Hmmmm.. This is what I've been saying for years. Thanks for doing this story, your stats are a definite eye-opener.

The parents need to step up. The culture of the city taking the slack for everything has to stop.

Let's talk about the criminal justice system for a minute. This is partly inspired by "Bastards of the Party," an HBO documentary I saw a few weeks ago. One part of the documentary that really hit a nerve was when the social historian being interviewed made a remark about jails being "warehouses" for a group of people that society has no use for. I pretty much agree with this statement, and will go out on a limb and take it alittle farther.

Why have prisons become a "life-style?" Why do we have huge amount of people (millions in fact) incarcerated, and being completely under utilized? They waste their time, waste our tax dollars, and the majority come out even worse. Why aren't we trying to revamp the system into something completely streamlined? It's absurd to put someone behind bars for 10-20 years and expect them to be rehabilitated when they get out. You're basically forcing them to rely on the prison system to survive.

We need to change this. If I were trying to overhaul the system, I'd propose a plan along these lines. Shorter sentences(1-5 years), and tons more support on the tail end. Counselors, bootcamp, job training, substance abuse counseling, everything that we can throw at them. Do this two times, and if the person is still committing crimes, execute them. Yes, execute them. Make the appeal process three weeks. We waste tons and tons of money on criminals because we simply don't want to deal with them. I say, deal with them. If we cared about an ounce for others, we should try our best to rehabilitate criminals. Make the three strikes and your out policy a real deterant.

I know nobody will ever go for this kind of idea. Everyone will say it's way too extreme, or it's evil. But, look at it this way; Criminals are taking money away from other social services that could really benefit our quality of life. They murder, steal, and rob, and then they cost us even more when they're behind bars. If they don't want to live by the laws that govern us, then they need to understand that they cannot survive by breaking the law and living out the rest of their days in prison.

"Even though many young thugs do really bad things to really good people, the justice system still tries to rehabilitate them and basically slaps them on the hand for their serious crimes."

Okay, well what do you suggest we do? Give the 16 year old 5 years in jail? He's still out at 21 with no new social skills. Give him life then?

Look, like it or not, rehabilitation isn't just some sort of bleeding heart social goal (though I like that part of it). It is also a recognition that we can't simply lock everyone up and throw away the key, we have to try and find away to make sure they don't engage in further anti-social behavior. Sometimes that works, sometimes that fails with horrible results. I don't like that result, but the other option (which has to be life imprisonment if we follow your argument, unless you follow Gtown_teach's absolutely absurd 3 strike and death argument) seems even more ridiculous.

What is even more distressing is the fact that you have this whole post which basically dehumanizes these kids (ie. thugs, menacing brats, etc.) and yet your article has absolutely no explanation about how Alante got to where he was. What led him to the teacher assault, the arrest for the girl, the theft and ultimately, the alleged tragic killing? Instead of something that actually tries to provide an answer to why this happened, we end up with a George Bush inspired "lock them all up" diatribe that sounds much more like a Republican Party talking point than a serious study of the why and the how of juvenile offenders. Too bad.

Philly Resident,

Do you selectively read things? You didn't even argue about the idea of shorter sentences, and way more social support. When I was talking about the 3 strikes and you're dead plan, I was talking about doing massive amounts of counseling, job training, and behavior modification during and after the sentence. A person being locked up for a tremendous amount of time is terrible, but it's even more terrible when they get out, and receive almost no supervision, counseling, and training. If we really care about the lives of the criminals, we need to show them that we're invested in them to try to make their lives, and our lives better. But, if they're simply not interested, then they need to go. Now, I'm not talking about small offenses, I'm talking about violent robberys, rape, assault with the intent to kill, homocide. If you want solutions, try reading the arguments completely first.

Also, did you miss Simon's entire passage about how Alante didn't have family structure? About how the kids in the one family were just as poor, but had their focus around education? Quite frankly the majority of the problems with these kids is family structure. Anyway, please read my entire post before saying it's just absurd.

Gtown,

I did read the entire argument, I was focusing mainly on my problem's with the article and probably should have left out the statement about your post until I could further clarify. For that, I am sorry.

However, having re-read your post again and taking into account what you said I must say that I still find it, well, absurd. To begin with, your first post makes no distinction about "serious" or "non serious crimes", which was part of what I thought was absurd.

But taking you at simply the statement of violent crimes should be give this sort of treatment, I still have a ton of objections. There are a ton of practical considerations in terms of your death sentence idea (ie. people have and should have the right to have an appellate review of their case, which just can't happen in three weeks). More importantly, the idea that we just start executing a ton of people because they haven't stopped committing crimes flies in the face of common decency.

