Trying Children As Adults....My Pet Peeve With This Country

[Lou]

RH-then that kind of blows your demanding kids listen and parents need to not be their kid's friends out of the water, doesn't it? If there is a chance that your kid is a sociopath, then that's what it is and nothing you do can fix it. On the other hand, I don't believe people are BORN sociopaths. I believe people are born with mental disorders that can squew their view of what happens around them and how it effects them. I believe that if that's a child, who cannot get help on their own, perhaps that's not their fault. If it's an adult, who CAN get help, then it is their fault if they don't fix it. At least for some disorders. Serious mental retardation not one.

Wiccaness:
I WAS SO HOPING one of the younger members would post!
I think you're right on many points. Like the part where you're scared of your parents consequences, but the rest of it lumps into "big trouble", with little to no idea what that big trouble may be in the whole scheme of things.

And, yes, children DO break the law every day. Also right, in perhaps not voting, but everything else. That doesn't change the fact that as a nation, we say kids can't do those things, not because we're TALLER than they are, but because they aren't capable of making good decisions. They make impulsive decisions. That's either true or it's not. But, it's stupid to waffle and one day have that be true and the next they're adults.
We don't HAVE a consistent punishment for these kids. I'm not sure they would care if we did, but without a consequence you know of that is consistent from case to case, there is no way a person, much less a child can foresee it. Waffling back and forth between adult and child on this case or that, isn't justice.

I think depending on the crime, they can be trialled as adults, the kid who was practicing wrestling moves, i call that an accident, the girl who's parents were killed, i called that murder.

True. Very true. And, yet, there are MANY a gray area between accident and murder. You have justifiable homicide, 2nd degree manslaughter, 1st degree manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter, 2nd degree murder, and 1st degree murder...probably more. In all cases someone is dead because of someone else, but there are shades of culpability.

If this girl had hit the news a week before the murders, we (society) would have been in an uproar about how this 21 year old predator was influencing this "baby". How she doesn't have the ability to decide whether or not to have sex. He'd be branded a child molester and put on the sex offender list. If she went on Larry King crying about how she loves this guy and can't live without him, we'd be shaking our heads and saying, "The poor girl. She's been brainwashed by this evil man."

Where DOES a 15 year old girl fit in this scenario? It seems to ME that her theory of killing her parents and running off to her happily ever after with her Prince Charming, SHOWS how childish she really is. The idea that she saw this 21 year old man as a Prince Charming at all and had NO questions as to why he was interested in her shows it too.
But, she's not on the same "level" of evil as the man trolling grocery store parking lots nightly for people to kidnap rape and murder. She's not like the woman who searches far and wide for a hit man to kill her husband. And, society says she makes stupid decisions anyway.
It's certainly not an ACCIDENT, that is true. It would seem the current Juvenile system, she'd get 3 years and be out free as a bird. Also, not right. In fact, if they tossed her in Juvi and then threw her back out on the street, chances are she'd get right back mixed up with another weird guy, end up abused, 5 kids, and could easily kill again...probably with a battered woman's defense.
So, we have to logically look at the situation. Is it right to throw her in prison for life? Apparently, some people think so. I don't. I think she REALLY needs a LOT of counseling....maybe ropes courses. I think she needs her education. And, punishment. But, I don't believe she should, lose her whole life because she made a stupid decision in a time of her life when we know she's going to make stupid decisions. I don't believe she's a lost cause.
I think what she NEEDS is a Juvenile System MADE for Juvenile Offenders. One that understands she's a child and THINKS like a child. A system that says, just like YOU said, "Great, you make impulsive decisions, but you KNEW killing your parents wasn't the right thing to do." And come up with a punishment that suits that. If it's not 3 years and then your free and your records are sealed, then we find something else! Is it 10 years? 15? I don't know. But, I don't feel like she's on par with your basic first degree serial killer. Even people who kill their spouses often get 2nd degree murder for "heat of passion" which can apparently last WEEKS while they plan it.

But whats the difference between a 17 year old and an 18 year old....one years suppose to make a difference? theres 18 year olds who do much more stupid things than a 14 year old.

This is how it starts. When I was in 7th grade they tried a 17 year old as an adult. The case was something like a group of teens robbed a store and killed the clerk. They were 18, 19 and one 17 year old. I dealt with that. (What am I saying, I was 12, of course I dealt with it. What the heck did I care?)
But, slowly, they've said, "Well, they tried a 17 year old last year, and this kid is 16." And then it goes to 15, 14 and you're suddenly looking at a 12 year old on trial for 1st degree murder and saying, "HUH?"
You can't buy cigarettes until your 18. You don't walk into a store the day before you're 18th birthday and have the clerk say, "Well, you're almost there". Are we any more mature the day before our birthday than we are ON our birthday? I think not.
I don't think 18 year olds are "mature", but it's the line society has taken. That's when you can live on your own and vote and are considered an "adult". You have the rights of an Adult American Citizen and thus also should have the punishments. I really wouldn't care if they made TWO lines. They could have "kid law" for children up to 16. A sixteen year old has more rights, not adult rights, but more rights. We trust them to drive and get a job. From 16 to 18 there could be a group of harsher laws. But, if there is a line, it needs to be a LINE. But, having a line that is faded has caused us to just drive the age farther and farther back. What's next? 8? 5? 3?
I'm sure that there would be times when a kid commits a crime the day before his birthday and we will want to pull our hair out. On the other hand, there are plenty of cases like OJ that make us pull our hair out. SOME punishment, like what they would get in a harsher Juvenile System has GOT to be better than the people who get off with no punishment.

