• jeffw@lemmy.worldM
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    9 months ago

    I don’t think many kids know about their options though. He basically said “I asked my parents for help and they denied me, so I can’t get help.” To me, that suggests the kid thought he exhausted his options. An uneducated child is a system failure imo, not a child’s criminal act.

    I’d also say that most people who are victims of suicide could have turned themselves in. Do we frown on them because they opted for violence?

    • Jimmyeatsausage@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      The criminal justice system doesn’t normally care how awful you are to yourself, its there to try and prevent you being awful to others. I believe you can still be charged with a crime in most of America if you survive a suicide attempt, but it isn’t normally pursued because it doesn’t really accomplish the things the state cares about…just like the state doesn’t typically care about any psychiatric conditions you have unless they make you a danger to others.

      I’ve got a few psychiatric conditions myself, and sometimes they contribute to me making bad choices that negatively impact the people I care about, but that doesn’t absolve me of the responsibility I have to own up to my actions and make amends when I fuck up. I can’t imagine anything I’ve dealt with leading me to the conclusion that killing a bunch of children or peers would be acceptable or desirable, but I also have the benefits of being properly medicated and having years of therapy under my belt that had given me a lot of great tools for dealing with my shit…but its still my shit and I’m responsible for it.

      And yes, I do tend to frown on suicide. It’s a final solution to a usually temporary problem, hurts EVERYONE who loves you, and it destroys your ability to do anything to make the world better.