How should youth crimes be dealt with?

[Korgeta]

This topic rose after two children aged 10 were found guilty of attempting to rape a child aged 8, was dealt with in an adult court. More information found here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8702365.stm

One issue from the topic is the fact that taking children in an "an adversarial court situation". and that it should have been tried in a private court simple with no media and such.

British members on this site would also recall an infamous youth crime case as well, James Bulger case when again a child was murded by two young boys and were tried at a adult court.

So what is the best way to deal with youth crimes in the UK or the US?

[Flagg]

Like youths perpetrated them?

I mean we know for a fact that childrens brains don't function the way adult ones do, so why would you treat a child as an adult? We don't let children vote, drive, or drink, so yeah, it's retarded the way we've decided to classify certain crimes as "adult only". FYI: even a 4 year old can kill someone intentionally.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

How much is society willing to expend on making them into functional individuals? I'd favour detaining them until the age of 18 - 21 in the direct 24/7 care of a small group of four to six (at the very most) mental health professionals who are prepared to invest emotional energy in developing actual relationships with the kids, assuming their parents are too much of deadbeats to have a constructive place in the rehabilitation, detaining them in a homelike setting with highly monitored school attendance slowly being introduced. This would however probably cost something like two million dollars a year. Generally the science of childhood development is that children need constant and endless attention to develop as productive and well-integrated adults... And you'll need highly trained specialists to intervene when they're ten years old to undo ten years of bad input and replace it with good input, who will need to be constantly in the lives of these kids until they're adults and will have to make a considerable emotional investment in these children.. Which means they must be paid quite a lot. If such an effort were made I'd wager on their being well-adjusted adults assuming there are no major psychiatrist conditions which would favour hospitalization. But is society prepared to bear the financial burden? I'd support doing so, and argue it ethical, but how many people will ever support spending, say, up to eight million dollars to rehabilitate a single ten year old murderer?

[Temujin]

One thing that should be done is give them a battery of physical and psychological tests to see if they have signs of Antisocial personality disorder (i.e., they 're a sociopath) or something similar. Since there is currently no treatment, this will determine whether or not rehabilitation is likely to even work.

[Sarevok]

i am not convinced the boys are guilty at all. The only evidence is that girls word of mouth and she gave contradictory statements. If a 8 year old girls statements without any concrete evidence is enough to convict you then we live in a very scary society indeed. The whole case stinks of paranoia and excessive backlash.

[Stofsk]

So what is the best way to deal with youth crimes in the UK or the US?

On a case-by-case basis, as with any crime or any offender. Some people will have excellent prospects for rehabilitation, others will not, and there is no age limit to be in the former category and being a youthful offender doesn't mean the latter is guaranteed. Flagg's point is well-taken however, a child's brain is still developing so that does lend weight to the idea a young person has better prospects for rehabilitation, comparatively speaking, to an older offender. The older the offender happens to be, the more likely they're career criminal types, although you'd be surprised at how some who go to prison are ordinary people who made a bad decision for whatever reason and are now paying the consequences of that decision. EDIT: incidentally this is why here the sentencing guidelines for judges means they go 'softer' on youthful offenders than more mature ones.

Where I am the process does protect accused minors who are younger than 18 (ie not legally adults) from the media by forcing them to not print their names. Really though the most important thing about rehabilitation is education. For youthful offenders, they turn to crime invariably because they live on the streets and can't get away from that sort of environment, and usually fall into drugs and that's a topic in itself.

i am not convinced the boys are guilty at all. The only evidence is that girls word of mouth and she gave contradictory statements. If a 8 year old girls statements without any concrete evidence is enough to convict you then we live in a very scary society indeed. The whole case stinks of paranoia and excessive backlash.

From a prosecutorial viewpoint, cases like this where the complainant is young are frustrating because they don't have education or maturity to properly express themselves when they're on the witness stand. Since you can't ask leading questions in examination-in-chief, unless you ask the judge whether you can treat the witness as hostile - which would look pretty fucking bad if the witness happens to be the complainant - trying to get the witness to give unequivocal testimony is difficult. Prosecutors also can't - or at least here they're not supposed to - coach witnesses. Just because a young child can't express herself well or gives contradictory statements does not mean she wasn't victimised or can't stand witness to that effect. As with all things their credibility has to be weighed, along with whatever other evidence there happens to be, but not readily dismissed.

