I think we all remember this little incident, where a 6’6″ schoolboy thug beat a teacher’s aide unconscious over a Nintendo Switch. No? Here’s the story, along with his mother — predictably — begging for clemency because “prison will kill him”.
Here’s the thing, Mommie Dearest: your precious little baby belongs in prison, because he has demonstrated quite beyond doubt that he is a menace to society.
And frankly, I don’t care that he’s autistic, any more than I would care that voices in his head are telling him that Switch Is God, and therefore beating someone savagely is somehow acceptable.
He belongs in prison. And if that “kills him”, that is just too bad — because if he’s allowed to run free, who’s to say that he won’t go nuts and beat someone (to death, this time) because they wouldn’t give him Cheerios for breakfast?
Maybe — just maybe — he should be confined to a mental institution instead, except that such institutions are usually staffed with bleeding-heart psychologists wearing wizard hats, who solemnly declare that after a few months’ therapy, little Johnny is Ready To Be Released Into Society.
Whereupon little Johnny murders someone else, because he doesn’t like Mondays.
And then people like myself call for the psychologist to be executed for being an accessory to murder (which they are, in cases such as these) under Hammurabic principles.
So the whole thing spirals out of control, simply because we as a society somehow think that mentally-retarded sociopaths like this Brendan Depa shouldn’t be incarcerated and kept from being a danger to anyone they come into contact with (e.g. a 5’4″ slender teacher’s aide).
Throw him in jail and melt the key.
The fact that modern prisons are dangerous places is a topic for another time, but it’s irrelevant to this discussion.
And some people might disagree with me, but they’d be wrong.