Unfortunately (or fortunately, I guess, if you're a sadist), an artifact of the American criminal justice system is the potential for probation violations to result in punishment which exceeds that of the original offense.
There is no "Probably". This is a statement of fact. The crimes were serious enough that they justified a prison sentence. The criminal was trialed, found guilty by a jury, and sentenced.
Just because the criminal was put on probation that doesn't mean the crimes committed by the criminal weren't serious offenses.
Either I'm missing something or you must be confused. It's extremely unlikely that a young teenager would be sent to "prison" in the US for the crimes that landed the girl in the article, "Grace," on probation. I used the word "probably" only to account for unlikely possibility that, given the variation in sentencing across US jurisdictions, a place exists where this might occur.
> This is a statement of fact. The crimes were serious enough that they justified a prison sentence.
This is obviously untrue. Did you read the article or any of the related news coverage? Grace's crimes were not punishable by a prison term.
> The criminal was trialed, found guilty by a jury, and sentenced.
Where are you getting this false information? Grace was not tried and found guilty by a jury. In fact, she wasn't even tried in a regular courtroom - this entire process took place in family court. [1] For reference - out of almost 24,000 2018 Michigan family court cases involving juvenile offenders, less than 0.01% went to trial (of those, only 12 - 0.0005% - were jury trials). [2]
Why are you making this stuff up?
1 - Family courts exist to solve legal problems involving youth and their parents.
2 - https://njdc.info/wp-content/uploads/Michigan-Assessment-Web...
Both crimes that are punishable by law with prison sentences.