What is an adult?
I was driving into work this morning listening to the radio, and Rover's Morning Glory was talking about a story that happened recently where an 11-year old boy shot and killed his father's pregnant girlfriend. The boy is going to be charged as an adult for a double homicide.
I have a serious problem with this. Don't get me wrong, the boy needs to be punished, my problem is in charging the boy as an adult. He's 11... he's a kid.
The law says that at age 16 we're old enough to drive a car. At 18 we're adult enough to vote and watch porn. At 21 we're now sufficiently adult enough to drink. And apparently, at the age of 11 we're old enough to be tried as an adult for crimes? This doesn't make sense to me.
Why do we have any variation based on age for crimes, especially if it can be arbitrarily re-assigned at any time? If someone is accused of murder... then that should be the end of it. It seems to me that this ends up being an issue of unequal enforcement of the law.
I have a serious problem with this. Don't get me wrong, the boy needs to be punished, my problem is in charging the boy as an adult. He's 11... he's a kid.
The law says that at age 16 we're old enough to drive a car. At 18 we're adult enough to vote and watch porn. At 21 we're now sufficiently adult enough to drink. And apparently, at the age of 11 we're old enough to be tried as an adult for crimes? This doesn't make sense to me.
Why do we have any variation based on age for crimes, especially if it can be arbitrarily re-assigned at any time? If someone is accused of murder... then that should be the end of it. It seems to me that this ends up being an issue of unequal enforcement of the law.