Pipeline to prison?

@Thomas,

boomerang wrote:

Juveniles tried as adults?

Thomas wrote:

Bad idea. Juveniles are not adults.
To try them as adults may serve some people's revenge fantasies,
but not any goal of deterring crime.

On this point, I must dissent.
The victims (be thay adult or not) are rightfully entitled to vengeance.
I suspect that everyone posting here, as juveniles,
had a basic knowledge of right and rong.
I sure did; there were times that I consciously chose rong,
for profit, as a child (until I had an epiphany about it),
but I knew very well what I was doing. I was guilty and I knew it.
I knew someone who worked in a dept. store
whose phonograph records were ofen stolen by teenagers.
Do u think that thay did not know that stealing them was rong ??

Who on this thread did NOT know
the difference between basic right n rong, as a teenager?
(like stealing?) Thomas? boomer??

David

2 Replies

@OmSigDAVID,

Quote:

Who on this thread did NOT know
the difference between basic right n rong, as a teenager?
(like stealing?) Thomas? boomer??

It is not that....it is the question of when do we expect the young to have mastery over themselves to be able to do only right?? Just as we used to believe (back when we were more civilized, before civilization got deep into the death spiral) that it was better for ten guilty men to go free than one innocent man to be condemned by the state we once believed that it was better to give ten youth a pass for their misdeeds than to convict one who was not mature enough (almost always through no fault of his own) to stay on the path of righteousness. So we said that all of those under the age of majority would not be judged as adults, even though many surely deserved to be.

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

David wrote:

Who on this thread did NOT know
the difference between basic right n rong, as a teenager?
(like stealing?) Thomas? boomer??

hawkeye10 wrote:

It is not that....it is the question of when do we expect the young to have mastery over themselves to be able to do only right?? Just as we used to believe (back when we were more civilized, before civilization got deep into the death spiral) that it was better for ten guilty men to go free than one innocent man to be condemned by the state we once believed that it was better to give ten youth a pass for their misdeeds than to convict one who was not mature enough (almost always through no fault of his own) to stay on the path of righteousness. So we said that all of those under the age of majority would not be judged as adults, even though many surely deserved to be.

That is the argument of the M'Naghten Rule; I reject the reasoning thereof.
(that M'Naghten was free of criminal liability for killing the Queen's Defense Minister because he thawt that it was morally OK)

David

0 Replies

@ossobuco,

ossobuco wrote:

I'm not sure where you said that, but if you think your sixty thousand spent matters, you can fly a kite.

I'm not sure what you are trying to say here.

0 Replies

@boomerang,

boomerang wrote:

That's very interesting, Walter.

Am I correct in assuming that the 10 maximum year sentence applied only to juvenile offenders? Is there such a thing as a "life" sentence in Germany?

What happens after 27?

Correct. Only with juvenile offenders the maximum is 10 years.
From 21 years onwards, there's lifelong for murder and such.

(I must add that vary rarely juveniles between 21 and 27 are convicted according to the Juvenile Law.)

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Your remarks about crime seem to implicitly assume that the only object is to deter crime. Open ended sentencing and parole boards came into use (and fashion) at the end of the 19th century (state by state) on the principle that the penal system should reform the inmates. Personally, i agree with Nietzsche that for whatever may be said publicly, one of the prime objects, and probably the prime object of systems of criminal "justice" is to gratify a desire for revenge on the part of the victim, the victim's survivors, or those in society who identify with the victim or the victim's survivors. I further agree with him that criminals don't look on their arrest and conviction as a natural consequence of their behavior, but as a result of mere misfortune. He uses, i believe, the metaphor of someone hiking in the mountains who gets caught in a land slide. It was not their intent to get caught in a land slide, it was just their misfortune. He says that criminals do not commit their crimes in the belief that they will be caught. I agree with that--after all, why would anyone leave home to commit a crime believing that they would inevitably be caught and prosecuted? This is, by the way, based on my recollectio of what he writes in Beyond Good and Evil, which i read almost 40 years ago. On that basis, though, punishment as deterrent would never work, because the criminal will not believe that they will be apprehended and prosecuted. It only happens to the other guy.

1 Reply

@Walter Hinteler,

Walter Hinteler wrote:

From 21 years onwards, there's lifelong for murder and such.

Where in practice, "lifelong" can mean as little as 15 years, and does mean less than 20 years on average. Life sentences that actually last a whole life are rare in Germany.

1 Reply

@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

Your remarks about crime seem to implicitly assume that the only object is to deter crime.

Not quite. But it's the only object that I consider a good idea. Also, your or Nietsche's analogy for why deterrence doesn't work, doesn't work. Plenty of people abstain from hiking in the mountains because they know they might be caught by a landslide. Likewise, I expect plenty of people to abstain from crimes because they know they might be caught.

2 Replies

@Thomas,

I abstain from hiking
because it might involve too much walking.

David

0 Replies

@OmSigDAVID,

The problem is that neurologically they aren't adults. The brain goes through tremendous change during adolescence.

