Two 12 year old boys have been convicted of murder after stabbing a 19 year old man with a machete

[AngeloMysterioso]

AIBU to be gobsmacked and just terrified by this?!

I mean what the fuck are a pair of 12 year olds doing with a machete in the first place??

Yes you're right - we aren't born with empathy, we develop it. Some people can't develop it.

It clearly a really complex field and my understanding of it just brushes the surface.
But we would be foolish to ignore it and we'd do well to begin to find ways to spot it early on so that these people can be assisted in some way to live without harming others.

I don’t believe there is any finite evidence to prove either side of this argument.
Just some widely respected studies such as the Macdonald triad, suggesting that some individuals are born with a predisposition towards violent behaviour. And other equally respected studies that suggest that socioeconomic factors are the true cause.
I personally think both are at play.

There's lots of research already done and lot's ongoing.
This research is 10 years old but there is much more recent stuff - this is just one I had looked at for study:

‘Can’t’ develop it is an interesting description. Based on what evidence? This doesn’t fit with my understanding of human development but I may be unaware of some research.

My understanding is that in order to feel empathy we have to have experienced empathy, amongst other things. Mirror neurons are involved but I don’t know whether they are genetically hard wired, epigenetic or develop through experience.

Empathy is a complex thing and a lack of empathy does not make a murderer.

Psychopaths are all around us. Lots on TV at the moment due to the GE. But what leads to such horrific crimes is far more complex than just a lack of empathy.

I agree, there are definitely a large array of interacting factors that can make somebody commit a violent crime.

Epigenetics is moving quickly and I hope that before long we will better be able to map just how much environmental factors impact our gene expression and what sets of factors create the biggest risk for extreme antisocial behaviour.

I guess what I was loosely trying to suggest was, that even before the environmental factors get to work - some individuals are already predisposed to psychopathy and if we could spot this early on we could adjust their environment so that the lack of empathy does not spark into extreme violence.

As you say, lack of empathy alone does not cause violence, there need to be some other factors there too.

Haven’t got time to read that but what I do know is that the first three years are crucial for brain development and it’s mostly influenced by relationship.

The frontal cortex doesn’t fully complete development until early to mid twenties.

Adolescence is a key period for brain development as the frontal cortex wires up with the lambic system and adolescents have what is sometimes referred to as ‘accelerator’ brain. The limbic system is the speed and the frontal cortex the breaks. So teenagers tend to take more risks and make more instinctive and knee jerk decisions.

How this development all happens is influenced heavily by experience. There is no equation that can say exactly how this will happen and the risk and resilience factors are very complex.

My understanding is that this kind of violent crime will be due to a complex mix of genetics, experience and context. It’s unlikely to just be ‘they were born with psychopathy’. Humans just aren’t made that way.

Either way these kids will need incarcerating. Whether it can be turned around for them to develop into decent adults remains to be seen but I’m not hopeful. We don’t have the resources or facilities I don’t think.

My heart goes out to that young man's family.

My eldest son is 11 and off to secondary school this year. I fear for his safety.

What is the world coming to? I posted on here ages ago saying something needs to be done about knife crime and was told I was being unreasonable. I don't think I am.

Stop and search. Anybody with a knife gets a year inside a South American jail to keep the costs down and parents of U-18s fined £1000 to help funding. They will soon get the idea.

My vote for early intervention would be attachment focused support for vulnerable families at birth and/or prenatally. I think a ‘within baby’ view isn’t helpful to be honest, but I’m coming at it clinically rather than research focused.

Would you want to live in any of those countries though?

It was. Read the article there is an artists drawing

We need stop and search

I’m familiar with that part of Birmingham. It’s dangerous because Birmingham cancelled regular police patrols years ago. This was 100% gang related - I’d imagine an initiation. That poor boy.

There’s been a fatal stabbing of a 25 year old in the midlands just this weekend with 2x teens being arrested one was just 14.

It didn’t happen in Birmingham. It happened in Stowlawn, Wolverhampton.
You say it was 100% gang related - which gang(s)?

There is a major lack of research in the infant to early adolescent stage. Most research on psychopathy is in older adolescents and adults - by which time the brain wiring becomes less plastic so I guess that's where the findings that 'empathy can't be developed in extreme psychopathic individuals' comes from.

However, epigenetics is finding that our genetics are changing much more rapidly over our entire lives than we ever thought - so who knows, maybe proper criminal reform is just around the corner . .

