No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes. – Philosopher Hannah Arendt
Doing her damnedest to send a real message, Oakland County, Michigan, Judge Cheryl Matthews sentenced James and Jennifer Crumbley to 10 to 15 years in prison for their failure to prevent their son Ethan from killing four high school classmates and wounding six others.
The defense asked for five years of home arrest while the prosecution argued the judge should exceed sentencing guidelines because the “devastating impact of their gross negligence was foreseeable.”
Matthews issued the following statement before the gavel came down:
These convictions confirm repeated acts or lack of acts that could have halted an oncoming runaway train, about repeatedly ignoring things that make a reasonable person feel the hair on the back of their neck stand up. Opportunity knocked over and over again, louder and louder and it was ignored. No one answered. And these two people should have and sure didn’t.
The judge further explained that she imposed these severe parental penalties hoping they would “act as a deterrent” that might make parents consider what the progeny are actually up to.
The good news is the punishments do fit the crimes and they’re proof that Lake County state’s attorney Eric Reinhart and his office completely blew the Robert Crimo, Jr. prosecution. The bad news is Judge Matthew is indulging in the worst kind of wishful thinking.
Take the aforementioned Crimo, Jr., father of Highland Park shooter Robert Crimo III. Despite folding like a cheap suit by allowing him to plea to an inexplicably lenient 60-day jail term, the jackass showed up to jail wearing a “Political Pawn” t-shirt, which aggravated the shit out of the judge, police, relatives of the victims, and everyone else in Illinois.
So, if a parent who signed for their mentally ill son’s assault rifle still doesn’t begin to understand their culpability after his progeny killed seven and wounded 48, they’ve been convicted of reckless conduct, and subsequently sent to the slammer, that pretty much eliminates any notion of deterrence, doesn’t it?
The fact that the Crumbleys will serve at least 60 times Crimo, Jr.’s sentence won’t make any difference in this preventative possibility regard, either. The insurmountable issue is if negligent parents harbored the capacity to comprehend their own negligence, they wouldn’t be negligent.
Despite the very real prospect of their own imminent demise, I’ve suddenly seen a slew of middle-aged women texting and/or looking down at their cellphones in busy traffic. And if the prospect of death isn’t enough to deter that distraction disregard, then how can the threat of a jail term ever measure up?
Whether it’s smoking, obesity, or distracted driving, we all think we’re the singular person who can somehow buck the odds and escape a dire fate.
So, while I certainly admire and appreciate Judge Matthew’s sentencing determination, other than satisfying our lust for retribution, it won’t amount to a damn thing. Because the only thing that’s ever stopped a school shooting is a watchful borne of a reasonable due diligence.
Since we last talked about this difficult topic, the fine folks at Ontario Christian High School in Ontario, California, applied that very preemptive mien to prevent this kind of tragedy before it could happen.
A student observed that a classmate had become so consumed with the Columbine massacre that he posted photos of himself posing with guns and ammunition on social media. He immediately alerted school officials, who alerted the police, who opened an investigation, and after he was arrested, the police recovered seven rifles, two handguns, a shotgun, and 1,000 rounds of ammunition from his home.
How those parents, who fully cooperated with the investigation, failed to catch on to his expanding arsenal is beyond me. Were they “negligent?” Not nearly to the point of Crumbley’s or Crimo, III’s parents. So please tell me what jail sentence could possibly mitigate this form of negligence by omission?
That means administrators need to train students to see the signs of a peer potentially veering into violence. They need to earn the kind of trust that encourages students to come forward when they do see those signs. Then they need to take these reports seriously and promptly report them to local law enforcement.
Better yet, we need to teach our children to similarly take note of a classmate sinking into a self-imposed abyss, because that’s where these tragedies always start. If we claim to be Christians, then we are, indeed, our brother’s and sister’s keepers. I understand high school is a strangely stratified and cliquish time, but reaching out to a struggling student is never a wasted effort and it could save lives.
Again, Judge Matthews did the right thing, and perhaps the Crumbleys will serve as an example to parents who are having issues with their depressed children. But per Ms. Arendt’s opening quote, there’s no punishment that will ever deter a negligent parent from being negligent.
The only answer, per the great Albert Camus, is for us to remain vigilant in the face of an increasingly violent society.
. . . BUT . . . Only of the student is White and Male . .
. . In an other situation reporting a student that is NOT White and Male will afford the reporter condemnation of being a Bigot, Racist or Transphobic . . as Ann Coulter stated on Bill Maher’s show if you don’t hear a mass shooters Gender or Race within 5 minutes he was not White or Male . . . For that matter . . . ¿ Would there be ANY punishment for the shooter or his parents if he was NOT White and Male ???? . . ¿ Would you even hear about a trial or the sentencing ??? . . Welcome to Bizarro world . . .