People are Frustratingly Stupid

So I was reading this CBC article this morning about a woman named West ran into a pedestrian crossing a crosswalk on a motorized wheelchair. She then fled the scene of the crime and later had her car repaired, destroying the evidence. The woman she hit later died of her injuries.

Eventually, West was caught and pled guilty. She started serving her jail term in May 2009. This week she was granted parole and will be moved into a halfway house. This is all the article says - there are no further details concerning her intentions, behaviour, or otherwise.

Commenters are livid. They are claiming that the justice system doesn't value human life; that West hasn't changed; that West is a coward who hasn't served her complete sentence yet and shouldn't be paroled. Let's take a second to remember that:

• The justice system isn't there to make you feel better.
• West made a mistake - a very serious one - and she served a year and a half in prison because of it. She didn't try to kill anyone, and there is no rehabilitation to be done here; she made a mistake and she paid the price.
• You're kidding yourself if you say that you would have turned yourself in.
• After being caught, she pleaded guilty. According to every episode of Law & Order I've ever seen, you get paroled because of good behaviour. If she got paroled, there must have been a reason for it.
• Her parole is helping society. In jail, we paid for her to do nothing for society. Now she has an opportunity to pay taxes and contribute. I'd say that's a positive change.

I feel that people, particularly those in New Brunswick, and particularly those who comment on CBC articles, would sound a lot smarter if they would think for half a second before opening their mouthes to offer their knee-jerk opinion on everything.

I am so frustrated after years of living in a province where people's gut-reaction is the final word on things. Maybe I'm fooling myself if I think it's going to be different elsewhere, but maybe people in the rest of the world are a different kind of stupid. That'd be refreshing ...