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Comment by loopbit | Hacker News Reader

Be careful with this, I come from a country where someone below 18 can't be indicted for a crime. Regardless of the crime.

There has been cases of 17-year-old minors raping and killing that went completely free (or spent a few months in juvie).

What I'm saying with this is that yes, I agree with you: The age of the perp should be considered. But we should also consider the crime in question.

In this case, both age and 'crime' account for what is just a prank with no harm done (apart from bruising some teacher's ego). Even expelling the child would seem to me a bit excessive, but I could understand the school doing that. Anything more is just disproportionate.

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An example from today. A 13 year old boy kills one person and injures some others with a crossbow. He's unlikely to face criminal charges because 14 is the age of criminal responsibility in spain.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-32380705

So in crimes like that, essentially no one is held responsible for the murder. The kid, being under thirteen, is a free agent, a loose cannon, able to freely commit any crime he/she wishes with no possibility of anyone facing consequences for it.

Am I the only one who thinks parents should be held criminally responsible for not training their kids properly? It makes sense, doesn't it? If the child isn't considered responsible, then the person responsible for the child should be.

Somehow the society is geared towards saving young pregnable wombs. Leave your wife? Pay maintenance. Have a kid that doesn't live with you? Pay maintenance. Don't pay maintenance? Go to jail. Kids is murderer. Whhaa? Poor baby.

'Not facing criminal charges' does not mean 'not being punished'. Kids like this are often placed in the care of the government until they are 18. They may also be forced to undergo psychiatric treatment. Neither is a cakewalk.

I didn't say he was avoiding punishment. I said he was notgoing to face criminal charges. I'm not sure what your point is, or how your comment applies to anything I wrote.

And that is the country (and the law) I was referring to.

Let me guess. That country is India and that rape was a group-rape with 3 other adults and this 1 minor boy. A country where more than 50% of rape cases involve ex-girlfriends and ex-boyfriends and where not marrying a girlfriend is considered rape.

Did you participate in that candle march?

Lets not be careful at all at uploading some basic truths - minors are minors and we _adults_ can't change the definition based on our communal level of outrage.

India? Wow you've gone far away... Nope, Spain, right in 'civilized' western europe.

The incident I mention, by the way, happened a few years ago and it was a group of high schoolers, all of them minors (except one, whose 18th birthday had happened a few months before, he was the only one charged as an adult).

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