The human mind doesn’t even really fully mature until your mid 20s. A 15 year old still has a good full decade until full maturity, and they are notorious for making impulsive decisions without realizing the consequences of their actions.
What he did was wrong and he deserves punishment, but ruining his life too for being a dumb teenager does nothing for the unimaginable harm caused to this girl, it just makes more victims.
I don’t know what the right answer is, but I can tell you the wrong answer is to ruin a teenagers life over a stupid act when that isn’t going to solve anything.
A kid was arrested, but released pending further investigation, so I’m hard pressed to believe there is no punishment for this. But we’re talking about teenagers here, the fact that he could be punished is there, but was not given serious consideration if any at all…because he isn’t a fully mature adult. So what would a more serious punishment do?
This is something probably solved with education rather than more punishment.
retributive justice doesn’t work.
one of the main reasons people try to treat minors differently than adults is because they recognize that retributive justice is literally giving up on the person and doing the easiest thing for society to deal with them.
especially in cases that involve minors there’s a push for restorative, transformational and participatory justice models because they don’t give up and fall back on treating the person like an animal.