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Comment by sodosopa | Hacker News Reader

The title is a little more clickbaty than what it is. It's an ankle monitor for when kids are on house arrest for juvenile crimes.

> On March 29, court officials in Chicago strapped an ankle monitor onto Shawn, a 15-year-old awaiting trial on charges of armed robbery. They explained that the device would need to be charged for two hours a day and that it would track his movements using GPS technology. He was told he would have to be given permission to leave his house, even to go to school. But he found out that through his monitor, officers wouldn’t just be able to track his location, as most electronic monitors do. They would also be able to speak—and listen—to him.

and

> In January, Cook County, home of Chicago, awarded a contract to the electronic monitoring company Track Group, which will lease 275 ankle monitors to keep tabs on children awaiting trial.

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In what way is that not what the title says?

Not clickbaity enough.

Chicago is tracking kids and listening to potentially anyone in the city without consent.

“Kids” awaiting trial for armed robbery. (The infantilization of teenagers is ridiculous. For most of human history, young men at 15 were fighting wars. If you’re old enough to rob someone with a gun, you’re not a “kid.” Under certain circumstances it also may not be reasonable to treat you like an adult for purposes of the law, but calling the accused a “kid” is a disingenuous way to try to downplay the seriousness of his conduct.)

Using scare quotes doesn't change the fact that these are children.

> these are children.

that were old enough to hold up a gun/knife to someone and make a demand.

I am a former high school teacher working with Chicago kids age 15-22 (yes). I don't know about you, but they're children to me. They are simply not equipped with enough information to make rational choices in a system that has either by design or evolution _completely failed them_.

A child is someone who is not cognitively capable of distinguishing right from wrong. A 15-22 year old is fully capable of doing that. They may have a hard time fighting various pressures and doing the right thing, but that's a qualitatively different issue. (And in fact, most adolescents are perfectly capable of doing that too.)

> A 15-22 year old is fully capable of doing that.

Actually, the brain is still a work in progress until age 25.

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=141164...

> So the changes that happen between 18 and 25 are a continuation of the process that starts around puberty, and 18 year olds are about halfway through that process. Their prefrontal cortex is not yet fully developed. That's the part of the brain that helps you to inhibit impulses and to plan and organize your behavior to reach a goal.

> And the other part of the brain that is different in adolescence is that the brain's reward system becomes highly active right around the time of puberty and then gradually goes back to an adult level, which it reaches around age 25 and that makes adolescents and young adults more interested in entering uncertain situations to seek out and try to find whether there might be a possibility of gaining something from those situations.

That doesn't say that adolescents can't distinguish right from wrong (which is what I said). That says that adolescents often lack the impulse control to do the right thing consistently.

To give you an example. My six year old doesn't really understand why she shouldn't eat junk food. She can kind of understand that she shouldn't do it, but the "why" is beyond her. Thus if she eats a bunch of junk food, it's not her fault, it's my fault. "Children" are held harmless because they lack a basic prerequisite for culpability: the ability to truly distinguish between right and wrong.

Having the cognitive ability to distinguish right from wrong, but lacking the impulse control to do the right thing is different. I know I shouldn't eat junk food, and I'm fully capable of understanding why. But I have trouble doing the right thing. If I eat a bunch of junk food, it's my fault. I am culpable, not my mom.

Calling someone a "child" is to negate their culpability. That's not an appropriate label for an adolescent. If lacking impulse control negated culpability, I'd suspect you'd find that a lot of adult criminals had poor impulse control. That doesn't make them "children." (Contrarywise, when it is demonstrated that an adult lacks the capacity to distinguish right from wrong, that does negate their culpability, in the same manner as for children.)

> A child is someone who is not cognitively capable of distinguishing right from wrong. A 15-22 year old is fully capable of doing that.

Do you therefore support changing the voting age to 15, as well as the draft eligible age?

Doesn't this argue for stricter constraints on their behavior(such as GPS trackers with microphones/speakers)?

There's a difference in tagging the CTA and going up to someone on the 606 and mugging people with a gun.

15 year olds are not, and never have been, "children." They're adolescents. We have long recognized that people of that age are distinct from both children and adults in that they're capable of a wide variety of (often destructive) adult behaviors, but aren't put together enough to be fully accountable for that. That's fine--that's why the law tackles culpability for adolescents on a case-by-case basis.

Calling them "children" is both inaccurate, and a rhetorically sneaky way to mitigate culpability, responsibility, and agency. Controlling adolescents is one of society's most important functions, precisely because of the mismatch between destructive potential and impulse control. Society thus expects adolescents to control their behavior. It might give them more leeway in that regard, but they are not (and should not be) treated like children, who generally are held harmless for their misconduct.

> 15 year olds are not, and never have been, "children." They're adolescents.

