While I agree with you Summa the US justice system has a long ways to go and the focus has to swing back towards rehabilitation, at the same time some consensus has to be reached on how to deal with juveniles. I personally don't believe someone at 16 or 17 is a completely different individual then they are at 19 or 20, nor should they get special treatment in hopes that they will reform in latter years. A lot of it is based on studies which purpose each person has some kind of mental age regardless of their physical age. But there's no standard method of assessing this value and the issue of trying a person as an adult or a juvenile is really up in the air.
In Canada we have the Youth Criminal Justice Act which goes way too far in protecting the accused. Their name and the names of their victims can't be published in the media, all court cases are completely closed and there's little to no exceptions as there are in the US. So even if someone is mentally and physically mature, knew exactly what they were doing as an adult would and could foresee the consequences for their actions they can't be tried as adults except for the rarest of cases.
Most states can't continue to operate their correctional facilities under three strike laws and minimum sentencing, California for example a few months ago was going to be forced by the Feds to release some prisoners due to overcrowding so even before you get into the ethical part of locking non-violent criminals away for years with violent people... the basic resources needed to continue to operate under those conditions simply are not there.
In Canada we have the Youth Criminal Justice Act which goes way too far in protecting the accused. Their name and the names of their victims can't be published in the media, all court cases are completely closed and there's little to no exceptions as there are in the US. So even if someone is mentally and physically mature, knew exactly what they were doing as an adult would and could foresee the consequences for their actions they can't be tried as adults except for the rarest of cases.
Most states can't continue to operate their correctional facilities under three strike laws and minimum sentencing, California for example a few months ago was going to be forced by the Feds to release some prisoners due to overcrowding so even before you get into the ethical part of locking non-violent criminals away for years with violent people... the basic resources needed to continue to operate under those conditions simply are not there.
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