A Canadian teenager used America's militarized police to terrorize dozens of women gamers for years

It’s aight. He is still a minor just like when he committed his crimes.

I doubt anyone wants to continue the trend of treating minors as adults in the penal systems, just because their crime was one particular to yer subset?

No? Well then just leave him to the fucking Canadians.

Between the two systems, the Canadian one is far more likely to reform him instead of just punishing him and keeping him in n out of the system. They still do that shit up here, it’s weird.

They even try to reform the 'dult offenders. Part of them social safety nets for all parties, offenders & victims, the rest of us.

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I find the usual police incomprehension about this sort of thing difficult to credit. There is precedent with crimes such as bomb threats, and bogus fire scares. When there are bomb threats at malls and schools, I very much doubt that police use victim-blaming tactics in those instances.

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Sarah Jeong handily debunks the notion that cops “don’t get” cyber – they seem to magically care about online threats if they’re made at cops.

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There are alternatives.
Psychopaths are not treatable, which is one reason psychiatrists do not want them in psychiatric units.

My own thinking fwiw is that there should be a halfway house between prison and society - one or more controlled regions given over to simplified societies, a bit like the Amish way of life. Psychopaths would live in them; they could be monitored with moderately intensive surveillance, but would have no direct access to the Internet, mobile phones, guns(!) or large knives. If they wanted to kill one another they would have to use shovels or forks. Phones would be landline; information would be in books. Vehicles would be at the buggy level (perhaps small electric vehicles, maximum speed about 15mph.) Crime inside would be the same as outside.
I suspect there are many ethical and practical objections.
[edit - I should perhaps have clarified that I meant psychopaths convicted of serious crimes or who are prolific offenders. I have called down the wrath of the civil libertarians - but before you add another attack, please acquaint yourself with the operation of your own criminal justice system.]

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This sort of thinking I think, over time, incrementally, leads to Kurt Russel movie plots.

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Or to Aussies.

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Your new tablet is an Etch-A-Sketch!

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Well, I think we need to be sure first.

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Not least of which everyone who is shit-sick of Facebook, weaponised advertising and being run over by idiots who are texting while driving SUVs, to name but a few things clamouring to be let in to this bucolic paradise.

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I’d be really interested in seeing the actual debunking - where is it? All I see is denial that that’s the case, so I’m obviously missing any links. Given how many stories I read where the police that take the crime reports are pretty clearly clueless about the issues, it seems like whatever tech-saavy cops there are, aren’t, at any point, being asked to investigate these caes. (That is to say, just because some police forces have some officers doing internet surveillance doesn’t mean the rest have any tech knowledge, nor are the knowledgeable officers available to be tasked with the cases, possibly because they’re too busy spying on people.) Which is at least partially an issue of the cops not caring (and obviously threats against women have historically been a pretty low priority for the police), but that doesn’t rule out that the case that the cops that do care/deal with these kinds of cases don’t have the skill-set to do anything about it.

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We already have “Open prisons” for white collar criminals. Ford Open Prison in the UK is a well known example - it is said that the various fraudsters and confidence tricksters that inhabit it have run courses which have been called a “Ford MBA”, and that some of the prison officers have grown rich on investment advice from prisoners. There is also said to be a population of younger non-violent prisoners there who get to do the dirty work in exchange for being taught useful business skills by the old hands. If you have been telephone scammed, perhaps it was by a Ford graduate. (I am not a Ford graduate but I used to drive past it occasionally and got told about it when I stopped for lunch at a nearby pub.)
I’m just proposing a next step.

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Perhaps something like Heinlein’s Coventry.

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This reminds me of the Norwegians letting Breivik have a games console, but not an up to date model (possibly because it would have an Internet connection.)

Only the Norwegians could think of punishing a mass murderer by letting him stew in his own whiny shitness.

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It IS a public health issue, so quarantine seems an appropriate response.

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I call the idiot drivers "today’s asshole."

Because every and I really do mean every time I drive somewhere, there is some asshole doing an asshole move to fuck with me while I am simply trying to get somewhere. So, they get branded today’s asshole and sometimes there are many in one day.

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Comparing this to an auto-immune disorder sounds about right. It wasnt that long ago, the worst you might expect from an asshat like this, was to get your house draped in toilet paper. It’s the bizarre disproportionate response that police deliver, that makes this story notworthy. If they were in the business of protecting civilians, you might expect this kid to be able to do this to the same victim exactly once. a second attempt would be flagged in the database, and the caller would need to verify his location after that. but none of that would fit in todays omg terrorist paradigm.

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I’m not a Jesus freak, but his advice to give your shirt to the one who steals your coat is good advice.

Otherwise you imagine felonies.

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That’s a lot like saying “I’m not a racist, but…”. If you suspect that your idea is neither smart nor ethical, why post it anyway?

Your description of “a halfway house between prison and society” is scary.

On the one hand, it sounds like some societies. Totalitarian societies.
On the other hand, it sounds like the more civilized ideas of how a prison system should look like. Except that it’s so big you need cars to get around inside. Which means you’re planning to put a lot of people in prison.
The fact that you call it “between prison and society” and not just “a more friendly prison” sounds like you’re unwilling to grant traditional due process rights and the principle of “nulla poena sine culpa” to the people you want to confine there.

Does he? I’m no psychologist, but aren’t there countless different ways of being fucked up that can lead to such behaviour?
Your quick diagnosis makes kupfernigk’s ideas of interning everyone so diagnosed in an agrarian panopticon even more scary.

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“Hey, buddy, what part of shoot first and avoid questions later do you not understand!?”