Until then, I agree - they need putting somewhere secure. Just a shame we can't yet spot these individuals before they hurt someone.

Poor Shawn

Rest in peace

Even in the womb babies are influenced by environment - stress during pregnancy, drug/alcohol use. I just can’t see how we could ever tease apart what exactly is pure genetics/epigenetic or environment and essentially it’s a complex and constant interplay between them. Babies are born recognising their mothers smell and the sound of her voice. They have heard their surroundings. So by the time they are born their brain and physiology have already been influenced by their environment IYSWIM?

It’s fascinating stuff but I do worry about this idea of rooting out the bad eggs in childhood. It’s just not that simple and could be catastrophic.

I pulled the legs off crane flys as a kid. I’m now vegetarian (and not a psychopath). Kids do some shit stuff as they learn and develop. There isn’t really a way of knowing how they will then develop. I don’t think we could ever really predict which kids will go on to murder.

Supporting vulnerable families is the way I would go. support them to be present and available patents with strong boundaries. Have more for teens to do and get involved in where they can build skills and get a sense of belonging and value.

These lads obviously had little to no adult oversight and supervision. God knows where they had got the knife or the idea to murder. What were they accessing online? Where they being groomed for gang or organised crime purposes? They have taken a life, ruined others and messed up their own lives. It’s such a tragic situation.

Indeed.

You’re correct.

There’s no such evidence. I grew up in Glasgow which was the murder or stabbing capital of Europe for a long time! Back in the noughties there were youths walking about with machetes. Not as young as 12 but I remember two 17/18 year olds from a rival area jumped out a car waving machetes and asked me and my friends where “such and such” were, who were the leaders of the gang in my area. Nearly every town and city in west coast Glasgow had these gangs in every postcode btw. They were called “young teams”.

In Glasgow they have managed to reduce the problem of knife crime through looking at it as a health problem and an approaching it more holistically rather than just increasing stop and search or sentencing.

Interestingly stop and search was never such a massive thing in Glasgow even when stabbings were rife, it’s interesting how the police will treat certain demographics of youth differently despite having the same patterns of violence 👀

Thisis so kind of the parents and they showed more tolerance than I would I have to say: Mr Seesahai said he felt sorry for the parents of the two killers and did not wish to see them "go away for life", but he wanted to see the "right sentence".

That said, I have to say I worked with at risk Youth so not easily shocked but this behaviour is extreme and I wonder if boys like this can recover and reform. I just don’t know but certainly hope so.

yes, most dangerous age to put a weapon in someone's hand, the most likely to point a gun at someone and fire it, the least likely to be able to comprehend the consequences.

I agree with everything you said there @Finestwinesknowntoman

Early intervention and family/parent support is the only sure way we can attempt to put children and their families on the right course.

Families are more complex then ever before. It's a really hard job to get it right and where it's needed most.

The trouble is understanding why they carry a knife. For some it’s with intent to do harm but often, in my limited experience of working with young offenders, it’s for protection. Some had seen that behaviour in the adults around them so it as the norm to them sadly.

Either way a stop and search could be a helpful preventative tool to keep things safer and to also highlight young people that need intervention and oversight.

Like with dogs, some people are just too badly bred and too badly raised to be safe in society.

So if a 9 year old or older does any of the following they should go to prison for 50 years:
Pushes their brother down the stairs when play fighting and kills them.
Hits them with a bike as they stepped in front of them.
Drives over a toddler by mistake on the drive.
Punches someone and they hit their head
Stabs someone who is raping them.

All those people should spend 50 years in prison for what end?

And don't talk rubbish about in the past it wasn't like this blah blah blah. The murder rates has hardly changed since the 1970s

This is the public health model approach I was talking about https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-45572691.amp.

It’s an older article and not sure if crime has gone back up by then but I know at least at one point great progress was made. It’s more headline grabbing to talk about increasing stop and search and being tough on crime etc unfortunately so politicians down here don’t seem to have caught up on other approaches to actually successfully reducing crime. Scotland is a great example being one of the most violent countries in the developing world at one point.

And don't talk rubbish about in the past it wasn't like this blah blah blah. The murder rates has hardly changed since the 1970s

In England and Wales it appears to have roughly doubled.

https://www.murdermap.co.uk/statistics/homicide-england-wales-statistics-historical/