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Irish Judge Orders 13-Year-Old To Surrender Xbox
An anonymous reader writes "In Belfast a High Court judge has ordered a 13 year old to surrender his Xbox to the authorities. The boy was charged with a series of robberies and in the bail application the judge asked the boy what he owned that meant a lot to him. The teenager said it was his Xbox games system. The judge told the youth that the surrender of the Xbox would show him what it was like to have something he really valued taken from him."
I love it when a judge thinks and makes the punishment fit the crime. Having his parents pay a fine would have been pointless. Gotta make the punishment hurt for it to have any effect.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
nt
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
I'm interested and scared to think what the result would have been if this happened in America today and the response had been, "My constitutional right to avoid being a witness against myself in a criminal case".
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
. . .how many new X-Boxes he will buy with the money he stole.
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
Let me get this straight? He was accused of stealing and when asked for bail he had his xbox taken away? While I agree if he was found guilty that would be an excellent punishment, but that should not be the cost of his bail.
It amuses me what this judge would have ordered for the following if such should ever appear before him.
Kenneth Lay
Lindsey Lohan
Lori Drew
The intruder who victimized the "hide your kids, hide your wife" guy.
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
send him to one of jail boot camps that can trun some kids around.
harsh? really? johnny jackoff is involved in a series of robberies and you consider taking his fucking video games away harsh
piss off, my mom would hide the power brick to my sega for weeks at a time for failing to keep my grades up and this stain gets the same treatment for robbery and you fucking find it harsh???
first it was the pepsi generation, now its the pussy generation ... fucking wonderful
So we are supposed to cheer from seizing property from someone who has been accused but not yet convicted?
If this happened in America, would the 14th Amendment stop this?
Well, what's he going to do while he's out on bail without his Xbox? Let me run it through a high tech AI simulator.....okay, the most likely candidates are:
1. nothing
2. steal an Xbox
and for some reason a distant third...
3. look for leprochauns
This isn't really newsworthy... except to alert us there's one less swill-spitting high-pitched teenager playing Modern Warfare.
I bet those Irish boys know a few words.
This is a pretty swell example of fair justice and a fitting punishment. So much common sense this judge doth hath.
---- GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Judge: "Kid, I order you to hand over your... XBox!!!"
Kid: "Whatever" (makes mental note of which houses he had broke into that had xboxes)
Judge: "And... your Live account password. Your gamer tag is now mine".
Kid: "NOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooo!".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
> Human nature says transgressors must be punished.
It is also human nature to throw things, like rocks, at children who take our toys. We learn better.
People used to say human nature was that women were not landowners.
If we find things that work, and that are economically efficient, we can work on changing minds. The political system will delay the effects of that effort greatly, but that does not mean we will not learn better in another century or three.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
...his sister rather than his Xbox.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
To be fair, he is only accused of being involved in a series of robberies at this point. The article did not say how this accusation came to light. It could be that he was caught leaving a burglarized home with stolen items in his hands, it could be he was walking down the street, someone ran passed him and dropped an item, he picked it up right about the time the cops came around the corner and busted him.
and yes, I know people that has happened to. A club some of us were at was raided for employees supposedly dealing drugs out it. When the cops came barging in, everyone and their brother started dumping anything illegal they had on them and kicking it as far away from them as possible while trying to not be noticed. The cops simply associated everything on the ground with whoever was closest and arrested them for it. There was a big write up in the paper about it complete with everyone's names. My friend got hit for possession of paraphernalia used to process a drug and possession of a narcotic.
He fought the charges and had them all dropped and triggered a problem with the search warrant (it was set for the bar employees not patrons) which a lot of the others used to get the evidence against them tossed out.
Sure your honour! You can have my xbox and now im sad....
*goes back to his 360*
I do not mean to be the iTroll here, but I honestly wonder how this story made it to the front page. The point was finally that the judge ruled that boy to give up something valuable to him, it could have been anything. Now it just happened to be an X-Box and *BAM*, it's here on Slashdot. Moreover, justice has confiscated computers too many times before to make the news flash complete. This article had even so made much more impression if the machine happened to be the tool of the commited crime or likewise, as it implies that the X-Box itself had something to do with the final judgement. However, so was not the case.
There are 2 types of people in the world - those who understand decimal and those who don't.
