Authorities in Texas say a 10-year-old boy has confessed to an unsolved 2022 killing, telling investigators that he shot a man he did not know while the victim slept.
You’re not wrong. Clearly Texas does have at least one juvenile facility – the one where he was taken for evaluation – but why they’re not keeping him there is not evident.
Clearly the family is not up to the challenge; they can’t even keep their own guns secured. If the authorities do not intervene now, this kid is just going to keep going. Juvies and jails are like finishing schools. He’ll come out of it not actually better, just better at it. The 20th century is full of examples of the utter failure of penal systems for turning around a bad start, from Clyde Barrow to Charles Manson .
This kid is already well on his way to a full lifetime of similar behavior:
The boy is being held in juvenile detention for threatening a student on a bus in another incident earlier this month . . . after sheriff’s deputies were contacted on April 12 of this year about a student who threatened to assault and kill another student on a school bus.
I suspect that that’s less a Texas thing and more the difficulty of legally locking up a ten-year-old in a mental hospital long-term.
Doesn’t have to be for life but 6 months in an institution would do him better than 6 years in jail.
You’re not wrong. Clearly Texas does have at least one juvenile facility – the one where he was taken for evaluation – but why they’re not keeping him there is not evident.
Clearly the family is not up to the challenge; they can’t even keep their own guns secured. If the authorities do not intervene now, this kid is just going to keep going. Juvies and jails are like finishing schools. He’ll come out of it not actually better, just better at it. The 20th century is full of examples of the utter failure of penal systems for turning around a bad start, from Clyde Barrow to Charles Manson .
This kid is already well on his way to a full lifetime of similar behavior:
He sounds like he is mentally unwell. He needs psychiatry and people who can work with him, not prison.