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If you feel anger. Good. You should. The easiest target is the worker. But ask yourself this. Why was there only one?
The general rule for most professions that deal with kids is that adults should never be alone 1 on 1 with a kid.
This worker is probably paid the least of any profession that deals with children, and they are asked to do it alone, with no backup to help catch mistakes.
So I blame the state for not investing in the well-being of children.
That being said, this worker should still be held criminally accountable for the death of this child. Regardless of the states culpability in not allocating enough money to hire the number of workers necessary to care for the children they supervise, this person was still criminally negligent.
that's a tough one for me. I mean there need to be repercussions. After all, they did take the job and did know the responsibilities. But maybe they expected more support to avoid these kinds of mistakes. Or maybe they expected the hiring manager to ensure they were qualified. And likely they will have to live with this horrible pain for the rest of there lived. No way to know from here. But I am not sure it "automatically" should result in crimanal charges that I would expect jail time from.
Well, the letter of the law is clear enough. IANAL but it looks like there's probable cause for manslaughter charges. We'll have to see if the DA agrees. But that doesn't mean a jury will convict. They'll want to hear all of the details that we don't yet know.
On a general level, though, I would say your position is soft. I believe that if you work a job with small children or other people who can't keep themselves safe (people with Alzheimer's, etc.), you have a moral obligation to keep them reasonably safe. If your working conditions are so bad that you can't, then either blow the whistle or quit. If you don't, everyone will blame you in the end. This is basic CYA for any job, of course, but it's extra important when people's lives are on the line.
Yeah, my laymans understanding of manslaughter fits the bill. But laws are "funny". And I want to agree with what you said about blow the whistle or quit. But I understand how hard that is for a lot of people. Also, it's hard to blow the whistle on something everyone already knows is bad. If people didn't have to work to survive (health insurance, rent, food...) it would be a lot easier to quit if you felt you couldn't safely do the job. But the system was designed to make it hard for people to quit. So I have trouble blaming people for not being able to do it.
If the state actually invested in things besides private prisons and locking people up for smoking a joint it wouldn't be such a miserable backwards shithole but if the dirt roads leading to the redneck's trailers out in the sticks were paved they wouldn't have their trucks covered in mud every time they went into town and that would infringe on their cultural identity as tribal swamp people.
Yeah but it wasn't like the kid was left in the car for 20 minutes according to the article they were in there for multiple hours. How do you forget about a kid for hours and hours on end?
Forgetting things doesn't get harder with time, it gets easier. That said, a parent or what not would have lots of things in their house and such that would trigger them to think about the kid and remember. This person proabably had no such triggers in thier life. And of course it is what they needed.
Ah yes, the ol', "I don't get paid enough for this shit", defence for letting a child die while in your custody. Solid.
Well if that is how you read it... it isn't what I said, but I can't help your choice of interpretation. But as long as we don't put some blame on the management and funding deciders, this kind of thing will continue.
You definitely included the employee's low pay as context to consider. Another person likely would've prevented this from occurring, but the fact is that only one person was involved. The amount of pay that person received does not negate their failure to not kill a child. They could've been coerced into taking care of the child against their will and that would still not absolve them of guilt, in my opinion.
I did, but not as motivation. Low pay means the hiring manager usually don't have a large pool of people from which to choose a person with the skills for the job.
If a worker had a heart attack and died in the car in a parking lot on a hot day with the kid in the back, and the kid died. Would you still nlame the worker? Or would you ask why wasn't there some system in place to handle the possibility of an incapacitated worker. Like a checkin system when they are with a child, or a partner.
Now add on that humans making mistakes is a whole lot more likely than a sudden heart attack incapacitating someone. Yet no system or plan exists to prevent it from resulting in the death of the child. This was entirely preventable, it just wasn't worth the cost to the policy makers.
And no, the worker shouldn't be completely absolved from guilt. They shouldn't be allowed to work 1:1 with vulnerable people ever again. But will jail time solve anything? If there was some evidence that it was more than just a horrible mistake, then sure. But if not, I don't see how putting all the blame on them will prevent it from happening in the future.
This looks to be a case of manslaughter, defined by state law as if one "(1) Recklessly causes the death of another person." For criminal liability, it really is that simple. The person who did the immediate bad act is charged with the most severe crime.
It seems you want to blame the state. Great! Talking about civil liability, you can be sure the victim's family will sue the worker, their company, and the state, and they'll probably settle out of court because it's a sure win for the plaintiff.