Do you believe teen criminals
should be tried as adults?LetsGetFamouss
Yes, I do, though it depends upon the severity of the crime and whether they can be judged mentally competent. The thing is, most teens aren’t stupid. They know they’ll be tried as teens, so they can get away with some pretty horrid crimes. Short of outright murder, and even then they’re not always tried as adults, they can commit crimes nearly as bad without fear of much reprisal and when they’re grown and their sentence is finished, their “files are sealed.”
I’m not talking about a little shop lifting or whatnot. I’ve never met anyone who didn’t swipe something as a kid, usually a candy bar or bookmark or something small. They’re just feeling things out. That kind of stuff rarely stays with them into adulthood, and if they do start going for bigger stuff, as soon as they’re caught, they usually stop. I know my sister did when I turned her in to my grandma for stealing clothes from the department store where she’d worked for decades. She was grounded for a month.
Little crimes deserve to be treated as mistakes that the child/teen can learn from. Big crimes, like murder, rape, harassment, violence of any kind… those are crimes where the teen should be tried as an adult. Because deep down everyone knows that these aren’t just crimes, there a betrayal of foundation of human decency, of the concepts of humanity and society. Teens who commit these crimes expect if/when they’re caught to be tried as children because of their age. They basically commit most of these crimes, unless driven to it by circumstance, because they know if they wait to commit the crime until they are adults, it will go worse for them. That, I think, is inexcusable. The only reason a child is tried as a child for crimes is because we expect them to make mistakes. There are however certain actions which can never be construed as accidents. You don’t accidentally rape someone or hurt them through harassment or violence. And while it’s possible to accidentally kill someone, that’s why there’s a difference between murder and manslaughter.
Part of the problem with our modern society is the lack of accountability. People are not required to take personal responsibility for their actions. In a society where you can be stupid enough to spill hot coffee on yourself and then sue the place where you intentionally bought hot coffee, can we really expect criminal teens to be accountable for their actions? Though I don’t want to imply that things were better in the days of Hammurabi and his code, “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” that level of accountability might be good for certain people. Unfortunately, people sentenced to death for their crimes are seldom executed for them, even if there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that they are guilty. The Norse practice of a “blood price” paid by the family of the perpetrator to the victim or family of the victim would be better than what we have now, which is a legal system without concrete consequences, where a criminal (of whatever age) can knowingly commit a violent crime, confess to it, and still expect to grow old on death row. Responsibility is something we’ve practically bred out of ourselves when it should be a Pavlovian response.
May 6th
The Norwegian pagan martyr, Eyvind Kelve, was murdered on the orders of King Olaf Trygvason when he would not give up his faith.
In 1938, the Long Island Church of Aphrodite was established in West Hempstead, New York, by the Rev. Gleb Botkin, a Russian author and son of the court physician to the last czar of Russia.
Comments (8)
Teens need a chance to redeem themselves. If it is murder or something as bad, then feel free to try them as adults.
Well said, people who are put down when they were young are stronger that is if they survived.
Wow, I have to say I didn’t expect quite such a conservative (for lack of a better word) response from you. I agree with you to a certain extent, but I think teens who murder and rape are for the most part tried as adults, especially when they’re sixteen or older. At least that’s the way it is here in the red states.
Oh, drat! I forgot: I found this on the interwebz and thought of you. It’s a Cthulhu ski mask.
I find it ironic that we push our children to grow up so fast in our culture but then tell them they aren’t adults and thus can’t have the rights an adult has. I think when it comes to children being tried as an adult I think it should be determined on a case by case basis. I absolutley agree with you about our cultures lack of accountability; we have no moral decency anymore.
@heidenkind - I think it comes of how I was treated by other teens when I was still a kid. They were simply monstrous to me. I can completely understand why some kids end up taking weapons to school. But there’s no accountability among the students who harass and finally push the “terrorist” over the edge. For the most part, they don’t even understand that they’ve done something wrong. I’m not saying it’s okay for someone to take weapons to school, but on the other side of the coin, most kids who are bullied to that extent don’t feel like they have a lot of options outside of suicide or retaliation. I just don’t think going soft on teen offenders is doing anyone any favors. Murder and rape are the crimes for which teens are most often tried as adults, but there are other crimes that are not punished at all outside of maybe being suspended from school. Basically the message that we send to kids is, it’s okay so long as you don’t get caught, and even if you do, we’ll there’s a way for you to get out of being held accountable. They take that lesson with them into adulthood and then look for the loopholes in the law if they get caught again.
BTW, the Cthulhu mask is awesome!
@Altered_Sight - I agree, but I think all criminal trials should be prosecuted on a case by case basis, not just teen ones. On the other hand, I think people who get off on technicalities and loopholes are worse criminals than those who do their time.
I agree with you, that’s how a lot of high school kids behave. High schools in this country are truly ridiculous institutions–they’re supposed to give kids an education and “prepare them for the real world” (I heard that phrase a gazillion times when I was in school), but they do neither. They’re really just prisons; so is it any wonder kids who get bullied by other students don’t feel like they have any way out?
I am supposed to be honest that all the things you say coincides with my own wits
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