A crime doesn't make a child an adult | Hacker News Reader

A crime doesn't make a child an adult

theatlantic.com

25 pointspaulpauper58 comments

I wish people would stop using the word “child” in an effort to minimize criminal behavior by young adults. A 16 or 17 year old isn’t a “child.” The Marquis de Lafayette and James Manor were just 18 when the revolutionary war started. Societies going back to ancient times ascribed significant responsibility to teenagers. And in modern times, there is a scientific basis for distinguishing between adolescents and children when it comes to brain development. Historically, adolescents were treated like adults.

The article’s focus on moral culpability also overlooks the key purpose of the justice system: protecting society from criminals. In that respect, the age actually creates a bigger risk. People who start engaging in criminal conduct at an earlier age more likely to engage in criminal behavior as adults: https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/youth-justice-involvemen... (“Continuity of offending from the juvenile into the adult years is higher for people who start offending at an early age, chronic delinquents, and young people who commit violent offenses.”). If you look at the curve of when violent conduct occurs, it peaks from ages 13-25. And it’s actually about as high at age 13 as it is at age 25, with the peak around 18-19.

A more rational and less emotional sentencing system would be harsher on teenage offenders while reducing sentences overall. If someone is committing violent crimes at age 15, that signals an increased risk of violent criminality for the next decade. Short sentences will mean that person will keep victimizing society repeatedly over that period. On the other hand, multi-decade sentences are counter productive. Violent criminality drops sharply after age 40.

Young people have a much higher chance of reforming if society puts some effort into it. Juveniles especially need to be put on the right track somehow. Ignoring the problem is definitely not the answer, but neither is focusing on punishment rather than rehabilitation.

Citation needed on that first point. I think the evidence shows the opposite. People who start committing crime earlier are more likely to simply be bad people rather than people who happened to be in bad circumstances.

> People who start committing crime earlier are more likely to simply be bad people rather than people who happened to be in bad circumstances.

This is an unreasonable claim without the evidence actually being provided. It reads more as the conclusion you expect to see when you pull up a given study. Especially "simply be bad people" is not a particularly scientific phrase, and is a particularly moralistic one.

You've got it backward. The notion that criminals are simply ordinary people who find themselves in certain circumstances is the moralistic concept. It's something people want to be true, because it implies that we can reduce crime by fixing the circumstances that cause people to commit crime.

But science shows that criminals are literally wired differently. For example, the brains of youth homicide offenders are different than those of non-offenders. Computer models can actually predict future homicidal behavior from clinical data and brain scans: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-32782-5 ("Classification through machine learning models using these clinical and neural data predicted which formerly incarcerated youth committed a future homicide as adults with high accuracy.").

Similarly, we know traits such as ADHD are caused by brain chemistry rather than the environment. Compared to the general population, ADHD is over-represented in prison populations by a factor of 5 for youth and 10 for adults: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4301200/ ("Compared with published general population prevalence, there is a fivefold increase in prevalence of ADHD in youth prison populations (30.1%) and a 10-fold increase in adult prison populations (26.2%).").

Of course, none of that is to say we should do some pre-crime like process where we imprison people with ADHD who haven't done anything wrong. Instead, the point is that youth who commit serious crimes are disproportionately likely to be the ones who commit crimes due to factors intrinsic to the individual. That cuts against the popular notion that youth offenders are the ones who are more likely to be able to be "saved" through societal intervention. E.g., an adult drug dealer who shoots someone in an altercation over a drug deal may well be easier to rehabilitate than a teenager who shoots a classmate over social conflict.

> You've got it backward. The notion that criminals are simply ordinary people who find themselves in certain circumstances is the moralistic concept.

Two things can be true at once. My point was about the quote I pulled. Other perspectives on the topic are a separate matter.

> But science shows that criminals are literally wired differently. For example, the brains of youth homicide offenders are different than those of non-offenders.

Regardless, science doesn't show how these differences form; this phrasing smuggles a nature over nurture perspective as a fact: "more likely to simply be bad people rather than people who happened to be in bad circumstances" (as well as "science shows that criminals are literally wired differently" and "the point is that youth who commit serious crimes are disproportionately likely to be the ones who commit crimes due to factors intrinsic to the individual"). My point is that the statements I quoted are not strictly true, they are what the author expects to be true; I suppose there may be some reason other than morals for said expectation but, seeing as you didn't deny my framing, instead reversing it, I suspect it is accurate.

