Summary
A 15-year-old boy was sentenced to life in prison for fatally stabbing a stranger, Muhammad Hassam Ali, after a brief conversation in Birmingham city center. The second boy, who stood by, was sentenced to five years in secure accommodation. Ali’s family expressed their grief, describing him as a budding engineer whose life was tragically cut short.
Your position is therefore undemocratic.
If your position was to kill all people of a particular skin color then my position would be the same. Democracy cannot work if fundamental rights are not protected from onslaught by people who, ultimately, would abolish democracy itself. Because that’s where your path leads: Towards a failure to regard other people as people.
comprehend the rightness and wrongness of murder
You still fail to acknowledge that that’s not what it’s about. It’s about executive control. If an adult has an intrusive thought they have a very good grasp on blocking it, youth doesn’t. If everything works well then they’re simply exploration happy, like stupid bands, invent new makeup styles and re-invent the shopping cart race. If society messed them up at a fundamental level then things like murder can bubble up, and might not be stopped by the weak frontal cortex. That does not mean that they’ll regret it, though: They’re already perfectly capable of rationalising, and will do so to maintain a consistent self-image of themselves.
Did you understand anything of what I just wrote. Please rephrase it in your own words (“So you’re saying that…”) so I know we won’t continue to talk past each other, there.
More generally speaking, there’s an African saying: If a kid does not feel the warmth of the village they will find the warmth they deserve by setting it ablaze.
Because that’s where your path leads: Towards a failure to regard other people as people.
No. Life, liberty, rights, and privileges can - and should - be deprived upon conviction of a crime. The appropriate deprivation of rights and privileges as a sentence for murder is life imprisonment. Nothing of my opinion disregards any person as a person.
Your position, however, disregards the victim’s rights as a person. Further, you have advocated for stripping me of my rights to participate in governance based solely on your dislike for my opinion.
You have justified fascism.
It’s about executive control.
I summarily reject your suggestion that a 15-year-old is so lacking in their capacity for executive control that they can be excused of murder.
If an adult has an intrusive thought
This wasn’t an intrusive thought. This was a deliberate act.
If a kid does not feel the warmth of the village they will find the warmth they deserve by setting it ablaze.
By all means, be warm to the kid. Until he starts setting people on fire.
Life, liberty, rights, and privileges can - and should - be deprived upon conviction of a crime.
Life can and should be deprived? That’s barbaric. Every civilised country has abolished the death penalty. Heck even parts of the US managed to abolish it.
I summarily reject your suggestion that a 15-year-old is so lacking in their capacity for executive control that they can be excused of murder.
So you reject reality. Which explains a lot.
By all means, be warm to the kid. Until he starts setting people on fire.
And what if noone was warm to him, who is at fault when the village burns? I’d say the adults are. Punishing the kid is just them trying to cover up their own failures. A convenient scapegoat for their own failure to foster wholesome interactions.
And what if noone was warm to him, who is at fault when the village burns?
Him.
It’s a pretty simple concept. He is the one who performed the act. He is responsible.
I’d say the adults are.
Unless you can show the adults deliberately taught him to murder, I’d say no. If you can show they did that, they can join him in prison forever. But he doesn’t get a pass.
I’m perfectly happy to blame the adults for a kid becoming a little shithead asshole. Not so much when the kid deliberately decides to murder someone.
You argued that 4-year-olds don’t need supervision. Now you’re arguing that 15-year-olds are incapable of being responsible for their own, deliberate actions; that their parents, guardians, or other individuals charged with supervising their behavior are responsible.
