Why the age of criminal culpability needs to be far higher than 18

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Truth in Justice

The public lynch mob has paused in its demand for a hanging in the NZ media and as the outrageous cost of hard on crime policy starts to weigh on public coffers (and with the privately run Serco a public relations disaster), some quiet reason has slipped into the debate on crime and punishment.

Raise the age of criminal culpability – Justice Minister
The Government is looking to change the law to keep 17-year-old crims out of adult courts…Justice Minister Amy Adams has asked officials to look at whether dealing with 17-year-olds in the Youth Court will cut rates of re-offending and stop some young people starting out on a life of crime.

Sadly the quiet reason doesn’t go far enough.

Here is the simple reason why it is utter madness to charge young offenders as adults – biologically they do not have the physical brain development to rationally critique their actions.

The brains of human beings do not fully develop until the mid 20s. Before that, the frontal lobes where most of our decision making occurs, are not fully developed. Teenagers and young people are a mess of dopamine rewarding risk taking without the actual software or hardware to fully appreciate the consequences of that risk taking.

This is biological fact.

Charging young people who do horrific criminal acts as adults totally misses the point that they don’t have any appreciation for the magnitude of their actions.

This fact has been missed in the public outrage and anger sparked whenever a young person is charged with a terrible crime. Our need to condemn and demand punishment misses the very clear reality that punishing a young person who has little appreciation for their crime is totally counter productive and heavy handed punishment only serves to concrete a life of criminal activity.

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

The sooner we allow reason and science to step into the crime and punishment debate, the sooner we can start having a system more focused on positive outcomes rather than  a self-fulfilling prophecy of despair and misery.

 

21 COMMENTS

  1. It’s not so much that they don’t have an appreciation for the magnitude of their actions it’s they don’t have the impulse control that adults have. So a 17 year old is more likely to get into a fight because someone has made him angry than an adult.

    But anyway, yes, the age needs to be higher than 18. Something like 21 or maybe older.

  2. The rights of adulthood include the responsibilities of adulthood, whatever age society determines that should be. Enough of the babying of young adults.

  3. The age should be higher when NZ is approaching an election where National wants lower crime figures.

    Just like making Maori crime figures lower by giving them 3 months grace period for not having a licence, will help appease the Maori Party (National’s coalition partner).

    All other times, it doesn’t matter what the age is.

  4. My “awakening” occurred in my mid 20’s in the late 1960’s.

    Yes we don’t think along lateral lines until we reach our mid 20’s so we don’t see “The whole picture” and make often irrational decisions because we are not fully aware.

    “The brains of human beings do not fully develop until the mid 20s. Before that, the frontal lobes where most of our decision making occurs, are not fully developed. Teenagers and young people are a mess of dopamine rewarding risk taking without the actual software or hardware to fully appreciate the consequences of that risk taking.

    This is biological fact.”

    • I remember thinking about this in my mid-20s and my conclusion, from observation, was that young adults can handle one or two adult level issues but anymore than that and their brains just can’t cope – it’s just too much.

      The problem is that if young adults don’t have the brain capacity to understand the consequences of law breaking than do they have the capacity to allow them to get married, drink alcohol, drive cars, trucks, sail around the world etc, etc.

  5. The brains of left wingers do not fully develop at all hence why you believe Marxism can actually work. However just because your brain doesn’t fully develop, doesn’t mean you still can’t be held accountable for your actions, rape and murder are wrong and it shouldn’t take much in the way of brain function to figure that out.

    • @ Stephen …clearly you are the undeveloped or retarded one or you would not be making stupid comments like this which are not even to the point …or is this an attempt at humour? ..if so, you clearly have not read the scientific evidence

      sure young people MUST be held accountable….that is not the question

      …the question and the issue is whether they should be put in adult prisons where they will be further at risk

    • Actually Stephen, it was different to me. I was incredibly right-wing in my teens and twenties. I would’ve been a prime candidate for the Young Nats or ACT on Campus.

      By the time I reached my thirties is when I started to realise that right-wing ideas were naive nonsense bereft of evidence, and attempted to paint a world that was 50,000 shades of grey, in simple black and white terms.

      In other words, I grew up.

      The world is not as simple as you think it is. Adults understand this.

  6. No compassion in our criminal justice system, their system has many flaws most of these young fellows end up inside become desensitized and are prone individual easily lead in to prospecting for gangs then become courier gang members and the cycle goes around.

    There’s a saying “show me your friends and i’ll show you your future, that the reality for these young vulnerable boys its actually scary that it defeats the purpose of teaching them a lesson and when a young undeveloped mind starts to internalize his reality he will doubt have more of a changes of becoming another statistics in our criminal Justice system and be classed as a danger to society.

  7. Prison is basically attending the University of Crime, you learn upgraded criminal skills while in prison, by hardened crimes who have a lifetime of criminal experience. You can then apply these skills to your advantage in the outside world once you are released, also you have a new network of contacts which you have built up while serving time on the inside.

  8. Rehabilitation is all BS in NZ, too much money in the criminal justice system for lawyers, judges, corrections, police. The more crime the better.

  9. The problem in today’s society is we have children being born from unstable relationships, these children have mental health problems already, and when you mix alcohol, drugs and P together you have a volatile cocktail.

    I had a friend of mines son stabbed to death by a drug & alcohol crazed gangster at a party in Tauranga, the victim was not even known to the perpetrator, he was merely a friend of the people having the party.

    With the huge Chinese migration into NZ we are inheriting the drug and gang culture from Asia where anything goes, likewise the Australian Rebels teaming up with the NZ gangs, these guys don’t muck around they shoot first and ask questions later.

    The NZ Police, Politicans and the Justice Dept need to wake up and come down hard on these guys otherwise they are going start controlling communities, they already control the prisons.

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