An Adult? Really?

A cou­ple of coun­ties over from me, three boys recent­ly killed the old­est boy’s step­dad. The old­est boy is 15 years old, the oth­er two are 12. The sto­ry is that the 15 year old and one of the 12 year olds sat in the room wait­ing with their guns and shot the step­dad when he entered the room. I am not sure what the role of the oth­er 12 year old is.

The judge has ruled that the two shoot­ers should be tried as adults.

I have nev­er under­stood this. We set up a sys­tem so that we treat juve­niles dif­fer­ent­ly than we treat adults. Pre­sum­ably we do this because we rec­og­nize that chil­dren are sim­ply not adults.

But let the crime be seri­ous enough and we for­get all about such fine distinctions.

Per­son­al­ly, I think it is wrong that either child is charged as an adult, but I accept that there are prob­a­bly argu­ments to be made for deal­ing with the 15 year old as an adult.

I can­not fath­om an argu­ment for treat­ing a 12 year old as an adult.

The first result:  hous­ing the kids in the adult jail.

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