[Flagg]

How much is society willing to expend on making them into functional individuals? I'd favour detaining them until the age of 18 - 21 in the direct 24/7 care of a small group of four to six (at the very most) mental health professionals who are prepared to invest emotional energy in developing actual relationships with the kids, assuming their parents are too much of deadbeats to have a constructive place in the rehabilitation, detaining them in a homelike setting with highly monitored school attendance slowly being introduced. This would however probably cost something like two million dollars a year. Generally the science of childhood development is that children need constant and endless attention to develop as productive and well-integrated adults... And you'll need highly trained specialists to intervene when they're ten years old to undo ten years of bad input and replace it with good input, who will need to be constantly in the lives of these kids until they're adults and will have to make a considerable emotional investment in these children.. Which means they must be paid quite a lot. If such an effort were made I'd wager on their being well-adjusted adults assuming there are no major psychiatrist conditions which would favour hospitalization. But is society prepared to bear the financial burden? I'd support doing so, and argue it ethical, but how many people will ever support spending, say, up to eight million dollars to rehabilitate a single ten year old murderer?

But wouldn't age itself "rehabilitate" the 10 year old? I mean barring psychopathy or major mood disorders, to assume that a 10 year old with less understanding of life and death and with less impulse control would carry out a murder in the same situation at say, 13 doesn't make sense to me.

[Tanasinn]

Children don't show competence and understanding on-par with an adult until around age 15 to 16, and even then, that's a hazy line.

Obviously individuals like this need to be contained, but rehabilitation while they're still young and (reasonably) impressionable should be the focus. You stick a kid in prison, you're surrounding him with a very nasty peer group to be victimized/influenced by, and we're all already familiar with the issues of recidivism the U.S. has, to say nothing of the problems of getting a basic education in prison. Contain, treat, and by all means keep tabs on the individuals, but if you toss them into a prison, you'll get the same garbage out as what you put in, if not worse.

One thing that should be done is give them a battery of physical and psychological tests to see if they have signs of Antisocial personality disorder (i.e., they 're a sociopath) or something similar. Since there is currently no treatment, this will determine whether or not rehabilitation is likely to even work.

Antisocial personality disorder is not considered diagnosable at that age. You would want psychological testing though, yes - things like conduct disorder correlate highly with later antisocial personality disorder and problems of the sort. Knowing if and what kind of psychopathology might've influenced a given child offender can be useful in determining how to approach their actions.

[Hillary]

How much is society willing to expend on making them into functional individuals? I'd favour detaining them until the age of 18 - 21 in the direct 24/7 care of a small group of four to six (at the very most) mental health professionals who are prepared to invest emotional energy in developing actual relationships with the kids, assuming their parents are too much of deadbeats to have a constructive place in the rehabilitation, detaining them in a homelike setting with highly monitored school attendance slowly being introduced. This would however probably cost something like two million dollars a year. Generally the science of childhood development is that children need constant and endless attention to develop as productive and well-integrated adults... And you'll need highly trained specialists to intervene when they're ten years old to undo ten years of bad input and replace it with good input, who will need to be constantly in the lives of these kids until they're adults and will have to make a considerable emotional investment in these children.. Which means they must be paid quite a lot. If such an effort were made I'd wager on their being well-adjusted adults assuming there are no major psychiatrist conditions which would favour hospitalization. But is society prepared to bear the financial burden? I'd support doing so, and argue it ethical, but how many people will ever support spending, say, up to eight million dollars to rehabilitate a single ten year old murderer?

Aren't you simply plucking figures out of the air here? We know nothing of these boys upbringing, nor their mental state; yet you advocate 24/7 professional care for the next 10 years. Maybe they just got carried away with their "game" - they were 10 years old and we know what animals kids can be. Maybe they have already learned their lesson. Who knows? What is clear, and here I agree with you, is that the boys need help rather than the punishment they will undoubtedly receive

As for the OP, I cannot see what has been gained by this case going through the criminal courts. The victim has almost certainly suffered more trauma due to the trial (maybe even worse than the actual assault) and we are convicting children in an adult court, yet allowing the defendants less rights than an adult would normally have - i.e. not being able to properly cross-question the accuser.

