Thursday, May 15, 2008

Young offenders

I noticed in passing in the newspaper that Omar Khadr is 21 years old. He was 15 when he went into Guantanamo, and now he's 21 and still there. He must be fucked up. There is no way a person could be in that kind of prison for that portion of their life and come out a functional adult. If he had spent those years in a healthy environment, he might have come out a non-fucked-up adult by virtue of exposure to what a healthy environment is liked. Even if he had spent those years with his family, he might have come out non-fucked-up - I'm sure personally know several cases where people from extremist families came out as moderates as part of their normal adolescent rebellion. Of course, he might have still turned out fucked up anyway, but you can see how the possibility of non-fucked-up would have been there. But by having spent those years in Guantanamo, there's no chance of him not being fucked up.

Then I turned the page and saw that they might start treating young offenders the same as adult offenders. This worries me. I'm worried that if the justice system is forced to treat young offenders the same as adults, then there won't be any room to fix people who can become un-fucked-up by growing up. I'm not saying that all young offenders are innocents who don't know what they're doing - I've been on the receiving end of enough adolescent cruelty to know that! And I'm not saying that they don't understand that stealing things or hurting people is bad, I'm quite certain they do. But you know in that awful stage of early adolescence where the hormones are flying and you just can't grok that this is temporary and that the world is bigger and kinder than the middle school cafeteria, and you're sort of hostile and defensive and ready to pounce because of that? And then as you get older you see that the world is bigger and there are other ways to live and in the real world everyone isn't judging you for the shade of blue of your jeans, and you sort of mellow out and are more able to calmly go about life and let things just roll off your back? I can see how in some cases the adolescent hostility might lead to criminality, and the mellowing out as you see the bigger world might eliminate it. And it would be a shame to eliminate this possibility in applicable cases by forcing the offenders to be sentenced to imprisonment pursuant to adult standards.

I know in some cases society needs to be protected from the offender, but in cases where they would become a better person just by being exposed to a bigger, less nitpicky world than the school cafeteria, prison (even in a juvenile institution) isn't going to un-fuck them up. I don't want to see those who can be un-fucked-up lose that chance just because of political will to further punish the permanently fucked-up ones.

1 comment:

laura k said...

Excellent. Thanks.