Joe Ligon: America's 'longest juvenile lifer' on 68 years in prison

You are seriously downplaying what is described in the article as a "stabbing spree" with 8 different victims, 2 of them killed.

Maybe you don’t think he deserves his punishment. I certainly do. The type of person who would go on a stabbing spree for wine money is not the kind of person who has any place in society I want to live.

A childs reasoning would more likely follow this kind of path: Child wants alcohol->storekeeper has alcohol->child capable of coercion by force (ie stabbing)—>child gets alcohol from storekeeper

However, instead he did this: Young man wants alcohol->storekeeper has alcohol—>alcohol costs money that young man does not have—>innocent passerby’s have money—> young man capable of coercion by force (ie stabbing)—>young man stabs innocent passerby’s for their money—>Evaluate whether amount stolen is enough for alcohol, if not, repeat previous steps, if so—->young man gets alcohol from storekeeper

Good decisions are not proof of brain development, however complex ones are. Given the evidence I would say he was rightly judged as an adult.

My position is that no 15 year old deserves a life sentence _without parole_. Are there 15 year olds who commit crimes that truly reflect their irredeemable nature? Perhaps. I expect they are in the minority though, and that's the whole point of a parole board (as flawed a system as that is).

To your point about different time and place, yes, but that’s the system: the jury you get, absent a mistrial, is the jury you get and their opinion is what decides what you deserve by definition (absent new evidence, appeals, etc, within the confines of sentencing regulation, etc.).

Perhaps what you’re after is that there’s no universally objective standard of what a person deserves for their actions, given all the myriad influences and conditions that lead to a particular moment in a person’s life, and which may lessen that persons agency. Therefore the judgement of society is imperfect in the sense that it cannot adequately grasp all these attributes, and may give attributes differing weight based on something as small as whether their eggs were over cooked that morning. So for a person to use the word “deserves” with authority is flawed because a person or people cannot render a perfectly objective judgement.

I think you’ll find that this is an argument as old as time, but whether by birth or immigration, people living in a system operate by its rules, and the word “deserve” reflects the authority of a society to bring down punishment on scofflaws. Like when I tell you something is “cold” we need not debate the true principle of what cold means, you assume to context. So should you assume context for the word “deserves”. Society has never achieved perfection in balancing agency and justice but herein lies a predictable truism - if you run around with a band stabbing others so severely that some die and by luck some don’t, society will determine ya dun f’d up.

There were continuous tough on crime efforts throughout (and beyond) the very long “crime wave” period, but there’s very little evidence that they has any impact on turning things around. Better explanations are the demographic bugle aging out of the age range that drives most crime, the lead-crime link, and the legalized abortion crime effect.

I know that sounds cynical but in the last year, the 'shining lights' of my city's youth offender program 'quit' for sexually harassing the young people they were charged with. That's Canada's Young Offender system and that is one heavily scrutinized system. If that kind of evil can hide for a decade in our young offender system, we're passed the point of draining the swamp and need to bring in heavy earth movers.

Preferably doing all the above at the same time.

(take it easy, I'm Australian)

“Educate” me all you want about rehabilitation, but when I hear that a man murdered two people with a knife and slashed six others, I’m going to think that man needs to be locked up for life because he’s too much of a risk to innocent people.

Conversely, I can lecture a liberal person all day about how dangerous these people can be and they’ll think that these people deserve a chance at being let back into society.