When Children Kill - The Age Of Responsability - How Low Do You Go?

I think the age of responsibility should be about twelve. I am reminded of the case of Reena Virk, a fourteen-year-old in Canada who was beaten to death by other14-year-olds, mostly young women. Only the two ringleaders were tried, although the others clearly had some responsibility. Still, I am opposed to life without parole or the death penalty for offenders under17. Every effort should be made to rehabilitate them until the age of 21. The juvenile justice system has not been fully effective in dealing with the increasing number of violent young people, but I support the concept of a separate justice system for the young. There is not much to be gained by putting a 12 year old in with adult prisoners who will only teach them more violence. Granted, children can become sociopaths very early and sociopaths can rarely be rehabilitated. Still, we owe it to our young people to at least make an effort.

There are a lot of considerations. Frame your law as a grey between your lower and upper agreed bounds. The case itself will give the judge space to give direction. This stuff gets complicated. Abused families, Lord Denning and the chapatti cutter case (his uncle had just homosexually raped him and he chopped his head off. Denning managed to introduce the grey of a reasonable 'adolescant' man). Leave it to the judge and appeals if necessary.

reply to post by redled


Surely it is those grey areas that leave the law so wide open to abuse by those that can afford good council?

And around we go again!!

MonKey

reply to post by ChiKeyMonKey

Yeah, but a judge can say p*ss off, whereas a politician is lobbied (bought).

Because there has never been a judge that was on the take.

That's not really what this was suppost to be about. How do you set a law or system of laws for defining a childs age of responsability?

At what age do children really comprehend the results of their actions?

MonKey

[edit on 29/10/07 by ChiKeyMonKey]

reply to post by ChiKeyMonKey

I'm kinda butting out of this. Our judges are unelected and that makes a big difference, it allows a judge to operate in a depoliticised way. Of course thare is some corruption.

2 years in a detention center is all they got for the murder of another human being, while the son lost his father. I personally think they should be held 100% accountable for the crime of murder and sent to prison for life.

Most of you seem to want to hold the kids accountable. And a couple have expressed that some fault should lie with the parents. So what about a "split time" sentence? A fairly decent slap on the hand to both the parents and the child.

The Age of Reason

'Criminal responsibility', they call it. But people are not responsible for their actions. Neither adults nor children.

Responsibility implies free will, which is an illusory side-effect of how the human brain is now known to function. All human actions are fully determined by a combination of genetic inheritance, personal history and present circumstances. There is no room left for personal choice.

When this is understood, the object of punishment becomes clear. It is not revenge; it is deterrence: to prevent, as far as is possible, a repetition of the same behaviour by the same individual or by others.

Quibbling about the numerical value of what used to be called the 'age of reason' won't get us anywhere.

reply to post by Astyanax

Responsibility implies free will, which is an illusory side-effect of how the human brain is now known to function. All human actions are fully determined by a combination of genetic inheritance, personal history and present circumstances. There is no room left for personal choice.

I couldn't agree more. However, until such concepts are accepted by the majority we are left to quibble over numbers.

Why not distribute the punishment between the parents and the child? The older a child is, the less the parents would to be held accountable up to the age of 18.

I.E.

Child age 7... 50% fault of child - 50% fault of parent/guardian
Child age 12.. 80% fault of child - 20% fault of parent/guardian
Child age 16.. 95% fault of child - 5% fault of parent/guardian

reply to post by Scramjet76
That would imply giving undue weightage to one particular aspect of personal history, upbringing, than to others. It also arbitrarily groups the other factors together and assigns them a value without determining how that value is distributed among them.

What about peer group influence, for example? Some psychologists believe a child's peers have more influence on a child's development than its parents do. Shouldn't we be punishing them as well? How about adult relatives? Teachers and other influential adults?

You're right that few people, at least in the West, accept the illusory nature of free will. So I suppose the punishing will continue. Funnily enough, it continues throughout the world, even among people - Buddhists, Hindus, Calvinists and Muslims, for example - who are quite comfortable with ideas like determinism (the first two) and predestination (the other two). The urge to punish seems to be built in, part of the evolved sensorium that also produces the illusion of will.

What a shame about that.

reply to post by Astyanax


Astyanax. You have brought some awesome ideas to the thread, so thanks for that.

Would blame sharing be posible in the multi contact world we live in? Some children have so many possible influentual people around them, like you said, that the cost of a crime could be so diluted it would be negligible. Or should we aim for smaller communities that can be policed in such a way that everyone is responsable for the acts of everyone. With a punishment effecting the whole of your community.

"No tv for a week for block 12!"

A silly example, maybe!

And I believe that parents have the biggest sphere of influence over their own children - well unfortunatly - better parents do anyway?!

MonKey

I think ten years of age is a reasonible age to hold a child accountable. Now, that doesn't mean you throw them in prison with adults, but you certainly keep them out of society, in Juvenille prisons.

Look, a kid as young as 4 or 5 knows what it means to kill. Have you ever seen a youngster around a bug? Their first instinct is to kill it... They know that killing something means an end to that thing's existence...

This topic has some relevance here in Canada right now as a fourteen year old girl has just been sentenced to 10 years for killing her family in April of 2006.

www.cbc.ca...

She was given 4 1/2 years in a mental hospital and 4 1/2 years of community supervision in the hopes of being rehabilitated. Her 23, now 25 year old boyfriend has yet to be tried.

I think 12 is a decent age to hold someone criminally responsible for there actions. At 12, your understanding of right and wrong has been formed I believe. To say this young person didn't know that killing her parent's and little brother was wrong is BS. I don't think they should be housed in an adult prison at that age mind you but they should be held criminally responsible for there actions. A judge should have leeway in deciding the sentence in relevance to the offenders age though.

There has also been some disturbing behavior from youths in Halifax recently. Three girls beat a another girl for two hours, almost killing her. They were a 15 y/o, a 17 y/o and an 18 y/o. Should these girls be tries as adults? I would say they should. They understood what they were doing. It has gotten so bad in that city that there is a push on to bring in a chapter of the Guardian Angels but that's off topic and I won't bog down your thread with that discussion.

reply to post by GAOTU789


Wow that really is a nasty case, the girl killed her whole family.

But even there you had people for both sides of the equation: lock um up for good, fix um and let um go!

What makes a 12 year old kill? What the hell was she doing with a 20 something year old boyfriend? Where were the parents while that was going on?

She's facing 10 years (8 including time served) of time behind bars. Maybe they can "fix" this kid. But what kind of life will she have when she gets out and has no-one there to support her because she killed them?

Crazy world

MonKey

reply to post by Astyanax

That would imply giving undue weightage to one particular aspect of personal history, upbringing, than to others. It also arbitrarily groups the other factors together and assigns them a value without determining how that value is distributed among them.

What about peer group influence, for example? Some psychologists believe a child's peers have more influence on a child's development than its parents do. Shouldn't we be punishing them as well? How about adult relatives? Teachers and other influential adults?

That's all true but I'm just trying to simplify everything so we can stick it to the kids and the parents. Maybe we should stick it to everyone who has spent over "x" number of hours with the child? I.E.

Child age 7 = 280 + hours with the child
Child age 10 = 400 + hours " "
Child age 13 = 520 + hours " "


Ok seriously, there has to be an alternative to simply saying "a child is responsible by age 10." I mean if a child really commits a hideous act you have to wonder who the parents are and what goes on in that household? I totally agree that peer groups affect kids as much or more than their parents. But responsible parents should be able to recognize really negative peer groups and keep their children away.

If the kid goes to jail I certainly hope the parents get at least 90 days of McDonalds.