Crime and punishment

[Vlad!]

No, not the Dostoevsky novel, excellent though it may be.

Early this week, some teenaged vandals stole the head off of a beloved Durham landmark. The perpetrators have since been located and the head has been found.

From a chat a co-worker had with a representative from the museum, it looks as though they're leaning towards not pressing formal charges but instead forcing the kids to work all summer on the museum grounds doing unappealing work such as shoveling animal waste and pulling weeds. The possibility of requiring them to pay for the repairs has also been brought up. The argument against pressing charges is twofold:
* Some involved don't want the crime to appear on these kids' records
* There has been a lot of public sentiment against these kids; if it went to court their names would be public record, and there's the fear of reprisals/vigilantism.

The take of my co-worker (a Durhamite who, like most longtime residents of the Bull City, loved the dinosaur) is that it would be good for these kids to be hauled into court and have to face the music, and that if you do something stupid then you have to face the consequences. This seems like a reasonable opinion to me, and were I asked I think my response would be much the same.

What do you pholks think? Bring the kids before a judge, or let them off the hook officially in exchange for some dirty work over the summer?

[enemy anemone]

off with their heads!

[Vlad!]

I found it ironic that my co-worker was on one hand decrying the museum for not pressing charges, and on the other hand he would probably be one of the mob carrying pitchforks and torches if the kids' names were released.

[chrisnu]

I would bring the kids before a judge, and have them face the consequences, but have some sort of police protection available for them, at least for a time.

[Vlad!]

Sure, but the Durham police have better things to do than protect some juvenile delinquents 24/7. They could certainly offer them the choice of protective custody--keep them in the pokey for their own good until the dinosaur gets repaired--but I doubt any teenager would agree to that.

[bloop]

off with their heads!

I'm bloop, and I approve schil's message.

[RedcoatJones]

Maybe it's different in NC, but I was under the impression that if they go to Juvey court, their names are still sealed. Of course, at 17, they are on the bubble of being tried as adult or a child.

[bloop]

Yeah - I think we should keep things more consistent.  If you're going to set an age, stick with it (I would set it around 13 for criminal cases - they know what they do).

[Vlad!]

Maybe it's different in NC, but I was under the impression that if they go to Juvey court, their names are still sealed. Of course, at 17, they are on the bubble of being tried as adult or a child.

I don't know how it works in NC, and I don't know if all the perps were minors. That's a good point, though.

Yeah - I think we should keep things more consistent.  If you're going to set an age, stick with it (I would set it around 13 for criminal cases - they know what they do).

I'm a little conflicted about that. On one hand, I fully support making people pay the consequences of their actions, but there's also the argument that it's counterproductive to send a kid to jail for several years (obviously we're not looking at years of jail time in this case, but still...). By putting them in the lockdown with other criminals and keeping them from school/church/their parents which can have good influences, you're really just exacerbating the problem.

That said, in this circumstance I see no reason to treat these kids specially. They did something stupid, and the judicial system really needs to send the message that this is not in any way OK.

[Vlad!]

Update:

First of all, the kids are all 18, so they would be tried as adults. Still, a good question to ask.

The museum has apparently decided to not press any charges. There has been talk of putting them to work over the summer, but nothing concrete has happened. One of the kids apparently worked at the museum; whether that played into anything I don't know.

Reasons why I think this is a bad idea:
* The justice system exists for a reason. To not use it is to undermine its effectiveness, especially in cases where the perps are still at a formative age. Being made to do the perp walk up the courthouse steps would probably be a good experience for them.
* These are white middle-class kids in a town which is stratified along both race and class. Some of the "if they were black the museum would have thrown the book at them" comments are as unavoidable as they are unfortunate, and while I don't think that's the case, if anything children of privilege should be held to higher standards and should be able to get away with less.
* A lot of people strongly disagree with this approach. If the concern is vigilanteism, it would be better to punish them through official channels rather than slap their wrists. Believe me: if their names get out (and they very well might; this is the information age after all), the risk of unofficial reprisals is significantly greater since there are no official ones.

The thing that saddens me most is that we always suspected--and I think the museum's response to this event proves--that even though the dinosaur was a beloved landmark to the Durham inhabitants, to the museum it was a nuisance. They were most likely waiting for it to fall apart enough to justify bulldozing the entire thing, and this even no doubt gives them the excuse to do so. Perhaps I'm just pessimistic, but that's the way it seems to me at the moment.

Bonus material: DINO PICS!
this one's from a while ago when it was in better condition
this one's more recent; notice the holes in the skin, the overgrowth, and the much-less-effectual fence
another one from back closer to its heyday
the headless dinosaur

[bloop]

I thought the people of the locality of state can press charges - that the museum actually doesn't have to (but they'd obviously have a open-and-shut civil suit).

[Vlad!]

I thought the people of the locality of state can press charges - that the museum actually doesn't have to (but they'd obviously have a open-and-shut civil suit).

I doubt very strongly that they can press criminal charges. They could possibly press civil charges if they knew the identities of the perpetrators, which of course brings us to a chicken-and-egg problem. They would also have to prove that they were damaged by the act, which as you suggest would be a lot harder because there would be no monetary or personal property damage they could claim.

[bloop]

I guess I just thought there have been cases where "the people" (the criminal justice system, really) decided to press charges without the blessing of the victim.  Prosecuting criminal cases is in the best interest of the people whether or not the victims of the perps are on-board.

[Vlad!]

New dino news: looks like the dino will be saved

I'm kind of irritated that the burden for restoring the brontosaurus is being put on the community instead of the perps, but at least they're not going to bulldoze it.

Also, note that this article gets one thing right that the previous article misstated: the head, far from being in good condition, was pretty beat up when it was recovered.