This is not something I ever thought I would write as I do believe people can rehabilitate but the rate of juvenile reoffenders suggest that the system has never worked - MOJ stats for 2012-2023 show juvenile reoffenders c10 percentage points higher than adult reoffending stats.
The suggestion is to abolish the Youth Justice System and Youth Courts for serious offences - murder, attempted murder, sexual assault of any type and armed robbery amongst others. The age of violent perpetrators is becoming lower and lower yet they hide behind their juvenile status.
Major cause of youth offences include poverty, poor parental supervision, abuse and lack of educational opportunities - where this is a known causal factor and for lesser offences (not murder) their penance should be 5 years of military service. The cadets have been known to massively rehabilitate delinquents but always at the instruction of the parent for them to join. And the best military recruitment zones have always been the council estates, why not get the young offenders out of poverty, into a structured environment with responsibility and getting a hands on education that shows them they can create value to society.
The risk would be too high for those with serious offences being put through the military however can only imagine they’d make the best SAS!
Firstly, I want to address poverty. I’m not convinced that poverty causes criminality, as I see no causative mechanism, especially when we are discussing youth offending. I can believe that it is correlated, but that is different. To me, I would argue that the lack of parental oversight and the destruction of society to the point that we cannot make moral truth claims is the bigger problem.
Currently, in the UK, we do try some 14+ year-olds as adults for some crimes, are you wanting to lower this to the standard age of criminal responsibility (which is 10)?
Also, as many of us here want, if we reintroduced the death penalty, would you be happy with it applying to a 14-year-old? What about a 10-year-old?
Can you clarify what you mean by moral truth claims - do you mean difference between good and evil, justice be served?
For serious crimes I’d abolish the minimal age of criminal responsibility altogether. Anyone that can plan out a murder that young is a psychopath, extenuating circumstances where kids have killed an abuser would be a slight exception but would need to do some research on their reoffending rates.
Its an uncomfortable decision however yes death penalty would need to apply at any age. Hopefully it would only ever be used as a deterrent.
Yes. We do not, as a society, teach or know what goodness is, or righteousness. This stems from both the Enlightenment, and the subsequent liberal erosion of morals in favour of baser desires. What it means to be good and the importance of such is something that is entirely lost on modern people.
I understand why you say this, but I think that you end up with a problem here, and that is mens rea. Maybe this is genuinely something that should be in the hands of a jury, but I would ask, “Can a 4-year-old ever have a genuine mental state to take the life of another?” Maybe the answer is yes, but I have a hard time voting to make that a legal reality.
Part of teaching morality is to show that penance is due for bad behaviour/crimes to which removing the age of criminal responsibility would be doing however I appreciate many modern judges would have a hard time advocating for this.
Parenting styles has the biggest part to play in the lack of moral teachings. The government need to relinquish a lot of the responsibility they have taken on and return it to the parents.
Do I believe a 4-year old has a mental state to plan out the killing of another that would meet the definition of murder - no and I don’t believe there has ever been a case of that happening. A 4-year old however may commit manslaughter in the protection of a family member which I would expect stand outside the requirements for death penalty.
Although I agree the stats do not support rehabilitation, I cannot agree that the best place for these individuals is the military as punishment.
We have a highly professional military, unlike other countries (who do allow military service sentences). Introducing convicted criminals serving a sentence into the military will damage our military credibility and capability. I do not want that. Our military should continue to have standards for acceptance, including absence of unspent convictions.
I broadly do not believe criminals can rehabilitate, they can learn to abstain from crime, yes - but I see no evidence suggesting the state of “rehabilitation” actually exists.
As far as I can see it, the concept of “rehabilitation” requires the criminal to have some sort of semi-permanent criminal mental state and then a dramatic conversion. I think this is nonsense. A criminal is, by definition someone who commits a crime - it is not a state of being. I think the concept of “rehabilitation” is simply an artefact of the liberal “blank slate” fallacy, applied to criminal justice.
Regardless, I do not believe it should be the role of the criminal justice system to rehabilitate offenders.
I recognise this is a considerable departure from our current orthodoxy, but I believe custodial sentences should be served in a “penitentiary” system, dispensing with “prisons”.
Essentially I believe custodial sentences should be for the purposes of 1. Public safety, 2. Punishment. Rehabilitation might come a distant 3rd in some cases.
I believe the true solution to this problem is root and branch restructuring of our justice system, much, much more severe sentences and a far more significant system of imposing life-altering fines, that are actually recovered - through a system similar to the current child maintenance recovery system - which I outline in detail here: Enhanced Criminal Fines Initiative