This is pretty much what has happened. According to the article, (I know, slashdot RFTA) the kid has to surrender this as a condition of release until the charges against him are disposed of.
So he was being held in jail or detention anyways. Went in front of a judge and the judge basically said, gimme your X-Box for bail money.
...who is smart enough to let the kid keep Xbox, take the games and leave him with just Duke Nukem Forever.
not likely. He told the Judge it was his Xbox because he really liked his PS3 and didn't want to lose that.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
In America, it would turn out that this somehow violates his human rights and thus the punishment would go back to the standard massive fine for his parents, who would proceed to not pay the fine or go out and rob a liquor store to pay off the fine.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Punishment?
This was a bail condition. The accused has yet to be tried for his crime.
"We live in a global world" - Harvey Pitt, former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman
Did someone come to his house to collect the Xbox? Because I have an old workstation (with a cast iron chassis and case) and 21" CRT here that I'd like to get rid of, but I can barely lift them.
When an adult asks you "what do you own that means a lot to you", answer "my schoolbooks"...
That lie would be seen through very easily. Your bail condition would be to eat quite a few florets nightly, else land in jail.
I don't post AC. I like my -1, Flamebaits. Trump/Sheen 2012 on the Batshit Insane ticket!
That's only one comment. Most other commenters say this punishment was appropriate, so why are you so pissed off??
If you post as an AC, don't expect me to spend a mod point on you.
A criminologist who spend his live looking at ways to deal with criminals made this conclusion before taking his own life.
What did he mean? Nobody can agree on that, at least not other criminologists who make their living coming up with new things to try. That is hardly suprising, were they to accept his final conclusion, they would be out of job.
So what does it mean? First, you have to understand statistics and how easily they can be manipulated. Lets examine the most commonly used metric to determine the success of a criminal treatment program. Recidivism. That is, what percentage of criminals commit a crime again...
Oh wait, there the problem starts already. That is NOT what recidivism is. It is a common lie that is easy to swallow but it is a LIE.
Here is the real definition of recidivism as it exist in modern society:
The recidivism rate is the percentage of people who having been found guilty of a crime are linked to another crime within a certain timeframe and have this link recorded.
What is the difference? Well, the police does not have a 100% success rate at solving crimes. So it stands to reason not all those who commit a crime are actually found guilty for it. So, if a known criminal commits another crime but is not found GUILTY for it, he doesn't count. Conviction rates are very very low and many crimes do not even get reported.
Take rape, we know many of them do not get reported, so the changes of a rapist being actually being sentenced for another rape are pretty low. That is why serial criminals are so common.
Nonetheless, those who preach a certain method of dealing with criminals often claim they get a low percentage of recidivism. How low? This is an industry in which a reduction from 72% to 70% is considered a major breakthrough. Within statistcal error rate you say? Why yes, it is, that should tell you all you need to know by itself.
The only 100% effective measure against criminal repeating himself is the death penalty and we tend to find that a bit much for shop lifting.
All other methods? Hard to compare. As said, it depends on the effectivness of the police and justice system, not just in finding and convicting criminals but in linking them together.
In Holland we don't have consecutive jail times. This means there is no motivation for the police to solve all crimes, if they know you done ten robberies, they go to court with the ones they feel they got the best evidence on and the rest remain officially unsolved. In germany they don't do this, possibly one of the reasons the germans got a far higher success rate. How do you compare then different methodes when the statistics are gathered very differently? You can't.
For instance, it is often said the US has high crime rates. WRONG, the murder rate in the US vs Holland is pretty much the same. Yes there are undoubtely very rough areas in America but Holland got no go areas as well, they are small of course but so is the whole country. Per head. the crime rates are fairly similar.
Part of the problem is that people are very ideological about this. They claim X works best not from evidence but because they feel it should be the best method. This goes both for the hardliners and the bleeding hearts. Who is right?
Junkie related crime in Holland has gone down now junkies are kept of the street with free drugs and social care. They got no reason to rob anymore so they don't. It works? Depends, do you want to pay what could be called a ransom through your taxes to keep the junkies in line? Because nothing was solved, all we did in Holland is basically cut the cost of crime by increasing the cost of social well fare. The junkies were not cured, they are just "taken care off".
And when the economy goes down the toilet thanks to the actions of right wingers were do you think they go to cut costs first?
