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Irish Judge Orders 13-Year-Old To Surrender Xbox

Posted by samzenpus on from the put-down-the-controller dept.

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."

13 of 445 comments (clear)

  1. Excellent! by msobkow · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Excellent! by davester666 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yeah, now the kid has to go out and shoplift another XBox...

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
    2. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      News Flash: You're not a behavioral psychologist either, chum, and your answer shows it. Stick with what you know.

      You're talking about Pavlov's-dogs-style behaviorism, the judge isn't. And by the way, behaviorism is out of favor "in general" as a strategy, but that doesn't mean it is discredited.

      So yeah, the judge isn't going to have the boy whipped (strict behaviorist strategy). Discomfort that encourages thinking about context is a different beast altogether, which is what the judge is proposing. This is more like putting your kid in time out and asking them to come back to you when they can explain why you are mad at them.

    3. Re:Excellent! by Mashiki · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Right. And criminology is still in the dark ages, and we use leeches and blood letting as the main sources of medical treatment today. Dig your head out of your ass, there are competing theories on crime. And many criminal theories rest into two specific schools. Those being:

      Bad parenting+lifestyle+societal factors = criminal action
      and
      Chance+opportunity+risk = criminal action

      I believe that the second is more appropriate. As even in average, society roughly 40% of people will steal if they feel they can get away with it, and 30% will steal no matter what. This is your basic material covered in your crim101 courses.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    4. Re:Excellent! by FunkSoulBrother · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Probably more to do with the fact that those 'resort' prison countries:

      A) Also take care of their non imprisoned citizens -- they have functioning social safety nets.

      B) Don't have America's shitty attitude towards ethnic minorities, or have very homogeneous culture.

      I mean don't get me wrong, America's brutal prison complex is horribly immoral, but if you transplanted it to Scandinavia magically without fucking up their social safety nets, I don't think it would really RAISE crime at all.

    5. Re:Excellent! by Kjella · · Score: 4, Informative

      I've got no belief that throwing people in a hole will set them straight. On the other hand, I'd be pretty scared of a prison system that didn't discourage crime. A legal system where you get convicted but the punishment is a raised finger and "Please don't do that again" won't do much good. Yes, perhaps in some cases you can take away the reason for their crimes like making them kick the drug habit, but far from all criminals are junkies. A lot of them steal simply because they can and you can't cure that by giving them free things.

      We did try that with some of the roaming thieves for a while, the result was they acted like legal squatters. They kept stealing from all the neighbors, they trashed their own place and before they left they stole everything that wasn't nailed down. It was like pure consumption, not a care in the world for preserving anything. We just threw them a free party and when they were done they moved on to trash somewhere else. Fines are of course a joke because they have no income and anything they steal won't be used to pay fines.

      Largely the crime itself is risk free, because almost anything that can bring that burglar to harm is illegal unless your life is in immediate danger which is interpreted very strictly. As long as he turns and runs you'd better let him run or else you might end up on charges for injuring him. While he's likely to get a minimal penalty for any injury he causes you while trying to flee. My country is pretty much the direct opposite of Texas, they have all the rights even when in the middle of robbing me blind.

      The "catch-and-release" here in Norway means that we have people who are convicted of 25+ crimes a year (not 25+ trials, we gather them up) and that's just what they're caught for. The overall solve rate is 43% so probably well over 50 crimes a year. I don't know what is working, but the all too lenient system here also isn't working very well. Each of those crimes have victims, but it doesn't seem stopping more people from becoming victims is a priority at all. Why should I risk being assaulted to give you another chance?

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    6. Re:Excellent! by Sabriel · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Chance+opportunity-risk-empathy = criminal action

      Further refinement?

    7. Re:Excellent! by simmonsjeffreya · · Score: 5, Interesting

      While you do make a few good points here, I would add one point to this:

      C) Drug use. For example, just in tenth graders, 41% of American students have tried pot, compared to 17% in Europe. Also included in this same study* is the fact that 23% of American students have used illicit drugs other than cannabis (not counting alcohol), while only 6% in Europe have.

      I hate to be the one to bring up drugs, but from what I see on a daily basis, it does play a major role. I'm not saying every drug user is going to become a criminal, but it seems from recent data collected by SAMHSA, the balance of drug abuse is changing in the US. Marijuana and alcohol are decreasing, while other more serious, dangerous drugs are increasing in use. This varies from Europe, where Alcohol and Marijuana, in that order, are the most abused, with much, much lower percentages of the population using more dangerous, serious drugs.

      I attribute this change in the US being due to the availability. Alcohol, as a teenager is actually much harder to come by than say marijuana, or surprisingly prescription pain killers, for example. Teens these days have broad access to marijuana, and seem to always have a friend who can get pain killers or tranquilizers (I do not have a source for this statement, it is based on personal observation.) This leads to them just avoiding the trouble of acquiring alcohol and instead, smoking marijuana, while not really a problem in my eyes, or taking prescription pain killers, which is a much bigger issue. Marijuana isn't truly a gateway drug, many users can go their whole life without moving to something "harder", but things like prescription pain killers, tranquilizers, etc are more likely to create the need to get higher and higher, and are rising in use at an alarming rate.

      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.

      Study Cited: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/21/us/study-finds-teenage-drug-use-higher-in-us-than-in-europe.html
      Older, but still accurate information with the same testing methodology used in both regions.

  2. Re:harsh, but... by Osgeld · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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

  3. Re:Accused but not yet convicted by bmo · · Score: 5, Informative

    ITT: everyone on slashdot but a few misunderstands what bail is.

    It's a guarantee of showing up to court. He gets his xbox back if he shows up to court. If he doesn't, it becomes property of the government. Explain how this is unreasonable.

    --
    BMO

  4. The Scene by SuperKendall · · Score: 4, Funny

    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
  5. Re:Excellent! said the kid by Locutus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  6. Re:Accused but not yet convicted by metacell · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ITT: everyone on slashdot but a few misunderstands what bail is.

    It's a guarantee of showing up to court. He gets his xbox back if he shows up to court. If he doesn't, it becomes property of the government. Explain how this is unreasonable.

    *sigh* No, people here are not misunderstanding what bail is. They're misunderstanding what the issue is. From the fine article:

    The judge told the youth it would show him what it was like to have something he valued taken from him.

    That's clearly using bail as a form of punishment, not as a way to ensure the person returns to face trial. It's a misuse of the bail system.