I think the end of the argument is a bit short-sighted.
[edit: not "argument" - "article"]
If your child has potentially powerful skill with computers, you should not simply make sure they aren't DDoS'ing and staying in chat rooms.
You should be spending time, resources, or another kind of energy giving them problems to solve and challenges to approach with their talents. Don't just avoid court - give your child space to be who they are.
Teach them about whitehat. Help them creatively wield their strengths. Don't be selfish - be a parent.
Dude, if my child did this, I would pat him on the back, and go to court and ask a question: "Is it not insanely embarrassing that our GOVERNMENT which is theoretically supposed to keep secure is able to be hacked by my 12 year old son. This is not his fault, it is yours. Now imagine a 30 year old version of my son in North Korea who have real political objectives"
Wonder if there was an older member "helping" its common practice in the UK for gangs to get under age kids to act as couriers and to hold naughty stuff as if they get caught the penalties are minimal compared to a >18 year old woudl get
I doubt it's impossible, but kids can be plenty technologically adept. I can believe that a 12-year-old could act as a script kiddie or conduct moderate attacks.
Quebec's law system doesn't allow that. At most he will be sentenced to a few months of detention in a youth facility. Once he will turn 18, everything will be cleared.
The article says
> " was sentenced to eight months in "open custody" at a rehabilitation home for youths, with another year spent on probation."
I think this is great, and I also think that it's great that your record is cleared at 18 (although, it's not really cleared, it's just not held against you). As a Canadian, I appreciate that rule. Kids make mistakes, and they deserve the opportunity to make things right and live a normal life (there are obviously exceptions to the rule).
This kid has skills. As others have mentioned, his parents should show him some white hat programs (although many have age restrictions), and get him internships. He has a lot of time ahead of him, and if handled correctly he can do really well for himself.
It's always seemed odd that all kids get a free pass just because they're kids. I knew what I was doing at 12. I guess it makes sense; age is often used as a (bad) proxy for maturity.
That said, prison time for anyone, adults or children, for computer-related crimes is barbaric. But I doubt that's on the table here.
> It's always seemed odd that kids get a free pass just because they're kids.
In my opinion one reason why they cannot be made fully responsible for their actions is, that they do not have the same rights as adults. They are not allowed to drive cars, to drink alcohol, to have sex, to vote, to marry, to become president and so on.
Another reason might be, that they did not have the same chance to develop an ethic framework as adults had, because they had less years to learn.
> age is often used as a (bad) proxy for maturity.
I agree, but on the other hand there is a need for a fair (same for all) measure. I have no idea what would be a better objective measure.
> That said, prison time for anyone, adults or children, for computer-related crimes is barbaric.
I would agree if this is limited to "crimes" that are only or at least mostly computer related.
> they did not have the same chance to develop an ethic framework as adults had, because they had less years to learn.
Many people die without ever having found an ethical framework. In fact, it's possible to make ill-designed ethical frameworks of your own that can have disastrous effects on society. Believing that time is the equivalent of wisdom is unwise.
> Believing that time is the equivalent of wisdom is unwise.
I absolutely agree with this statement, but that is not what I wanted to express.
I would more say that time plays an important role.
Learning anything takes time. Not everyone uses the time for learning the right things.
Some people are fast, while some people are slow.
I would say it is not fair to judge people who had little time to learn (children) by the same measures as people who had more time to learn (adults).
As a kid, you have a distorted view of reality and your prefrontal cortex is not fully developed. That is to say your morals, planning, and judgement is not fully developed.
This was part of SCOTUS [outlawing capital punishment for minors](http://www.apa.org/monitor/jun05/jn.aspx).
The Prefrontal cortex is key to what we'd consider a person's personality. The seminal case of this would be [Phineas Gage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage), who had his prefrontal cortex (along with most of his frontal lobe) destroyed. Despite a hole in his head, he miraculously survived. Without his prefrontal cortex, he was no longer inhibited by judgement, shame, or morals. He didn't ignore it, he just simply didn't feel it. A man went from being honest and upstanding to constantly thieving and telling lies.
Since the pre frontal cortex does not fully mature until around the age of 25, I would argue the 13 years this child does, in fact, not know the full extent of what he did.
By that logic, we shouldn't hold 24-year-olds responsible for their actions either, right?
Anyway, what makes you think having a "fully developed" prefrontal cortex means one DOES "know the full extent" of one's actions? And what makes you think full development means one knows this better than 50% or 75% development? Heck, for all we know, moral responsibility might even peak at 15 and decline from there with further development!
Is there some sort of test that shows how much people have, as you claim, "a distorted view of reality" as they age?
Also, I think people tend to project their current selves onto their past selves in their memories. I even sometimes find that I have an odd sense of having known something before I learned it, because it's difficult for me to viscerally recall my previous unknowing state.
This works in reverse, too: Adults forget how capable some children can be, because they either weren't a capable child themselves, or forget how capable they were as a kid. Probably because adults are biologically prone to shy away from thinking of children as little adults.
I think a large part of the appeal of Ender's Game was that it treats unusually bright 11-year-olds as capable moral actors - the author clearly remembered what it was like to be one to a degree few other authors do.
Would anyone provide a counterargument? Or have I brought up a subject so controversial as to not be worth responding to? My mind can be changed.
EDIT: People seem to be misreading me. I said that the justice system drawing an arbitrary line at 18 years of age seems odd, considering some children are mature and some aren't. Some children know what they're doing. Some don't. Why is 18 optimal? Is it just the least bad solution to a problem that has no good solutions?