If you ignore the essentialist phrasing, he’s largely correct—there is a “snowball effect” where the first crime and its punishment cause further physical, mental, and social damage to the criminal that can then lead to subsequent crimes.

https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=27... has some analysis of the phenomenon; The Shawshank Redemption is a popular fictional account of the same idea.

Kids are incredibly malleable, although they are mostly a function of their environment. Childhood really the only time you have to form them. Teenager are just bigger kids.

But yes, young people are more likely to re-offend, especially if society has given up on them. Older people tend to get beaten down by lots of wisdom, either learnt the easy way or the hard way.

> Kids are incredibly malleable, although they are mostly a function of their environment.

Incorrect as to the word “mostly.” See: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/from-freud-to-fluoxe... (“Roughly half or more of the variance in most personality traits is attributable to genetic factors”). And even though environmental factors play a large role, by the time you're confronted with an adolescent who has committed a serious crime, a lot of that has already been baked in through the pre-adolescent environment.

> Teenager are just bigger kids.

That’s completely contrary to science. Teenagers are teenagers. Their brains are distinct both from children and from adults. In fact, the reason violence peaks at around 18-19 is because the development of the emotional centers outruns the development of the prefrontal cortex that provides impulse control.

And of course in terms of physical strength and capacity to do violence, men reach a substantial fraction of their full adult strength by age 15.

Your own link above collates some studies showing that certain kinds of therapy reduce recidivism.

> focusing on punishment rather than rehabilitation.

punishment is a prerequisit to rehabilitation

no, it's not. consequences are. and we don't need to hurt people to get accountability.

> and we don't need to hurt people to get accountability.

Then don't hurt people, and ask that from those who do... if you don't want somebody else to do it to them.

> A more rational and less emotional sentencing system would be harsher on teenage offenders

This does not align with my understanding of the research, e.g. https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annur... ?

> "Unfortunately, so far, the existing empirical work has not had a central place in policy, legislation, and political discourse (Loughran 2019, Nelken & Hamilton 2022). Unsurprisingly, scholars have been frustrated that their insights on, for instance, the inconclusive evidence for the deterrent effect of incarceration on violent crime or the evidence that treatment can help to rehabilitate have not had sufficient impact (Cullen et al. 2011, McGuire 2013).

> Empirical research has failed to sway policymakers and political leaders for many reasons, too many to cover fully here. For instance, one can broadly think about high levels of punitiveness in certain cultures and jurisdictions, such as the American context (Kleinfeld 2016, Muenster & Trone 2015). Moreover, there has been a penal populism where politicians have sold the public on a simplistic discourse that they need and want strict punishment against crime (Roberts et al. 2003, Windlesham 1998). Added to this is the discriminatory and racist framing of crime as part of a dog-whistle political strategy (Haney-López 2015). Another problem is a more general aversion to science, and a populist politics that drives on simplicity instead of nuanced, evidence-based policy (Huber et al. 2022). These headwinds foster a more challenging set of conditions not just for altering policy but even for the bare minimum of having robust and legitimate conversations about effective and ineffective punishment."

Or, for a lengthier investigation and many citations and projects, https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-end-of-violence-gary-sl... ?

("Twenty-five years ago, I sought out Gary Slutkin while searching for a solution to the gun violence we experienced in Los Angeles. I got far more than I hoped for. The methods he describes in his groundbreaking new book helped reduce our gun violence to historic lows and save thousands of lives.”—Charlie Beck, former chief of police, Los Angeles Police Department")

As I understand it, the research you’re talking about is about the potential deterrent or rehabilitative effect of punishment. I’m talking about the effect of removing people from society during the ages when they are most likely to commit violent crime.

> removing people from society

Which is something the person will definitely experience as punishment, and might make matters only worse afterwards, especially if that "removal" doesn't include therapeutic processes (which is the current state of affairs mostly)?

I see a lot of parallels and a shared interest in removing/reducing violence. The title and summary of the linked book may give the impression that the focus is elsewhere; maybe the introduction will help to see more of the shared research interest, or make it clearer where you disagree on the approaches?

> I wish people would stop using the word “child” in an effort to minimize criminal behavior by young adults. A 16 or 17 year old isn’t a “child.”

This reminds me of a horrific study (that keeps getting repeated over and over!) that claims that child death rate of covid is actually not as low as people thought. Then it turns out that their definition of child is 0-18, and in the data there's a really sharp turn in death rate for age <10, precisely what people already thought.

