- cross-posted to:
- upliftingnews
- cross-posted to:
- upliftingnews
Superior Court Judge John Phillips remembers the day 23 years ago like it was yesterday.
A kid stood in his courtroom who’d committed a murder, a young man who was still angry and unrepentant. Then the boy’s grandmother entered.
“He broke down and started crying,” said Phillips. “He was just a kid. And I’m thinking, ‘I’m sending kids to prison for life.’”
Phillips, now 81, had seen it all in 13 years as a district attorney and then 21 as a judge. Shootings, thefts, assault. He handed out difficult sentences, but he was troubled by the stories of many children who went through his courtroom.
“It’s very easy to pull a trigger if you don’t have any future, you don’t have any goals and you don’t have anything to look forward to,” he said.
Do you believe in rehabilitation? Would you say your values are exactly the same now as they were when you were a child? Do you think that people who grew up in unhealthy environments come out of it with a well-formed sense of psychonormativity?
I’m not going to indulge your derailing questions.
Everything you say you should be telling to the victims of these criminals. Go ahead, tell them the people who murdered their loved ones for (checks notes) money should get off easy because they ‘didn’t know any better.’
Fuck that. Glad people like you don’t govern the world, lol. We’d be at the mercy of the worst of us because you’d keep saying ‘they can be better!’
I used to work in restorative justice and you’d be surprised at the benefits for the offenders AND the victims/families of victims when I worked in criminology so I’ve had this conversation with the victims.
Does it always work? No. But when it does does it improve things? Generally yes. It’s not black and white.