What to do with young Offenders? Has society become weak?

In the last couple of days have read these two articles about young kids ( 7 - 12 yrs old) attacking other kids. The First article talks about a young girl with Cancer. Being attacked and then the attackers trying to set her on fire...

Then a couple days later read about kids trying to lynch another Kid?


Five-year-old girl battling cancer viciously attacked by yobs who tried to set her on fire




Boy of seven 'lynched' by gang of schoolchildren with 'homemade noose'

Personally I feel as a society we have become to weak and tolerant of young offenders. Time we dealt with offenders like this. Treat them as adults.

No more left wing BS about poor old Johnny having a bad life.

Time to lower the age of responsibility and put them in prison with the big boys.

[edit on 23-8-2009 by greenfruit]

times are harsh now,i guess all the tv makes the kids even more aggressive,or theyr just bad seeds,but yea we should charge them as grown ups if they do such..freakish things

We know more about child psychology and brain development now than we ever have, so it makes sense that we would change the way we deal with young offenders over time. I don't know if it's a question of getting soft so much as knowing more about how to deal with people like this.

The question is, what happens to these kids after they get out of the rehab programs, reform schools, mental institutions etc. that they get sent to? Are the outcomes generally better than sending them to prison? That should be the main criterion IMO...

reply to post by greenfruit


I can honestly say "What the hell, has happened to this generation".....Is it lack of parental care? Maybe because parents work longer hours (both) or is it about disclipline.......or lack of it in the schools? Who knows? - Please understand I am not knocking anyone just looking for a clue about what has gone wrong? Any thoughts?

reply to post by Disinfo Agent


IMO any one who tries to set a cancer patient on fire deserves to rot in prison till hell freezes over. Why do we find this need to rehab / help these people?

Holy hell! Well done mate! Well done!

Star and Flag for you!



Has society become weak? Absolutely!

Society, not just american, has been BRED to be weak. We are TRAINED to become weak.

reply to post by greenfruit


Lock up their fracking parents!!!

It's their bloody fault! Children raised properly (ok, there are exceptions) don't act like that.

Originally posted by greenfruit
IMO any one who tries to set a cancer patient on fire deserves to rot in prison till hell freezes over. Why do we find this need to rehab / help these people?

Depends on your philosophy of justice, I guess. I think it should ultimately be about rehabilitation, so that people can go on to become productive and contribute to society in some way, pay back their debt for the suffering they caused. At worst it should be about separation from the general population, for the sake of public safety.

You seem to be advocating justice based more on retribution or revenge - the idea that even if someone like this can be reformed, that punishment should take priority, and we should just keep them in prison forever. But the costs of doing that as a general policy would be prohibitive - prisons are already overcrowded and expensive.

Children's minds are plastic, and they are able to change. Adults, maybe not so much. Do you really think we'd be justified in imprisoning someone for 70 years because of something they did when they were 7? And is refusing to imprison a 7-year-old for life and instead trying to fix whatever's wrong with them really a sign of "weakness?"

[edit on 23-8-2009 by Disinfo Agent]

Originally posted by greenfruit
Personally I feel as a society we have become to weak and tolerant of young offenders. Time we dealt with offenders like this. Treat them as adults.

No more left wing BS about poor old Johnny having a bad life.

Time to lower the age of responsibility and put them in prison with the big boys.

[edit on 23-8-2009 by greenfruit]

Well for what it is worth, I somehow get the "BRITISH" version of conservative, being a
liberal by US standards.

I suggest you reference the US prison population... Then I suggest you reference the cost and finally determine if it has curtailed crime here. You put a seven year old in with adults and less a life sentence you are getting a efficient monster on the way out.

I suggest these kids should be punished, while I remember the horrid things I did as a youth...

I am now a productive member of society without even a driving offense.

Now provided I was hauled off for my past transgressions I suggest I would have learn the trade of crime in and out DANGEROUS.

BUT, trying to hang or char broil a another is beyond the pale...