I understand your argument about providing a ton of social services in jail and upon release. But the reality is that even if we provide those things some people are going to commit crimes. To simply suggest that we start mass executions because we are tired of spending money incarcerating them fills me with a huge amount of dread. We've now taken a turn away from individualized consideration in sentencing to basically aggregating large groups together for the purpose of killing them.

I think the deterrent argument is hopelessly broken. First, people generally don't have a conception of the likelihood of being subject to the mandatory death sentence because most people probably imagine they aren't going to get caught. Did mandatory federal sentences on firearms somehow reduce gun possession or use in Philadelphia over the past few years? Has the drug kingpin execution statute somehow solved the problem of large scale drug traffickers. Hell, has the mandatory drug sentences here kept the teenager from dealing over 2 grams of cocaine? I think the answer to all of the above is no.

I certainly apologize for not taking more time before to respond fully to your criticisms (and maybe my word choice was poor), but I didn't selectively read it and your idea still doesn't make sense to me.

As to Simone's article, I did read it and a bald assertion of no family structure doesn't really explain the situation. Plenty of people have no family structure and do horrible things, plenty of people have no family structure and don't shoot other people. I am sure there are people out there with "family structure" who commit remarkably horrible acts. I guess to clarify what I meant by it was what do we know about Alante. This is off the top of my head, but we have no indication if he ever suffered any physical abuse, sexual abuse, trauma from previous incidents of violence he saw, drug issues, alcohol issues, issues of abbandonment, issues from poverty, etc. I am not saying this excuses the action, but if we are going to make large assertions about populations based on a specific case, then it might be necessary to actually look into the background of the specific actor we are using as a metaphor for Philly juvenile crime. I get that wasn't the thrust of her article, but I think that is where the article is remarkably flawed.

True, I didn't specify the type of crimes. Surely, we don't want to start executing people because they have two joints on them, or misdormeanors.

But, Why is it so absurd? Why wouldn't the safety of people who are trying to live their lives inside the bounds of the law be a priority of the state and federal government? Why is it so absurd to put down someone whom shows a long rap sheet of violent crime? And, what is "common decency" when you're being robbed at gun-point. We have too many people warehoused in this country with super-long histories of violent crime. Why are we warehousing them? What for? Because we don't have the cajones to deal with them? Why should it fill you with dread? What fills me with dread is that these guys are still alive, and might prey on me or my family in the future.

Alright, if you want to rehabilitate them, then do so.. 100 percent. If the rehabilitation doesn't work, then what? Punishment? The most extreme punishment I can think of is execution. Either way, deal with the problem. We're wasting time, and money with our current system. And, it's getting us no where.

And, yeah... family structure is the majority of what a child learns. Not saying everyone, but most. Child may have a strong family but get abused.. There's dysfunction in ever family. But, when you have a collapsed family and community structure due to poverty, or other social issues, these are the results.

This is a classic example of a conservative philosophy and a liberal one clashing. The reason Philly has a high crime rate is because the city taxes you to death and that’s it. I know it sounds crazy but when you tax people this much you drive out middle class families and you drive out single people who live in apartments. What is left are slums and a whole bunch of poor people congregating. What should be done is for the city to lower its tax burden. Get rid of that ridiculous income tax and get rid of that stupid business “privilege tax”. What will happen is simple gentrification. Wealthier people will move into the city and spend their money in the city. Businesses will move in. This will create more money for the justice system to operate. This will allow poor people to get better jobs and, or move out to the country where it is cheaper to live. As long as you have a huge population that lives in poverty you will have a huge crime rate. I know this sounds crazy but take me for example. I recently moved to Philly. I found out that Philly has an income tax and I am preparing to move to the other side of city line just so I don’t have to pay this tax. Philadelphia will never get another income tax dollar from me and all the sales taxes I pay at the local stores will go to Montgomery county because I will shop there. Just check the stats Philly has lost 500,000 residents in the last 50 years that’s 1000 residents a year and my guess is that poor people are not the ones moving out.

excuse me, 10,000 residents per year

you say a lot and speak with authority but do you really know???

here's the authority. How long have you had democrats running the city? What has the population done in the last 50 years. What has the tax situation look like in the last 10 years? Are you saying that poor people who don't have opportunities don't attract crime? It's common sense. My most profound argument is this. How's is it working out?

Preach Pat preach

I love it when people use terms like "bleeding-heart," "liberal," and "liberal Democrat" to describe huges swathes of people. Sounds like someone got their money out of the "Talk-Like-Rush-Limbaugh" audio tapes series, Level 1.

Actually it was vol 2.