US super prisons don't work either. Or do they? What would be the crime rate if all the super prisons are emptied? Nobody is going to do that test so we wil
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Xbox for an Xbox.
If the kid was already stealing at a young age, he's probably not under the best supervision of sorts. Taking an Xbox is all fine and dandy on paper, and in rhetorical circles of justice, but I'm not sure if it'll be effective. Maybe it'll just motivate the kid to continue stealing. Or it might stop him. Who knows? But I wouldn't like to leave it too much to chance. Why not put him in a program of sorts? Clockwork Orange his ass...or at least do more than eye for an eye.
I chucked out my old SGI machines not so long ago. The trick is to remove all the outer panels and PCBs, they're about half the weight of the machine. You're on your own with the monitor though.
No sig today...
I think it will resort in the kid putting blame on the Judge and not learning a real lesson. Community service to work off his debts and some jail time would probably serve as a better lesson. Weekends in jail and free time doing some shitty job versus taking something that can be replaced. Hmmm....
I have a hypothesis about "criminal" behavior. I had a professor recently who was retired from working in the prison industry. He assured us, that some of those people were complete animals in there, and it was without doubt necessary to keep them confined. Without doubt we have vicious people in our prisons, and they did things to get there, they weren't just snatched off the street without reason.
What if "criminal" behavior is a brain evolution problem? Bear with me here. For some people civilization isn't something their race hasn't been accustom to for that long. If your people come from the wilds, you will have a brain evolution centered towards survival skills in the clime you are from. What success ever has societies had with integrating aboriginals into their mix? Mostly its a destruction of their way of life and cultures, with them being victimized, marginalized and constantly struggling to adapt and playing a great game of "catch up".
Those same "criminal" aspects of a person would be very self serving in a hostile environment or where "civilization" doesn't exist. Very often what we deal with in "criminals" are predatory instincts run unchecked. I think we aren't dealing with channeling predatory instincts, but instead of trying to eradicate them. Trying to eradicate something of that deeply ingrained nature is going to fail I think; the individual's defense mechanisms will defeat it. This is why you see such blatant hatred and anger in prisons. This is a defense mechanism to being torn down in the mind.
First we need to figure out who has the regressive brain structures early on and work towards cultivating their instincts in a positive way. (This requires a socialistic approach, but that isn't such a bad thing. ("Socialism isn't the boogieman" is another lecture. It's followed by "Rebuilding the Education System Smart".)) Catching the problems early on can't be emphasized enough, for its in early child development in which problems are rooted and where the best potential for proper cultivation also happens. Parenting is one of the most important jobs in our known universe. Sadly, it's taken a backseat to the point of criminal neglect by the modern world. We have too much engaging adults as it is and the result is, children and the science of raising them to be better human beings is being downgraded in importance.
Look at our welfare system. We are paying people who are complete losers to have kids in our current welfare system. We should be paying them NOT to have kids or sterilizing them and then giving them a check. (Actually we should just help them manage their time and resources and guide them towards a wonderful and fulfilling life.) These are collectively BAD PARENTS. Not individually, but as a whole this isn't the clime to be farming children.
I think if we are to effectively deal with "crime" we need to not just focus on the individual accountability, but also on the "big picture". This is very important not just to reduce "crime" but to advance the entire human race out of its reptile brained way of dealing with things into more intelligent and productive methods. We shouldn't be lollygagging about either, we are on a limited time frame if you haven't thought about it. I have and that is the lecture "Space: Lets get there while we can." which is related to "Oil: if we don't stop, we will become oil."
Back to the subject at hand. I think the judge was a wanker on this one. This isn't going to engage the kid except to piss him off and teach him not to get caught. You just end up with a more careful criminal. Taking something precious to the kid is going to traumatize him to some degree, and it being an authoritarian figure doing it, all the more encourages re
Take the Red Pill.
Coming from around that area I can assure you that this will not stop him from stealing again. All he will do is go out an get another xbox. You go round to his mates and play on his xbox (probably also stolen). The teenagers around here are almost unique. At the start of each summer we have the 12th July also known locally as the "silly season". When school stops at the end of June and the kids have nothing on for the next two months they tend to kick off the summer with a little bit of recreational rioting! It happens year after year and nothing is really ever done about it.
Problems should be removed or fixed for good, not punished.