Quote:

This discovery gives us a new understanding into juvenile
delinquency. The frontal lobe is “involved in behavioral facets
germane to many aspects of criminal culpability,”9 explains Dr.
Ruben C. Gur, neuropsychologist and Director of the Brain
Behavior Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania. “Perhaps
most relevant is the involvement of these brain regions in the
control of aggression and other impulses…. If the neural substrates
of these behaviors have not reached maturity before
adulthood, it is unreasonable to expect the behaviors themselves
to reflect mature thought processes.
“The evidence now is strong that the brain does not cease
to mature until the early 20s in those relevant parts that govern
impulsivity, judgment, planning for the future, foresight of consequences,
and other characteristics that make people morally
culpable…. Indeed, age 21 or 22 would be closer to the ‘biological’
age of maturity.”

http://www.abanet.org/crimjust/juvjus/Adolescence.pdf

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

Where in practice, "lifelong" can mean as little as 15 years, and does mean less than 20 years on average. Life sentences that actually last a whole life are rare in Germany.

Not really:

Quote:

Section 57a

Conditional early release-life imprisonment

(1) The court shall grant conditional early release from a sentence of imprisonment for life under an operational period of probation, if

fifteen years of the sentence have been served;

the particular seriousness of the convicted persons guilt does not require its continued enforcement; and

the requirements of § 57(1) 1st sentence Nos 2 and 3 are met.

Quote:

Section 57

Conditional early release-fixed-term imprisonment

(1) The court shall grant conditional early release from a fixed-term sentence of imprisonment under an operational period of probation, if

- ...
- the release is appropriate considering public security interests;
and
- the convicted person consents.

I've worked in a prison where about 1/3 was life long impsoned.
Most (= more than 70%) had been there for 20 years and longer.

-----------

Juveniles usually stay longer than 2/3 of their 10 years as well, btw. (According to my personal experiences during my time as probation officer, though, only.)

1 Reply

@boomerang,

Quote:

On the whole I'd rather not see any minor tried as an adult than to keep using the scatter shot, knee jerking system we use now.

In the cases of late teens murdering or raping or doing arm robberies I do not see how we can not charge them as adults.

1 Reply

@boomerang,

boomerang wrote:

The problem is that neurologically they aren't adults.
The brain goes through tremendous change during adolescence.

Quote:
This discovery gives us a new understanding into juvenile
delinquency. The frontal lobe is “involved in behavioral facets
germane to many aspects of criminal culpability,”9 explains Dr.
Ruben C. Gur, neuropsychologist and Director of the Brain
Behavior Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania. “Perhaps
most relevant is the involvement of these brain regions in the
control of aggression and other impulses…. If the neural substrates
of these behaviors have not reached maturity before
adulthood, it is unreasonable to expect the behaviors themselves
to reflect mature thought processes.
“The evidence now is strong that the brain does not cease
to mature until the early 20s in those relevant parts that govern
impulsivity, judgment, planning for the future, foresight of consequences,
and other characteristics that make people morally
culpable…. Indeed, age 21 or 22 would be closer to the ‘biological’
age of maturity.”

http://www.abanet.org/crimjust/juvjus/Adolescence.pdf

In my opinion, that is trumped by known common human experience, to wit:
in old age my knowledge that it is unacceptably rong
to commit a robbery or a murder is exactly equal
to what it was when I was a teenager,
and indeed what it was when I was well below age 10.
Indeed, of all of the kids by whom I was surrounded
during my teens (and before), exactly O% of them
committed robberies or murders; we never considered it,
tho of course we read of plenty of robberies n murders
in the newspapers n heard of them on the radio.

Will u admit that during your teenage years
and during your childhood, u knew that it was rong
to commit robbery or murder equally as well as u know it now ??

In my mind, it was extremely simple:
the same as I woud not and did not wanna be robbed or murdered,
so also other people shoud be treated the same way.

That is not hard to understand, in my opinion. Yes ??

(Note that robbery is defined as stealing
by means of brute force, or threat of violence,
applied to a living human being.)

David

1 Reply

@OmSigDAVID,

Quote:

The 10th Amendment provides that the federal government
has no power other that what was granted to it in the Constitution.

During the life times of our founding fathers a large loophole were created in that limitation as the government not only have the powers granted expressly to it under the constitution but any others powers needed to achieves those goals.

Such as chartering companies under the Federal government or creating a national bank.

1 Reply

@BillRM,

I don't want them running through the streets but that doesn't mean they're adults. In neurologically measurable ways they aren't adults. It's not just my opinion it's a biological fact.

1 Reply

@Walter Hinteler,

For what it's worth, Wikipedia says 19.9 years is the average for life sentences in Germany. Admittedly, it may not be worth all that much. It cites as its source a survey by the Bundesjustizministerium (federal ministry of justice), but doesn't provide a link.

0 Replies

@OmSigDAVID,

Yes I knew right from wrong.

But knowing right from wrong doesn't always stop you from making bad decisions, especially in one's teenage years. Adolescence is a form of diminished capacity.

1 Reply

@boomerang,

boomerang wrote:

I don't want them running through the streets but that doesn't mean they're adults.
In neurologically measurable ways they aren't adults.
It's not just my opinion it's a biological fact.

Every citizen owns the public streets (as a member of the public) and has a right to run thru them.

The people who r not adults
r within their rights to run thru the streets.

David

1 Reply

@OmSigDAVID,

Sorry. I should have said "I don't want them running through the streets breaking the law."

0 Replies

@boomerang,

boomerang wrote:

Yes I knew right from wrong.

But knowing right from wrong doesn't always stop you from making bad decisions,
especially in one's teenage years. Adolescence is a form of diminished capacity.

That is the reason that adults commit felonious crimes.

David

1 Reply

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