[darkroasted]

"Why is prison even considered for young people?"

Here are some crimes I've seen in the news:

* A man was shot and killed during a robbery while he was getting robbed. He begged for them to not shoot him and they put one more bullet in his chest. The perps were 15. http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Arrest-Questioned-...

* A kid at a local school was gang beaten by other students, had teeth knocked out, and was concussed. He was beaten because of a "mistaken identity" Here is a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjC7yd1OaAk

So what should be done in the case of these offenders? If not jail, then what? Clearly these perpetrators are too dangerous to coexist in civilized society. So there has to be some form of punishment, and some form of separation. I would be ok with sending them to work on a farm instead of prison, but I'm pretty sure that others would describe that as being "forced labor camps" and would rail against that too.

[makecheck]

Well my first question would be (and this doesn't seem to be the first question that "justice" systems ask), what situations are these kids in?

I'm not saying that the situation completely excuses a severe punishment but when you looked at stories like these, did you even wonder:

- Maybe this kind of robbery has happened to them, or to their friends, family or neighbors. It's not hard to imagine someone turning cold after seeing bad things happen to loved ones.

- Maybe they know something that the store owner did and it was a kind of "mob justice". (I'm not justifying them shooting the guy. Yet, based solely on the knowledge that the owner was begging for his life, you don't know enough about the situation to understand why the kids shot him.)

- Are these things happening because of other factors? Economics are frequently a reason. I can imagine giving a lot less of a crap about society if I was dirt poor and I couldn't see any way to make it better.

I think the first solution they should consider is if they can make the perpetrator's life better. Prison makes it undeniably worse; ironically, if being poor got them into prison, they'll probably be even worse off after prison (what with people refusing to hire convicts and such).

[darkroasted]

Honest question: how familiar are you with the actual history of these problems, and the actual situation on the ground? Have you read anything beyond standard zeitgeist sources (sociology classes, NYTimes, Economist), etc?

The dominant social policy of the last 65 years has been that crime and disorder can be cured by addressing "root causes" which means material deprivation, lack of school funding, lack of housing, a school curriculum that was not culturally attuned, etc.

So first in the 50s, 60s and 70s they built public housing, upped welfare spending, eliminated corporal punishment in the schools, and greatly reduced punishment and police enforcement. Here is a poster from the time: http://www.newyork.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/a...

This was a disaster. The welfare spending incentivized women to not get married and to stay on the dole, because you would lose benefits if you got married or got a job. The public housing was not policed at all and was destroyed by the rougher element in the population. Crime skyrocketed. Youths would commit muggings at gun point and end up back on the streets with nothing more than probation.

Then there was a ham-fisted backlash starting in the mid-1970s but really coming into effect in the 80s and 90s. Unfortunately, rather than emphasis consistent discipline and enforcement from the get go, the backlash was more about "three strikes" and using drug offenses as proxy crimes. Even in schools, getting tough meant suspensions, which is not much of a punishment to a roguish street urchin.

So if you look at the situation now, you have kids growing up in homes which are violent and where they don't get punished if they roam the streets and bully other kids. Then you have those kids go to schools that are full of disorder, and where if they cause trouble they just sent to the principals office and then go right back into the classroom. Or maybe they get suspended for a few days. Big whoop, that is only a punishment if you care about school. Gangs are allowed to openly sell drugs on the street. So by age 15 your role models are gang members, you have never been subject to real discipline, you have been fighting others or being assaulted your whole life. And then they commit some heinous crime. At that point, the 15-year-old cannot be permitted to coexist in normal society. Giving them money or something is not going to magically make them civilized when they have spent their live growing up in a barbarous environment. It's not the 15-year-old-murderers fault in the cosmic sense that he was born into such a wild environment. But the fact remains that he his too dangerous to be permitted to roam the streets freely.

But of course I absolutely agree that the problem needs to be addressed earlier. We need to figure out a way that these kids are an environment with order, that is with safety, security, and discipline from the day they are born.