10mo ago

Editorial Board: The teen arrested in Georgia school shooting is not an adult, and shouldn't be treated like one

www.latimes.com Editorial: The teen arrested in Georgia school shooting is not an adult, and shouldn't be treated like one

Charging 14-year-old Colt Gray as an adult in Georgia school shooting reveals a nation that has forgotten the purpose of its juvenile justice system.

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240911120608/https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-09-07/georgia-shooting-failures

35 comments

Gonna have to agree on this one. Our new pattern of trying juveniles like adults does not seem to be helping anything.
- Right. Like the whole point of treating juveniles differently is that they are incapable of understanding the magnitude of what they are doing. If anything, the argument for treating them differently is the strongest when applied to very serious crimes like murder.
  
  I think it's the exact opposite.
  Juveniles may not understand that jaywalking or trespassing or resisting arrest is wrong, especially if parents haven't explained those things to them.
  But even a ten year old understands that murdering your classmates is very wrong. Just ask one if you don't believe me.
- Yep the best recourse is to be harsher on the parents. Don't have the kids if you are not gonna take full responsibility for their actions until they are 18. The ole reverse "sins of the father".
  
  I'm not sure that works either, when some do have legitimate mental health issues and our mental health infrastructure in the country is a little weak.
  Ultimately I don't think a punishment-and-fear paradigm is really the solution. The fear part just doesn't work at the broader societal scale, and never really has.

The US "justice" system was never about justice, education and reinsertion.
It was about revenge, and it's always been.
- When the world consisted of small villages, people being people did bad things. So these villages set rules and punishment for those that didn't follow them. So if you fooled around with someone's wife you'd find yourself banned from the village, etc. This is the way they kept a stable society.
  These rules where also known as commandments in some parts and as time went along became more sophisticated and were known as laws.
  From the outset the village elders knew that without a penalty the rule, commandment, law was worthless.

The American prison system is absolutely counter productive, whether for adults or juveniles. When you throw people in a cage and treat them like animals for years, they are going to act like animals when you let them back out. The only difference between adult and juvenile prosecution is likely to be how long he's locked away before he's turned loose on society again.
Rather than deciding between adult and juvenile, we should be deciding whether or not we want to treat offenders like human beings and actually try to rehabilitate them if possible.
- I agree, but I also think there ought to be a punitive aspect when dealing with murder. If you take someone out of society, I think you lose the right to participate in society. The truly difficult thing is getting fair trials. There are too many people bullied into accepting plea deals, innocents who are locked up to avoid the death penalty. But with an open and shut case like this? Lock him away. He stole four people from their families.
  
  There's no evidence that what feels good to you actually reduces the odds of the perpetrator committing crimes again or reduces the rate of those crimes in society in general, and good evidence that what doesn't feel good to you does those things. So you will have to decide if you would rather feel good about how the person who did something wrong was punished or have less crime in your society.
- Oh, this kid needs to get shot. Same with his father. We can skip the “rehabilitation” for mass murderers and the people who made/support them.

A generation ago the U.S. latched onto a bogus notion that some adolescents are sub-human “superpredators” who must be treated only as if they are wild animals to be caged or put down.
This was a racist dog-whistle, repeated by Hillary (the shithead who gave us the orange bad), about crack-babies.

I do wonder if the reasoning behind trying teen shooters as adults is to ensure that their record sticks into adulthood. When you are charged as a juvenile your records are expunged upon turning 18. I certainly would want to make sure that this person could never legally own a gun again.
- When you are charged as a juvenile your records are expunged upon turning 18
  A lot of people think this but it isn't true. In Georgia (and most other states) you have to ask a judge to expunge your record and they have to give the prosecutor's office an opportunity to respond before the judge can decide if the person with the juvenile record has been rehabilitated and their record should be expunged. There's nothing automatic about the process.
  
  Well that is certainly a comfort and gives more credit towards not trying and sentencing teens like they're adults.

I've always been under the impression that the juvenile justice system is not equipped to adjudicate murder charges.
- Why not?
  
  Even in regular court not every judge can preside over a murder case. Tales experience in the area of law.

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Fuck them and fuck that.
- You show a remarkable depth of understanding!

35 comments