There are some people who seem bound and determined to be as vile as possible. Maybe their homelife sucked growing up, or maybe there was something else, but they're just bad eggs across the board.
For people like that, we have to trust the criminal justice system to handle them. However, when that fails, it can fail horrifically.
The prime example for today is a kid out of Wisconsin, whose crimes are the stuff of nightmares.
Seventeen-year-old Tremonte Kirk was sentenced to 35 years in prison on Tuesday by Judge David Borowski at the Milwaukee County Courthouse.
In December, Kirk saw a random woman from a busy street and followed her into the elevator of her apartment. He raped her and then stomped on a surgical incision on her leg.
The woman, Charlotte Nozar, testified in court against her attacker.
"Your honor, the serial rapist you have sitting in front of you today is an existential threat to the women of Milwaukee," she said.
"Nothing, nothing can give me my life as I knew it and my leg back," she added.
Judge Borowski berated Kirk for his actions and pointed out that his criminal behavior extended back to when Kirk was only 12 years old.
"This is as aggravated, depraved and sadistic and evil as it gets. You engaged in monstrous conduct, conduct that would lead the average person to believe you are an absolute monster. Your parents raised a monster," said the judge. "Your record, Mr. Kirk, is horrible. If you were 40 years old, it'd be a horrible record."
DNA evidence implicated Kirk in another attack a year earlier. The victim got away in that case, thankfully, but it seems that Kirk had a long history of similar behavior, with reports going back at least five years.
That's right. He did this stuff when he was just 12.
What's more, he was wearing an ankle monitor during both of these recent attacks. They knew where he was the whole time? Ankle monitors are typical for people "enjoying" house arrest. They're supposed to be within so many feet of their home, and this twerp was running around raping people?
Yeah, Kirk is clearly as "depraved and sadistic and evil as it gets," but how did the criminal justice system not crack down on this guy long before? How was he able to run around and commit these atrocities against people for at least five years without someone stepping in and addressing it before now?
The fact that he was a juvenile doesn't even cover it, because the ankle monitor is an alternative to juvenile jail. Further, if any of his criminal actions were sexual assault back then, which seems plausible, he could have been tried as an adult and locked up then.
Coddling criminals doesn't do anything, even if they're juveniles. Some people might get scared straight the moment handcuffs are applied, but many others require something a lot more severe. How many innocent people are victimized by "people" like Kirk every day, only to get the soft excuse for justice that clearly played so much of a role in Kirk's life up until now?
A woman's life was destroyed because people were too afraid to punish an evil monster in their midst. That's not helpful for anyone.