How do we balance the rights of juvenile criminals with their victims

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > How do we balance the rights of juvenile criminals with their victims

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

If you took the concept of restorative justice to its logical conclusion, it seems like the answer to the Kia theft question is to have the state immediately replace the vehicle, so the victim is harmed as little as possible, and then worry about the offender after. The simplest solution being that they now owe the state, like they had taken a student loan, but that runs into the issue of it essentially making it consequence-free for people with money. I guess maybe they could make it so it's only payable in organs and/or body parts? Really though, how you actually deal with the offender is a much tougher question, but (essentially) fungible property theft/destruction is like the least difficult question to answer if you're trying to apply the concept of restorative justice: Just replace the stolen item. Sure, there might be some emotional damage too, but it's not like assault or battery where it might be impossible to even get close to restoring the victim.

banned from Starbucks posted:

What are these free thrid places that no longer exist because I don't really remember having any growing up in the 90s either. The "free" option was go to the mall and look at stuff you couldn't afford. Everything cost money back then too.

I think it just means a place to be that's free of supervision/suspicion, in contrast to school or home, but also places where the right to assemble is not at all respected for the young.

# ¿ Nov 26, 2023 10:44

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 04:31

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Bel Shazar posted:

Is this thread supposed to be about social control and sensationalist media narratives rather than the actual crimes and criminals?

Yeah, if it's just about perception, then the only real answer is changing the news. Like, there's nothing you can do if the media convinces people the kids are getting worse, when violent youth crime has dropped precipitously since the mid 90s, and the youth murder rate is like half the previous lowest point since at least the 60s. Really, the current youth might literally be the least violent in all of US history.

# ¿ Nov 26, 2023 20:27

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Zachack posted:

Youth crime arrest numbers being lower doesn't necessarily mean that the remaining crimes committed aren't worse in nature, or at least just as bad. If the current juvenile incarceration system is designed around a broader scope of child crime then it probably needs to be rethought if the majority forms of crime are on the more extreme part of the spectrum.

Like I said:

There does appear to be a corona-correlated bump in general violent crime and youth murders in the years not included, but then it seems to me that the challenge is to find whatever changed there to make the previous excellent progress reverse. Prevention, rather than trying to change a cure that appears to have been working.

# ¿ Nov 27, 2023 08:31

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Main Paineframe posted:

I'm honestly not sure whether you're being sarcastic here. The first part seems sarcastic, but the second part seems serious.

That said, you're missing the point. It's not just a problem for them. When somebody is booted out onto the streets without the basic knowledge needed to function in society (because they spent their crucial schooling and socialization years in prison), that's also a problem for society. Because if they don't have any decent options for making a legitimate living then they'll probably fall right back into crime, simply for lack of other options.

That's the fundamental reasoning behind rehabilitative justice. No matter how mad you are at someone's crimes, the fact of the matter is that once they're done serving their time, they're going to be back out in society and we're all going to have to live with them. Because of that, it's in everyone's best interest to help make sure that inmates are reformed into functional members of society, because their removal from society is usually only temporary.

This is not an entirely unproblematic argument for rehabilitative justice. If the purpose is to reduce the threat of reoffending, or generally the risk the individual poses to society, then super long sentences, amputation, or even the death penalty are viable alternatives. It only becomes rehabilitative justice when the desires of the offender are taken into account.

# ¿ Nov 28, 2023 06:38

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Verviticus posted:

well you see i think you start with a humane and not psychotic perspective which eliminates two of your options, and then to avoid paying literally millions of dollars to keep someone in jail forever, you maybe try to get them to be a functioning member of society again

It's not a given at all that you start from what you define as a humane and non-psychotic perspective. Someone might argue that rehabilitative justice is inhumane towards the victims, robbing them of dignity by treating the offender with far more kindness than they ever showed their victims. The thread is supposed to be about balancing rights, and people's perception of those rights are going to differ, often quite a lot.

Liquid Communism posted:

From a purely pragmatic standpoint, rehabilitation is less expensive anyway. It is not cheap to keep someone locked up, having them instead be a tax paying citizen is good financially for society.

But is the objective the financially optimum choice? That suggest an ethics system that's going to lead to some real hosed-up outcomes, even if you can finagle it into serving your point in a specific case. It not having a solid foundation also means it can easily be turned around on you, if someone can show that another option is more financially optimal. Like, if we're not doing away with super long sentences for especially heinous crimes, then you could look at a given prisoner, calculate their expected contribution to society vs. the cost of keeping them imprisoned, and if the ROI is too low they go straight from sentencing to an en-suite execution chamber.

# ¿ Nov 28, 2023 17:56

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Verviticus posted:

this is tangentially related, but is there good evidence out there pointing one way or another to the median age where people establish their understanding of right and wrong? i am sympathetic to the idea that if we could convincingly say that someone knows their actions are wrong and understands the consequences that we could morally punish a 17 year old similarly to an 18 year old, but i'm also sympathetic to the idea that the age is higher than 18. obviously there needs to be a convenient bar that is not dynamic (it wouldnt really be fair to hold an unusually emotionally mature 13 year old to the same standard as most 18 year olds), but is 18 actually the correct number or is it just the convenient one

I found this graph, of the actual physical maturation of the brain (local vs. long distance connections in the brain), which I feel indicate that the above approach probably wouldn't be great if it has any correlation at all with behavior/understanding of right and wrong.

There might be a mean you could designate as "good enough", but if the above is any indication, that would leave a lot of people to be judged as way more mature than they actually are. Like, look at those outliers out near 25, whose physical maturation matches that of a mean 10 year old. Sure, they have more experiences to work with to solidify an understanding of right and wrong, but it might still be tough for them to really integrate those experiences into a mature understanding of morality. And the outliers seem likely to be the ones that actually end up doing poo poo like joyriding, or far more serious crimes.

# ¿ Nov 30, 2023 05:46

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 04:31

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

PT6A posted:

I think simplifying the issue into an understanding of right and wrong is a bit facile. Even young children have a conception of right and wrong. What they lack is an understanding of long-term consequences, and the executive function to categorically avoid "wrong" actions which provide a boon in the present. This is also a reasonable argument for charging juveniles as adults in the cases of very serious crimes like murder, in a sense; it might be unreasonable to expect a teenager to be able to fully process the consequences of stealing something, even a car, but you can argue that they probably do understand the concept of death and that it's permanent and fundamentally wrong to kill someone.

Yeah, what I posted would probably have more to do with the thing you mentioned, the ability to accurately judge actions and how they relate to outcomes and morality. And yeah, we should expect the ability to accurately judge an action like first degree murder to arrive before the more abstract "speeding in a stolen car might lead to you plowing down someones grandma", even if both have the same outcome.

# ¿ Nov 30, 2023 07:04

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > How do we balance the rights of juvenile criminals with their victims