“Children” does not now generally exclude adolescents, but extends to all pre-adults. We have terms that are more specific that do exclude adolescents, but “children” isn't generally one of them (though in certainly contexts the term might have special definitions.)

(Historically, it may havenexclude some or all adolescents, but that's because in most cultures, adult included some or all adolescents.)

> Controlling adolescents is one of society's most important functions,precisely because of the mismatch between destructive potential and impulse control.

Arguably, but then directly contradicted by:

> Society thus expects adolescents to control their behavior

Does society deem control of adolescents an important social function because it expects that adolescents lack adequate impulse control given their destructive potential or does it not see such a gap and expect that they have adequate impulse control for self-containment? Your second statement cannot be a consequence of the first, it is an incompatible expectation.

"Children" including adolescents is a very new (and very pernicious) idea.

> Does society deem control of adolescents an important social function because it expects that adolescents lack adequate impulse control given their destructive potential or does it not see such a gap and expect that they have adequate impulse control for self-containment?

There is nothing contradictory. Society holds children harmless because they're not generally cognitively capable of distinguishing right from wrong. Adolescents are, and are expected to behave. Society acknowledges that adolescents often have problems actually doing the right thing, but doesn't treat that as an excuse that mitigates culpability, as for children. Instead, they tailor punishment on a case-by-case basis to accommodate that fact. (Also, historically, they put adolescents to work, to reduce the avenues for misbehavior. Idle hands and whatnot.)

Adolescents are not, as a general rule, expected to have the cognitive faculties of adults, which is why they aren't usually tried as adults, why they can't vote, why they can't buy alcohol, and why they can't drive cars without additional rules (in graduated license states).

> which is why they aren't usually tried as adults

It seems to me that America and the United Kingdom often try children, not just adolescents, as adults.

I'm sure that's reporting bias, and it only happens to a miniscule proportion of underage offenders, but what is the actual guideline there?

"trial" a.k.a. not guilty yet. Yes, listen all you want in a detention center.

Also the "most of human history" argument is reductive and regressive. We can and should improve on our history.

There is a difference between improving on our history, and denying the underlying facts of the universe that led people in history to adopt certain customs. The former might be not sending 15-year olds off to fight the neighboring tribe. That is progress. The latter would be denying that a 15-year old is fully capable of horrific violence, and deeming him a "child." That is foolish.

Where's the line for you? Who is or isn't a "kid"? Is it just criminals that lose their kid status? Is it because they used a gun? What about an 8 year old that kills someone with a gun (either on purpose or accidentally) are they kids?

I think, as someone in my 30's, that pointing at a group of humans who are somewhere between middle school and college age and saying "those kids over there" makes sense.

Ask any developmental psychologist and they'll tell you: the brain is still developing, and 15 year olds are fucking idiots when it comes to long term consequences factoring into their decision making. "For most of human history" is a useless example because of all the other terribly stupid shit we did "for most of human history".

FOH with this "I decide who is a kid" nonsense, as if a bunch of law-abiding white kids of the same age wouldn't be called kids by most sane people.

> FOH with this "I decide who is a kid" nonsense, as if a bunch of law-abiding white kids of the same age wouldn't be called kids by most sane people.

I'm pretty sure flipped out when a judge treated Ethan Couch as a "kid" (and rightfully so).

12-year-olds stick people up. Young teenagers don't have fully-developed brains; it's probably "easier" for them to do this stuff, not harder. I have a hard time with the idea that you really think someone stops being a "kid" just because they commit a crime.

Recruiting a 15-year-old to fight in an armed conflict, by the way, is an action that has a name: "war crime".

> Young teenagers don't have fully-developed brains

Neither do old teenagers; executive function isn't fully developed, IIRC, until the early-to-mid 20s.

I don't think anyone past the age of puberty is a "kid." It may not be fair in any given circumstance to treat them like adults, but they're not children either. Societies have long recognized that fact. (There is a reason in Judiasm the Bar Mitzvah is at age 13.)

Plenty of 12 year olds aren't past puberty, but by you're logic, they're not "kids".

Life expectancy was also a lot lower when these rites were introduced.

> For most of human history, young men at 15 were fighting wars. If you’re old enough to rob someone with a gun, you’re not a “kid.”

The hormonal peaks and incompletely developed executive function that made male adolescents excellent pawns in violent policy (and also contributes to their engagement in violent crime, often as similar pawns) is exactly part of them substantively being a kid.

Yeah for "most of human history" you were lucky to live past 20 or 30... Of course people approaching their later years were fighting wars. :P

But if you lived past 20, median life expectancy was in the 60's or 70's, clear back to the Neolithic. About like today!

Kids do things all the time that they're not ready for, or are above their maturity. They lack full control, context and understanding of their environment and direction, so they shouldn't be seen as adults just because they're emulating adult actions.

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