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.
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.
It’s a pretty simple concept. He is the one who performed the act. He is responsible.
So if someone calls up an assassin to murder another person, the one who ordered the kill gets off scott-free?
Unless you can show the adults deliberately taught him to murder, I’d say no.
Adults have a duty to raise kids well, just as they have a duty to file their taxes. If they cannot do so on their own, they have the right to be helped along by the rest of society. And, really, even if not there’s that other (more famous) African saying: It takes a village to raise a kid.
Consider the alternative, or, rather, that really seems to be what you’re implying: That children are responsible for their own upbringing. Next up: Babies are expected to grow their own food. Your potted petunia is responsible for its own watering.
You argued that 4-year-olds don’t need supervision.
If they have shown signs of being violent to their peers, yes of course they need supervision. And so does our 15yold. But that doesn’t mean that we pre-emptively supervise every kid that way they’d never learn independence, and thus never truly become adults, they’d just spinelessly bow to the next random person who passes as an authority figure.
Consider the alternative, or, rather, that really seems to be what you’re implying: That children are responsible for their own upbringing.
His upbringing isn’t relevant to the issue. His deliberate actions are. He is generally responsible for his deliberate actions, regardless of how shitty a hand he was dealt.
We can give him some leniency on issues like contract law: He might not have the cognitive ability to understand an important legal document. He might not understand the value of money. He might not have the capacity for complex abstract thought, and should be protected from those who would exploit that and defraud him.
But Murder isn’t an abstract concept. It’s pretty simple. He isn’t owed any societal protections for deciding to kill someone.
His upbringing isn’t relevant to the issue.
Why? Because it would put blame on the adults? Because you want to, at all cost, deflect responsibility from the ones in the position to provide warmth without there being a burning village?
I call that spineless.
He isn’t owed any societal protections for deciding to kill someone.
Why, then, are the adults owed social protections for deciding to turn him into the kid he became? And yes I used “decided” deliberately here: If he decided to become a murderer, then the adults can’t claim that “it was an accident”, “we didn’t mean to” when it comes up to turning him into a murderer.
