In March of this year, Shanesha Taylor left her six-month-old and two-year-old kids alone in her car for almost an hour while she attended a job interview. She was later arrested, and her kids were removed from her custody.
When this story broke in news and social networks, it provoked a huge outpouring of support from people empathizing with Shanesha Taylor and her catch-22 situation: she can't afford to pay for childcare because she doesn't have a job, but she can't go to a job interview because she doesn't have childcare. The support partially came in the form of money - as of today, almost $100,000 dollars has been donated to Shanesha and her cause.
Many are arguing, though, the bottom line is that Shanesha Taylor committed a crime by endangering the lives of her children. The prosecutor, Maricopa County (AZ) attorney Bill Montgomery, is proceeding with the felony child abuse case against Shanesha. He has not been swayed by public opinion, even in the form of Change.org's petition to drop the charges against Shanesha. He even remarked that a list of names of people sitting at home in their pajamas did not amount to a legitimate petition, anyway. [DISCLAIMER: I signed that petition while at home in my pajamas. I'm actually at home right now, in my pajamas, writing this.]
There are a lot of arguments that can be made against Shanesha, and her decision to leave her young children alone in a car. For example, if she couldn't afford to take care of her kids, she shouldn't have had them to begin with. Another argument is that child abuse is child abuse, regardless of the circumstance. And then there is the classic response to any bleeding-heart explanation for the commission of a crime, that Shanesha is simply blaming anyone but herself for her situation in order to avoid taking responsibility for her actions.
I don't know Shanesha Taylor, and I don't know all the facts of this case, but I do know there are essentially two fundamental perspectives responding to her situation. One perspective takes into consideration the existence of human emotion and suffering, and of the un-level playing field upon which the game of survival is played in the United States. The other perspective insists law and order cannot persist in a system entrenched in the subjective reasoning of what may or may not be a crime; there have to be clear-cut lines about what is right and what is wrong, or people would not be able to do anything without knowing whether or not they are breaking the law.
It is true that clearly-defined laws are an integral part of our justice system, a corner stone of Due Process of Law. Many laws have been successfully challenged on the basis of "unconstitutionally vague" wording. Without clear-cut lines, any of our actions could be construed to be legal or illegal, and all at the whim of police and prosecutors and judges. Police and prosecutors and judges are human, with emotions and different thoughts and feelings each day - mayhem would ensue if criminal justice relied solely upon the unpredictable and mercurial human mind.
Another legal consideration is the precedent that could be set in a case like Shenesha Taylor's. Is it okay to put your children's lives in danger as long as you are at a job interview? If Shenesha is not prosecuted, would that mean anyone could argue they had a really good reason for breaking the law, and therefore should not be charged with a crime? Technically, anyone can argue they had a really good reason to break the law, and a lot of the time, defendants do exactly that. However, the circumstances under which such justification defenses are allowed can be very difficult to discern, and if Shenesha Taylor is allowed to bring such a defense in this case, wouldn't that make those waters all the murkier?
Maybe. I don't really know, but I find it incredibly pretentious to deny the influence of societal factors on human behavior. Blaming illegal behavior on mommy or daddy, or on the devil, or on "the man," or on society in general is looked upon disdainfully as a cop-out to avoid personal responsibility. In some cases, that may be exactly what it is. However, that alone does not mean society can never influence human behavior beyond individual will. The definition of the word "explanation" is different from the definition of the word "excuse."
Explaining behaviors does not necessarily mean excusing behaviors, and excusing behaviors doesn't always have a good explanation. Attempting to remove mitigating factors from determining criminal behavior, sweeping them away as "excuses," is not logically possible, because we are human beings. Considering outside factors may make criminal prosecutions a lot more complicated, and much more difficult to achieve, but it is not supposed to be easy to put a person in jail.
The ease with which Shanesha Taylor was arrested, removed from her children, and is now being prosecuted is NOT okay. There is no room for "consideration of the totality of the circumstances." It is a rubber stamp of "you're fucked" punched onto the foreheads of anyone without the resources to survive in a socially acceptable manner.
The most confounding aspect of all of this, though, is the way we so easily deny ever having been victims of circumstance in order to justify our ready condemnation of others who are victims of circumstance. Does it make us feel better to think we have more control over what happens to us than we actually do? Does pretending that we are in charge of our own destinies make it okay to prosecute people who acknowledge they are not in charge of theirs?
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