"The three youth were arrested. Two will be charged as adults."

[Stinky The Clown]

How often do you hear or read a line like that?

The quote is completely made up, but makes a fine example. Children are children. They are incapable of thinking and reasoning like adults. At some point they do, indeed, become adults. But not at 8 or 10 or 14. They are children.

Here in retributional, Calvinistic America, however, we often charge kids based on the awfulness of the crime.

They're CHILDREN, for Christ's sake.

I would rather we charge some woefully immature adults as children than the other way around.

Yeah. I'm a fucking bleeding heart. Deal with it.




Edit to change "and" to the intended "as" in the next to last line.

[Winterblues]

1. A few fourteen year olds fought in WW II and many were on cattle drives in old west

Fourteen year olds should know better.. Eight year old, now that is another story.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

3. wrong, so wrong, so utterly wrong, it is hard to start

Yes, individuals who are young can act and react in great ways. But, would you treat a 14 yr old as a captain in charge of a major attack on a heavily fortified enemy position? of course not.

the fact that they were programmed well enough to follow orders and behave bravely, well that's part of the teen brain. But they are NOT ADULTS. Period.

[slampoet]

6. A few 14 year olds SURVIVED war......

[John Q. Citizen]

2. Notice that an underage drinker will never be "charged as an adult?" It's only when

it works against the individual are they charged as an adult. Never when it could, say, allow them the right to vote, or to drink, or to sign a contract.

I agree Stinky, the whole concept is a rotten one.

[Political_Junkie]

4. Agreed

"Yeah. I'm a fucking bleeding heart. Deal with it." - Ditto

[meowomon]

5. Depends on the crime and the situation.

Murder is murder is murder. I don't want a convicted murderer walking the streets just because s/he turns 21. Also child molesters. There is no rehabilition. We need to protect those who can't protect themselves.

I am also a bleeding heart and believe inmates deserve to be treated with human dignity even if they are convicted of a heinous crime. I am a nurse in a jail and put this to practice every day.

[27inCali]

7. sure are a lot of black kids being tried as adults....

not to hijack your thread with another subject, but the two issues seem to dovetail quite a bit.

[Stinky The Clown]

8. There is that. Yes, it is a separate issue ...... sort of.

[nosmokes]

9. +infinity +1

I reckon I'm a bleedin heart too, because treating *children* as adults just don't make a damn bit of sense to me.

What's the purpose of having a juvenile 'justice' system if we're simply gonna shovel kids into the adult system?
We certainly aren't doing it for the sake of the child nor the victim, but only, so far as I can see, to satisfy some primal urge of revenge which is not what justice is supposed to be about unless we're ready to admit that we already have a sort of bastardized sharia law functioning now in the US.

[Stinky The Clown]

10. ". . . . . . a sort of bastardized sharia law functioning now in the US."

That's actually an interesting way of portraying it.

[flvegan]

11. For a 14 year old, to me, it depends on the crime.

Some 14 year old gang banger that takes part as a triggerman in a drive-by that kills 4 people...fuck him. There is no form of educational enlightenment that happens over the course of 4 short years that changes right v wrong that much.

[hippywife]

12. And what would you being doing

if you lived in the kill or be killed territory in which so many of them live without hope?

It's a very impressionable age, and they don't get many good chances.