Are child criminals victimisers or victims?
THIS AND many other societies today have a strangely selective sense of justice. Particularly baffling is the hypocrisy in how we view murders committed by children as opposed to those committed by adults. Children who murder are considered products of a wicked society but adults who murder are considered the wicked society. Somehow, we always seem to forget that every adult was once a child and is also therefore a ‘product of society’.
Naturally, since we view child murderers as victims, we treat them as victims. That means they often get a slap on the wrist for the heinous and the gruesome crimes they commit (because supposedly, their crimes are not their fault) and we are much more intentional about rehabilitating them to a better life. On the other hand, similar crimes committed by adults are typically punished with much harsher sentences and are followed by very emotional appeals from the four corners of society for the perpetrators to be given the most painful forms of execution.
In reality, there is little difference between the level of cognitive and emotional development of the average 17-year-old versus that of the average 19-year-old. Yet, one is considered a child, under the law, and the other is not. There is no obvious fix to this because, for legal and administrative reasons, at some point in an individual’s life they will have to be recognised as having transitioned from childhood to adulthood. It just so happens that we have picked lucky number 18.
OVERLOOKS
Public sentiment on the matter of criminal justice often overlooks the fact that nothing special happens to an individual on the night before their 18th birthday.
In Parliament recently, our justice minister raised the concern that children, specifically those aged 14 to 17, are committing serious crimes and are killing not only children of a similar age but also adults. He suggested that where these children are not given harsh penalties for their crimes, the families of victims might feel they have not gotten justice.
It seems he wasn’t the only one who felt this way because another parliamentarian chimed in to say we should hang the child murderers. That idea was, however, not supported by the minister, who said he does not support hanging.
I agree with the minister. Neither has capital punishment materially impacted crime statistics in countries that have utilised it nor does it solve the root cause of many of our murders, which is a vengeful culture of aggression. Further, the suggestion that the state should preside over the killing of those who have engaged in killing, as retribution for their killing, is morally questionable. So, this article is not a promotion of the use of the death penalty either for adults or for children.
What is strange, though, is that while many call for the death penalty to be applied to adults, they have shuddered at the parliamentarian’s suggestion for child murderers to be given similar treatment. Why would it be okay to hang a 23-yearold who commits cold-blooded capital murder but not okay to hang a 17-year-old who commits a similar crime? Perhaps we have all forgotten that just a little over a year ago, the country clamoured for Rushane Barnett, a 23-year-old male, who brutally murdered his cousin and her four children, to be given the death penalty. The general sentiment was that he was undeserving of any consideration for rehabilitation, notwithstanding that many children, some of whom are a mere five years younger that he was, are given that consideration.
ACCOUNTABLE
Children, and especially adolescents, should be taught that they are accountable for their actions. A big part of what promulgates the worsening culture of lawlessness across the country is the fact that when children act in a reprehensible manner, their actions are often downplayed or excused on account of their supposed ignorance or naivety. When adolescents cheat, steal and bully, they, like the society which raised them, sometimes characterise their behaviour as being nothing more than typical teenage conduct. They associate model behaviour with maturity and adulthood and see sensibility and civic-mindedness as being out of character for people within their age group. The reason they see it this way is because this is the attitude they observe among their parents and other adults.
Children are not idiots. From as early in life as the age at which a child begins to process their own emotions, they know and understand that certain abusive actions cause harm to others. When children, like adults, commit violent and savage crimes, they are well aware of what they are doing. The baseless notion that children must be shielded from the law because they are victims in this world (unlike adults, I guess) will not help the country move out of its crime-ridden state.
Are child criminals victims or victimisers? The truth is, we are all victims of some injustice or evil in this world, but even victimisers who were victims of a wicked and hard upbringing pose a threat to society. Rather than creating monsters either to incarcerate or execute, we should strive to create less of them, and we can do that by first recognising that character building does not start at age 18.