One of the problems I have with the "justice" system in my country is that sentencing typically involves punitive measures instead of corrective ones. It is well-established that punishment - especially when there is a long delay between the action and the consequence as there is with our trial system - is comparatively less effective to other forms of behavioral correction. Thus, when I came across this story today I couldn't help but smile:
Things like this shouldn't be unusual, but they are. It'd be nice to see more things like this. But what do you think?
"After five teenagers defaced a historic black schoolhouse in Virginia with racist and anti-Semitic graffiti last year, a judge handed down an unusual sentence. She endorsed a prosecutor’s order that they read one book each month for the next 12 months and write a report about it.
But not just any books: They must address some of history’s most divisive and tragic periods. The teenagers can read “Night,” by Elie Wiesel, to learn about the Holocaust. They can crack open Maya Angelou’s landmark 1969 book, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” for an unsparing account of the Jim Crow South. They can also dive into “The Kite Runner,” by Khaled Hosseini, a captivating tale about two boys from Afghanistan.
...
The teenagers’ sentence, known as a disposition in juvenile cases, also includes a mandatory visit to the Holocaust Museum in Washington and the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History’s exhibit on Japanese-American internment camps in the United States.
...
“We are seizing the opportunity to treat this as an educational experience for these young men so they may better appreciate the significance of their actions and the impact this type of behavior has on communities and has had throughout history,” the commonwealth’s attorney, Jim Plowman, said in the statement."
Full article available here from the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/08/us/black-school-racist-sexist-graffiti.html
But not just any books: They must address some of history’s most divisive and tragic periods. The teenagers can read “Night,” by Elie Wiesel, to learn about the Holocaust. They can crack open Maya Angelou’s landmark 1969 book, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” for an unsparing account of the Jim Crow South. They can also dive into “The Kite Runner,” by Khaled Hosseini, a captivating tale about two boys from Afghanistan.
...
The teenagers’ sentence, known as a disposition in juvenile cases, also includes a mandatory visit to the Holocaust Museum in Washington and the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History’s exhibit on Japanese-American internment camps in the United States.
...
“We are seizing the opportunity to treat this as an educational experience for these young men so they may better appreciate the significance of their actions and the impact this type of behavior has on communities and has had throughout history,” the commonwealth’s attorney, Jim Plowman, said in the statement."
Full article available here from the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/08/us/black-school-racist-sexist-graffiti.html
Things like this shouldn't be unusual, but they are. It'd be nice to see more things like this. But what do you think?
