When Kids Get Life Reaction and Peer Review

¶ … beyond just the presentation of facts in the When Kids Get Life video, and asked the deeper questions, "Why do they do it? Why do teens commit heinous crimes?" Until we understand these deeper issues, it will be impossible to truly or meaningfully address the issue of how to punish or treat these adolescents.

I also appreciate your willingness to share your thought processes. For example, you said that your views changed from what you learned in the course and through encountering materials like When Kids Get Life. Like you, I have also learned a lot and have changed my views. There are no easy answers. As you mention, protecting society is a primary concern and cannot be ignored. Incarceration does protect society theoretically, but as you noted, rates of juvenile offending are actually increasing. The public is not necessarily better off with the current programs. Incarceration alone is not enough. I believe that kids who offend, and adults too, need access to the services they need to rehabilitate themselves when possible.

I think most people would agree with you when you said that adolescents have different needs than adults. Adolescent brains are developing. Their hormones are still unbalanced. These young people do need special considerations from the criminal justice system. Trying them as adults does not make sense from a developmental psychology perspective.

Like you, the Jacob Ind and Nathan Ybanez stories were the ones that had the strongest impact on me. Both of these kids were dreadfully abused throughout their childhoods. Without any help or intervention, their anger and fear reached the level where they killed their parents. I do not believe that these boys would have killed their parents otherwise. Their killings are a type of self-defense. Abuse takes its toll on the brain, and kids might not know how else to defend themselves. They might not have any recourse, or have anyone they can trust. I believe strongly that it was their abuse that is the greater problem than even the murder. Far from condoning murderous behavior, this point-of-view and understanding of the bigger picture helps us to see that incarceration is not getting to the root cause of the problem of crimes such as these. We need to recognize abuse before it gets to the point where the child becomes irreversibly damaged. Many juvenile offenders were abused. Are corrections facilities equipped enough to help people like Jacob overcome the trauma? I doubt it. On the other hand, I believe that we have a responsibility to view people like Jacob as victims and offer them the help they should have had before they committed the crimes. It may be possible to rehabilitate many young offenders like Jacob, giving them a second chance at life. What we have instead is a system that is further punishing kids for being the victims of abuse. They have, as you mention, the "doli incapax," or inability to reason like adults.