It’s everything a parent fears. A child, walking home from a friend’s house, is stolen away, often with no hope of a live recovery. The body is later recovered by a search team, laid away in some obscure location.

However, it is rare that the event is caught on tape.

Such is the case though with Carlie Brucia, an 11-year-old victim of this unthinkable crime, whose kidnapping last week was caught on tape at a car wash in Florida. Joseph Smith, an auto mechanic with what the New York Times referred to as a “long criminal record,” was arrested on suspicion of committing the atrocity after acquaintances noted his likeness to the perpetrator in the nationally broadcast video. This odd coincidence has brought national attention to case, as has the father’s demand that the Florida judicial system be reviewed considering Smith’s lack of time in prison.

Smith has been in and out of the Florida court system, mostly on drug charges. In 1999, he was arrested for heroin possession and in 2000 for prescription fraud. His penalty was probation for both, not prison time. In 2001, he served 13 months for another offense of prescription fraud and was arrested in 2003 when he was again found with drugs — just eight days after being released from prison. Courts found the offense was not great enough to warrant the optional 5-year sentence, so Smith was released on three years probation.

If Smith were locked up for five years, he couldn’t have left Brucia dead behind the church three miles from the car wash. If he were locked up, Brucia would have returned home from her friend’s slumber party.

But there is no way Smith’s past drug charges could have predicted him committing the crime of which he is accused. Only two crimes even relate to the current situation: a 1993 battery charge, which landed Smith a 60-day sentence, and a 1997 arrest on charges of kidnapping and false imprisonment, of which he was acquitted.

When a person is acquitted, he or she is declared innocent of all charges — in other words, not guilty. Yet this minuscule detail has escaped the news media and family of the victim, for every statement made by them links the current kidnapping to the one where Smith was exonerated.

It is understandable why the family is upset that Smith was not in jail. Their 11 year-old daughter is dead and nothing — not even Smith finally being given jail time — will fix their empty hearts. The family hopes that by investigating and improving the Florida judicial system this will never happen again.

But it will. According to the Washington Post, 155 children are kidnapped every year by people they don’t know. The problem is not with the Florida judicial system, but with the people who commit these evils.