12-year-old boy admits to hacking police and government sites for Anonymous

The article says > " was sentenced to eight months in "open custody" at a rehabilitation home for youths, with another year spent on probation."

I think this is great, and I also think that it's great that your record is cleared at 18 (although, it's not really cleared, it's just not held against you). As a Canadian, I appreciate that rule. Kids make mistakes, and they deserve the opportunity to make things right and live a normal life (there are obviously exceptions to the rule).

This kid has skills. As others have mentioned, his parents should show him some white hat programs (although many have age restrictions), and get him internships. He has a lot of time ahead of him, and if handled correctly he can do really well for himself.

> It's always seemed odd that kids get a free pass just because they're kids.

In my opinion one reason why they cannot be made fully responsible for their actions is, that they do not have the same rights as adults. They are not allowed to drive cars, to drink alcohol, to have sex, to vote, to marry, to become president and so on. Another reason might be, that they did not have the same chance to develop an ethic framework as adults had, because they had less years to learn.

> age is often used as a (bad) proxy for maturity.

I agree, but on the other hand there is a need for a fair (same for all) measure. I have no idea what would be a better objective measure.

> That said, prison time for anyone, adults or children, for computer-related crimes is barbaric.

I would agree if this is limited to "crimes" that are only or at least mostly computer related.

As a kid, you have a distorted view of reality and your prefrontal cortex is not fully developed. That is to say your morals, planning, and judgement is not fully developed. This was part of SCOTUS [outlawing capital punishment for minors](http://www.apa.org/monitor/jun05/jn.aspx).

The Prefrontal cortex is key to what we'd consider a person's personality. The seminal case of this would be [Phineas Gage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage), who had his prefrontal cortex (along with most of his frontal lobe) destroyed. Despite a hole in his head, he miraculously survived. Without his prefrontal cortex, he was no longer inhibited by judgement, shame, or morals. He didn't ignore it, he just simply didn't feel it. A man went from being honest and upstanding to constantly thieving and telling lies.

Since the pre frontal cortex does not fully mature until around the age of 25, I would argue the 13 years this child does, in fact, not know the full extent of what he did.

> I knew what I was doing at 12

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

Under Jewish law the official age at which one is considered able to tell right from wrong and thus held responsible for one's actions is 13 (for a boy) or 12 (for a girl). I've never seen a good argument for 18 or 21 being a better place to draw that sort of arbitrary line. My suspicion is that kids act irresponsibly to the degree that they do largely because we don't allow them agency or true adult responsibilities - we've infantilized them. Whatever age gets picked becomes essentially a self-fulfilling prophesy.

>Would anyone provide a counterargument?

Sure. Do you mind if I'm a social nihilist?

Once upon a time, there was a place in mild prosperity, where there was a reasonable amount of wealth and almost any person who worked hard enough and didn't run into any terrible luck could eke out a living. Near this land there lived a fully sentient and conscious, territorial dragon who hid in a lair guarding innumerable treasures. The people largely respected the dragon's right to its property, and when foolhardy wealth-seekers intruded on its lair, people largely allowed the dragon to go about its business, grievously injuring those intruders. But when a child, or an insane person, or a wanderer who didn't know any better strayed into the dragon's lair, people pooled their efforts and sent envoys to rescue them before it was too late. Of course, nobody was terribly concerned that this process made the dragon any less threatening, or that people would try to intrude on the dragon expecting to be saved.

You may by now have realized that the dragon is a stand-in for our criminal justice system, and the criteria are the age of majority, the insanity defense, and mens rea. You see, it is a common lament of libertarians that the criminal justice system exists to control people, which, to me, is only slightly inaccurate. The criminal justice system exists because we can't control people, not even to the extent of "don't kill each other".

We created a giant, bloodthirsty monster that likes to kill people who step out of line, and we called it "The System". While we're not sure precisely how The System prevents crime, we do know that societies with a System experience less crime than those who don't. We haven't, for the most part, done enough research to determine what particular characteristics are good for preventing crime, and to a large extent, of the research we have done, we ignore the findings. We have the System because it's been around for a very long time and we're all -- quite rightly -- terrified of what our society would look like without it.

Among the people who work with The System, there is little illusion that the whole thing was designed with the efficiency and elegance of closed-source software commissioned by business majors. But it's not terrifically important if we steal off some of the most sympathetic of its prey, because, on balance, the System continues to exist as a viable threat to any would-be offenders.

So we don't give 12-year-olds a free pass because we think they aren't aware of their actions. We do it because we know that a 12-year-old is at an extraordinarily vulnerable time in their life and oftentimes a pretrial diversion program can mean the difference between a postgraduate degree and a life on the streets. We do it because we understand that we don't sufficiently undermine the System by allowing 12-year-olds to get off, because for the most part kids that age aren't going to try to exploit our kindness. And of course we do it because there was never anything ethical about the System in the first place, merely necessary, and most of us can all too easily imagine how artificial and distant some of the greater structure of society seemed to us as children. Most people can't stomach the idea of sending a kid to jail.

Law isn't based on reason, evidence, or morality. It's based on fear. Specifically, fear that society wouldn't work without it. But we aren't scared of 12-year-olds.

The 17 year old youth who raped and murdered a girl in Delhi bus got off with three years in a correctional home.He was the one who drove an iron rod in the victims private parts and raped/tortured her for an hour before throwing her out of the running bus..he was just six months away from his 18th birthday..Juveniles always get free passes

Would community service not be a sentence?