I guess the victim's parents will feel that they have their pound of flesh and the Daily Murdoch can run a campaign to have these boys named, but the children should be the ones who are the focus here.

[ShadowDragon8685]

You know, I have to wonder...

If two ten-year-old boys beat the tar out of an eight-year-old boy, would they get tossed in the same clink, run through the same legal wringer, as two twenty-year-old chavs who beat the ever-loving stuffing out of an eighteen-year-old bloke?

Probably not. Children are far and wide recognized as not having the capacity to fully understand the gravity of actions they undertake. And, while it's perfectly plausable for two ten-year-old boys to drag an eight-year-old girl out to a field, it's also plausable for them to have gone willingly, and then they went farther than she wished for them to go.

It is certain that kids of that age can and do have an inkling of the mechanical aspects of sex, and even it's name, but almost certainly wouldn't have any idea of the true nature of it.

After all, if two twenty-year-old blokes grabbed an eighteen-year-old girl's hair and started yanking her about, well, they'd be charged with assault; ten years younger, however, and they'd be given a very stern talking-to and probably grounded for a month or something.

So why, I ask, is this being treated any differently? Let's presume for the sake of argument the worst-case scenario: the two boys collected the girl, who did not wish to go with them, took her to a field, pulled her clothes off against her will and took turns penetrating her with their penises; anybody's definition of rape, of course.

Obviously, if they were ten years older, they'd throw the book and the library it came with at them, and rightly so. However, the important question here is: did the two boys have the faculty to grasp the heinous nature of ther actions, or was it simply an unfortunate mechanical expression of the way young boys tend to harass young girls? If they did grasp the heinous nature of the violation, then of course they should be treated as such, but the nature of the law is that a crime can only be a crime with understanding of the crime; hence the reason we consign those who cause the death of someone whilst mentally unable to control or percieve their actions as criminal to a psychiatric ward, instead of the penitentiary.

That's really what needs to be done here. Conduct a psychological examination of lads in question. If they were fully capable of understanding the nature of their crime and it's heinousness and chose to do it anyway, throw 'em in juvvie with the rest of the lot. If not, then send them home or make them wards of the state, assign an officer of the court to monitor them to ensure no further criminal activities, and a mental health professional or two to monitor their state of mind and ensure that they grow up to become functional members of society.

[Solauren]

I think it depends on the child.

First, the kids should be given a (automatic and mandatory) full psychological and medical work-up. There's a question of competency to consider. It's entirely possible there is something wrong with the child, that correcting it will prevent further problems.

i.e I had a chemical imbalance in my brain that made me rather violent and screwed up when I was younger. Puberty corrected them, and some councilling helped me correct my behaviour.

Second, the childs living environment needs to be examined. Again, corrective steps here. Removing a child from an abusive parent and getting them help could correct the behaviour. (Not guilty of this one, but meet kids during my councilling that this applies to). And I'm talking the level of examination the guy on 'End of my leash' does.

Third, the childs 'working' environment needs to be examined. I've known too many kids that get moved between schools, can't fit in, so they 'rebel' massively. (Again, guilty of this one) And I'm talking the level of examination the guy on 'End of my leash' does, or more.

If these considerations are all 'clear'. i.e Kid is healthy, good living environment, and no problems at school, and no other extrenuating circumstances (case by case basis) (i.e the crime was obviously not an accident, etc), the child should be tried as anyone else.

I'm just against tossing a kid in jail or a holding facility during the trial process. House-arrest and tight monitoring (i.e ankle bracelet with good anti-tamper tech) should be sufficient.

It's post-conviction treatment I'm more concerned about. Tossing a a 12 year old in with 30+ year olds is probably not the best idea in the world.

[Temujin]

Children don't show competence and understanding on-par with an adult until around age 15 to 16, and even then, that's a hazy line.

