Quote:
Originally Posted by PepsiFree
...ok. And yet I am still wondering what your point is. We do know about it. We can't change that, and nobody is asking to change youth justice principles going forward, so... cool?
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Well I think his unsaid point is they are in place because society as a whole can't resist being overly harsh and judgmental without having a capacity to truly empathize and understand what got a youth to a place where they commit a crime, and more importantly, understand what exactly is required for that child to recover and be corrected. We see life through our own paradigms and it is really hard, if not impossible to really get outside of that, and that includes how one's formative years played out. And that is not necessarily for a lack of trying on our part.
But ultimately, the point is, as a society we have prescribed consequences for certain actions, which are deemed to extract justice for those crimes, while still allowing for change, recovery, and correction if the crime is not severe enough to deem the death penalty or life in prison without parole. We can't, however, force sincere change on someone, nor can we measure it. As horrible as it is, we can't force someone to feel true regret and not want to repeat something wrong that they have done.
Someone might pay the price of their crime and really not regret it or feel sorry, but we can't arbitrarily increase the punishment or add additional consequences simply because emotionally we can't accept a lack of remorse that we can't measure. While they absolutely should feel sincere remorse, they may need to be persuaded over time to change their heart.
A couple tangential thoughts - in addition to the conundrum of assessing an offending individuals sincerity and remorse, how do you assess whether the victim has truly forgiven after all reasonable measures to make amends have been taken? Is that even our place as a society to ensure happens, or to expect? I would assert that it is an individual matter. Victims, and their loved ones often hold grudges, but we can't change that. (I'm not necessarily saying that has happened in this case).
Another interesting thing to think about, is that certain youth/children have various fears that complicate matters like this, especially when required to apologize in person (i.e. see psychophobia).