A crime doesn't make a child an adult
theatlantic.com
A crime doesn't make a child an adult
1–10 of 63 posts
Re: A crime doesn't make a child an adult
#2Writers like the author should go through the trauma of being a victim of juvenile crimes, only then will they stop writing such rubbish.
Re: A crime doesn't make a child an adult
#3A minor is a legal fiction it can and will be discarded when convenient. Many people either don't understand or pretend not to understand that order is the only thing preventing so called children from killing and eating you.
Re: A crime doesn't make a child an adult
#4Writers like the author should go through the trauma of being a victim of juvenile crimes, only then will they stop writing such rubbish.
The brains of young humans aren't fully developed. That shouldn't be a get out of jail free card. Though it must be considered when deciding the fate of a person's entire life.
It doesn't help that even just be charged with a crime is now a permanent scarlet letter, even if the person is clearly innocent and charges are dropped.
Re: A crime doesn't make a child an adult
#5A minor is a legal fiction it can and will be discarded when convenient. Many people either don't understand or pretend not to understand that order is the only thing preventing so called children from killing and eating you.
Does sentencing children as adults actually deter other children from committing crimes?
Re: A crime doesn't make a child an adult
#6Writers like the author should go through the trauma of being a victim of juvenile crimes, only then will they stop writing such rubbish.
The brains of young humans aren't fully developed. That shouldn't be a get out of jail free card. Though it must be considered when deciding the fate of a person's entire life. It doesn't help that even just be charged with a crime is now a permanent scarlet letter, even if the person is clearly innocent and charges are dropped.
It is hard for me to feel sympathy for under18s when they go around in gangs and groups stabbing random people.
[0] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-17/teens-charged-with-mu...
[1] https://www.news.com.au/national/victoria/crime/shocking-foo...
[2] https://www.nine.com.au/australia-news/brisbane-man-stabbed-...
[3] https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/three-teens-accused-of-k...
[4] https://thenightly.com.au/australia/victoria/melbourne-teena...
I find it hard to believe they don't know what they are doing when they brutally murder someone. They know they are protected in society and the repercussions are always minor.
I don't know what the solution is, but forming a gang to steal cars, kill people, just doesn't sit right with me without severe punishment.
Re: A crime doesn't make a child an adult
#7After finishing the article, I am left with a much deeper suspicion of the felony murder rule, and of plea deals in general, than I am of giving minors the same sentences as adults.
That's not to say that I agree with giving minors adult sentences. But it doesn't seem the worst thing about the cases discussed here.
Re: A crime doesn't make a child an adult
#8A minor is a legal fiction it can and will be discarded when convenient. Many people either don't understand or pretend not to understand that order is the only thing preventing so called children from killing and eating you.
Does sentencing children as adults actually deter other children from committing crimes?
Some, somewhat, depending on circumstances.
But that doesn't much matter - because deterring other children is not a major motivation for the "sentence 'em as adults!" crowd.
Re: A crime doesn't make a child an adult
#9A minor is a legal fiction it can and will be discarded when convenient. Many people either don't understand or pretend not to understand that order is the only thing preventing so called children from killing and eating you.
Many people understand that criminal law is like a bandaid. You apply it after the bad thing happened. Sure, it may be a common believe that the punishment formulated within it also scares away new or repeated criminals, but that is way worse at getting the job done than common sense measures that prevent people to slip into crimes to begin with.
I can't remember seeing countries with stronger protections for minors collapsing into a perfect spherical body of criminal children. Good juvenile justice systems are not about the absence of consequences, they usually are about age-appropriate consequences instead. In short: supervision, intervention, and rehabilitation instead of pretending a child is simply a small adult. The idea that only the threat of adult punishment prevents children from “killing and eating you” is so simplistic it is an insult to everybody forced to read it.
If a kid becomes violent usually you have a long history of publicly visible and known smaller, less dramatic events leading up to that. Good social work and educational systems are able to pull children and teenagers out of that spiral, by for example isolating them from destructive family dynamics. All tried and tested, papers written about it, statistics and studies published about the effectiveness.
Countries having problems with criminal minors are usually countries who try to not spend any money on social measures and education. Or put guns into the hands of kids. There aren't many such countries.
Re: A crime doesn't make a child an adult
#10These young offenders are not blank slates whose future actions depend entirely upon how the state treats them. Rhetoric like the Author's has lead to disastrous soft on crime policies that have a death toll associated.
Every year that a criminal is incarcerated is a year that they CANNOT kill an innocent citizen, rob a home or store, desecrate or vandalize the community, shoot up fentanyl in the streets, or do any number of things.
Every year we refuse to incarcerate criminals, is another year that regular citizens are forced to live in prison like conditions. Just like we see people "tribing up" by race in prison, forcing the youth to live in an open air prison is one of the direct causes of the rise in racism in today's youth.