You do realise I'm Australian?
Hence, all the asking.
Perhaps one day there'll be a high security facility for extremely violent and very young offenders.
A poster has previously made the very good point that putting young kids into an adult prison environment isn't a good thing. From things I've read and heard, young offenders in an adult population are generally not better people when they get out due to isolation or abuse from predatory older prisoners, or the learn a whole range of horrible new tricks through that exposure.
So, if they're to automatically be tried as adults in that state, it's a done deal then, I suppose. I do wonder how the concept of rehabilitation and possible treatment for mental illnesses for kids of that age group would be addressed in an adult facility.
I don't think they should be thrown in a dungeon with bread and water. If that was MY daughter they'd stabbed 19 times, sure I may wish differently. But she's not, so I can look at this more objectively in context of the larger issues the whole thing raises.
So, given they -are- going to an adult prison, how should they be treated there? If they are deemed not to be mentally ill, what measures should be taken to rehabilitate them, if any? If they deemed ill, I'm supposing they'd go a secure hospital?
I'm thinking of the UK and how little Jamie Bulger's killers got out while still pretty young. The whole country was outraged, and rightly thought there was an extreme risk of some kind of re-offense (one was caught with kiddy *advertiser censored* not long after being released).
Because child killers under 14-15 yo are actually quite rare, it seems to me a travesty that they aren't afforded better care, in terms of evaluations, treatments, and facilities that offer them a chance to come out as balanced people rather than just more dangerous than they went in.
Mary Bell is a better example of a child killer who's had successful rehabilitation, but then the cause of her rage/violence was removed when she was put in prison, away from her terrible home (though a guard knocked her up while she was in prison and of course she had to give the baby up so the sad things didn't quite end for her right away). Still, she has lived a life free of violence as an adult on the outside.
This is what I meant when I was talking about abuse being a factor. Not an excuse, I don't have an angle here, to be clear so we all understand that. Just, Mary did what a lot of kids do, and took all the rage in her life of rape and terror and deflected it onto younger kids, littler creatures that she could 'safely' (as it were) express her rage on. She wasn't insane, I don't think, but I do think she was mentally and emotionally unhinged by what was happening to her. So, not a sociopath, not someone with an innate lack of empathy, and thus able to rehabilitate after the abuse (ie, the cause of her pain) was removed. If Mary was, as some might suggest, "evil" then I guess her evil just kinda .. went away.
For other kids with actual organic brain issues and hard-wired homicidal urges and the like, I don't think it would be quite so effective. Those kids are the ones who need to be much more carefully examined before being released again. But then, they first have to be identified as such.
All that entails a lot of time and expertise, which prisoners don't generally get. The idea of the adult version of the girl with "no remorse" getting out after thirty years in adult prison with little treatment/rehab - that's a scary thought, right there.
Oh wow. Waffle much. Sorry..
