Category: Let's talk
... for serious crimes.
So said a report out today.
Now, I have a major issue with this.
Firstly, while I believe that there should be an age of criminal responsibility, my belief is that that age should incorporate all crimes. Either a child is and can be held responsible for their actions, or they're not.
Furthermore, I can't help thinking that the stipulation the children be held responsible for serious crimes only has more to do with the public rreaction if this did not happen than to do with the need for the child to be brought to account.
In this country there have been some horrific crimes committed by children who were then under the age of twelve. And while I do believe that children should be brought to account for the wrongs they commit, I also think that in order for a child to commit such horrific crimes such as murder at such a young age there is something seriously wrong within that child or the environment they are brought up in, and that rather than trying and prosicuting them as adults we should seek to find the causes for these actions in order that they be rehabilitated. We cannot, after all, seek to lock up young children for the rest of their lives for the crimes they commit as children, and it is therefore vital that such children be able to function as normally as possible in the society into which they will be released once they reach adulthood.
As for minor crimes, if children can be tried for serious crimes, then why not minor ones too?
I completely agree with you. I think rather than having them put in jail, they should be required to go through some sort of rehabilitation program, hopefully to help them realize the serious reality of what they've done.
As far as the minor crimes, letting them off is sending the wrong message: "If you do something serious, something must be done about it, but anything minor, it's okay until you're older"? I don't think so.
bravo!!!! i totally agree ocean dream.
I should like to read that report...
A crime is just that, a crime, whatever age the person is. If someone has committed a crime, why should it matter what age they are, or if it does, then why does it not apply to all crimes, not just the most serious?
Exactly.
I agree with pretty much all that has been said here. Children should be held accountable for their actions, but at the same time if they commit murder at a young age they need help, not a prison system which will screw them up more because mentally they wouldn't be prepared for that kind of environment. Children can be incredibly impulsive, and ee no wrong in their impulsivity, partially because if they're young enough they can't understand why it would be considered wrong. Anger usually meets a need in a young child. While I would hope it wouldn't lead to murder or any such crime, if the child was abused from a young age it could, and they wouldn't necessarily be able to feel remorse for that action. Would that make them sociopaths?
I don't think so, as long as they were taught.
To me, if a child knowingly and willfully kills an innocent person, he/she should be tried as an adult, with full implications and punishment, including death. Normally, I would never even consider hurting, let alone executing, a child but willful murder of the innocent with full or close to full mental comprehention is a very serious crime and if there's no chance of recovery or of rehabilitation, I think that it's the best option. The only exceptions I would make are if it can be proven that the child really didn't understand what he or she was doing, either due to a mental disability or to the fact that it was an accident and/or the child was simply too young to realise that his/her actions might cause death or if he/she was killing someone who abused him/her. So, for example, a five-year-old who was playing with a gun and didn't really understand what it could do, and who accidentally shot someone I would not put in prison or sentence to death. It seems difficult to believe that someone couldn't know what the power of a gun is but since we're talking of children under 12, it very well may be possible, though probably less so as the child reaches that age. That said, in the gun case, I would recommend serious counseling and would charge the child's parents with murder if it could be proven that they didn't teach their child about gun safety and properly lock up the weapons. I also think that children who rape, beat or otherwise harm people should be tried as adults, unless there was a very good reason for it. Of course, there isn't anything to excuse rape, but if the child beat up someone because he/she was being bullied or because his/her cibling was beaten by that person etc. I wouldn't have a problem with it. But for truly minor crimes I don't think any children should be punished as adults. Even if they knew what they were doing, they are still children and it's very different, say, to steal a candy bar from a store than to murder someone in cold blood. Some children just tend to get into mischief without parental guidence or they might just want attention. Admittedly, they should be punished but they don't have the mental capacity to rationalise as do adults. So to them, stealing that candy bar might seem like the perfect way to get back at their parents or to show themselves to be tough to their friends. I'd make them do community service, or if it was something slightly more serious, I would send them to juvinile detention but not full prison.
We should abolish the age of criminal responsibility. All children should be held responsible for their crimes, and their parents should be held responsible too. But when children are convicted, they should be sent to young offenders institutions for rehabilitation.