Obviously individuals like this need to be contained, but rehabilitation while they're still young and (reasonably) impressionable should be the focus. You stick a kid in prison, you're surrounding him with a very nasty peer group to be victimized/influenced by, and we're all already familiar with the issues of recidivism the U.S. has, to say nothing of the problems of getting a basic education in prison. Contain, treat, and by all means keep tabs on the individuals, but if you toss them into a prison, you'll get the same garbage out as what you put in, if not worse.

One thing that should be done is give them a battery of physical and psychological tests to see if they have signs of Antisocial personality disorder (i.e., they 're a sociopath) or something similar. Since there is currently no treatment, this will determine whether or not rehabilitation is likely to even work.

Antisocial personality disorder is not considered diagnosable at that age. You would want psychological testing though, yes - things like conduct disorder correlate highly with later antisocial personality disorder and problems of the sort. Knowing if and what kind of psychopathology might've influenced a given child offender can be useful in determining how to approach their actions.

I figured that might be the case after I posted. I should of clarified my statement better the way you did.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

But wouldn't age itself "rehabilitate" the 10 year old? I mean barring psychopathy or major mood disorders, to assume that a 10 year old with less understanding of life and death and with less impulse control would carry out a murder in the same situation at say, 13 doesn't make sense to me.

No, because any child without educational and psychological background of being properly raised, in fact, whose background is so deficient that they murder like this, is going to have serious problems in adulthood. Yes, they are less mentally capable, but children do not go around murdering each other due to a lack of impulse control all the time. Clearly something went gravely wrong in how they were raised (again assuming they don't have serious psychiatric conditions) for them to not have the mechanisms of personal discipline and empathy which prevent most children from getting carried away and murdering their peers. Whether their parents were chav scum or rich and disassociated from their lives, uncaringly distant, matters very little in the end; either way they were poorly raised.

[Cosmic Average]

Was there any physical evidence of attempted rape?

According to the girl's testimony, she wasn't raped:

An eight-year-old girl alleged to have been raped by two 10-year-old boys has told a court she lied because she was worried about not getting any sweets.

The girl admitted she said she was raped because she was scared her mother would find out that she had been "naughty", the jury at the Old Bailey heard.

Later, the girl maintained that some touching had taken place but the judge brought her ordeal to an end, saying she was exhausted.

Mr Justice Saunders told her: "No-one is suggesting you have done anything wrong - and I am the judge."

The girl had been giving evidence all day and most of Wednesday via a video screen as lawyers tried to establish what happened in a field in Hayes, west London, in October last year.

The prosecution allege the boys took the girl to a block of flats, a bin shed and a secluded field to assault her.

The boys, now aged 11 and 10, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, deny two charges each of rape and two charges each of attempted rape of a child under 13.

In cross-examination by defence counsel, the girl admitted that she had voluntarily been playing with the boys.

Linda Strudwick, defending the older boy, asked her: "Did you ever tell your mum it was not you but it was (the boys) who took your knickers down? You didn't want your mum to think you had been naughty?"

The girl replied: "Yeah." The judge then asked what the girl had been worried about and she replied: "No sweets if it (sic) found out I had been naughty."

Questioned by Chetna Patel, for the younger boy, the girl admitted leaving the area where she was meant to be playing and approaching the boys. But she said she was not raped as she had earlier claimed.

In a series of questions, the girl was asked if any parts of her body had been penetrated by the boys. She replied each time: "No."

Jurors have heard how the youngster told specially trained officers that the defendants led her to a block of flats where they exposed themselves and pulled down her underwear and then did the same in a lift.

She said she was next taken to a bin shed and assaulted before being led to bushes and then a garden area where she was assaulted again.

The girl had been playing with her younger sister but said she had been taken to the different locations by the boys, the court heard.

When the younger girl went home without her, their mother went looking for her, said prosecutor Rosina Cottage.

The woman then bumped into the mother of the younger defendant and a five-year-old child, Miss Cottage said.

When the boy's mother asked the little boy where her son was, "he said that he was in a nearby field and that he was with (the girl) and that he was hurting her", the prosecutor said.

The girl's mother then saw her daughter with the boys and asked what they had been doing. They all said nothing, added Miss Cottage.

The mother asked for her child's scooter back from the younger defendant. But as they walked home, the woman "could see things were not right with her daughter".