> I wish people would stop using the word “child” in an effort to minimize criminal behavior by young adults. A 16 or 17 year old isn’t a “child.” The Marquis de Lafayette and James Manor were just 18 when the revolutionary war started. Societies going back to ancient times ascribed significant responsibility to teenagers. And in modern times, there is a scientific basis for distinguishing between adolescents and children when it comes to brain development. Historically, adolescents were treated like adults.

Looking at the past for wisdom on how to treat young adult/people is very dangerous...

> People who start engaging in criminal conduct at an earlier age more likely to engage in criminal behavior as adults

this is not quite what the citation means. I am also very curious on how these study correct for cofactors .People who start a life of crime early are probably not comming from the best conditions in term of life circonstances. Which in it self is also a strong predictor.

> A more rational and less emotional sentencing system would be harsher on teenage offenders while reducing sentences overall.

No, that would be the fear based emotional response. The ration response would be to simply measure whether or not harsher sentencing have a better outcome. Instead of prehemtively jailing people based on dubious stats.

> The article’s focus on moral culpability also overlooks the key purpose of the justice system: protecting society from criminals.

I do NOT concede that as the KEY purpose. And when you call "protecting society from criminals" the key purpose of the justice system you wind up with the horribly broken mess that is the US justice system.

Yes, A purpose of the justice system is to remove from society those who cannot be trusted.

But another purpose of the justice system should be to rehabilitate those who can be. And the US justice system is HORRIFIC at that. If anything, the US justice system is a net negative on rehabilitation. The way the US system throws everybody together does more to let old criminals teach new ones their tricks than any improvement from any rehabilitation program can counteract.

Protecting society from criminals (or the violently and severely mentally-ill) is the only function of incarceration that is guaranteed to work. I agree with you that the US justice system is horrific at rehabilitating those who can be rehabilitated - but we don't really have a good understanding of what specific people can and cannot be rehabilitated, or how to go about actually effectively doing the rehabilitation.

Whereas someone who has committed 30 petty thefts and then gets arrested, locked in a cage, and guarded by armed agents of the state, is extremely unlikely to commit another theft as long as he remains locked in the cage.

And he's also extremely unlikely to get shot to death by e.g. a store owner trying to protect his property from theft - another important function of the criminal justice system is protecting criminals from ordinary people using violence against criminals in order to protect their own lives or property.

> Protecting society from criminals (or the violently and severely mentally-ill) is the only function of incarceration that is guaranteed to work.

However in most cases the incarceration is used as punishment, with the length is related to the seriousness of the crime rather than the likelihood for repeating offenses.

Here in Norway we explicitly separate this, where most sentences are punishment, but some are explicitly for protecting society. In the latter case there is technically no end, just a minimum time and after that periodic reviews to determine if the person still poses a sufficient threat.

It's technically classified as a punishment due to legal reasons, like ensuring human rights and due process are respected.

> Whereas someone who has committed 30 petty thefts and then gets arrested, locked in a cage, and guarded by armed agents of the state, is extremely unlikely to commit another theft as long as he remains locked in the cage.

How does that help, if after incarceration that person become a much hardened criminal both because of the lack meaning pathway to integration, and you know spending years locked up with the worst of society.

> but we don't really have a good understanding of what specific people can and cannot be rehabilitated, or how to go about actually effectively doing the rehabilitation.

Then let's work on that.

The theory is that people commit most of their crimes in their prime age of ~15-30. If you lock someone until out of that age, their crime rate will go down on their own. Whether or not this is cruel is another discussion.

This is actually a problem for rehabilitation studies, since now they have to sanitize this effect out of their data on how much rehabilitation treatment actuality works. This and other flaws have tainted some claims that a rehabilitation process is successful.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/prison-and-crime-much-more-...

> Protecting society from criminals (or the violently and severely mentally-ill)

And this is another problem--your "justice system" should NOT be where you place your mentally-ill--they belong in a (possibly secure) medical facility and not with rank-and-file criminals. This is yet one more issue with the US system.

A secure medical facility is basically the same thing as a prison, as far as the people compelled by the state to remain there are concerned.

It is not nearly the same.

> Yes, A purpose of the justice system is to remove from society those who cannot be trusted

Agreed.

> But another purpose of the justice system should be to rehabilitate those who can be

Why? Especially if it comes at the expense of the first purpose?

> The Marquis de Lafayette and James Manor were just 18 when the revolutionary war started.

And Thomas “all men are created equal” Jefferson raped his slaves[0], and then enslaved the resulting children, but we don’t do that nowadays either, because I guess some things changed since 200+years ago?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson_and_slavery

These 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.