Tiffanitsa, your mentioning of guns brought up a good point. It's not directly related to this topic, so I appologize in advance, but if a child's parents keep a loaded gun in the house where the child can reach it, and the child ends up killing someone with it, the parents should get the murder sentence, or at least serious criminal negligence charges. If the parents would just take the time to put the safety on the gun, the child wouldn't have been able to shoot it in the first place. Okay, rant over.
Yes, I believe that no matter what the circumstances, a child should be tried as an adult if it can be proven that he or she had the mental capacity and maturity to know what he or she was doing. If not, I think serious counseling and rehabilitation programs are in order.
Any country that started executing children would fast lose any credibility they had in terms of criticising any other country’s human rights.
while any serious crime should be addressed and the perpetrators brought to account, you have to remember that we’re talking about children here. There is a vast difference between a child at the age of say, ten, and a child of eighteen. We cannot possibly know how a ten year old is going to turn out in eight years time, and therefore cannot possibly know that a child who commits murder at the age of ten cannot be rehabilitated.
Would you really want to be a part of a society that writes off children for the rest of their lives?
As for trying children as adults, How doo you rationalize that children:
Are not allowed to drive
Are not allowed to vote
Are not allowed to have consentual sex
Are not allowed to drink
All because they are deamed to not have the maturity to be able to do so safely/to make rational decisions.
And yet you think that those same children should be able to be tried in adult courts and executed?
If we do not feel that children are fit to be treated as adults in terms of their responsibility for cars/alcohol/the vote then treating them as adults in terms of their wrongdoings is a blatant double standard.
If they take it upon themselves to commit murder and actually know what they're doing, that's alot more than stealing a beer from the fridge or grabbing the car keys, though the latter could certainly lead to accidental death. I hardly ever believe in rehabilitation in such serious cases for adults, but perhaps, it really is different with children. I don't know. But what happens when that ten-year-old, who wasn't executed but who was imprisoned, either in a place for children or in an adult prison, is released. Whether it's five, ten or 20 years later, that child's life has been ruined. It's bad enough when this happens to an 18 or 20-year-old, but to be imprisoned from the age of ten? How can they be expected to integrate into society? And how, if they're not imprisoned, can simple counseling serve as a punishment. They're basically being told "well, we don't like that you killed someone. But while your big brother would go to prison for it, you only have to sit and talk with a shrink for awhile." That's not right either.
No-one has said that they shouldn’t be imprisoned. The original point made in the op was that if children should be held accountable for their crimes then that should mean all crimes, not just the serious ones.
And generally children who commit murder are imprisoned in young offenders institutions where they are rehabilitated and prepared for integration back into society upon their release. You cannot argue that because this will be hard for them that eans they should be executed. Even the most backward countries in the world don’t execute children.
And the point here surely isn’ that their lives will be ruined, the point surely is that for a ten/eleven year old to commit such a crime in the first place, there is surely something seriously amiss anyway. At that age children should be riding their bikes and playing out with their friends, not goig out committing murder.
We have three notorious child murderers in this country. One is Mary Bell, who was convicted of the manslaughter of two boys in 1969 aged eleven, (they were killed on two separate occasions), and the other two are John Venables and Robert Thompson who were convicted of the murder of two year old James Bulger in 1994, aged ten. They all served sentences of between eight and ten years (Mary bell served ten years) and were released under new identities.
But when you look at the cases the one thing that is very apparent is that they had very messed up childhoods. Mary Bell’s mother wasa prostitute, and social services had been involved in her life from an early age, similarly Robert Thompson’s family had involvement with social services, to the extent that his older brother had been begged to be taken into care, and had attempted suicide to achieve it.
You can’t just look at a child that commits a horrendous crime and say “oh, that child Is bad, beyond rehabilitation, better execute them for their own good and the good of others.” You have to look at the reasons why a child commits such a horrendous crime and seek to address them and rehabilitate that child in order that they one day can lead something resembling a normal life.
