The Worth of a Child

I heard today about a convicted child molester released this week from prison. He served two years of a twelve year sentence. It seems the prisons are just too crowded to keep child molesters, rapists, and murderers locked up – too full of those real threats to our society: Pot smokers and housewives who bounced checks! (I could have said: Housewives who bounced checks and pot smokers, but I don't know of any women in prison for bouncing pot smokers.)

Another report today is about Tommy Chong (of Cheech & Chong) recently being released from prison after serving 9 months for selling bongs online – not for selling or posessing pot, mind you but for selling glass bottles with rubber hoses attached! And we've all heard the stories of people getting 20 years to as long as life for possession of a couple joints.

In Oklahoma, there is a woman serving 25 years in prison for writing a bad check. Had the woman had a gun and robbed the store and shot the cashier she would have gotten 7 to 10 years.

With criminals like these threatening the well-being and safety of our society (or, more accurately, threatening the bank balances of the rich and powerful) it is no wonder we can't afford to keep minor criminals like child molesters in prison.

Notice the pattern? A crime against the institutions of our society or against the state will get you a long prison sentence. A crime against an individual doesn't count.

From recent experience with the rapist in Colorado, the child stealer and killer in Idaho, and the San Jose, California predator with 36,000 documented molestation incidents, we can expect to hear about this fellow that was released this week having killed a child before summer's out.

A couple sites you should visit from time to time are ThrowAwayTheKey.org and ChildAdvocacy.com - not that it will do much good. It sickens me to live in a society where we will not protect our children and women from the likes of these men.