Your entire argument is based on the fallacy that children knows exactly what they are doing, just because you think you did.
You must get that this boy is not even a teenager yet. Destroying his life by throwing him into a prison will only result in him learning and befriending other troubled children. This will not do anyone any good.
The solution I would suggest is a minor punishment, say a week or so in prison - just to scare the living hell out of him. Meanwhile having a professional evaluate his situation and suggest a reasonable recovery plan (therapy, forced change of school in order to find new friends, computer banishment, or whatever).
Oh, really? Throwing him into prison would be a bad idea? The person you're replying to stated that he(she?) is against prison for computer crimes. In general.
Don't twist the statements here. I guess a discussion about arbitrary cutoffs for 'Yeah, a month ago he didn't know what he was doing, but now he's mature' would be fine.
Why is 18 optimal? Is it just the least bad solution to a problem that has no good solutions?
To me, this is what it is. Determining maturity and adulthood in an institutionalized fashion with a subjective measurement would be extremely difficult. Drawing a line in the sand at 18 wildly simplifies the problem of maturity, around the time when most children's brains have mostly finished developing. As far as objective measures for when you should be considered an adult, "your brain is done developing, you now have an adult brain" seems fairly reasonable.
Under Jewish law the official age at which one is considered able to tell right from wrong and thus held responsible for one's actions is 13 (for a boy) or 12 (for a girl). I've never seen a good argument for 18 or 21 being a better place to draw that sort of arbitrary line. My suspicion is that kids act irresponsibly to the degree that they do largely because we don't allow them agency or true adult responsibilities - we've infantilized them. Whatever age gets picked becomes essentially a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Once upon a time, there was a place in mild prosperity, where there was a reasonable amount of wealth and almost any person who worked hard enough and didn't run into any terrible luck could eke out a living. Near this land there lived a fully sentient and conscious, territorial dragon who hid in a lair guarding innumerable treasures. The people largely respected the dragon's right to its property, and when foolhardy wealth-seekers intruded on its lair, people largely allowed the dragon to go about its business, grievously injuring those intruders. But when a child, or an insane person, or a wanderer who didn't know any better strayed into the dragon's lair, people pooled their efforts and sent envoys to rescue them before it was too late. Of course, nobody was terribly concerned that this process made the dragon any less threatening, or that people would try to intrude on the dragon expecting to be saved.
You may by now have realized that the dragon is a stand-in for our criminal justice system, and the criteria are the age of majority, the insanity defense, and mens rea. You see, it is a common lament of libertarians that the criminal justice system exists to control people, which, to me, is only slightly inaccurate. The criminal justice system exists because we can't control people, not even to the extent of "don't kill each other".
We created a giant, bloodthirsty monster that likes to kill people who step out of line, and we called it "The System". While we're not sure precisely how The System prevents crime, we do know that societies with a System experience less crime than those who don't. We haven't, for the most part, done enough research to determine what particular characteristics are good for preventing crime, and to a large extent, of the research we have done, we ignore the findings. We have the System because it's been around for a very long time and we're all -- quite rightly -- terrified of what our society would look like without it.
Among the people who work with The System, there is little illusion that the whole thing was designed with the efficiency and elegance of closed-source software commissioned by business majors. But it's not terrifically important if we steal off some of the most sympathetic of its prey, because, on balance, the System continues to exist as a viable threat to any would-be offenders.
So we don't give 12-year-olds a free pass because we think they aren't aware of their actions. We do it because we know that a 12-year-old is at an extraordinarily vulnerable time in their life and oftentimes a pretrial diversion program can mean the difference between a postgraduate degree and a life on the streets. We do it because we understand that we don't sufficiently undermine the System by allowing 12-year-olds to get off, because for the most part kids that age aren't going to try to exploit our kindness. And of course we do it because there was never anything ethical about the System in the first place, merely necessary, and most of us can all too easily imagine how artificial and distant some of the greater structure of society seemed to us as children. Most people can't stomach the idea of sending a kid to jail.
Law isn't based on reason, evidence, or morality. It's based on fear. Specifically, fear that society wouldn't work without it. But we aren't scared of 12-year-olds.
The reason "nihilists" aren't taken seriously is because they like to rely on an overly simplistic understanding of the world and ill-conceived metaphors.
I am interested in which parts of that metaphor you think were overly simplistic or ill-conceived. I thought it was pretty right-on as far as how people treat the system.
The 17 year old youth who raped and murdered a girl in Delhi bus got off with three years in a correctional home.He was the one who drove an iron rod in the victims private parts and raped/tortured her for an hour before throwing her out of the running bus..he was just six months away from his 18th birthday..Juveniles always get free passes
That is probably just ignorance on the part of the journalist. A trial let alone a sentence is highly unlikely in this case. The child will probably do community service or extra homework. (Although, I am not a lawyer and Quebec does have its own laws, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.)
Not necessarily. The prosecutor can withdraw charges (edit: that is, prior to a trial) if they come to an agreement with a defendant, at the discretion of the judge. It is a way of expediting cases where a trial benefits no one.
[edit: not "argument" - "article"]
If your child has potentially powerful skill with computers, you should not simply make sure they aren't DDoS'ing and staying in chat rooms.
You should be spending time, resources, or another kind of energy giving them problems to solve and challenges to approach with their talents. Don't just avoid court - give your child space to be who they are.
Teach them about whitehat. Help them creatively wield their strengths. Don't be selfish - be a parent.