This is a great way to analyze the purposes of the criminal justice system. Typically, there are three: punishment, deterrence, and rehabilitation. Prosecuting someone who forgot their kid in the car can't have deterrent effect--to the extent the event was avoidable, the possibility of prosecution couldn't possibly match the deterrent effect created by the risk of harm to the child. Likewise, there is no rehabilitative purpose. You think someone who did that is likely to do it again? The only possible purpose is punishment, which doesn't seem valid here either. In my view, the purpose of punishment is to create and reinforce social norms. It makes people not do something not because they fear the punishment, but because they feel shame for violating the norm. Do we need to create such a norm for not endangering your kid?
Forgetting a Child in a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime? (2009)
31–40 of 234 posts
Re: Forgetting a Child in a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime? (2009)
#32Articles like this make me very glad the the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in 1985 that it is unconstitutional to imprison someone for an "absolute liability" offense. Put another way, while someone can be thrown in jail over a mistake if they were reckless , there must be a "due diligence" defense available. Absent extreme circumstances, it would be very hard for a case like this to come to trial in Canada.
Can you elaborate on what a due diligence defense would be in this case?
I'm not a lawyer, but I'd suspect that showing that the defendant normally took appropriate care and that it was only an unexpected event which provoked the mistake would be sufficient. My understanding is that due diligence only has to be prices on balance of probabilities.
Re: Forgetting a Child in a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime? (2009)
#33Articles like this make me very glad the the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in 1985 that it is unconstitutional to imprison someone for an "absolute liability" offense. Put another way, while someone can be thrown in jail over a mistake if they were reckless , there must be a "due diligence" defense available. Absent extreme circumstances, it would be very hard for a case like this to come to trial in Canada.
Not sure what you are referring to, but leaving unattended children in cars is quite strictly illegal in Canada.
Re: Forgetting a Child in a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime? (2009)
#34This is a great way to analyze the purposes of the criminal justice system. Typically, there are three: punishment, deterrence, and rehabilitation. Prosecuting someone who forgot their kid in the car can't have deterrent effect--to the extent the event was avoidable, the possibility of prosecution couldn't possibly match the deterrent effect created by the risk of harm to the child. Likewise, there is no rehabilitati…
It also sounds like a situation where you'd probably prefer a professional judge over a jury of your peers.
Re: Forgetting a Child in a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime? (2009)
#35I read somewhere that Tesla had an innovation to prevent this, but then couldn't Google it later. Did I dream that it can anyone else remember what I half-recall?
At first I thought you meant Nikola Tesla and was even more curious as to what it was.
Re: Forgetting a Child in a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime? (2009)
#36I read somewhere that Tesla had an innovation to prevent this, but then couldn't Google it later. Did I dream that it can anyone else remember what I half-recall?
Rather than a car feature, what about one of those sensors that alert you if the object is too far? And force the user to explicitly acknowledge that it's intentional (for when you leave them with someone else).
How do you reduce false reports (e.g. dropped connections) enough that people won't shut it off in annoyance, though? For a technological solution to really work for the "break in routine makes someone forget a baby in the car" case, it has to be something that can be left in place forever once activated.
Re: Forgetting a Child in a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime? (2009)
#37Articles like this make me very glad the the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in 1985 that it is unconstitutional to imprison someone for an "absolute liability" offense. Put another way, while someone can be thrown in jail over a mistake if they were reckless , there must be a "due diligence" defense available. Absent extreme circumstances, it would be very hard for a case like this to come to trial in Canada.
Not sure what you are referring to, but leaving unattended children in cars is quite strictly illegal in Canada.
Is it illegal to accidentally leave an unattended child in a car? The entire point of the article is accidental, not intentional, incidents.
Re: Forgetting a Child in a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime? (2009)
#38s
I generally agree with the idea of not criminalizing an honest mistake. I change my tune when it comes to mistakes that show a lack of fitness for the general task/required skills. In some cases I think a civil action like a fine or some type of legal mark that can identify serial 'mistake' makers. If you 'forget' to wear your motorcycle helmet 7 times maybe you just don't get to operate a motorcycle anymore. Or if y…
I've got three kids under five, I cannot imagine a world where I forget that they're there
Which is the whole problem. Our imagination and perception is flawed and limited. The idea that you can rely on it to accuse others of terrible crimes shows an unwarranted confidence in it.
People who actually studied memory are telling you (in the article): yes, it can happen to everyone, and you don't need any concussion.
Yet, you have an unshaken faith in memory, based on nothing but the fact that it never happened to you.
It's quite scary, actually.
Re: Forgetting a Child in a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime? (2009)
#39s
I generally agree with the idea of not criminalizing an honest mistake. I change my tune when it comes to mistakes that show a lack of fitness for the general task/required skills. In some cases I think a civil action like a fine or some type of legal mark that can identify serial 'mistake' makers. If you 'forget' to wear your motorcycle helmet 7 times maybe you just don't get to operate a motorcycle anymore. Or if y…
> I think there's an infinitesimally small percentage of people who actually forget
It happens more often than you believe, unfortunately. That's literally the entire point of the article.
> There's a dismayingly cartoonish expression for what happened to Lyn Balfour on March 30, 2007. British psychologist James Reason coined the term the "Swiss Cheese Model" in 1990 to explain through analogy why catastrophic failures can occur in organizations despite multiple layers of defense. Reason likens the layers to slices of Swiss cheese, piled upon each other, five or six deep. The holes represent small, potentially insignificant weaknesses. Things will totally collapse only rarely, he says, but when they do, it is by coincidence -- when all the holes happen to align so that there is a breach through the entire system.
> On the day Balfour forgot Bryce in the car, she had been up much of the night, first babysitting for a friend who had to take her dog to an emergency vet clinic, then caring for Bryce, who was cranky with a cold. Because the baby was also tired, he uncharacteristically dozed in the car, so he made no noise. Because Balfour was planning to bring Bryce's usual car seat to the fire station to be professionally installed, Bryce was positioned in a different car seat that day, not behind the passenger but behind the driver, and was thus not visible in the rear-view mirror. Because the family's second car was on loan to a relative, Balfour drove her husband to work that day, meaning the diaper bag was in the back, not on the passenger seat, as usual, where she could see it. Because of a phone conversation with a young relative in trouble, and another with her boss about a crisis at work, Balfour spent most of the trip on her cell, stressed, solving other people's problems. Because the babysitter had a new phone, it didn't yet contain Balfour's office phone number, only her cell number, meaning that when the sitter phoned to wonder why Balfour hadn't dropped Bryce off that morning, it rang unheard in Balfour's pocketbook.
> The holes, all of them, aligned.
> There is no consistent character profile of the parent who does this to his or her child. The 13 who were interviewed for this story include the introverted and extroverted; the sweet, the sullen, the stoic and the terribly fragile. None of those descriptions exactly fits Lyn Balfour, a 37-year-old Army reservist who has served in combat zones and who seems to remain -- at least on the subject of the death of her son -- in battle.
Re: Forgetting a Child in a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime? (2009)
#40This is a great way to analyze the purposes of the criminal justice system. Typically, there are three: punishment, deterrence, and rehabilitation. Prosecuting someone who forgot their kid in the car can't have deterrent effect--to the extent the event was avoidable, the possibility of prosecution couldn't possibly match the deterrent effect created by the risk of harm to the child. Likewise, there is no rehabilitati…
If you replace the victim with a dog instead of his own child, I'd say, "Yes he'd probably do it again.".
That leads to an odd situation where the action that leads to a child's death would warrant a lesser sentence than the same act leading to a dog's death.