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Do you think minors should be tried as adults for crimes they've committed?
yes 31%  31%  [ 8 ]
no 69%  69%  [ 18 ]
Total votes : 26

noodler
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29 Nov 2014, 12:16 am

Do you think minors should be tried as adults for crimes they've committed?



r2d2
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29 Nov 2014, 12:28 am

There is a reason why we have age of consent laws. There is a reason why one has to be a certain age to drive a car, buy alcohol, vote, join the military, sign a binding legal contract or live completely on their own with no parent or guardian. This is the same reason why minors should not be tried and sentenced as adults. If a person is not old enough to consent for sex with an adult, drive a car, buy alcohol, vote, join the military, sign a binding legal contract or live completely on their own with no adult guidance - then they are certainly not old enough to be held equally accountable as an adult either.


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auntblabby
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29 Nov 2014, 12:33 am

the humane thing would be to recognize that people's brains develop at different rates and that it is fundamentally unjust to punish a child brain the same as an adult brain.



Persimmonpudding
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29 Nov 2014, 12:03 pm

Society's treatment of youth is despicable enough. Only if you are a child can you be physically beaten for having an opinion. Only if you are a child can you be held against your will and forced to sit in one position for several hours a day, having to ask permission to pass urine. Only if you are a child can someone grab you by the arm and haul you around roughly for having the nerve to not obey them without question. Only if you are a child are you expected to hold your peace when someone who has authority over you, which is apparently everybody, is clearly in the wrong. Only if you are a "child," to include 17 year old youth, can your boyfriend be sent to prison on felony charges if he happens to be in the wrong age-group, regardless of whether or not he has been the only human being in your life who has ever actually treated you like a person. You have fewer rights than a dog, and you are treated more poorly.

If children cannot have adults sent to jail for misdemeanor assault and battery for grabbing them roughly and cannot have them jailed for taking their property, then sentencing them as adults does not make sense. We already treat them like garbage, and this would be doubling down on it. It would be treating them as accountable in a society in which they do not have the attendant rights. It would be salt and vinegar on the wounds.

If you are a kid, then having respect for the law is a failing of character. You do not owe respect to an entity that treats you with no respect or dignity at all, and I cannot believe that a kid who bows to such treatment could possibly have a moral spine. Not only should kids NOT be sentenced as adults for committing crimes, but for certain types of crime that are injurious only to property rather than the person, they should be given accolades. Oppression warrants rebellion, and rebellion under oppression demonstrates the presence of a moral compass.



noodler
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29 Nov 2014, 12:52 pm

r2d2 wrote:
There is a reason why we have age of consent laws. There is a reason why one has to be a certain age to drive a car, buy alcohol, vote, join the military, sign a binding legal contract or live completely on their own with no parent or guardian. This is the same reason why minors should not be tried and sentenced as adults. If a person is not old enough to consent for sex with an adult, drive a car, buy alcohol, vote, join the military, sign a binding legal contract or live completely on their own with no adult guidance - then they are certainly not old enough to be held equally accountable as an adult either.


I agree totally. Well put.



guzzle
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29 Nov 2014, 6:41 pm

noodler wrote:
Do you think minors should be tried as adults for crimes they've committed?


James Bulger comes to mind...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_James_Bulger

And 21 years later...
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-23941699



auntblabby
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29 Nov 2014, 9:04 pm

the one whose last name used to start with a V seems to be quite a piece of work.



noodler
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29 Nov 2014, 9:08 pm

What ever happened to Thompson? I read the whole article, but it didn't mention anything about Thompson after release. And he was the one diagnosed as a psychopath, right?



auntblabby
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29 Nov 2014, 9:11 pm

I think it was V who was the 'path.



eric76
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29 Nov 2014, 10:16 pm

r2d2 wrote:
There is a reason why we have age of consent laws. There is a reason why one has to be a certain age to drive a car, buy alcohol, vote, join the military, sign a binding legal contract or live completely on their own with no parent or guardian. This is the same reason why minors should not be tried and sentenced as adults. If a person is not old enough to consent for sex with an adult, drive a car, buy alcohol, vote, join the military, sign a binding legal contract or live completely on their own with no adult guidance - then they are certainly not old enough to be held equally accountable as an adult either.


Why do we so often have an idea of a single age at which everyone magically transitions from being a child to an adult?

It makes far more sense to have a progression of stages with some possibly determine by other factors than by age.

Instead of becoming an "adult" overnight, one should slide into it naturally.

In any event, I knew someone who was executed by the state for a murder he committed before he turned 18. I have absolutely no problem with that. The only thing that I didn't like was how long it took them to do it.



auntblabby
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29 Nov 2014, 10:18 pm

death [relatively speaking] is the easy way out. the hard way is supermax for the duration of one's natural life.



eric76
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29 Nov 2014, 10:20 pm

Persimmonpudding wrote:
Only if you are a child can you be held against your will and forced to sit in one position for several hours a day, having to ask permission to pass urine.


I used to work for a company in which the president of the company's wife, a former schoolteacher, wrote the employee manual. The manual included the requirement that all employees get permission from a supervisor to go to the bathroom.

So one day to test it, I stuck my head into the president's office while she was standing there and asked permission as required by the employee manual to go to the bathroom.

That was the last time anyone there heard anything about the employee manual.



eric76
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29 Nov 2014, 10:21 pm

auntblabby wrote:
death [relatively speaking] is the easy way out. the hard way is supermax for the duration of one's natural life.


You're sure right about that. I think I'd rather get a death penalty than life in a supermax.

For all practical purposes, you'd be dead even though your heart is still breathing.



auntblabby
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29 Nov 2014, 10:23 pm

ted k. seems to be one of the few inmates therein who is handling it ok. everybody else they have to keep drugged up as they start self-mutilating themselves after a while.



Jacoby
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29 Nov 2014, 10:23 pm

Its depends on the individual and the crime that was done, how much of a threat they are to society. I have problems with incarceration in general so that would naturally extend to minors as well. Minors are certainly capable of murder, rape, and violent assault so I don't feel comfortable saying that no minors should be sentences as adults.



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29 Nov 2014, 11:55 pm

r2d2 wrote:
There is a reason why we have age of consent laws. There is a reason why one has to be a certain age to drive a car, buy alcohol, vote, join the military, sign a binding legal contract or live completely on their own with no parent or guardian. This is the same reason why minors should not be tried and sentenced as adults. If a person is not old enough to consent for sex with an adult, drive a car, buy alcohol, vote, join the military, sign a binding legal contract or live completely on their own with no adult guidance - then they are certainly not old enough to be held equally accountable as an adult either.


I just find it funny, in a dark way, that the military is allowed for younger people than some other things...


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