WARNER ROBINS, Ga. — A Warner Robins teacher is accused of threatening to behead a student after she made a comment about his Israeli flag, according to the Houston County Sheriff’s Office.
It’s “fringe” but if this was our response to every time someone did this shit our mental healthcare facilities would be overrun like it was peak COVID. Plus, if this were some kind of treatable mental illness they’d be going absolutely nuts about curing it being some kind of liberal brainwashing. But it is an epidemic.
That would not be the case if ineffective resources dedicated to the prison system were properly redirected in an evidence-driven program designed to isolate people from larger society when they constitute a danger and effect whatever treatments are possible to fix the actual issues, not some misconstrued notion of good and evil. I believe that it is legitimate and moral for society to protect itself from people like this man. You’re just not going to fix anything by sticking him in a dark abusive hole for five years, much less letting him out on parole for a few grand.
This man’s brain is in the exact same condition that it was in when it caused him to react to a child’s statement as if he were sieging Fallujah. That same guy is still walking the streets. Having received some consequences for his action may have attenuated those signal pathways, but may have also exasperated them. He needs a combination of medication to reduce his reactivity and coping mechanisms for realizing when it’s happening. He may never be safe for society, but he’s certainly not safe because he was able to take $5k from his savings to pay bail.
