10 year olds too young to be criminals?

[Mandy]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/uk/7053482.stm
"As five young boys are given two years' detention for manslaughter, calls are made to raise the age of criminal responsibility."

Whilst I am not soft on crime, the sentencing for 2 years each for throwing stones when they were 10 - 12 years old did ring alarm bells with me. If they were from a middle class neighbourhood, I bet they wouldn't have been sent to jail.

[Marcella-FL]

Reading more than just this ONE article on the case is vital IMO. They weren't just kids who made a stupid mistake. They were kids who belonged to a gang who went out in a gang of 15 - 20 kids looking for trouble. They weren't just throwing stones and the "accidentally" hit the victim. They were throwing the stones AT the man and his son.

I think they are lucky they are getting two years. Hopefully this will wake them and their parents up!

[Mandy]

This isn't a wakeup call for either them or their parents.

It is a destruction of their (and their parent's) future life / chances (what little they had already).

This on a day when there are no more jail spaces left in the UK
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/uk/7053535.stm


p.s. Can you source where you read about them being in a gang of 15-20 ? What does a gang mean anyway in this context since any group of boys can be called a gang ? I have sometimes been referred to as part of a gang ? (when the "others" were just social friends). Couchtrippers could be called part of a gang.

[faceless]

a gang looks and acts threateningly - and if these wee bastards were in a large group when they attacked this guy then 2 years (one in reality) isn't enough. They won't, of course, go into prisons but 'secure accomodation centres' so the prison overcrowding problem isn't relevant.

[Marcella-FL]