My Sister, The Jail Bird

So my 17 year old sister is crazy! That is the only way I can explain her ridiculous behavior. Well, that and the fact that Homophobic Narrow-minded Person is right. She is back on drugs. It all began last year.

Before Christmas she and this idiotic male friend of her's shoplifted from Wal-Mart. Of course, they were caught. She stole batteries. BATTERIES! They were for her little walkman CD player. She had asked our mother to buy some and my mother said they needed to see how much money they had after the bought the groceries & stuff they needed. Well, she took that as a NO and decided to steal them. Since she was a minor, they banned her form the Wal-mart and she attended Teen Court for the offense. She was given X amount of hours of community service and X amount of times she had to participate at Teen Court as a juror.

I was a juror at Teen Court when I was like 14 or so. I was a volunteer though. I know! I am such a nerd. But I wanted as much experience with the law & court system as I could get (without becoming a criminal) since I was planning on becoming an attorney. Still do someday I guess.

Anyway, my sister did the teen court appearances, but never got around to doing the community service. At first she blew it off with the excuse of having enough time to do it later. Then when later came and went, she couldn't find a cushy enough place to allow her to work. The animal shelter she did community service at before, no longer allowed underage people to work there. And then once the other places found out she was caught stealing, they didn't want her there either (like Goodwill or Salvation Army). And heaven forbid if she was gone pick up trash or do anything else that required REAL work.

Eventually, as most idiots tend to do, she got into MORE trouble with the law. First with truancy from skipping the self paced high school she begged us to let her attend. Then later with a curfew ticket she got when she stole Mom's car one night while Mom was sleeping and refused to appear in court for. She has had more court appearances this year than I can keep up with. She once bragged that she knew more about the criminal justice system than I do. Interesting! I have a Bachelor's Degree in C.J. I responded, "She may know more about the punishment phase than I do." Like that is something to brag about?!

So here it is July and my sister has STILL not done the community service she was supposed to. She had until mid-March to have it completed. When she failed to do so, they kicked her case back to adult court from juvenile court. When she went back to adult court, they gave her X amount of time to get the community service done or she would be sent to REAL jail and not Juvie since she is now 17 years old.

At another one of her court appearances (this one for truancy), they ordered my sister to stop attending high school (she was barely a sophomore) and enroll in GED courses. She was given a specific date to reappear in court with her GED. At that time Mom told the judge she found some rolling papers in my sister's room so the judge ordered my sister to submit a urine analysis at the end of the week. If she refused or didn't pass, they would suspend her license. She refused to take the UA, admitting to Mom that she was smoking marijuana again.

Again, leaving things to the last minute, my sister reappeared in court with no GED. She attended the courses and was ready to take the test. Of course, she waited until the Friday before her court appearance to find out about how, what, where to take the GED test. Turns out that the test in only offered on Wednesdays, at the city University and enrollment is only done on the Tuesday before. The test costs $85, which she does not have. And, of course, they were due in court on Wednesday, so taking the course before appearing in court was out of the question.

Anyway, the court extended time for my sister to get her GED and said that she owed a $500 fine for the truancy. They totally forgot about suspending her license. They stated that if she refused to pay the fine she could be sent to jail as well. My sister wasn't sure if the judge meant real jail or juvie.

Eventually at one of her other court appearances they did suspend her license and ordered her to get a job and pay $100 of her fine by June 30th. Well, my dumb ass sister began talking to her so-called "friends". They convinced her that she should just pay off her community service and fines by sitting them out in jail. Jail is no big deal, according to them.

So when my sister attended court on Wednesday for the theft, she told the judge she wanted to go to jail and sit out her community service. Well, the judge said they needed a warrant. Turns out she already had one from the failure to appear in court for the curfew ticket she received. So off to jail she went.

She was released from jail this morning. Mom had gone to Wal-mart and when she returned home my sister was there. She walked most of the way home until someone picked her up. She is saying that she is going to get a job and pay off her remaining fines. I guess jail was not as easy as she thought. Unfortunately, she has a very short memory so I will believe her plans when I actually them executed.

Sad really. Just plain sad!