It seems to me that criminal activity is less disturbing when you understand it. Timothy Durham’s alleged Ponzi scheme isn’t laudable, but the motives are easy enough to identify. Shootings and assaults that are the product of domestic violence are serious, but they don’t make me as doubtful about the general well-being of my community as random assaults and shootings.
The Associated Press has an article about child molestations in Veedersburg that simply peg my “what the hell?” meter. Samantha Light, a twenty-four year old woman with an apparently good reputation was allegedly molesting very young children – like 3 year olds – along with her boyfriend, Steven Quick and video taping it. People were using Ms. Light as a babysitter and she was betraying their trust in horrific fashion. And, it happened in Fountain County where everybody seems to know just about everything about everyone.
It’s the kind of crime that I can’t begin to wrap my head around, and that is one of the things that makes it so troubling. If you understand a crime, you feel like the means of avoiding it are more within your control. Even the illusion of control helps you place the actual risks of becoming a victim of the crime in some sort of proper context. Without control, the perceived risk looms much larger than the actual risk — think of the difference between being harmed in a car crash versus being harmed in a terrorist attack. The car crash is a far greater risk. It’s not even close. And yet, fear of terrorism is much greater than fear of car accidents. I think it’s because the car is a known risk and one that is, to a great extent, under your control.
People are very quick to judge anything sexual that doesn’t follow accepted patterns and then child exploitation added in, with parents involved ,is beyond putting into any perspective.
Terrorism has become so politicized that there’s no possibility of a non-partisan assessment of the threat. As my brother-in law said a while back: ‘Bush kept us safe, but as long as Obama is president the threat is high’…And he was dead serious. Pass the biscuits, please.
So perhaps there is a good reason to have regulations regarding licensing of day care operators? This is not the first example of this happening in Indiana, yet each time we all throw up our hands and wonder how this could happen.
People who grow up in depraved situations will act in depraved ways as adults. Think of the effort it must have taken over the millenia for some individuals to break out of this natural pattern and start developing a civilized society with rules of behaviour. We have so far yet to go.
And how will we punish these people? Putting them in prison will do no good because they will get out, as depraved as ever. Rehab? What will actually work? Nothing has so far.
Parents forced to work low wage jobs have to look for the lowest cost day care because we, as a society, value these people and their children much less than others. A living wage and employer/state provided day care would go far to alleviating much of this depravity.
I agree with you Doug. And that’s one reason for “white-collar” crime to receive lighter punishment.
Many of Canoefun’s comments cut both ways:
1.) Licensed day care will restrict competition and increase its price– not helpful. (And this was baby-sitting, not formal child care, right?)
2.) The most “force” in parents having low-wage jobs is the government’s monopolistic provision of low-quality, high-cost elementary and secondary education services.
3.) The most “force” in parents having to take two jobs is the level of (federal payroll and state income) taxation on the working poor– and other redistribution to interest groups at the expense of the working poor.
4.) The flip side of an even higher minimum wage is that you’re forcing employers to pay unskilled workers an artificially high wage (if they hire them). The result, in many cases, will not be compassion but unemployment and more social pathologies.
canoefun, what would the regulations have caught, or how would they have stopped this?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m as upset about this as anyone. However, I think the public feels that passing more laws will somehow make us more safe. In cases like this, I fail to see how a regulator would have caught this unless they’re posted on-site during all hours of operation. Do you want to pay for that?
To me, passing laws in reaction to events like this are just like the “hate crime” laws. Beating a man and dragging him behind your truck should get just as severe punishment regardless if the motive was a hate crime or because the guy cut someone off on the Interstate.
It would prevent people like them from getting into the business. And eric’s arguments are old and tired. Remember eric, tax cuts for the wealthy creates jobs, right? 8 years of bush tax cuts for the wealthy have given us all these jobs we have now, right?
Sorry you had a bad experience in school. Most children do not. Try to help others, quit hating those who have less. They work just as hard if not harder than most and earn far less because our society has its priorities wrong. Those who provide a service or construct something should be paid the most, those who manage should be paid the least.
For the record, I was not a fan of the Bush presidency in oh so many ways. More specifically, I was not a fan of his two Keynesian tax cuts.
You’re confusing “old” with good– and “tired” with economists perhaps growing tired of pointing to the obvious benefits and costs of legislation.
1 & 4.) Why do you see more expensive (licensed) day care– and artificially higher unskilled labor rates– as something not to discuss?
2.) My schooling was a mix of public and Catholic– and was just fine. If you’re excited about govt monopolies for the provision of high-quality and low-cost, then I probably won’t be able to talk you out of your faith.
3.) My policy prescriptions focus on the poor. Why are you hating them by ignoring key causes of– and contributions to– their plight. Are you in favor of thousands of dollars of federal taxes– and hundreds of dollars of Indiana state income taxes– on the working poor? Really?
How, exactly? Do “people like them” have some sort of DNA defect we can screen for?
There always is a first instance of a crime, you can’t always predict who will commit one.