Quote:
Originally Posted by kirant
Under the right circumstances? How about killing people because a guy in a white lab coat tells you to (Milgram Experiment)! Or torturing friends because you were given the job of security guard to roleplay (Stanford Prison Experiment). According to Cracked (take what you want from it), there are replications of experiments which state that, because said "scientest" tells you to, 80% of people will literally zap a REAL puppy to death.
Anyways, I'm fine with this. The intent of our prison system is for rehabilitation primarily, detention and punishment secondary. If she can prove she's rehabilitated and matured, I see no reason to keep her in jail. That being said, I would prefer they monitor her real close and bring her back if issues begin to appear.
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Yeah, the truth is it's hard to find someone with a strong enough moral framework to be able maintain their sense of right and wrong when under the influence of an authority figure or part of group dynamics.
Not to say anyone is capable of doing what this girl did, she is on the extreme end of a dysfunctional child. That doesn't mean the same forces that create other, lesser dysfunction among children weren't the cause of her evil doings. I suspect they were.
12 years old is far too young to lock her up and throw away the key. Yes, she should know the difference between right and wrong at that point. However, there's a lot of nuance in right and wrong that a 12 year old can't grasp. For example, they can understand that hitting someone is wrong because it hurts them. But they aren't able to understand how or to what extent it hurts them.
I also don't agree that punishment should be the goal of a Justice system. Punishment is only useful as it acts as a deterrent. Beyond that, it is pointless to spend the money punishing someone harshly in what will probably make them only a harder criminal and less likely to assimilate back into society.
There seems to be a want out of posters here to achieve a mental victory over criminals through punishment. You want them to realize what they did was wrong and realize they are scum. You want to defeat them totally in the same way Big Brother defeated Winston Smith in 1984. That is a fool's errand. People can come to the realization on their own that what they did was wrong, but no amount of punishment will ever force this realization.
Don't waste your time, money and health making sure an evildoer suffers the 'correct' amount of time. Societies should punish according to what works as a deterrent and rehabilitate to reduce recidivism. Justice systems are bloated and inefficient when they try to achieve victory over the criminal through suffering.