India passes tough new law for serious juvenile crimes
bbc.com
bbc.com
So what is your age limit? If 16, why not 15? And if 15, why not 12, or 10, or 7, or 5?
The only thing we can say with any certainty is that the Victorians tried and tested the hang-em-high method of crime reduction, with less than stellar results to show for it.
Why should there be an age limit? If a person is capable of consciously plan a crime and execute it, he/she should be able to take a responsibility and punishment for it. What I mean, is that such incidents should be decided case by case basis, not setting some hard limit just because a perpetrator is below a certain age. A person doesn't become somehow magically different at midnight he turns 18. Aand it's not like we have a problem of minors of 5 years old running around and killing people, so the bar sets itself naturally (I'd guess proposed 16yo is pretty accurate for the serious crimes).
OK, so it's bad bad phrasing on my part.
How would you personally decide "if a person is capable of consciously plan a crime and execut[ing] it?"
> Aand it's not like we have a problem of minors of 5 years old running around and killing people
Yeah, that was hypoerbole on my part. It's not unknown for 10-year-olds to commit hideous crimes, though.
so why 18 then. The age limit is just a line in the sand that is different in differents states and for different things (driving, drinking, having sexual relationships)
For what it's worth, I completely agree!
I'll take that as you're agreeing with me!
This seems necessarily goading. Why does 18 magically make someone an adult? If anything, we've swung way too far to the left on this issue. A 14 or 15 old person is mature enough to understand complex moral issues. At 15 I drove a 6,000lbs death machine car and had a part time job on top of school. The idea that I didn't understand rape or murder was wrong at that age is asinine. I'd say high school age is fair game for serious prison time for serious offenses.
Here in Chicago a lot of our shooters are 15-17. These aren't innocent children, but fairly serious criminals with nothing but a life of crime ahead of them. Catching them early has potential for betterment compared to leaving them in the loving arms of the gang system and more or less guaranteeing the further victimization of others.
You're proposing hanging 14 and 15-year-olds?
Purely and genuinely because I'm curious: at what age would you say "stop, they're too young to hang"?
>Catching them early has potential for betterment...
But once they've crossed a line, despite having another 40-50 years of life in front of them, that's it? Not any chance of trying to turn them into contributing, worthwhile members of society?
What rights are you referring to here?
In New Delhi, the drinking age is 25, but you'd be hard-pressed to convince me that the fact that he's not of legal age to drink means he's not of legal age to be expected not to brutally rape and murder a young woman.
India should:
1. Not pass knee-jerk laws, it takes a long time to undo the damage.
2. Do away with the death penalty.
Mobs of 'concerned citizens' always turn into sadistic assholes when they know their anger is righteous. But once the punishment of death is off the table, there would be one less way to cause serious damage.
You should see how the discourse in India has become, with good people suggesting more and more creative ways of torturing the rapists; disembowelment, chemical castration, and reversed re-enactment of the original rape have all been suggested.
A national exercise in revenge is sickening. Good, kind people braying for blood is sickening.
Creative suggestions and covering those in detail is a media propaganda to keep the minutes running on their 24hr news channels.
And should we change our morals and flush away decades of cultivated ethics about juvenile justice because organized crime groups recruit underage people?
Creative suggestions and covering those in detail is a media propaganda
Here's an MP from the upper house of parliament, saying:
"Hands and legs of the males who commit rapes should be broken. A law for this should be enacted in this House." [1]
That's not propaganda. This is happening openly - because this time it's okay for people to show their worst sides.
[1]: http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-make-law-to-break-hands...
Then they aren't good people. They think their horrible behavior is justified for some reason, just like most people who do horrible things. That one may personally empathized with one group over the others shouldn't blind us to the same underlying pattern.
A lot of rape cases are unreported, unfilled, not looked for thoroughly, misattributed or the criminal is let go because he is well-connected, minor, minority or inconvenient in any other way.
Pushing the severity of punishment for the slim share of criminals who we managed to catch does not do much towards crime prevention. They should clearly be aiming at inescapable justice rather than sadistic justice.
Edit: Not implying that rape or murder are "normal" but I would say they're more common...
Older teens need to just be treated as adults with respect to both.