To Think This is Too Low a Sentance - 12 year olds knife killing

[LuckysDadsHat]

https://news.sky.com/story/two-boys-believed-to-be-uks-youngest-knife-murderers-detained-for-minimum-of-eight-years-and-six-months-13221221

8.5 years minimum is nothing when these children are still only 13. They could be out at the same age of the man they killed. Why are sentences getting so lenient? I know some will say they are just children, but they are not so naive to not know what they were doing, and after the murder one of them was on social media saying "I don't really care" about the murder. It's just horrific and we need to have higher mandatory sentencing for all knife crimes including just carrying a knife.

It's not about retribution, you can't punish the violence out of someone. Nor do I think you can rehabilitate or redeem someone capable of a crime like this.

The benefit of a long minimum term is simply that they'd be out of the hair of the general public for longer.

So your only reason for a long prison sentence is to prevent reoffending?

What if a shorter sentence was more likely to prevent reoffending?

Obviously I think we all agree prevention of crime is the main or even only priority.

@saraclara

I said this The US has a better prison system than us with proper infrastructure

I'm not talking about death row and officer brutality!!!

No, it won't prevent reoffending, it will simply reduce the window for reoffending and the number of people they hack to pieces across a lifetime.

The criminal age of responsibility means anyone over 10 does bear some responsibility.. it doesn't mean they are literally adults. It's just that kids over 10 will face some consequences.. whereas kids under 10 will not even be going to court.
Of course these kids have some responsibility.. they just don't have adult levels of understanding and responsibility. That's completely obvious. The nature of the crime doesn't magically make them adults. You are just more shocked abd upset by this crime.. but that doesn't make those kids have adult understanding or be culpable as adults under the law!!

What other charge would be possible?

Are you the same person you were when you were 12? Ss an adult would you make the same choices?
The reason we think of 12 year olds as kids is that their brains and characters are still developing.
There is far more chance to rehabilitate a child than there is an adult.

There is no shortage of people in the world. Why take the chance, at great expense to people who obey the law and work hard?

It's a horrific crime but I'm happy to afford a 12 year old offender, themselves a victim of abuse, exploitation and modern slavery, a chance at rehabilitation that could, if all goes well, see them reintroduced to society in their early 20s (knowing that the possibility that they'll never be released remains an option).

Plenty. There are loads of people, disproportionately women, in prison who, if it weren't shortfalls in housing, mental health support and detox services, simply wouldn't be incarcerated. But there's nowhere else to place them.

So we need to change the law then to give 12 year olds the vote learn to drive and drink. Anyone having sex with a 12 year old isn't doing anything wrong because at that age they are old enough to take adult responsibility for their actions.

And before anyone says this is different, no, it isn't.
No-one is denying that a 12 year old isn't able to know right from wong and shouldn't be held responsible for their crime. And that does and should mean them being detained in a youth institution. BUT there is a difference between that and actually treating 12 year olds as adults purely because you feel so strongly about what they have done.
there is presumably a reason why you don't think that a 12 year old should be able to drive, or why you think that having sex with a 12 year old is wrong. And the fact is that the same reasons apply to a 12 year old committing a horiffic crime. They haven't stopped being children just because it's a crime they've committed. The fact people are horrified doesn't mean they've come of age.
It's all or nothing.
Either 12 year olds are children and need to be treated as such regardless of their actions, Or 12 year olds need no boundaries and should be permitted to do everything that adults do.

Might as well have all crimes be punishable by life imprisonment then.

They are children and one of them at least has been criminally exploited by adults. They need rehabilitation. No one is a winner here. It’s just devastating all round.

I wouldn't go that far. But in general, law-breakers should be dealt with in the way that causes the least inconvenience to law-abiders.

I mean, yeah. Obviously I have grown up and have different decisions to make and in a different environment but I'm not so radically different that my current self bears no association.

What about you, are you a reformed violent murderer turned respectable member of society?

Didn't work with John Venables, how many chances do we give people?
Why should they keep being let out of prison?

How many people take drugs in theirteens and e)ly 20's.
Howoften do we say on here that the brain doesn't mature until 25?
The only difference here is that these people aren't committing murder. But a lot of people do questionable things when growing up, that doesn't mean that they are the same people 10, 15, 20 years on.
Mary Bell was successfully rehabilitated as was robert Thompson. So it's simply not true that someone who commits that level of crime can never be rehabilitated.

If your 12 year old does something wrong do you hold that against them for the rest of their life? It doesn't matter that it's not a murder they've committed, the principle is still the same.

Mary Bell? Robert Thompson?

If kids of 12 (as they were) can commit "adult" crimes, they should get an adult sentence

Because we are supposedly a civilised society?
Also no mam is an island. Turning your back is what leads to situations like this in the first place. Maybe if more people had given a shit about troubled difficult kids initially it never would have reached the stage where those kids got so bad they stabbed someone.
If we can't even try for children who cab we try for?
The world was not a safer or better place in the medieval times when 5 year olds got their hands cut off for stealing bread. In fact it was a much more violent and dangerous society to live in.

Yeah, you can have your opinions on this but they are not mine. People might not do the same things they do in their most risk taking years throughout their lives but they tend to remain the risk takers and those who are more reckless in society. Idiots remain idiots and those who are violent tend to remain violent.

Put it this way, I wouldn't want them to be housed next to m upon release, would you? Or is your faith in redemption an academic one and one made more palatable at somebody else's risk?

https://www.cps.gov.uk/publication/assisted-suicide

You are not wrong, OP.

Given the high reoffending rates among these young men, I'd say the prison system is not doing a great job at rehabilitating; so to save my life, sentences for murder need to be harsher.

Might also determine some from committing crimes of they know the sentences are not a joke.

Society would be more civilised with fewer criminals.