 

[palabravampiress]

What boggles my mind in this case, honestly, is that the girl is 14.

When I look back on myself at 14… Gosh. I was not in a position to be making any decisions at all. That was a bad year for me. I was really screwed up. I am a pretty intelligent person. I’m a straight-A sort of student. That year, though, I was on the verge of flunking out of my classes, especially math. I couldn’t walk (because of a knee injury). I passed out frequently (because of a medical condition). These stressors, on top of the usual Freshman Year social and academic stressors, created a very emotional and not-very-rational Palabra.

One thing that I didn’t know was how to defend myself from adults who were cruel. Because of my knee injury, a teacher actually helped two boys make fun of my on an almost-daily basis. If a professor had treated me that way when I was 21, I would have reported him. In class, I probably would have questioned the relevance of that particular discussion and asked him to get back to the lecture. At 14, though, it didn’t even occur to me that, as a kid, I could tell anyone or do anything about it at all – and people wonder why I almost failed his class. The Special Education Assistant, the lady who operated the chair lift, openly questioned whether or not I needed to use the chair lift (like any 14-year-old girl carries a cane and uses a chair lift for fun!) and gave me a hard time about it. I DID tell my parents about that, and my dad went to the school to complain. At 14, I was an absolute mess. I needed my parents. I could not make rational decisions. Sure, I never tried to kill anyone, but I did fantasize about beating that teacher up with my crutches. I knew it wasn’t smart, but I didn’t know what else to do with my anger, especially not to someone with whom I was forced to interact daily and who had so much more power. If I had attacked my teacher, I would hope I wouldn’t have been tried as an adult – for starters, that teacher/child power dynamic isn’t even close to an adult situation. Similarly, the 14-year-old/parent power dynamic isn’t even close to an adult situation. Adults often have the choice to walk away; kids can’t walk away from parents (or teachers) when tensions arise – especially not temporarily handicapped kids! Kids don’t have the same rights in daily life. In conflict, they don’t have the same options as those that an adult might have. They certainly don’t have the same power or even the experience of being in control of day-to-day decisions like where and when to eat, sleep, or what to do with one’s day. That being the case, I don’t think they can reasonably be expected to have the same responsibilities.

The man in this scenario was 21. Your average twenty-one-year-old is a lot more mature than your average fourteen-year-old. When I was 21, I lived by myself in a teeny tiny room in New York City. I had self-respect and personal autonomy. I was young and something of a fish out of water in the big, bad city, but I was capable of getting to and from the city, balancing my budget, clothing and feeding myself, getting to and from work, going out with friends, etc. etc. My life was my own. I talked to my family on the phone once a week. Had I been injured and had my employer tried the same stunts that my teacher had pulled, I wouldn’t have fantasized about beating her up with my crutches. Instead, I would have known my rights and I probably would have sought employment elsewhere. That is a typical adult response to a problem. An adult who fantasizes about and then acts on the urge to beat someone up with his or her crutches is in a very different situation than is a kid who does the same. An adult has more options. An adult has more responsibility precisely because an adult has more rights and more power in any given situation.

To charge this girl as an adult as if she had the same rights and the same opportunity in this situation as the 21-year-old man, well, that’s ridiculous. Not only do fourteen-year-olds not think like adults, they aren’t treated by society as adults, and so they don’t often or always have the same methods of escaping or avoiding conflict to begin with. Kids are easily swayed by adults – like this 21-year-old – at least in part because their entire experience up to this point has been one of doing what adults say, “or else.” And yet we expect this 14-year-old to act like an adult in this and only this situation? That hardly seems right.

If we, as a society, feel that the juvenile system is too lenient, then we need to address that. We don’t need to create an unfair double standard in which minors are treated as minors until or unless they get on the news, in which case we pretend they are adults just so that we can throw the book at them. If we do that, then we’re just kidding ourselves for the sake of harsher punishments. The fact is that kids don’t have the same rights as adults. That means they don’t have the same personal autonomy or the same options for avoiding conflict. And *that* means that you can’t really hold them responsible as if they were adults – because the fact is, the kid probably didn’t have the same ability to extract herself from the situation in a peaceful fashion. Making the juvenile system harsher is one thing. Picking and choosing when to grant kids adult legal status – after the fact – is a travesty of the justice system.

 

[Lou]

RIGHT!
Sure we could say she could have called the cops, but they'd lock up her boyfriend. And we have NO idea how this guy treated her. I guess there is a chance it was Romeo and Juliet, but a man who's answer was, "Gee, let's kill your parents!" more than likely is abusive anyway.

Kids also have to deal with peer pressure and fitting in. Adults don't.

A 15 year old faced with 5 friends and a bag of pot is in a bad place. "Everyone's doing it", "It opens your mind", "It's harmless"...that's what they hear. Of course, they also hear pot is the gateway to harder drugs. They watch A&E and see people living under over passes. But, they ALSO know that if they say no, they'll be labeled a chicken or a goody two shoes and they're lives could very easily turn into something WORSE in their minds than living under the over pass.

Me? I have NO problem with it. I can say, "ARE YOU CRAZY?" Not just because "drugs are bad", but because I have responsibilites and things to do that I don't need to be high for. Apparently, I'm already too open minded for some people. As an adult, I can laugh my friends right off my property and it doesn't matter if they put up a billboard saying I said, "no". ME to say no makes me a smart person.
At, 15, it could mean 3 years of hell.