Having kids has nothing to do with it...

The correctional system is a joke. You can't rehabilitate someone unless they want to change. You can't make them change. You can take them out of society and let our tax dollars give them what is often times a better life than they would have in society. The kid is what, 12 years old? Is it an isolated incident or does he have a violent history?

Where do you draw the line? What if it was someone elses kid other than your friends? What if the victim was the one that initiated the fight? You know, there are so many things to take into consideration. In the grand scheme of things, I don't think it would be fair for him to get more time than a murderer might get in some cases. The system works in a weird way. This is apples to oranges, but there were two cases before me in court where the defendants were charged with DUI's and marijuana... Two SEPARATE cases! I got jail time for speeding. Want to guess what they got? Both of them automatically had the marijuana charges dropped with no questions asked... They were both sentenced to take ONE alcoholics anonymous class, pay one SMALL FINE, and served no jail time after the judge suspended 100% of it. They wouldn't serve a single day in jail, and the incident would NOT go on their record provided they did the AA class and paid the fine. I GOT JAIL TIME FOR SPEEDING!!! The likelyhood of them becoming repeat offenders is high, and they will probably eventually kill someone. I don't know if you see where I'm going with this or not, but I don't see the logic behind the way punishments are decided. There should be a benchmark that they uphold for each individual crime. There would still be variables, but at least you wouldn't have to worry about spending more time in jail for threatening someone than actually killing them. You know?