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.
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.
Because it would put blame on the adults?
I have no problem throwing the adults in prison with him, if you can reasonably show they are responsible. Go ahead and blame them all you want. But understand that the blame they carry does not in any way excuse him from responsibility for his actions, nor the consequences of those actions. They can be blamed also, not instead.
Murder is too simple an idea to suggest that a 15-year-old can’t be held responsible for committing it.
Please, again, read up on developmental psychology, and what the prefrontal cortex does. The alternative, for you, is to effectively have zero empathy for anyone younger than the early 20s. Whether they murdered or stole a cookie or broke a toy.
I’m out of here lest sounding like a broken clock.