I have this idea here to fix problems, I call it "the final solution"...
And in other news, a 13 year old boy in belfast has committed another robbery... The victim reports their xbox was stolen.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Belfast is in Northern Ireland, not Ireland itself. People from Northern Ireland are loyalists to the British monarchy and are just as likely to call themselves British as they are to call themselves Irish.
Overlooking that ignores the great numbers of people who have died as a result of the wars for Irish identity.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
It's a whole different country. Invest in a map.
No, according to the fine article, the judge basically said, gimme your XBox as bail to teach you a lesson. Which is somewhat odd, considering that the boy wasn't convicted, and the purpose of bail is not to teach lessons.
The judge accepted his Xbox as part of his bail, not a punishment.
Europeans are much less accepting of the discriminatory & uncivilized practice of bail bondsmen, outlawing their activities in many jurisdictions. Instead, courts try harder to make the bail fit the accused means while still forcing their appearance at trial.
We should ideally outlaw bail bondsmen in the U.S. too, but they know their activities are morally bankrupt, and so hire lobbyists.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Just put it on craigslist and someone will come and take it for free.
Though.... a 21" crt? Those aren't too heavy. If lifting those is hard, then I suggest keeping it and lifting it every day until its not so heavy. Its cheaper than the gym.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Most of the current research into the matter seems to indicate that the real culprit is how we handle our prisons. We throw new offenders in with hardened offenders, keep them out of society unduly long and don't work toward helping them come out of prison with a better education and job skills.
I am a believer in retributive justice. I don't like our system precisely because there is retribution, simply mindless punishment with a goal of balancing scales of justice between victim and victimizer (which is the ultimate goal of a retributive system).
is what the kid should have said. He'd know how it'd feel if something really valued was taken away from him...
Certainly, if you'd like to put your back out, I've hosted plenty of LAN parties back when everyone and their mum owned a CRT, and the fancier PC setups with 21" monitors were the ultimate nightmare to assist with. Those things are so front heavy they're more cumbersome than anything else, would hate to drop one on my toes.
Put the bugger in public stockades and let the people who's homes that have been broken into do what they want to him. Honestly there needs to be more direct punishment to these little turds.
Our society of "dont harm the children" is causing generations of hoodlums that need their asses kicked.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I've not known many marijuana users, or alcoholics for that matter who will harm someone to get money to acquire their drugs. Crack, Cocain, Meth, Pain Killers, Tranquilizer, etc users on the other hand, will go to great lengths to get their next high. I've seen many, many friends go down this path, and it's truly sad to see.
Is this indicative of the drug or the type of person who is drawn to or particularly succeptable to addiction to the drug?
For example- We all know the stereotype of the lazy pothead who sleeps on his friends' couch and smokes weed all day, bouncing from low-paying job to low-paying job and never doing anything productive with his life. Without weed, would he have been an astronaut? Or is that just the type of person he was anyway?
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
That's a real shame. Some people still appreciate old machines. You should give them a chance to play with them.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
If he was really thinking, he'd have said he valued his homework.
I8-D
This is exactly what bail is for : you give something to the authorities, whether a house, goods, money, or ..., to be returned to you when you show up at trial. In trade, they don't arrest you, even though an arrest order has been given, and you get to leave prison with a stern letter asking you not to leave the country. For bail, the question is not guilt, the question is "what can you give the authorities so that they can be assured you won't leave the country to run from trial". The general practice for kids is a large sum of money from the parents, obviously this is hardly an optimal solution.
Note that arresting someone before trial, never mind a minor, requires the authorization of 2 judges, with possibility for appeal, which was either not taken, or failed. Generally this occurs because the person was caught red-handed by the police and arrested during the crime, or running from the cops. That may not equate to a conviction for theft, but it was the judicial system that ordered his arrest, not the police or the government.
I'll repeat it so it's obvious : he'll get this back at trial (whether or not he's convicted). Meanwhile, the kid doesn't have to miss school.
Are we down to an eye for an eye kind of justice?
Laws mean nothing, any lawyer will learn them all, but it takes an ethical person to be a good member of society. What this kid learned today is that next time, he better be sure not to be catched.
Fast & easy is not always the best solution, as this judge will learn later in life.
I would say that just hiding the brick would be much more harsh. With the console being taken away, it is gone, but with just the brick being taken, you have to look at the damn console everyday and know you can't play it....
