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[bryant]

My friend Jere pointed out, quite accurately, that the question isn't really "what did the kid in Kentucky write about?" The question is "when did we start arresting people for writing stories, no matter how disturbed?" Or, perhaps, "when did we stop trusting parents to raise kids and deal with problem situations?"

It's probably relevant that the biggest policy victory (pending) for the Democrats over the last few years has been Social Security, on which issue they're coming down on the side of the government protecting people. We really like being protected these days.

Comments

[tryslora]

We stopped trusting parents when they stopped dealing. I haven't read everything on this one, but the one thing I read said that the grandmother read his journal and turned him in. Doesn't sound like she even stopped to talk to him.

There isn't a lot of trust between kids and parents (or grandparents) these days. Our kids are smart. And I think sometimes the parents are afraid. They're afraid that their kid is really going to be insane and come at them with a hatchett or a gun and get them in their sleep. So rather than try to talk and tip the kid off, they think they're outsmarting the kid by handing him over to an authority figure. Washing their hands of the problem. It's so freakin' sad.

Hells, I can't imagine the reaction if I were fifteen today and writing some of the things I wrote when I was fifteen (which included a story about a one afternoon war in a high school which was actually a reaction to the cold war when I was a kid, not some kind of threat to the school's population).

The "me" generation has produced children and is too busy still being all about "me" to be all about their children too. It's something I struggle with for my own kids on a daily basis, but I know that if I'm interested in who they are and what they think, when they grow up I won't need to be afraid of them and we'll TALK about this stuff and I'll know when they're serious and when they're just being imaginative.

[head58.livejournal.com]

But how many times do we have to see kids shoot up a school and then find exactly this kind of stuff written in journals afterward before people can accept that yes, this is some kind of warning sign/cry for help and that there is a moral imparative to get the authorities involved? Sure, the kid has been arrested but now you can bet he's not going to prison - he's going to get some hardcore couseling that he wouldn't have gotten otherwise.

Is there a 100% correlation between writing this kind of stuff and going on a killing spree? Of course not. But can we take the risk?

More importantly though (and less devil's advodateish) these stories clearly could not have been the only factor here. If the parents/teachers saw Johnny Varsity with a Winning Smile and Friends Galore writing such stuff, well, okay, it's just a thing. But this kid was trying to recruit his fellows to some kind of gang. There are references to past offences/charges, "including any prior terrorist threats or sexual assaults," that were filed as a minor and have been sealed. This kid probably had some Big Issues, and the people around him knew it. Maybe the family had tried to get him help before and it hadn't worked, leaving them to this. We don't know. But I really doubt this happened in a vacuum.

If The Authorities were rounding up folks for a minor LJ post with no previous history of anything wrong, then I could understand the Orwellian panic.

[bryant]

Well, I actually take the unpopular position that yes, we can take the risk. In the same way that we can decide not to do racial profiling even though that increases the risk that an Arabic terrorist will get through and do something awful. In both cases I don't think the risk is high enough to justify the infringement on civil liberties.

But I recognize that I am not exactly in the mainstream here.

Re: this case -- just saying "if there were prior complaints we can't tell you about them" is in no way evidence that there were prior complaints.

[telepresence.livejournal.com]

My feeling is that this story is not all that notable, and it's just bad reporting that's making the issues we care about stand out in sharp relief. That the kid has a bunch of fairly well documented issues and incidents (some of which we apparently can't know about, legally)and this was just the triggering signpost. Not so much a free speech/kids have a right to weird fantasy lives thing.

In the same vein, a lot of news outlets are reporting on this whole situation in Atlanta with with hostage bonding with the fugitive guy over god and such, without ever getting into the fact that this is a fairly not-uncommon phenomenon in hostage taking/home invasion/sexual abduction cases. Yes, she had a remarkable experience, yes, it's a wonderful thing that he didn't hurt her, but I wish someone would take ten seconds to report the story in a way that acknowledges/reflects on the huge body of information about the nature of offender/hostage relationships in situations like this.

[head58.livejournal.com]

Well, I was playing devil's advocate there to a degree. I'm not a big fan of profiling but nor am I fond of barn door closing post equine escape. I have yet to find a balance between these 2 things I'm comfortable with.

But I do suspect there was more going on here than we're getting in the media. I mean, they jumped all over the zombie thing which just turned out to be an attampt by the kid at dodging. We're not hearing anything from family/friends about how he was a "sweet kid who wouldn't hurt a fly." I wish we had more to go on.

[kodi]

That's always been the question, as far as I'm concerned. The game we like to play, though, when we think a policy is stupid, is we watch the results of the policy for the stupidest result, and then parade that result as an example of what dimwits the people who enforce the policy are. It makes for interesting reading, but I don't think it actually sways anyone's opinion.

What bothers me most is that this is a felony. Not so bad for this kid, becuase he's a juvenile offender, but really. A felony conviction is not "intervention to prevent Columbine," it's a life-long punishment.

[roniliquidity.livejournal.com]

It stopped being the domain of the parents when the grandmother called police. The dispatcher can hardly say "Nah, I'm sure the kid's fine."

I think what the kid wrote, specifically, is somewhat irrelevent here. People aren't upset about the kid simply writing some fiction. They're upset that after he wrote the story about a group, including himself, massacring a school, he began to recruit his friends for No Limited soldiers. He was acting it out. That's what raises a red flag.

[bryant]

I don't know that he tried to recruit his friends for No Limited Soldiers. I know that a policeman testified that his writings contain evidence to that effect.

[bryant]

Is he still a juvenile? He's 18 now.

[roniliquidity.livejournal.com]

A couple of the links mentioned the journal writings but the first link of your prior posts says:

"Caudill testified that at least seven acquaintances of Poole's reported that Poole had attempted to recruit them into a gang, but that none of them were interested."

I take that to mean they actually talked to the kids in question. I thought there was an actual quote from an unamed peer in one of the articles, but I can't find it in a brief scan.

[kodi]

Oh, you're right. For some reason, I had it stuck in my head that he was younger than that. Ok, so yes - it sucks to be William Poole.

[bryant]

I have this awful picture in my head of the kids saying "Sure, he tried to recruit us into his Command and Conquer clan, but we weren't interested."