The Image of "Good-For-Nothing"; Crime & Punishment & Sony PlayStation

It's a story that staggers the imagination, triggers the gag reflex, and ought to fill every person of conscience with a seismic sense of outrage: the story of not-quite-six-year-old Jeffrey Baldwin who perished under the inhuman conditions provided him by his grandparents, Norman Kidman and Elva Bottineau.

Globe & Mail story on this case

CBC New story on this case

James Mills, pictured here, lived in the house where Jeffrey died. Mills contented himself playing with a Sony PlayStation while listening to Jeffrey coughing and crying through his final hours of life. Mills did absolutely nothing to help the child.

If this case was not so tragic, maddening and patently avoidable, I would suggest that some filmmaker create an Anime film of James Mills' ideas about "right" and "wrong," so surreal and otherworldly they appear to be. Clearly his co-defendants Norman Kidman and Elva Bottineau each have the moral compass of Adolf Eichmann.

Mills thought enough to point out during questioning that Jeffrey was "a 'dollars and cents' matter for his grandmother, Elva Bottineau." He went on to explain, "The kids were her only source of income. She didn't want to lose that and would do everything in her power not too."

Everything except feed the child, it seems. If what Mills says here is true -- and there is little reason to believe him -- wouldn't it have been in Elva Bottineau's financial interest (at the very bare minimum) to have kept Jeffrey alive? No, it's bad enough hearing that a child was only seen by his grandparents as a "dollars and cents" matter, but so much more fiendishly horrendous to see that poor Jeffrey was not even that.

Where in the name of God were the authorities in charge of Jeffrey Baldwin's case? I'm not up on how foster care works, but surely children are not simply left in someone's care with absolutely no follow-up visits or some minimal amount of contact with authorities. Clearly that's how it went in Jeffrey's case.

This is one of those gut-wrenching crimes and court cases that goes beyond laws being broken, and casts a pall across our humanity.

The Canadian justice system is not up for dealing with a case like this. The justice system's usual tools for meting out justice -- clarvoyance and exhaustively determining what would make lawbreakers' lives better, easier, and more fulfilled -- have no place in this case. Assessing the defendants' likelihood of reoffending has no place here. Having a justice issue an "ah shucks" statement about how sorry the defendants' are, and how they cannot turn back the clock, has no place here. Feather duster spankings have no place here.

No, the facts of the case must be meticulously logged and noted and examined, and the situation viewed from Jeffrey's point of view.

Canada's feather-duster system of Judas-Prudence is not up to this task. Great news for the fiends among us. A tragic realization for the Jeffrey Baldwins who go, at this moment, undiscovered in our country.