So VERY Sad! Instead of Helping Here in the US, Just Lock

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Them Up!! Sounds like this woman was totally overwhelmed. Now what will become of her children? Sadly, the answer here in this country is to lock the parents up (especially the mothers). Is it this way in other parts of the world?

Mom Dies In Jail -Unpaid School Fines-

Yeah, the only thing the U.S. leads the world in any more is number of incarcerated citizens. Very sad story, indeed. Certainly there has to be another way of dealing such small crimes other then tossing people in the clink.

My wife read how the poor woman had been denied her heart medication, probably resulting in her death.

I think that is awful that they put parents in jail now for their kid missing school. That just makes a bad situation worse. Who is supposed to watch the kid and make them go to school if the parent is in jail? As much as I hate to say this after all I went through shouldn't it be the kid receiving the punishment since they are the one missing school? I was sent away for it twice and had family court for it 3 times.

My mother is lucky that they didn't do that when I was in school. She would have been in jail so much because she couldn't make me go most of the time. I was bullied and hated school in general so there wasn't really anything that could motivate me to go.

Around here, if your kids miss school too often, you dont get a fine, but child-support-money can be reduced and normally social workers will show up, trying to examine the reasons behind it.

This appears to be the fruit of the No Child Left Behind thing.

I am NOT against a principle, that it be a crime to neglect and sabotage your childrens' education.

Why were there no meetings including child, mother, psychiatrist/counsellor, and school system representative?

Was any psych eval ever done, one-on-one, to find out if there was a frightened child afraid to attend school, as Hanyo was?

If they are missing school on purpose, then it is quite appropriate and fitting.

After all, without an education they aren't going to have as much of a chance at getting a decent job and are more likely to end up in jail or prison themselves.

I know a couple of twins around here who rarely went to school. I ran into them one school morning at 3 am and told them to go home and get some sleep so they could go to school the next morning. The next day I got chewed out for telling them to go home.

Sure enough, they have both spent significant time in prison now as well as their many jail sentences. I think it would be quite appropriate if we had put their mother in jail for refusing to take responsibility for her children.

^I love this!^ First good response I have heard in a long time!! Let's jail all these irresponsible parents that can't or won't control their children. Since the jails are all full up, we can let loose the druggies, rapists, and thieves. All these kids can then be brought up by the state properly using our tax dollars. I think this is a most worth-while cause! And for the perfect parents like yourself, we can farm some of them out if you wish not to pay the higher taxes. Instead you can lower your tax bill by raising these kids properly as they should be! Sounds fair to me.

P.S. Oh and by the way, you can't mistreat them in any way. NO spankings are allowed and you can't lock them in the house either. NO denying them meals because they did or didn't do something. The only punishment you may use to get them to conform is to give them timeouts. This is just to level the playing field a bit...

Maybe in some cases it's like that but it wasn't at all for me. Making my mother a criminal and taking her away because I had school problems wouldn't have helped me any with that. With as much school as I missed she would have been in jail so much. If getting locked up twice myself didn't make me go locking my mother up wouldn't have made me go either. She tried but short of physically dressing me and literally dragging me onto the school bus every day (which I was too big to physically do at that point) it just wasn't possible. School was just too awful of an experience for me that no punishment was worse than being there. In my case I think home schooling would have been the best solution but we didn't know about it and no one offered so we never did it.

I suppose putting the mother in jail might be the thing to do if she is just totally neglecting her kids and doesn't care what they do but it isn't always that simple. My mother tried to get me to go to school but I just refused to go. It's not like I was running the streets either when I skipped. I just stayed at home.

Her prison sentence may even be unconstitutional.

From the Supreme Court ruling in Bearden v. Georgia (1983):
http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/461/660/

Contrast the Supreme Court opinion with Pensylvania State Law:
http://www.pacode.com/secure/data/234/c ... /s456.html


As for the bolded parts above: One of the judges handling her cases has apparently stated that she could not pay the fines.
http://www.examiner.com/article/woman-d ... speaks-out

This certainly raises some questions about the constitutionality of the sentence... and the law itself, for that matter, as it could be argued that Pennsylvania law apparently transforms a constitutional prohibition of prison sentencing into judicial discretion.

Anyway, local media (mentioned in the Examiner article above) claims that she was taking medication for not only high blood pressure, but also anxiety and bipolar disorder.

I wonder if the judge who handed down the sentence is having his Falling Down moment right now...

If you read your own article you will see that when ordered to produce proof of income and her bills she failed to comply.

Should the judge just take defendants at their word when they say that they cannot pay? Not hardly.

If you read my post you would see that it was not just her word that she could not pay the fines, but also the opinion of the judge (Wally Scott) who had handled several of her prior cases.

I don't believe it's usually wise to put a custodial parent in jail over trivialities.

Not making sure their kids go to school is hardly a triviality.