11-year-old Pennsylvanian is youngest person in world to face life without parole

Originally posted by Maslo
reply to post by HattoriHanzou

 

Sorry, age doesn't enter into it. An unthinkable crime should receive the proper punishment, whether the criminal is an eleven year old child, or a mentally retarded person, or insane.

Punishing children and insane people for their crimes is definately wrong. Do you understand that what they did was not their fault, because they do not have mental capacity to understand it? You cannot punish someone who is not responsible for what he does, and children and insane people are not.

We can talk about the exact age when the child is criminaly responsible, but age definately is important, as is mental health of a killer.

I disagree. I have worked with mentally retarded children and even they can be taught right from wrong. The mentally ill can be taught the same thing with care. If the young, mentally ill, or developmentally disabled are not taught right from wrong by their caregivers or guardians, I say throw them in jail too for negligence.

reply to post by DimensionalDetective


With the increase in juvenile crime in america, It would be a good idea to build a special prison for children ages 6 thru 12 who commit violent crimes. Not a prison in the sense that we know prisons, but a regimented life with vigorious rehablitation, psychotherapy, education, and yes recreational environment. Yet still a prison. We as a society cannot blame anyone or anything for juvenile crime but ourselves. We have taken prayer from schools. We have taken away parental rights for punishment. We raise a nation of overweight selfish demanding children. Its time to correct some of these mistakes in a humaine manner. There has to be hope of rehablitation for this age group of offenders.
I write this knowing that there will be those who cannot be rehabilitated. Now how can we get ahold of some of that black ops money???

reply to post by Magantice


en.wikipedia.org...

A borstal was a type of youth prison in the United Kingdom, run by the Prison Service and intended to reform seriously delinquent young people. The word is sometimes used loosely to apply to other kinds of youth institution or reformatory, such as Approved Schools and Detention Centres. The court sentence was officially called "borstal training". Borstals were originally for offenders under 21, but in the 1930s the age was increased to under 23.

en.wikipedia.org...

Approved School is a term formerly used in the United Kingdom to mean a particular kind of residential institution to which young people could be sent by a court, usually for committing offences but sometimes because they were deemed to be beyond parental control. In the United States, the term reform school is used.

Prison for 6 year olds?

Baby prisons with warders dishing out the chemical cosh is the sort of dystopian nightmare that a just society can be measured by then?

It is true that most 6 year olds have been taught that hitting, hurting etc and therefore by adult logic, killing, is wrong but as the young have no awareness of their own mortality, how then can they truly understand what murder is? Even the 11 year old in this case had no real, philosophical or moral awareness of the permanent consequences of his actions.

This is so wrong to me. An 11 yr. old does not have the brain development to understand in which what he does or does not do can affect him for the rest of his life.

www.pbs.org...

reply to post by HattoriHanzou
Ha, Ha, your the one that is so low as to say the 11 year old should be murdered, for what he did, you know nothing of what is, about you. You are just as lost as the 11 year old, to say kill him, you should be ashamed of your self.

reply to post by HoldTheBeans


There is no such thing as an adult crime. That doesn't make any sense.
There is crime and the circumstances are always different. If not we wouldn't even need judges, the jury would decide and they would get the punishment that lies across from their offense in the books.

Who knows why he did it, but whatever the reason I can guarantee it didn't receive the prior reasoning of an adult because he wasn't one. Not that he shouldn't be punished. I don't really want him roaming the street. There has to be something though.

Yea when they sentence that kid, maybe he can just hold his breath, or have a tantrum, and maybe they will give him a break, or at least a sucker.

There are a lot of people who have guns at home and take their small children hunting. they often teach them that killing is ..fun...sometimes at those young ages a kid would surely have a hard time dicerning the difference between blood and guts being spilled from an animal that to him or her was clearly a sweet beautiful creature before BAM! dada says YES!!! Got Him! I note a lot of the children commiting murder have this kind of parent who thing a 5 year old is ready to kill. My stepson cryed when his stepfather made him hunt and kill animals he loved but a couple years later he was laughing at the slaughter like good old stepdad!

That's ridiculous and insane. I was raised around guns, and hunted from a young age, as did dozens of my friends and acquaintances. To imply that hunting an animal creates a bloodlust for human life is not just crazy, the facts are stacked against you.
People who are brought up in hunting households, who are taught a proper respect for weapons and life, are in fact far less frequent murderers than the inner city folk who are taught to fear the gun, and who then view it as an object of envy and lust. Just compare murder rates in cities where hunters are rare (such as LA or NYC) with rural areas where hunting is commonGood for the kid's stepdad. Learning where your meat comes from, and having the balls to claim it yourself, is part of being a complete human. Hopefully he won't get too pussified by your bleeding heart.

Insult me all you like. I am proud to care about the animals and to not have taught my children that it is FUN and a thrill to kill them. I am a vegetarian. I disagree with pretty much everything you said, that fact that you use a word like "pussified' and "having Balls" says a lot about you, that is an insult to every woman in the armed services and many others....certainly your heart does not bleed.

And who said Stepdad was hunting for food? You presume a lot. it has to be confussing when a young child is taught it is fun killing a wolf when it is so close to the German Sheperd they say is a part of the family.
btw I am against gun control, I own a gun.