Good.
We should not let acts of violence like go unpunished.
We need to set an example for anyone else who may be thinking about committing the same thing.
If your goal is to act as a deterrent then harsher sentences do not work, at least according to research.
At this point, we think it is fair to say that we know of no reputable criminologist who has looked carefully at the overall body of research literature on “deterrence through sentencing” who believes that crime rates will be reduced, through deterrence, by raising the severity of sentences handed down in criminal courts.
So basically I should punish these people who imprison everyone?
Literally nobody is looking at this and thinking "damn, I guess I shouldn't stab people." There is no example. This bit of news will disappear and everyone will forget about it in a few hours while that kid is just gonna be miserable until dead.
What's the better option then?
It should not be legal to hand out life sentences to minors, period.
In Germany the maximum sentence for minors is 10 years and depending on your developmental state you can count as a minor until you are 21 (You are always treated as one if you are under 18). And that is how it should be. Locking people up for life helps nobody.
This isn't a whole life sentence but 13 years and then parole for the rest of his life.
Your prescription seems to assume that either:
Everyone can be rehabilitated, which no society has ever achieved.
That it's preferable to push a well understood risk to people's lives back into the community than it is to keep that risk in the care of the state where they can't kill more people.
...but you strike me as too sensible to prescribe that kind of thing, so what have I missed?
Lots of/most/almost all prisoners are rehabilitated though?
We only hear about the very small minority that make attention grabbing headlines.
I'm in Europe BTW.
When I was 15, I knew it was wrong to stab people. It's not like getting into a fight on the playground. When you bring out a knife, or any deadly weapon, you immediately escalate things way beyond what school administration can handle.
As a kid, I knew there were crimes I could do that were just "boys being boys." Smoking weed, petty theft, vandalism, even getting into fist-fights. I also knew there were crimes that were off limits, such as rape and murder. Just about everyone around me knew the same thing, too.
You're advocating for a culture that encourages kids to commit more crimes and more serious crimes than they otherwise would because they know they will get off easy.
It’s very obvious from your posts that you neither know what the purpose of a punishment in a legal state is, nor what the effects of them are.
The idea that a multi year sentence is “getting of easy” is insane. And from what you are writing I get very strong vibes that you are one of those people who still subscribe to debunked ideas of perpetrator types, which are unironically Nazi-ideology.
The world that you want to create is not a safer one, quite the opposite in fact. Rehabilitation is the by far most important aspect of a punishment and the idea that crimes like the one in question are committed by people who carefully weigh how many years they are willing to spend in prison and could thus be deterred is beyond ridiculous.
Regardless of the veracity of your argument, it is not helpful to denigrate someone you are conversing with. Please just work with the information you have in the context of the discussion. There's no need to make such insinuations to establish your point.
Nor is it helpful to cast Godwin so early........
The point of jail for life is that it's worse than death.
Fuck prison sentences. If you've got that much of a problem with someone, shoot them and do it yourself.
This is genuinely disappointing. I understand the need for punishment, but unless there is therapy, a path to recovery and reintegration into society, we're just housing more and more people without a future.
Are you serious? He killed a kid, for no reason, in cold blood. He should never walk free ever again.
What about the other teenager? The one who died?
He never gets to go home, he'll never be part of society again.
While that's obviously very sad and tragic the purpose of criminal justice should never be vengeance or an eye for an eye. It should be about rehabilitation and reintegration. Yes it's awful that a life was lost but functionally removing another life from society for forever is hardly a good solution.
Takes care of recidivism, though. But I wouldn't advocate it for that reason.
Someone who will commit murder at the age of 15 is very badly damaged, and will need a great deal of help to not be a danger to others in the future. That's the compassionate route.
Almost zero governments will want to spend the money. Sadly, it's cheaper to keep them locked up.
I actually read the article, and if you get all the way to the first sentence, you'll learn that he will be eligible for release starting at 28.
A 15-year-old boy who followed a teenager he did not know through Birmingham city centre and stabbed him to death after a four-minute conversation has been jailed for life with a minimum of 13 years.
I'm sorry, but at 15 you're old enough to know that stabbing a stranger to death is wrong.
I'm sorry, but at 15 you're old enough to know that stabbing a stranger to death is wrong.
Yes? What do you think they're implying, that we should try to rehabilitate criminals... but only if they're still young?
I think (and forgive me if I'm wrong) they're essentially saying that without a rehabilitory justice system, we're just locking people up for life and creating a net drain on society. Financially, culturally... it's a morale drain on our nation, even.
Not to mention that as a society we're abandoning a person who, through a justice system built on rehabilitation and not some ye oldie Catholic concept of creating a punishing Hell on Earth, could actually flourish one day, adding to our society instead of taking from it.
A prison system designed to simply incarcerate, punish and torture those it touches will never offer anywhere near the same benefits to us as one that is designed to attempt to rehabilitate.
Not everybody can be rehabilitated, of course, but that's like saying we shouldn't try to treat cancer, because not everybody can be cured.
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