And that would be the rapists, themselves.

People can be raised in horrible circumstances, and never do horrible things. Yes, parents and community are be contributors to an individual's understanding of and relation to the world, but they are not the sole determinant.

Ummm, no.

I wasn't raised by the best parents. They made some mistakes, and at some point, I had to make the decision whether to be a victim of it (a fuckup) or to be an upstanding, respectable person. I chose option 2, much as those abominations could have. Instead, they chose to gangrape and torture two poor immigrants who came to this country seeking the American dream, only to get the worst nightmare experience that America could serve up, and to top it off, the remorseless little pricks who did it probably won't receive punishment to fit the crime because of their age in spite of their very rational, adult planning and perpetration of the crime.

Yes, the parents should shoulder some responsibility. But all of it? No. Not even the bulk of it.

Agreed 100%. We try juveniles differently for a reason, and it's not because kids never do terrible things.

Ok, so if one of these "kids" is 15, lets say, he is tried and convicted at a speedy trial - serves the maximum we can sentence a "kid" to and is out on his 18th birthday after serving less than 3 years. You think thats justice?? Right?? Fair??

No, but you know what they say: You can't make an omelet without raping some eggs.

Are we sure Florida law says 18 and out?

I don't know, because I'm not a child psychologist or criminal scientist. I doubt that you are, either. The people who decided that children should be tried separately from adults, were.

It seems likely to me that a 15-year-old could change a lot in three years separated from his friends, harmful family influences, and whatever drugs he was probably doing, with the help of therapy and treatment for any mental illnesses. People don't just come in "good" and "bad" flavors, they can be ill, confused, high, angry at the world, unable to understand right and wrong, etc. Many of these can be changed or treated. I'm not saying that the US criminal justice system as it stands is well-equipped to do that, but I think it should be.

Welcome to the Cellar, Kintups.:D
You don't sound like a Sputnik, they just went beep, beep, beep.

So can an adult.

If I understand the difference correctly, I believe it is that the juvenile brain and nervous system is not fully developed, things such as impulse control mechanisms. Is that accurate or did I hear that on a televised crime drama? (Which is, incidentally, where criminals often get their stupid ideas.)

I agree with this almost 100% but the problem is that prisons and juevy do nothing to change a person but just reject them from society which usually makes the problem worse.

Yeah, that is the problem. My husband used to work in a jail, so I have a particularly grim view of how incarceration works in the US. Unfortunately, to my mind a lot of the problems come from the ingrained idea that bad things should happen to bad people -- unfortunately, having bad things happen to you frequently makes you an even worse person.

.................................what?!?
:yelsick:

But now that jails are being farmed out to the lowest bidder, things will be much better. [/sarcasm]

A lot of people feel better with the idea that people they don't like are being punished with a very unpleasant life. However, a certain level of unpleasantness goes beyond "teaching a lesson" and can lead to increased personality problems.

Look at it this way: if a kid steals from the cookie jar and his parents make him sit in the corner, he might think "ok, I guess stealing from the cookie jar isn't worth it." If he does the same thing and his parents beat him black and blue, he's more likely to come away with some disturbed ideas about the world. The same is true, to a lesser extent, about adults -- a guy who goes to prison for selling a bit of pot is going to be "punished" in a way that is liable to turn him into a much more dangerous criminal.