Teen ordered to pay restitution for starting fire...

[flenna]

This. Hand digging from sun up to sun down with the blisters to prove it too. The one man tree planting chain gang with a minimum quota of say 100 a day...

This would get his attention better than telling him to pay back $36.6 million, which he knows he will never ever be able to do.

[SteveS]

Nah, like the article says, as long as he doesn't reoffend (much more likely now as his income will be hampered for some of the most vital years of his development) he will petition a halt in 10 years; and they'll grant it cause he was a kid.

He also, in my guess, won't be required to start payments until over the age of 18. He will be 21-22 When Probation is over. So, he could sit on welfare for 10 years, and still get it forgiven under the "No one will hire me as I am the kid who burned down our state."

ETA: Maybe I shouldn't have posted, I am particularily salty today after finding out that (completely off-topic), on average, any unemployed welfare recipient, in my state, receives over 55k a year annually in benefits. That is over 300% above the poverty line. While I am a working dude making barely over 200%. It makes me wonder what the EFF am I doing working? [/rhetorical]

It's asinine and people wonder why our out-of-state Welfare Fraud rate is so high, and our hiring from welfare is so damn difficult. Literally, working for a minimum wage job isn't even worth it. You might as well just stay on welfare. Bleh.

Welfare program = job security for the unionized government employee.