|
I don't think that it's right to try a 12-year-old as an adult in any circumstances. At 12, no one is even close to being an adult.
That said, this guy's a perfect example of the failure of the justice system to rehabilitate minors. That's the whole point of the juvenille justice system - rehabilitation. All the records are secret, and you don't have to admit them on job application. The idea is that you'll be reformed, but that's getting to be rarer and rarer. My mother is a school social worker and has several kids come out of reform school and back into her schools. She just testified in a case where a kid did 3 years for stealing a car when he was 9 and crashing it into a building. Now he's 15 and beat up one of his classmates with a 2x4. He's now been diagnosed as scizofrenic, but there was no diagnosis or treatment in the reform school.
__________________
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin
"There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush
"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo
|