ratbastid

I guarantee you, the answer to that question is something OTHER THAN millions of dollars in fines and being thrown into the state foster care system. Talk about pouring gas on the fire.

I agree with Ustwo (it happens often enough that I'm over being surprised by it) that we don't know enough about the nature of the kid or the firestarting to form a very meaningful conclusion. I'm assuming that the fire-playing was relatively innocent, and that it wasn't intended to destroy any property. If that's the case, then the media attention and the threat of massively serious consequences is, in my opinion, punishment enough. For a normal, non-problem kid to have accidentally caused this sort of devastation, be found out about it, and be the subject of huge legal and media attention and be threatened with separation from his family? Yeah... I feel pretty confident that kid's learned his lesson already. He's got to be completely terrified by all this.

Now, if he's a hooligan who started the fire maliciously or to destroy property, that's another issue. But they're calling it an accident, so... Again, we're forced to draw conclusions from a vanishingly small data set.