YTF said:
Quoting your post, but not singling you out. I think most of us who would have liked to have seen sentences of more consequence aren't advocating that Jen Martel would still be alive today though some insist on addressing us as though we are. Please stop confusing or intentionally linking the two. I think many of us are appalled even outraged to read Remy's lengthy rap sheet as compared to the sentences imposed.
I didn't intend to single anyone out with it, and I think it applies equally to both "pro" and "con" arguments RE: legal penalties, different parenting, quality of legal defense, etc.
I am 100% in agreement that something is very wrong when someone can be arrested so many times, with such a clear pattern of dangerously abusive and murderously threatening behavior, and can apparently have such a (correctly) blase attitude towards consequences ("just another year of probation..."). I don't know nearly enough about the legal system to know whether each or any offense was properly handled under the law, but if they were, it seems obvious to my simple mind that the law ought to be changed (how, precisely, is currently beyond my wisdom to say).
I also cannot speak intelligently about anything regarding the upbringing or parenting in the Remy household, except to state the obvious: that these are some frightening children whose patterns of behavior are shockingly at odds with the public face of a seemingly very nice, successful, and down-to-earth father who spent 3 hours a day, six months a year shooting the breeze on TV. Maybe it was something in the water? I don't care to speculate.
I agree with those who say that Jared was in serious need of what used to be called "tough love" (i.e., shutting the kid off from material/enabling support). But once again I lack the expertise to voice more than personal opinion, and I certainly can't prove (or even provide coherent supporting evidence) that "it would have made a difference", so why argue with those who adamantly maintain that I have no right to judge, or that they know it wouldn't have mattered?
I think sometimes the truth is so patently obvious that attempts at reasoned analytics and thought-experiments serve more to obfuscate than illuminate, trying to set the parameters by which we shall determine whether water is truly wet...
I think it's good and laudable that our approaches to criminal-justice should endeavor to offer opportunities for redemption and rehabilitation, and my non-expert guess is that there is virtually always at least some component of "mental illness" at play in these things. But there is also a component of justice and law and parenting (or ought to be, I think) whereby, if you live in this place with the rest of us, there are rules we all must agree to be bound by, and there are limits to how much we will allow your problems or mine to become ours.
Jared Remy, for a long time, clearly made his own problems, problems for everyone else, in pretty egregious ways. I personally think that's what is prison ought to be for. I think his parents appear to have been active participants in giving their son more and repeated opportunities to be a problem for everyone else. But again, just my opinion, and I'm not an expert.
In any case, I'm in the camp that doesn't want to see Jerry yukking it up on TV this summer. And I was (mostly) a fan until I read this piece.