Even though it’s proper and fitting to start this post with “Mom, Mom!”, and even though it is (sort of) about unduly harsh prison terms, Matt can heave a sigh of relief and put his pink-slip pad back wherever he keeps it. This post is not about Paris Hilton.
Though I may as well start by wondering what Paris might think about the harshness or otherwise of this sentence:
Ryan Kenty, 20, and his brother Brandon, still a sophomore in high school, plan to drive their mother to jail Monday morning before heading back to her rented apartment to move the rest of her belongings into storage.
Their mom, Elisa Kelly, and her ex-husband, George Robinson, are paying the price for hosting Ryan’s 16th birthday party — more than two years in jail each. Ryan had asked his mother to buy his friends some beer and wine, as long as they all spent the night.
Brandon, left, and Ryan Kenty will drive their mother, Elisa Kelly, to jail Monday, when she is to start a 27-month sentence for providing alcohol at Ryan’s 16th birthday party in 2002.
I think this is one of our more screwed-up social attitudes: the zero tolerance we have towards parentally-approved teenage drinking. Let me start by making it clear what I’m not saying. I’m not saying I think it’s a good idea for parents to sponsor drinking parties for their kids and their friends. What I’m saying is I think it is thoroughly stupid to criminalize behavior that I regard as the duty of a parent really.
Many kids, if not most, are going to experiment with alcohol in their teens. Simply a fact of life. Whether we think that’s good or bad is totally irrelevant. The strict social and legal sanctions we have put in place against teenage drinking mean that most kids are forced to experiment with alcohol in a wholly unsupervised environment. I would very much prefer that I was allowed to supervise my son’s introduction to alcohol, to teach him how to drink responsibly, and that I was allowed to do this at whatever age it turns out to be necessary.
Most countries have a legal drinking age. Most of these countries have a more enlightened attitude to parentally-supervised teenage drinking than the U.S. For example, in Austria the legal drinking age is 16, but parentally-supervised drinking is legal at 14. In France, “Anyone under the age of 16 can drink alcohol as long as the child is with the parent/guardian”. The law encourages teenagers’ introduction to alcohol to be supervised by their parents. If they’re going to do it anyway, we get to teach them how to do it right. That isn’t more important than teaching them to drive? How much drinking and driving happens because we only teach them to drive, we don’t teach them how to drink?
Coming back to Elisa Kelly and George Robinson, though:
“No one left the party,” said Kelly, 42, who collected car keys that night almost five years ago to prevent anyone from leaving. “No one was hurt. No one drove anywhere. I really don’t think I deserve to go to jail for this long.”
About 30 kids were at the Robinson property on remote Bleak House Road in Earlysville, Va., when police arrived about 11 p.m. after receiving a call about underage drinking. Many of the kids scattered into the nearby woods after one of them yelled, “Cops!”
The couple initially were charged with 16 misdemeanor counts, but seven of the partygoers had no alcohol in their systems. Of the nine who did, all were below the legal limit for intoxication…
If my son is going to drink anyway, this is how I would want him to be drinking.
Yes, they provided alcohol to minors. (Our society does a pretty good job of that too, doesn’t it? We stand on the sidelines and wet our free-market pants cheering as alcohol manufacturers glamorize the consumption of alcohol, and market it to our kids.)
But they seem to have provided a safe environment for responsible drinking. I have to agree with Kelly. I really don’t think they deserve to go to jail for 27 effing months.
And I think Albemarle County Commonwealth’s Attorney James L. Camblos III, who prosecuted the parents and said it was “the worst case of underage drinking he has had to deal with in 15 years”, ought to be thoroughly ashamed of himself. If there’s any justice in this world, he will never be elected to any public office he may aspire to.
What a pity that most TV networks will never broadcast the story of Elisa Kelly and George Robinson (and certainly not sympathetically). What a pity that most Americans will never hear their story. What a pity that most Americans will never be exposed to this debate.
Certainly not the way we were exposed to the debate about whether a billionaire heiress convicted of drunk driving and then found repeatedly driving without a valid license should or should not have been sentenced to jail for 45 days.