This argument fails if you consider that incarceration makes people more likely to commit crimes when they get out, not less

You can always keep them in jail forever, or execute them. Both are excellent options. Many human beings are complete and total net negatives, wholly incompatible with modern life, and their crimes justify their exclusion or termination. Iryna Zarutska's killer was convicted 14 separate times. He specifically should have been executed long ago, and the fact that he is still alive proves that America is not a Carceral state.

> 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.

Why stop at criminal, this also true for non-criminal; Let's just jail everyone, then we will all be safer.

CECOT is an excellent example of why common sense, and necessarily heavy handed policing is a requirement for a society to not be a prison itself. If you remove the prison, the prisoners just move into the country and make it a prison too. Except we all get to live next to them.

After 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.

The article is so facile.

> Yet crime-data analysts have noted that Louisiana’s crime wave was in keeping with a national trend

This is meant to be mitigating? What is this thought process? Who in their right mind is like "okay, a group of people broke into your home at night but your state shouldn't have been so hard on them for what ensued because akshually it was part of a whole nationwide trend at the time."

The modern right absolutely thrives on the fact that so many mostly reasonable people can't see that "play stupid games win stupid prizes" is just another side of the "tolerate anything but intolerance" coin. You can be in favor of showing leniency to kids for dumb, youthful mistakes without taking the doe-eyed approach that every dumb thing someone does in their youth is nothing more than a mistake. And the fact that you yourself made some poor decisions as a youth doesn't mean you have to look at a group burglarizing a house as "well, kids will be kids."

> The modern right absolutely thrives on the fact that so many mostly reasonable people can't see that "play stupid games win stupid prizes" is just another side of the "tolerate anything but intolerance" coin

This is something that drives me up the wall. I'm a pretty lefty guy, mostly, but I am very irritated by "my side" being so weak on crime.

I get it, we don't want to ruin people's lives for being a stupid kid doing a stupid crime, but there has to be some kind of middle ground between "ruin their life forever" and "teach them there are no consequences"

It's ridiculous

> but I am very irritated by "my side" being so weak on crime.

Weakness on crime is not a left vs right thing.It's mostly about which kind of crime each side is soft on.

America is the country with boner for lengthy incarceration, staggering incarceration rates, long punishments and as difficult return to society as can be.

And it is never enough.

Also, importantly, when I look at the right wing conservatives I see criminals in leadership and I see violent criminals down. And whole party supporting them and enabling them.

Mostly just if you're poor and not well connected. Affluent rapists often just get a slap on the wrist at best. Some of them even become President of the country.

> This is meant to be mitigating? What is this thought process? Who in their right mind is like "okay, a group of people broke into your home at night but your state shouldn't have been so hard on them for what ensued because akshually it was part of a whole nationwide trend at the time."

You analogy doesn't not hold, and in manyways point at the root of the issue. The point was to show that harsher punishment did not seems to result in meaningful effect on crime stats. It's fine to want harsher sentencing for some kind of emotional fuffilement, let's just not pretend that is helping in any otherways.

Totally wrong. Hammurabi's moral code overall was superior to the soft in crime approach we have today.

Writers 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.

Young brains may have trouble in nuanced situations but stabbing someone or whatever can be unacceptable regardless of their stage of biological maturity

What about cultures that see children as throw away tools and cannonfood for crime? Like sending thrm forth to throw stones, chant racist slogans on demos, etc?

What are you talking about?

A 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.

Does sentencing children as adults actually deter other children from committing crimes?

Criminal gangs specifically recruit legal minors because they are able to do things legal adults can't: Repeatedly and with impunity violate the law. Whether it's smuggling or assassinations, using legal minors make it all a lot less risky.

Would it stop stupid kids from doing stupid kid stuff? No. Would it make minors less attractive to organized crime? Yes.

What if there is value to society in removing antisocial individuals from the social compact, whether others are deterred or not?

Isn't that what juvenile halls are for?

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.

No. For both children and adults, sentencing strictness only deters a SINGLE category of crime--white collar.

Most other forms of crime, especially violent, are almost completely insensitive to the harshness of any possible punishment sentence.

If a brain is sufficiently broken that it no longer has the limiter against harming another human being, prison sentences won't do anything to fix that.

No true.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_El_Salvador

Turns out it works.

Flagged as AI Slop Bot.

Wikipedia article makes no obvious mention of correlation between sentencing and deterrence. Linked article, in fact, demonstrates that alternative programs provided almost all the improvement.

The experimental data from Salvadore and now its neighbors says yes.

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