Posted on 05/12/2008 6:09:59 AM PDT by reaganaut1
Thadd McNamara was at the helm of his motor home on a cross-country trip in 2005 when his cellphone rang and a neighbor gave him the news: His grown son, Sean, was in trouble with law -- again.
...
It turned out Sean McNamara was accused of burglarizing his father's home and attempting to make off with a baseball cap bearing the logo "Snap-On Tools."
It was classic Sean, his father would later say. Nothing serious. Just another knuckle-head move from an overgrown kid who drank too much beer, didn't pay his bills and, essentially, refused to grow up. Thadd even had a phrase from his Catholic school Latin that he used to describe Sean -- puer eternus -- or eternal boy.
This time, McNamara decided, he wasn't going to bail out his son.
He pressed charges, banking on a prosecutor's assurance that Sean would be ordered to undergo alcohol counseling as a condition of his probation, if he was convicted.
"You don't want to see your kid in jail," McNamara said in a recent interview. "But I felt that him being put in rehab was going to be good for him."
But Sean never made it to rehab.
He was nearly beaten to death in a Los Angeles County jail after being placed in dorms with about 200 fellow inmates, many of them violent members of the Southsiders gang. McNamara was attacked when the guard who was supposed to be watching them left his post.
The attack, in which inmates allegedly jumped from third-tier bunks onto his head as he lay on the floor, left him with permanent brain damage.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
I've been saying this for years.
There are four classes of reprisal for offenses that make sense.
In descending order of severity, they are:
1) Death
2) Permanent physical isolation
3) Immediate physical punishment
4) Restitution
Prisons are an inverted world where good is evil, and evil, good. They train the worst criminals in our world to escalate their behavior, and most offenders come out worse than they went in.
I would close all prisons and replace them with punishment on the scale above.
The guard didn't leave his post. The place was under staffed. There were too many of Mexico's finest in there for them to handle.
"I doubt this would have happened if he were not white in a jail filled with Hispanics."
It could have happened in any jail that's understaffed like this one, or that's staffed with incompetents. They'll do this on the outside too and it doesn't matter what paint job the perp's sporting.
Maybe there is more to the story, but I think the dad went overboard if all that was taken was a baseball cap.
The state actually likes stories like this. Increases the deterent effect of the threat of jail time. Guess they thought the threat of being raped wasn’t harsh enough.
While I agree with you, what other recourse is there for a parent fed up with a “grown up kid” to be set straight ?
As far as I know, the family has no alternatives to getting help for a misbehaving adult other than a legal conviction.
As for this family - they understood the result would be probation and counseling, not jail, and they were misled.
In fact I bet the guards regularly left their posts to let the cons treat the new guys to a little “tough love”.
Eggxactly, Baynative!
Notice how few of our Freeper friends here are using logic and the words “illegal alien”. I wonder why. Hispanic? How about just “illegal aliens from whatever country/countries”?
The Mayor Tony Villar (a former gang member himself) and wussie Po-lice Chief Bratton should both be sued for allowing this to happen on their watch. Things need to start happening in L.A.!
As for this family - they understood the result would be probation and counseling, not jail, and they were misled.
The reason I do not counsel use of legal system and to keep family memebers out of the legal system is contained in your sentence above. I have seen this happen dozens of times.
All liberals and gun grabbers are accessories to criminals.
There is but one thing about the Saudi culture I agree with but sadly, we will not see happen here in “civilized society”—hangings in the squares of America. Crime would go down exponentially if we allowed this. Also, firing squads for capital crimes by convicted service personnel.
The boy was 41 y/o, had a history of screwing up and was explicitly told not to go around the parent's house. He kicked the door in while his parents were away and the neighbor's called the cops. The old man was fed up and the DA promised to force an alcohol treatment program.
Interesting. It’s getting hard to tell which way these stories will break here on FR. Usually it’s a “got what he deserved” reaction. Actually, it’s not hard to tell at all.
I have to agree. Jails are full of very dangerous and very bad people that you would not want your children to be around. Unless your child happened to be one of those very dangerous and very bad people.
They weren’t misled at all. The case hadn’t gone to trial yet, and the parents wouldn’t bail him out.
You know...I am concerned about jails too. I don’t understand how so much violence can go on inside a jail? How is it allowed? Shouldn’t each inmate have a cell and when it is time to go somewhere a guard accompanies them? How come so many people get hurt in the jails? I may not understand it all but it seems it should be a simple thing. If you lock someone up you lock someone up. How come so many can gather and hurt others? Something is wrong with the jail system. I would like it if we could find a better way to incarcerate a person other than a jail. It’s antiquated and we need to find a better way for EVERYONE...because what happened to this young man was wrong and someone should be punished for it but...they are ALREADY in jail so now what? Doesn’t make sense to me. There needs to be change and big change at that. I pray for this young man and his father who thought he might just be teaching this boy a lesson. What a heartbreak it must be for him now. As for the ones responsible...they too will meet their maker one day and will have to go to yet ANOTHER jail and this one will be quite warm.
Unless your child happened to be one of those very dangerous and very bad people.
There is a huge difference between a sociopath and a garden variety knucklehead. By the time the sociopath makes it to jail and prison, the family is breathing a sigh of relief because they now know they and society are safe.
The knucklehead would do well in the old-fashioned garden variety jail with a sheriff and a work detail. Now that “corrections” has become a big business, there are few of those havens for knuckleheads to grow up.
In my neck of the woods intellegent judges sentence children of the upper class to have psych evaluations and they are mandated to the local private psychiatric hospital. Although the families are initially upset, they quickly realize how fortunate they are that their child is there.
Well we live in a police state right now and we could never build enough jails. We have more folks in jail, on probation and involved in the legal system then any country in the world. It’s not hard to find an overzealous cop or prosecutor to throw you in jail for even the most minor offenses. Think I’m kidding, get stopped for speeding and give the officer attitude or go into small claims court and just whisper that the judge is a moron and see what happens to you. We have petty criminals mixed up with animals like these evil scumbags. The Federal Criminal code is what 10,000 pages long. Are there really that many things a person could do endanger other fellow Americans or is it primarily laws and regulations that one anal retentive segment of society imposes on the other. Would back in 1870 a person be held in jail with murders and hardened criminals for robbing what is primarily his own home. Dad overreacted here and a tragedy ensued. Until we get sane with our drug laws, reform the legal system and start enforcing the death penalty more strictly the jails will swell and our society will continue to degenerate into gated communities and SS-like police departments .
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