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**flueftArete** · 07-26-2007, 06:36 AM

As a society, we have determined that kids like the critical facilities to enter into binding contracts, drink alcohol, have sex with adults, drive in cars with more than one person present, etc. But if they commit a crime, they certainly have the critical facilities to serve life.

It's a double standard. Either we adopt the Ozzy standard, and treat kids as adults in all ways (which I think would be bad in many ways and good in some) or we stop sentencing children as adults.

BTW, many other countries have youth crime problems as severe or worse than the U.S. Starting in the 1980s, the U.S. just got insane about crime and decided to cut off its nose to spite its face in the warped belief that tougher prison sentences and tougher prisoners somehow deter crime. My understand is that recidivism got worse in this period; so much for deterrence.

07-26-2007, 06:36 AM	#17
flueftArete Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 437 Senior Member	As a society, we have determined that kids like the critical facilities to enter into binding contracts, drink alcohol, have sex with adults, drive in cars with more than one person present, etc. But if they commit a crime, they certainly have the critical facilities to serve life. It's a double standard. Either we adopt the Ozzy standard, and treat kids as adults in all ways (which I think would be bad in many ways and good in some) or we stop sentencing children as adults. BTW, many other countries have youth crime problems as severe or worse than the U.S. Starting in the 1980s, the U.S. just got insane about crime and decided to cut off its nose to spite its face in the warped belief that tougher prison sentences and tougher prisoners somehow deter crime. My understand is that recidivism got worse in this period; so much for deterrence.
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