He said it seemed like the judge’s only options were “two extremes” of six months’ supervision or several years in jail, and it showed how inadequate youth court was for handling complex cases.
Honestly, this sort of case seems to need something that is not prison nor supervision. Some sort of intervention, I’m not sure what that looks like but I bet there are experts that could advise. But I also bet that would cost more than we budget for helping people get back on track.
You could argue that someone who does this should be in prison, even if they are only 14-16. But if data is anything to go by, these kids are being beat at home and deserve better role models than fellow prisoners.
For the victim, that probably still looks like a slap on the wrist. But in terms of rehabilitation, yeah, something like that would be better if our goal is rehabilitation (and not punishment), which I think it should be (as in, the goal should be to reduce violent crime long term, not to have harsh punishment to make victims feel better while causing the crime rate to increase long term). I hesitate to suggest things because this is the kind of case where the obvious answers are often wrong for long term societal improvements.
I would say that if you did day release, the “night” part should not involve spending time with career criminals. And most likely that time should be structured (e.g. an hour of homework, then an hour for dinner, then an hour for a victim support group, then an hour of TV, then lights out time) rather than unstructured (casually hanging out with other people on a bad path), because I think you really want to be working in small groups and directing the conversation. I think it should look and run more like a home environment than a prison, because these kids probably haven’t had a nice, structured, home environment.
However, like I said, there will be experts that will have a better idea of what data backed interventions have worked in comparable countries.
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