The story itself bothers me. Two teenage girls befriended a 3 year old while she was at a McDonald's playland, then cut off a huge chunk of the three year old's hair. They were identified and sent to juvenile court.
Where the story takes an interesting turn:
[Judge] Johansen ordered Kaytlen to serve 30 days in detention and 276 hours of community service for the incident and for making months of threatening phone calls to a Colorado teen.
Then the judge said, "I will cut that by 150 hours if you want to cut her hair right now."
"Me, cut her hair?" Bruno asked.
"Right now," the judge responded. "I'll go get a pair of scissors, we'll whack that ponytail off."
Moss was in court that day and can be heard on an audio recording demanding that more hair be cut off.
"You satisfied?" the judge asked.
"No," Moss replied. "She took that much off. My daughter's hair that had never been cut, that was down to here, was cut up to here."
Judge Johansen said, "Take it off clear up to the rubber band."
The teen's mother is upset about what happened - she claims she felt intimidated into cutting off her daughter's hair and now wishes she hadn't complied. (Did she have an attorney present? The article doesn't say.)
I'm struggling with what I think is a basic question - has justice been served? The teens in question have been punished. But punishment isn't the same as justice, is it? There's the notion of restorative justice in which the offender makes whole the offended. So in this case, we have to ask - what exactly was the crime? They were charged with assault - well they did something else in the process. It wasn't that they cut off a little girl's hair - they violated her sense of safety. They taught her to feel unsafe in the world. Having their hair cut off won't restore he sense of feeling safe. At the same time, the Judge's lesson was that those in power can do what they wish to those not in power. Was his sentence an abuse of power? We grant judges wide latitude for good reason - there are so many variables in any given charge that judges need to be able to exercise discretion. But there are also boundaries. We wouldn't let a judge horsewhip a defendant found guilty. We don't let judges execute prisoners.
I'm not sure I agree or disagree with the Judge's decision, but I'm sure it raises lots of questions for me. I'm not sure if the judge overstepped his bounds or not. He saw to it that the ofender was punished - I'm not sure he saw to it that justice was served.