Kyle Young Revisited

I used to blog about Kyle Young a lot. It was a terrible case - a troubled young man, 16 years old, who died falling down an elevator shaft at the Edmonton Law Courts building, after having been pushed against the elevator doors by two (count 'em) jail guards. This happened, incidentally, when he was shackled so that he couldn't raise his hands above his waist. Anyway, the incident triggered shock and horror among decent people, and a fatality inquiry whose final report is here.

Sadly but not surprisingly, it also triggered a minor outburst of that "Rrrr, he had it comin', hang 'em high, darn bleedin'-hearts" sort of masturbation that occurs around here whenever an incident like that happens. Said minor outburst is apparently not over yet. Earlier today, I was politely informed in the comments sections to a couple of posts on Kyle Young that I am a "fuckin' stoner" and an "idiot", and that the whole thing was "entirely Kyle Young’s fault, end of story."

The fatality inquiry concluded that procedures had not been followed in number of different areas (ya don't say), and also included this little tid-bit about the training of guards (warning: the link's a PDF):

Mr. Bertsch testified that to his knowledge there is no jurisdiction in Canada that provides specific training with respect to the handling of prisoners in the Youth Criminal Justice system. In this regard, I note that the National Union of Correctional Officers and Youth Facility Workers working session report, Ottawa, September 22nd and 23rd, 2005 which may be found at www.nupge.ca/publications, makes specific reference to training with respect to handling of youth prisoners. It is of interest to note that Alberta appears not to be part of that National Union, or at least did not attend that session. It would appear that there are training programs with respect to handling of youth prisoners.

Yes, it would appear so, and it would appear that Alberta was sitting them out at the time of Kyle Young's death (hilariously, I made a snarky comment in one of my earlier posts on the subject about the guards being "presumable trained" - joke's on me, I suppose). Now, credit where credit is due, that barn door has been slammed firmly shut, despite the alarming lack of horses within, and that's largely due to the findings of the Kyle Young inquiry. So, perhaps we should edit "entirely Kyle Young’s fault, end of story" to read "entirely Kyle Young's fault, except in the multitude of areas where it wasn't, in fact, Kyle Young's fault in any way, shape, or form, but rather the result of what amounted to pretty much a system-wide clusterfuck, end of story." Of course, if we did that, we'd be depriving certain people of their god-given right to gloat over the deaths of children.

Finally, for dessert, we have a wee quiz:

Question: Where is the computer located upon which our esteemed correspondent, "Reeltyme123", posted his/her/its insightful comments?

A) A three-masted schooner ship, sailing the seas in search of the lost continent of Atlantis.
B) My imagination.
C) Mordor.
D) Alberta Justice.

If you picked "D", give yourself an extra scoop of ice cream.