Asked what was wrong, the youngster then relived her alleged ordeal.

Later the mother called police and the girl told them they "put their thingies in me", the court was told.

"She was taken to hospital because she was complaining of pains in her stomach," said Miss Cottage.

The trial was adjourned and the girl was told she would not have to come back.

Link

It sounds more like it was a game of "you show me yours, I'll show you mine."

Anyway, it just strikes me as horrible; the age of consent is above their age because the law recognizes that children that young can't make informed decisions, but the law also holds them fully responsible... Ugh. Just sickens me.

[Simon_Jester]

No, because any child without educational and psychological background of being properly raised, in fact, whose background is so deficient that they murder like this, is going to have serious problems in adulthood. Yes, they are less mentally capable, but children do not go around murdering each other due to a lack of impulse control all the time. Clearly something went gravely wrong in how they were raised (again assuming they don't have serious psychiatric conditions) for them to not have the mechanisms of personal discipline and empathy which prevent most children from getting carried away and murdering their peers. Whether their parents were chav scum or rich and disassociated from their lives, uncaringly distant, matters very little in the end; either way they were poorly raised.

I think we need to draw a line, then, that depends on the circumstances of the murder or other crime the child committed.

A child who stages a premediated murder (say, going and getting a knife and stabbing the other child repeatedly) probably needs very extensive psychiatric care to rehabilitate them. A child who kills another child without serious lethal intent (say, Child A pushes Child B on the playground and B falls and dashes their brains out on a rock)... might not.

[ShadowDragon8685]

<Snip Report>

Link

It sounds more like it was a game of "you show me yours, I'll show you mine."

That's exactly what it sounds like to me, too. If you tried to explain the normal things kids will be experimenting with about that age in legal terms, they look like fucking sex crimes, just like all kids younger than that would be psychiatrically diagnosed as sociopaths and if you give a description of a saint to a police sketch artist he'll come out looking like a thug.

So, let's review: the girl and the boys played a game of "you show me yours, I'll show you mine," possibly with some exploratory touching. The girl's mother panics like a headless chicken, flies into a rage looking for the girl, and finds them. Confronted with her mother in a panic, the girl says what she thinks her mum wants to hear to make none of what happened her fault (hint: it isn't, since they were doing nothing wrong,) and the mother panics and accuses two boys of rape, has them hauled through the court...

Net result is that a lot of bullshit panic has most likely resulted in a hell of a lot more trauma for the three children than would have resulted if they'd actually experimented with penetrative sex. >_<

Anyway, it just strikes me as horrible; the age of consent is above their age because the law recognizes that children that young can't make informed decisions, but the law also holds them fully responsible... Ugh. Just sickens me.

It's more like *sigh, this again?* for me. Accusing these kids of sex crimes is absurd. Perhaps they need to extend those "if near their own age" laws to cover consentual childhood "doctor" type play. >_<

[Phantasee]

Do you need to get so worked up and hysterical? First of all, you can't pin all of this on the mother. It's the prosecutor's fault as well, for agreeing to go to trial over this. Stop sensationalizing the story more than it already is.

[Stofsk]

Dear christ. Never would I have thought I would actually stick up for a prosecutor.

From a prosecutorial viewpoint, cases like this where the complainant is young are frustrating because they don't have education or maturity to properly express themselves when they're on the witness stand. Since you can't ask leading questions in examination-in-chief, unless you ask the judge whether you can treat the witness as hostile - which would look pretty fucking bad if the witness happens to be the complainant - trying to get the witness to give unequivocal testimony is difficult. Prosecutors also can't - or at least here they're not supposed to - coach witnesses. Just because a young child can't express herself well or gives contradictory statements does not mean she wasn't victimised or can't stand witness to that effect. As with all things their credibility has to be weighed, along with whatever other evidence there happens to be, but not readily dismissed.

The girl tells the mum, the mum gets understandably upset and calls the police, and thus we have a criminal trial. So it turns out she was lying - that's not the prosecutor's, the police's or the mother's fault, but the complainant's.

[Phantasee]

I'm sorry Stofsk. I didn't mean to make you do such a thing