I would have told the Judge my prized possession was the Sta-Puf Marshmallow man.
Try donating it to a museum.
The boy has not been convicted yet. So the judge is punishing him in advance of seeing all the evidence and hearing all the testimony. I guess the kid can expect to be convicted based on a biased judge and fiat exclusion of exculpatory evidence.
The good news is that the kid is getting a lesson. A lesson on how the system protects functions that are poorly designed and do not work.
Have gnu, will travel.
Saying that everybody in Northern Ireland is a loyalist to the British monarchy suggests you don't know your history, or you're a troll.
I suggest you read a few articles on wikipedia at the very least: start with The Troubles. You'd be a foolish man indeed to walk into a bar in Northern Ireland and loudly declare that Bobby Sands was a loyalist to the British Monarchy.
Yeah, those 21" CRTs were made heavy back then...You would think they used them to keep the desks from floating away.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Wow I wasn't aware that Belfast had become like a third world country where the judge without a trial or hearing declares guilt and meets out a punishment right there on the spot. I guess he thinks he can be judge, jury and executioner and screw due legal process. The judge has no legal clue if the kid is guilty. He automatically assuming the kid is the thief which has not been proven in a court of law yet. The comment by the judge was completely out of line and shows his clear bias in this case. The judge is not ruling by law but by what he thinks without legally proven facts. The judge should be immediately removed from the bench and censured for this. This is clearly a judge out of control, spouting out his opinion on the results of the case before the case has even had opening arguments.
Remind me to never go anywhere near Belfast given they have out of control judges and don't follow common law practices.
Well, no. You are reading into the article and attempting to associate two separate statements as a cause and effect for each other. The judge said Give the Xbox to the authorities and it will be returned when the charges are disposed of as a means for bail. He then said it would teach him a lesson. He didn't say the Xbox as bail was to teach him a lesson, he said it would teach him a lesson.
This is little different from setting a bail for 1 million dollars and forcing the kids family to put everything on hock to get him released. well, except that it was something of the kids instead of the family that is put through the hardship.
That's an extremely literal interpretation. Why would the judge bother to point out that losing his XBox "would show him what it was like to have something he valued taken from him", if it didn't have something to do with the crime he was accused of?
What reason is there to set the XBox as bail, except to teach the kid a lesson? Did the 13-year-old pose a flight risk? If he did flee, would he be likely to bring his XBox with him?
The Xbox was set as bail to ensure the kid showed up to face the charges and dispose of them properly. That is the reason why bail is even set at all.
Having the kid learn a lesson in the process could be one of those simple ancillary things that was pointed out.
As for the speculation about him fleeing or taking his Xbox with him, you are again trying to read more into it then is known. We do know that bail is there to allow people who are not convicted of a crime, to be released while reassuring they will return to face the charges and dispose of them properly. Otherwise, we would simply release the accused criminals on their own recognizance. For reasons not discussed in this story, the judge decided that asking the kid what he valued the most and setting that as his bail was the way to achieve this contract for his release known as bail and comfortably assume he would be returning to face the charges. Anything outside of that is purely made up by either of us.
But lets walk outside this known reality for a minute, let's suppose the judge did think this kid was guilty of the thefts and did arrange the Xbox as bail as punishment before he was convicted. Wouldn't the judge expect the kid to just steal another and thereby defeating the punishment? Wouldn't the judge have ordered him not to play anyone else' Xbox games as part of that punishment? I mean that's a pretty flimsy punishment there, Gimme you Xbox, now you will have to play games on the computer or your friends Xboxes.
The Xbox was set as bail to ensure the kid showed up to face the charges and dispose of them properly. That is the reason why bail is even set at all.
No. This was in the UK. Bail isn't just a valuable or monetary amount set to motivate the accused to come back and face trial, or to hire a bounty hunter. It's a set of conditions for release, and may be used to prevent the accused from fleeing or from committing additional crimes, if the risk is deemed high.
If the judge bothered to point out that the accused would learn a lesson from the bail conditions, I think we can assume it had something to do with his motivation. It's not a judge's place to dispense general life advice.
lol.. Your trying to use to many words to say the same thing I said.
I thought you were under the impression that bail conditions were only to prevent the accused from fleeing. That may be true in the USA, but not in the UK.