Depends on the serverity of the crime commited, if a child is running around killing people, it obviously over time will get worse as it grows up doing this.
The issue is definatly dependent on the situation. 1. the crime 2. the clear mental capacity of the minor. I mean, I know 17 year olds who are dumb as a sack of hammers and 9 year olds who have a better knowledge of actions and consequences then I do.
The only way for it to be any sort of fair is to get rid of it, also it makes this false illusion that children have special treatment.
First of all, you cannot assume that the school teaches them that stuff because they don't do everywhere. Second of all, it's more about morals than knowledge, sure they may know what they're doing (which I doubt) but simply not care. Third, most of these kids most likely skip alot of school or don't pay attention. It is all about the parents.
"For many years it was thought that brain development was set at a fairly early age. By the time teen years were reached the brain was thought to be largely finished. However, scientists doing cutting-edge research using magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, have mapped the brain from early childhood into adulthood and found data contrary to these beliefs. It now appears the brain continues to change into the early 20's with the frontal lobes, responsible for reasoning and problem solving, developing last." "In calm situations, teenagers can rationalize almost as well as adults. But stress can hijack what Ron Dahl, a pediatrician and child psychiatric researcher at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center calls "hot cognition" and decision-making. The frontal lobes help put the brakes on a desire for thrills and taking risk -- a building block of adolescence; but, they're also one of the last areas of the brain to develop fully." "...I think that [in the teen years, this] part of the brain that is helping organization, planning and strategizing is not done being built yet ... [It's] not that the teens are stupid or incapable of [things]. It's sort of unfair to expect them to have adult levels of organizational skills or decision making before their brain is finished being built. ..." http://www.edinformatics.com/news/teenage_brains.htm ^This is why. You can't compare a fully developed brain to an incomplete one. If so, then its not fair to treat an undeveloped brain as if it is developed, therefore a child being tried as an adult.
I like the people in this thread who actually consider sending children as young as 12 to fucking jail a good idea. Because everyone knows there are absolutely no downsides to locking impressionable youngsters up with hardened criminals and gangsters.
But having a double standered is and then sending one kid to juvie and another to prison for the same crime is o.k? No i say try them both as an adults and then send them to a "re-educatment/Rehabilitation center" Also there is hardened criminals and gangs in both adult and child prison.
What is this shit? How about we don't send children to prison at all? Or we could do what we do now. Treat them both as minors and send them to Juvenal Corrections facilities, which basically does the same thing but without ruining their entire futures and subjecting them to certain conditions that I'll address below. Juvenal Corrections facilities distinctly lack the seasoned recruiters and king pen "father-like" figures found in prisons.
On further investigation i found the following. http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2006-09-20-teen-crime_x.htm http://www.hrw.org/node/11578/section/1 http://www.law.fsu.edu/journals/lawreview/downloads/282/Annino.pdf http://act4jj.org/media/factsheets/factsheet_26.pdf https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/bja/182503.pdf (The best)
Well here since the Youth Criminal Justice Act passed usually only murderers are tried as adults. Even though the only reason people wanted the act was because a 12 year old was hanged for murder.
In Sweden, if a child below the age of 15 commits a crime, the parents are responsible for it and will have to take the punishment. When you turn 15 you recieve criminal responsibility and will therefor take on the punishment yourself but you will not be tried as an adult. I think it is a good system.