Originally posted by greenfruit
reply to post by Disinfo Agent

 

IMO any one who tries to set a cancer patient on fire deserves to rot in prison till hell freezes over. Why do we find this need to rehab / help these people?

Well for one there is cost and for two they are not even given the trust in maturity to drive, based upon their age.

Originally posted by mikerussellus
reply to post by greenfruit

 

Lock up their fracking parents!!!

It's their bloody fault! Children raised properly (ok, there are exceptions) don't act like that.

Agreed...

The parents are inept and should be seasoned and BBQed (couldn't resist)

Originally posted by Disinfo Agent
You seem to be advocating justice based more on retribution or revenge - the idea that even if someone like this can be reformed, that punishment should take priority, and we should just keep them in prison forever. But the costs of doing that as a general policy would be prohibitive - prisons are already overcrowded and expensive.

[edit on 23-8-2009 by Disinfo Agent]

I believe that Punishment should come first e.g. 10yrs jail first then after that time some rehab.

As to over population and expensive, maybe time to double bunk and start growing own food.
Or easier to just keep people in there cells 23 hours a day.

Here in NZ we have farms and market gardens attached to prisons. To get any form of rehab, you must earn it and usually only in the last 1/3 of your sentence.

Originally posted by greenfruit
I believe that Punishment should come first e.g. 10yrs jail first then after that time some rehab.

As to over population and expensive, maybe time to double bunk and start growing own food.
Or easier to just keep people in there cells 23 hours a day.

Here in NZ we have farms and market gardens attached to prisons. To get any form of rehab, you must earn it and usually only in the last 1/3 of your sentence.

Keeping a 7 year old in an overcrowded cell 23 hours a day for 10 years is going to cause a massive screwup in brain development, far beyond what a little bit of rehab after that could fix. The Harlow monkey experiments are a good example of this.

The point is - children are not adults. Their brains are plastic. They can be changed, sometimes too easily. If you spend their formative years treating them like animals and stacking them 20 deep, no amount of help is going to change that later on. If the kids aren't psychologically stunted for life going into that kind of situation, they're sure as hell going to be when they come out.

reply to post by mental modulator


Will wonders never cease! We agree on something.


I think these kids need their @sses beat constantly for weeks. But the age of 7? C'mon, at that age they can't distinguish the difference between right and wrong. They are still developing a moral self.

Their parents are the real criminals here. Not only have they destroyed their children, but others as well.

Lock THEM up for 50 years. Either that, or let their own children decide their fate.

-how's that for evil?-

The madness is finally surfacing.
The children which are most sensitive are the first ones to express the "weakness" of society - which has always been inherit.

Those kids acting like that are just a consequence of another situation and not a cause or a situation per se. We ought to stop looking and trying to "solve" the consequences, thats never going to heal us. We gotta look deep into the cause and the cause is always beyond our immediate senses.

reply to post by vesta


All of the above.

I really think if parents were punished along with their children when they turn out to be little terrors they would do things much differently and we'd see a huge difference in the crime rate.

They ALWAYS pick on the weak and yet get praise by given free bowling trips, extra education, as much income through the taxpayer as they want. And the victims are the ones who have to foot the bill for it while all the time keep taking yet more abuse and victimisation by these scum.

The only thing they deserve is lining and getting a bullet in the head, that'll soon teach them manners and respect towards fellow man.

Some of my friends think some of my ideas are medieval. That I'm living in the wrong time or age... sometimes I feel that I am living in the wrong time.

Personally the argument that they don't know right and wrong is an excuse. Over the yrs I have been amazed buy what 7 to 10 yrs olds understand. Also how manipulative they can be of people in authority.

They Know how the law works from there older mates, what to do when the police get them etc.... don't under estimate the mind of a 7 - 10 year old.

Personally I think a lot of this has come from giving kids too much a pass. we want to protect kids but we go to far were we are not punishing them enough. MY parents grew up whacking my brother and my butts for a lot of things but they never crossed the line in to abuse. It is the few who did cross the line that has ruined punishing their kids and turned it into a crime. If we went back to real punishment at home a lot of these things wouldn't happen.