Young people have a much higher chance of reforming if society puts some effort into it. Juveniles especially need to be put on the right track somehow. Ignoring the problem is definitely not the answer, but neither is focusing on punishment rather than rehabilitation.

> I wish people would stop using the word “child” in an effort to minimize criminal behavior by young adults. A 16 or 17 year old isn’t a “child.”

This reminds me of a horrific study (that keeps getting repeated over and over!) that claims that child death rate of covid is actually not as low as people thought. Then it turns out that their definition of child is 0-18, and in the data there's a really sharp turn in death rate for age <10, precisely what people already thought.

> A more rational and less emotional sentencing system would be harsher on teenage offenders

This does not align with my understanding of the research, e.g. https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annur... ?

> "Unfortunately, so far, the existing empirical work has not had a central place in policy, legislation, and political discourse (Loughran 2019, Nelken & Hamilton 2022). Unsurprisingly, scholars have been frustrated that their insights on, for instance, the inconclusive evidence for the deterrent effect of incarceration on violent crime or the evidence that treatment can help to rehabilitate have not had sufficient impact (Cullen et al. 2011, McGuire 2013).

> Empirical research has failed to sway policymakers and political leaders for many reasons, too many to cover fully here. For instance, one can broadly think about high levels of punitiveness in certain cultures and jurisdictions, such as the American context (Kleinfeld 2016, Muenster & Trone 2015). Moreover, there has been a penal populism where politicians have sold the public on a simplistic discourse that they need and want strict punishment against crime (Roberts et al. 2003, Windlesham 1998). Added to this is the discriminatory and racist framing of crime as part of a dog-whistle political strategy (Haney-López 2015). Another problem is a more general aversion to science, and a populist politics that drives on simplicity instead of nuanced, evidence-based policy (Huber et al. 2022). These headwinds foster a more challenging set of conditions not just for altering policy but even for the bare minimum of having robust and legitimate conversations about effective and ineffective punishment."

Or, for a lengthier investigation and many citations and projects, https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-end-of-violence-gary-sl... ?

("Twenty-five years ago, I sought out Gary Slutkin while searching for a solution to the gun violence we experienced in Los Angeles. I got far more than I hoped for. The methods he describes in his groundbreaking new book helped reduce our gun violence to historic lows and save thousands of lives.”—Charlie Beck, former chief of police, Los Angeles Police Department")

> I wish people would stop using the word “child” in an effort to minimize criminal behavior by young adults. A 16 or 17 year old isn’t a “child.” The Marquis de Lafayette and James Manor were just 18 when the revolutionary war started. Societies going back to ancient times ascribed significant responsibility to teenagers. And in modern times, there is a scientific basis for distinguishing between adolescents and children when it comes to brain development. Historically, adolescents were treated like adults.

Looking at the past for wisdom on how to treat young adult/people is very dangerous...

> People who start engaging in criminal conduct at an earlier age more likely to engage in criminal behavior as adults

this is not quite what the citation means. I am also very curious on how these study correct for cofactors .People who start a life of crime early are probably not comming from the best conditions in term of life circonstances. Which in it self is also a strong predictor.

> A more rational and less emotional sentencing system would be harsher on teenage offenders while reducing sentences overall.

No, that would be the fear based emotional response. The ration response would be to simply measure whether or not harsher sentencing have a better outcome. Instead of prehemtively jailing people based on dubious stats.

> The article’s focus on moral culpability also overlooks the key purpose of the justice system: protecting society from criminals.

I do NOT concede that as the KEY purpose. And when you call "protecting society from criminals" the key purpose of the justice system you wind up with the horribly broken mess that is the US justice system.

Yes, A purpose of the justice system is to remove from society those who cannot be trusted.

But another purpose of the justice system should be to rehabilitate those who can be. And the US justice system is HORRIFIC at that. If anything, the US justice system is a net negative on rehabilitation. The way the US system throws everybody together does more to let old criminals teach new ones their tricks than any improvement from any rehabilitation program can counteract.

> The Marquis de Lafayette and James Manor were just 18 when the revolutionary war started.

And Thomas “all men are created equal” Jefferson raped his slaves[0], and then enslaved the resulting children, but we don’t do that nowadays either, because I guess some things changed since 200+years ago?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson_and_slavery

This argument fails if you consider that incarceration makes people more likely to commit crimes when they get out, not less

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> Every year that a criminal is incarcerated is a year that they CANNOT kill an innocent citizen, rob a home or store, desecrate or vandalize the community, shoot up fentanyl in the streets, or do any number of things.

Why stop at criminal, this also true for non-criminal; Let's just jail everyone, then we will all be safer.

> This is meant to be mitigating? What is this thought process? Who in their right mind is like "okay, a group of people broke into your home at night but your state shouldn't have been so hard on them for what ensued because akshually it was part of a whole nationwide trend at the time."

You analogy doesn't not hold, and in manyways point at the root of the issue. The point was to show that harsher punishment did not seems to result in meaningful effect on crime stats. It's fine to want harsher sentencing for some kind of emotional fuffilement, let's just not pretend that is helping in any otherways.

> The modern right absolutely thrives on the fact that so many mostly reasonable people can't see that "play stupid games win stupid prizes" is just another side of the "tolerate anything but intolerance" coin

This is something that drives me up the wall. I'm a pretty lefty guy, mostly, but I am very irritated by "my side" being so weak on crime.

I get it, we don't want to ruin people's lives for being a stupid kid doing a stupid crime, but there has to be some kind of middle ground between "ruin their life forever" and "teach them there are no consequences"

It's ridiculous

The brains of young humans aren't fully developed. That shouldn't be a get out of jail free card. Though it must be considered when deciding the fate of a person's entire life.

It doesn't help that even just be charged with a crime is now a permanent scarlet letter, even if the person is clearly innocent and charges are dropped.

Does sentencing children as adults actually deter other children from committing crimes?

Many people understand that criminal law is like a bandaid. You apply it after the bad thing happened. Sure, it may be a common believe that the punishment formulated within it also scares away new or repeated criminals, but that is way worse at getting the job done than common sense measures that prevent people to slip into crimes to begin with.

I can't remember seeing countries with stronger protections for minors collapsing into a perfect spherical body of criminal children. Good juvenile justice systems are not about the absence of consequences, they usually are about age-appropriate consequences instead. In short: supervision, intervention, and rehabilitation instead of pretending a child is simply a small adult. The idea that only the threat of adult punishment prevents children from “killing and eating you” is so simplistic it is an insult to everybody forced to read it.

If a kid becomes violent usually you have a long history of publicly visible and known smaller, less dramatic events leading up to that. Good social work and educational systems are able to pull children and teenagers out of that spiral, by for example isolating them from destructive family dynamics. All tried and tested, papers written about it, statistics and studies published about the effectiveness.

Countries having problems with criminal minors are usually countries who try to not spend any money on social measures and education. Or put guns into the hands of kids. There aren't many such countries.

What are you talking about?