Children Dying in Prison
Americans are adjusting alarmingly well to constant increases in government power and resulting decreases in their own rights and freedoms. One group of Americans, however, is far ahead of all other groups in terms of lost freedoms — that group is our children.
Not only are Americas children born into debt slavery, but in return for this taxation they are given almost no legal rights or protections. Every American child now carries $41,713 in debt the moment they are born, and yet they do not have the same rights to liberty as the adults who saddled them with that debt.
An American child can be taken out of his home and incarcerated in a government facility against his will, without a trial and without even being criminally charged.
One young girl I know was complaining at school about her stepmother. A teacher overheard her say that she wanted to kill her stepmother. The school brought in the police and the young girl was taken to county jail. It cost $70k to bail get her out of jail and back with her family.
Incarceration can be very difficult on a child, but there are much worse things. Children are routinely restrained in manners which cause them to stop breathing. Read the list of Deaths in Residential Youth Facilities/Programs maintained by the Coalition Against Institutionalized Child Abuse and just try not to care about this issue. I bet you can’t.
Read about little seven year old Angie Arndt who was restrained for more than an hour for the crime of gurgling milk and who was then retrained again until she died. As shocking as that is, it is even more shocking to learn that the vast majority of these deaths do not result in criminal prosecution. The person responsible for Angie’s death was sentenced to just sixty days in jail.
Read about the case of 14yr old Matthew Goodman, who was held in restraints for sixteen months until he eventually succumbed to pneumonia and blood poisoning.
This is how our government treats the weakest and most vulnerable among us. I am reminded of the words of Pastor Martin Niemöller:
“THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.
THEN THEY CAME for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.
THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
THEN THEY CAME for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up.”
Our children cannot speak up for themselves. We must speak up for them.