In the case of an adult who commits rape or murder there is often also a story of childhood abuse, but the difference I that adults have greater capacity to think rationally and make calculated decisions about their actions, also once you reach adulthood the chances of rehabilitation are less. But children can be shaped, molded, their behaviours and reactions can often be adjusted as they go into adulthood. We have to take that into account and seek to right the wrongs that have often been perpetrated against these children in order that they themselves be able to come to terms with what they have done and be rehabilitated.
Children are not born evil. Sometimes circumstances make them so. And often society has a part to play in shaping how those children turn out.
I must agree with you after reading your post. It was extremely well written and clearly thought out. You're right about the ability for the minds of children to be reshaped and changed. I suppose that I'm so used to thinking of adults committing such horrendous crimes that the idea of children doing them for anything other than self-defence is mind-boggling and I'm so used to adults, who usually can't change, that I wrongfully attributed the same idea to children.
But if I am to admit, which I have, that their minds are different from those of adults, what should be done about the less serious crimes. If we've agreed to put them into child prisons what happens when they do something else that would normally be punished with a fine or light imprisonment. Should we give them the same sentences? Surely, we can't fine a child. Their parents could pay the money, but if it's something serious enough to involve the law and not be petty enough to just need talking, how can we punish them in a way that they'd understand that they can't do these things. We can't just ground them after all.
I don't think children should be executed, unless they've killed, say, ten people by age eleven, and rehabilitation has already been proven to be unsuccessful in their case, and of course, it would be a wise idea to look at their living environment. For lesser crimes, I still agree that they should be able to be tried. They need to know that they can't get away with these things just because they are children, and some children have very briliant minds, far beyond those of others at their age group. I think this should be brought into account as well.
Ocean dream, I agree with your last post. I really understand all of this period, but the thing is if you murder someone, you murder someone, so that 8 to 10 sentence doesn't work for me...they should go to prison and get the help they need. Executing? That is horrible and I don't wish it on adults...unless your really filthy with it. It was this one story on True tv that I was watching and well...he got the electric chair. He disserved it by that time so...
The 8-10 year sentence is always going to be an emotive issue though.
On the one hand there are going to be people who say that it’s not long enough, and realistically how long is long enough? People will never agree on that because we all have differing opinions there which is wy sentencing is carried out by legal professionals.
But on the other hand there are valid reasons why, for instance, John Venables and Robert Thompson only served eight year sentences which are not always understood by those of us who come at this argument from an emotional point of view.
The reasoning behind the eight year sentence for the bulger killers was that they were being rehabilitated in a young offenders institution, and that once they had reached eighteen they would need to be transferred to an adult prison, and the view was that that would be detrimental to their rehabilitation and would harm their chances of reintegration back into society. And whether people want to acknowledge it or not, at some point, they would have to be integrated back into society, and surely better that that be done successfully to avoid the possibility of them reoffending?
If you take away your emotional response to a crime, surely no-one really believes that it is acceptable to take ten year old children, and keep them locked up for the rest of their lives? For perhaps sixty, seventy years?
Nah, you don't want to lock up a 10 year old for the rest of their lives, but you have to also consider what I said in my last post too...and you did make some points...how long is too long?
Well to be honest there is no one definitive answer to that question, because a sentence surely has to depend on so many things, the nature of the crime; the reasons behind it; the age of the individual; the mental capacity of the individual to recognize that what they have done is wrong.
And we have to look at what we seek to achieve through sentencing – is it punishment or rehabilitation?
While punishment is of course a factor, it could be argued that if rehabilitation is successful, then the punishment will continue throughout that person’s life because rehabilitation will bring about the realization that the crime was wrong, and consequently the rehabilitated individual will live with that for the rest of their lives, regardless of whether or not they are imprisoned.
Additionally, the individuals mentioned in my above posts have been released under new identities, therefore they are ot free to live their normal lives, they have had new lives created for them in order that they integrate as normally as possible into society. It could be argued that that in itself is a punishment, imagine aving to live your whole life as a lie purely for your own protection, never being able too tell people who you are, forming friendships with people knowing that if they knew the truth those friendships might be lost.
It's just not as black and white as lock them up/don't lock them up.
No. It's definitely not that simple for a child, but you could argue that it's not that simple for an adult either, depending on the circumstances.