Posted on 06/13/2014 8:39:25 AM PDT by Rusty0604
PHILADELPHIA A growing number of Americans are expressing outrage that a Pennsylvania mother of seven died in jail last weekend while serving a 48-hour sentence over unpaid, school truancy-related fines.
DiNinoEileen DiNino, 55, was found dead last Saturday in her jail cell. Authorities dont know the cause of death yet, they have ruled out suspicious behavior.
DiNino was being penalized because several of her children routinely missed school. According to the Associated Press, She had racked up $2,000 in fines, fees and court costs since 1999...
The fines related to school truancy are quite small perhaps $20 but its the court-related costs that are most expensive, sometimes reaching $150. Such costs add up quickly and make it nigh impossible for low-income parents to pay.
In the county where DiNino lived, roughly 110 parents of truant students are jailed every year.
Americans of all political stripes are denouncing the practice and likening it to the debtors prisons from the nations Colonial days.
(Excerpt) Read more at eagnews.org ...
Conservatives uphold the rule of law. How am I not doing that?
A lien on what? Property?
Fine then. Confiscate her iPhone. Then you’d be screaming about that.
There is the relevant discussion of just laws, of which Obamacare isn't. State laws on education may not be just either, and if not, they should be resisted.
The presumption is that this was a valid law that this woman (and over a hundred others, according to the article) broke and were assessed penalties.
No, I wouldn’t. You big government nanny state busy bodies are all the same....
“Dying on the inside” makes it sound like your guts are rotted out by the last stages of terminal cancer. But a lot of or perhaps most middle-aged people have something or other that requires treatment. At 55, make or female, you can be just fine one day and keel over dead from a heart attack the next.
And I’ll bet some smart lawyer is going to file a wrongful death suit on behalf of the dead woman’s children and make them very rich kids.
Conservatives do not support totalitarianism. They do not support regimentation and intrusions of government. They do not believe that government knows better how to raise and instruct children than parents do. They do not believe government should force citizens to comply with stupid and unjust laws.
No conservative educators organized that educational system. Neither did conservative legislators wrote the laws that punished this woman for failing to knuckle under. And I’ll bet a house payment that no genuinely conservative judge had seven kids taken into institutional care so that their mother could be thrown in jail.
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that you were one of the people I was ranting about. I was writing that post to you because I thought you and I were kind of on the same page about some things, and I was extending the thought. I apologize for writing in a way that made it seem I was arguing with you.
Debtor prisons are against the constitution both state & federal, and illegal (although used by the court systems under another name equally as illegal).
Sick perhaps? With many school systems attendance policies of doctors excuse needed after third miss in a school year or it is unexcused the first week of school can eat up those three days just by the typical bugs that kids get at school especially the first few days.
Take into consideration that parent who is raising a child may know from experience and the fact 20% of the kids at school are out with a bug may not be able to see a doctor. The days of parents notes saying a child was sick are over. Schools because of feral government {no I did not spell federal wrong} puts the screws to state and local schools based on attendance with Zero consideration to childhood illnesses or common sense. They in turn write laws that put good parents using common sense in legal jeopardy. They've even put these stupid unrealistic attendance requirements into kindergarten and Pre-K classes.
I would not think it unusual for any kid in lower grades of grade school to miss up to two weeks a year due to illness. Should parents have to run kids to the doctor for issues they by experience know how to treat? NO!!! The Morons running school systems know viruses etc. are going around & are active and yet still demand doctor notes anyway. They school boards will get their **** money one way or the other now wont they?
Sorry I was trying to be funny. I agree with you, if kids don’t want to learn and their parents don’t care then they can live with the consequences.
I agree with you again. If it was shown the woman had a prior condition that she was taking medicine for and was denied access like she was insured by Obamacare, then for sure there could be a basis for suing.
And if they just ignore the fines?
Okay, enough with the histrionics. Do conservatives support the rule of law or don't they? You can argue the justness of a law or a sentence, but the argument here seems to be that no penalty should be assessed for any law breaches. A person can be ticketed for overdue library material (I've actually seen this) after exhaustive attempts to recover either the book or the fine, and eventually, after all attempts to get either the fines or a response to court summons reach a dead end, an arrest warrant may be issued. Does that seem severe? The threat of jail isn't over failing to turn over a book (theft) but over the disregard for a justice system that we ALL rely upon for civilization to exist. And some criminal justice system MUST exist in society, otherwise we have Detroit.
I can think of plenty of staunch conservatives who believe that some requirement to provide for a minimal education of children is reasonable law. This particular woman seemed to habitually ignore her duty to provide some education.
Uhhhhh.... A mother of seven would still be alive? Sheesh! How many of you folks are out there on Freerepublic?
Well, whether Obamacare is or isn’t a valid law, it’s the law and people will be assessed penalties. Should we not object if the state wanted to jail people if they couldn’t pay those penalties?
What I’m getting at is, should we only object to such a punishment for laws we don’t agree with, or should we just object to that punishment on grounds of principle? I think we can foresee that the government will probably abuse the power of arbitrarily jailing peaceful citizens for government-imposed debts, so why should we allow them that power?
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