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In reply to the discussion: Judge: 13-year-old girl gets lighter sentence if her ponytail gets cut off [View all]ProgressiveEconomist
(5,818 posts)sense if the offender were 20 years older than she is. Equal justice under law is a fundamental principle of justice for adults.
But the girl is only 13, and the sentence was imposed in Juvenile Court. Don't kids deserve second chances after making mistakes? And don't the categories of adult jurisprudence often fail to captute the essence of youthful offenses? The 13-year old was charged with assault. But, just like a current Presidential candidate, she used a pair of scissors, not a baseball bat or brass knuckles.
Applied to kids, the logic of your argument would give eight-year-olds police rap sheets for "assault" for school-yard tussles. That actually happens in "zero tolerance" districts where local police, rather than School District safety personnel, are posted inside schools. Kids get labeled and groomed for iives of imprisonment before they even reach seventh grade.