11, 2002 06:00:58 AM new"Wouldn't it be nice it judges didn't have to slam half the population while making names for themselves? The judges intention to "shame men" by wearing women's clothing should be insulting to all women.
"Unless of course he/she makes men wear high heels. That would be well deserved torture. A stupid invention.
Good idea, aposter!
By Thorsten Veblen....
In woman's dress there is obviously greater
insistence on such features as testify to the wearer's exemption
from or incapacity for all vulgarly productive employment. This
characteristic of woman's apparel is of interest, not only as
completing the theory of dress, but also as confirming what has
already been said of the economic status of women, both in the past and in the present.
As has been seen in the discussion of woman's status under the heads of Vicarious Leisure and Vicarious Consumption, it has
in the course of economic development become the office of the
woman to consume vicariously for the head of the household; and
her apparel is contrived with this object in view. It has come
about that obviously productive labor is in a peculiar degree
derogatory to respectable women, and therefore special pains
should be taken in the construction of women's dress, to impress
upon the beholder the fact (often indeed a fiction) that the
wearer does not and can not habitually engage in useful work.
Propriety requires respectable women to abstain more consistently
from useful effort and to make more of a show of leisure than the
men of the same social classes. It grates painfully on our nerves to contemplate the necessity of any well-bred woman's earning a
livelihood by useful work. It is not "woman's sphere." Her sphere
is within the household, which she should "beautify," and of
which she should be the "chief ornament." The male head of the
household is not currently spoken of as its ornament. This feature taken in conjunction with the other fact that propriety requires
more unremitting attention to expensive display in the dress and other paraphernalia of women, goes to enforce the view already implied in what has gone before. By virtue of its descent from a
patriarchal past, our social system makes it the woman's function in an especial degree to put in evidence her household's
ability to pay. According to the modern civilized scheme of life,
the good name of the household to which she belongs should be the
special care of the woman; and the system of honorific
expenditure and conspicuous leisure by which this good name is
chiefly sustained is therefore the woman's sphere. In the ideal
scheme, as it tends to realize itself in the life of the higher
pecuniary classes, this attention to conspicuous waste of
substance and effort should normally be the sole economic
function of the woman.
At the stage of economic development at which the women were
still in the full sense the property of the men, the performance
of conspicuous leisure and consumption came to be part of the
services required of them. The women being not their own masters,
obvious expenditure and leisure on their part would redound to
the credit of their master rather than to their own credit; and
therefore the more expensive and the more obviously unproductive
the women of the household are, the more creditable and more
effective for the purpose of reputability of the household or its
head will their life be. So much so that the women have been
required not only to afford evidence of a life of leisure, but
even to disable themselves for useful activity.
To apply this generalization to women's dress, and put the matter in concrete terms"the high heel, the skirt, the impractical bonnet, the corset, and the general disregard of the wearer's comfort which is an obvious feature of all civilized women's apparel, are so many items of evidence to the effect that in the modern civilized scheme of life the woman is still, in theory, the economic dependent of the man---that, perhaps in a highly idealized sense, she still is the man's chattel. The homely reason for all this conspicuous leisure and the attire on the part of women lies in the fact that they are servants to whom, in the differentiation of economic functions, has been delegated the master's ability to pay.
posted on October 11, 2002 06:35:47 AM new
High heels really are torture devices. I haven't worn them since I was a foolish teenager. I like my spine upright and straight, thank you. You have the right to an informed opinion -Harlan Ellison
