Fine his parents $100, expel him from regular class for a week and have him do homework in a separate room by himself. Parents will scold him, he has to pay a price that actually registers. (at 14 I'm more concerned with losing 2 weeks of Xbox than a felony legal status I don't fully appreciate). He'll probably not do it again, or maybe he will, who cares, unless he escalates it's fine. That's just kids being dumb, and at age 17 it's not even interesting anymore.
I mean jeez, a felony? Give me a break. Kid changed a freaking wall paper. If he had done that 50 times in a row, you still don't give a felony, that's ridiculous and carries extremely heavy consequences.
I mean, for god's sake, there is a professional apartheid system. You have a felony? You get discriminated, for a job, for access to uni, for access to housing etc etc. It's discrimination, period. Why do we relegate 14 year old's to that position for changing a wallpaper in a prank, even if he did it 10 times?
The only reason this discrimination of people with a felony makes sense, is if we put the label of felony only on people who ought to be discriminated against. i.e. similarly to how if you molest a child, you're labelled a child molester and get discriminated against if you want to work at a school, with few exceptions this is usually a very sensible thing to do. But when we give a label (including the burden of the discrimination affecting people with a felony) to a 14 year old prankster, we can't justify it.
History is full of people who have lived wonderful, moral, lives, who made great contributions to society and went on to be upstanding citizens, who pranked way worse. You really think these people ought to have been given felonies, too?
There's a ton of iterative steps both in punishment and prevention. It usually starts with targeting parents, with council from people a kid looks up to (i.e. not the principal), with luxuries like games being taken away etc. Really I don't get it, changing a wallpaper on a computer is like pulling your kid brothers' hair, it's not something the police has to get involved in. It's a parenting/school type issue, not a criminal one.
If sensitive info was on the computer, sorry but it's not very relevant. 1) Someone do your job, you get paid for security or have security responsibilities that get wasted by a 14 year old. 2) How should the kid know, he didn't even touch or target it. If we start punishing people for what they 'might' have done, oh boy... talk about Orwellian thought crimes, it's beyond ridiculous. We can convict anyone of anything the moment the show the slightest intention to pull a prank.
The police should not be using threats and intimidation to teach kids a lesson.
It doesn't even make any sense, tell the kid you are arresting him to teach him a lesson and then announce to the media that all you are doing is teaching the kid a lesson, don't worry about it.
Will the kid notice in the media that you announced that you were just teaching him a lesson? Probably. Will this undermine the value of said lesson? Probably.
> The police should not be using threats and intimidation to teach kids a lesson.
Those are the only tools the Police have. Ideally, the school shouldn't have stuck the police on the job. This is a failure of the school system as they outsource their disciplinary actions to the Police. (Something I see all too often in schools...)
But as far as police actions are concerned, I'd say this is fair game and rather merciful in the great scheme of things. As noted, the sheriff's detective wasn't expecting the charges to go through pre-trial.
I agree, the police shouldn't have gotten involved.
I think where we differ is that you seem to think that once the police were called, it's a sensible thing for the police to then to say 'oh we're police, we have to respond to every request with action, let's choose a tool, ah here it is, let's use the scariest one we can get away with and then not go through with it, perhaps partially because of public pressure, that should solve it while not screwing over the kid for life'.
Whereas I'd say, it's a sensible thing for the police to say 'Alright so, the kid changed the wallpaper on a computer? Sir, this is not a police matter, I trust the school and parents are equipped to deal with this kid, goodbye'. Or something to that effect.
In general, the police have the power to arrest people. Doing so with the notion that the person is an immediate danger to others or a participant in a crime is not intimidation. So this is a tool that they have that is not based on a threat or based on intimidation.
There is nothing merciful about exercising their power in a situation where it should not be exercised.
Yes, I remember that you are perfectly fine with them planning on intimidating the kid. The intimidation is what I objected to in my first comment in this thread. Anyway, it's fine if we disagree.
I mean jeez, a felony? Give me a break. Kid changed a freaking wall paper. If he had done that 50 times in a row, you still don't give a felony, that's ridiculous and carries extremely heavy consequences.
I mean, for god's sake, there is a professional apartheid system. You have a felony? You get discriminated, for a job, for access to uni, for access to housing etc etc. It's discrimination, period. Why do we relegate 14 year old's to that position for changing a wallpaper in a prank, even if he did it 10 times?
The only reason this discrimination of people with a felony makes sense, is if we put the label of felony only on people who ought to be discriminated against. i.e. similarly to how if you molest a child, you're labelled a child molester and get discriminated against if you want to work at a school, with few exceptions this is usually a very sensible thing to do. But when we give a label (including the burden of the discrimination affecting people with a felony) to a 14 year old prankster, we can't justify it.
History is full of people who have lived wonderful, moral, lives, who made great contributions to society and went on to be upstanding citizens, who pranked way worse. You really think these people ought to have been given felonies, too?
There's a ton of iterative steps both in punishment and prevention. It usually starts with targeting parents, with council from people a kid looks up to (i.e. not the principal), with luxuries like games being taken away etc. Really I don't get it, changing a wallpaper on a computer is like pulling your kid brothers' hair, it's not something the police has to get involved in. It's a parenting/school type issue, not a criminal one.
If sensitive info was on the computer, sorry but it's not very relevant. 1) Someone do your job, you get paid for security or have security responsibilities that get wasted by a 14 year old. 2) How should the kid know, he didn't even touch or target it. If we start punishing people for what they 'might' have done, oh boy... talk about Orwellian thought crimes, it's beyond ridiculous. We can convict anyone of anything the moment the show the slightest intention to pull a prank.