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March 14, 2008
Child Endangering: The New Drunk Driving?
It seems that we're hearing more and more cases of parents, guardians, and especially "the mom's boyfriend" convicted of "child endangering."
Take this story of three moms charged with child endangering; one of them is only facing jail time after endangering her second child (her first child was killed in her home in 2005).
Let me get this straight: the courts said "you're a bad mom" and put her on parole for four years for endangering her child (letting it be killed), yet had no oversight over this new kid? That seems pretty short-sighted.
To relate it to drunk driving, which seems to carry similar penalties, imagine that I'm convicted of driving my Camry while intoxicated, so the court says I have to install a breathalyzer-style monitoring system in it. But, if I buy a new car, there's no such requirement. That seems to be the same sort of approach the courts take regarding child endangering.
So here's the question: How do we prevent people who put their children in harm from harming future children they may have? A related question is what do we do with all these kids who get taken away from their bad parents when there aren't enough foster homes and adoption parents to go around? Short of forced sterilization (which I think would be a hard sell for most people), I'm stumped.
Posted by Craig in Bad Parents