Age
|
Sentence in years
|
12
|
7
|
15
|
Life + 5 + 3 + 2.5
|
16
|
Life + 6 + 4
|
16
|
12 + 7 + 4
|
15
|
9 + 6
|
15
|
8.5 + 6
|
These were the ages at time of offence, and the sentences, of a group of working class Māori
kids who killed a man in the course of a robbery.
The defence that the kids did not fully understand the
seriousness of their actions, given the prevalence of violent video games and films
that show people being hit on the head without consequences, was rejected. They
were tried and sentenced as adults, even the 12 year old.
In the USA, there are people serving life without
possibility of parole for capital crimes committed before they were
neurologically mature, and there is a movement to have them released. Some have
been released and some, usually because of the input of the victim’s family, remain
incarcerated.
If we accept current scientific evidence that the decision
making centre of the brain is the last to mature and may not be fully
mature until early 20s, and that kids aged 12 -16 are definitely neurologically
immature - then the trial and sentencing as adults of these young people in NZ
was in line with the sort of harshly retributive sentencing often seen the
USA.
To argue these kids genuinely may not have understood
the gravity of their actions is not to diminish the awfulness of the outcome.
They planned a robbery and caused the tragic death of a man who was simply
doing his job - but were they capable of understanding the consequences – for him
and for them - of those actions?
If the argument is valid that they could not because the
prefrontal cortex is not yet fully developed, then the sentencing of
these kids was all about retribution, not justice or rehabilitation.
Neurologically immature brains do not have fully
developed impulse control and they have a reduced ability to assess risk. When this is combined
with the known greater sensitivity to peer pressure and a tendency to rush into uncertain situations to test out possible rewards – it seems obvious that adolescents, and especially young adolescents, should not be tried or sentenced
as adults.
There
were of course other factors at play here, the most important being the social
class and ethnicity of those kids.
When a 17 year-old middle class, white kid drove his powerful car at speeds in excess of 180kph in a 50kph zone in Christchurch and killed a young
Chinese student who was crossing the street, his lawyers argued that the defendant
was too young to control his reckless impulse to drive at what the judge
described as ‘insane speeds’.
So unconfident were the police of getting a
conviction for murder, they prosecuted for manslaughter for which a guilty plea
was entered and the driver got a 5 year sentence, of which he served 2 years.
Further
evidence of the disparity in treatment of young offenders can be found when
searching the names of these young people on the SST website. The latter’s name
does not appear even though he compounded the severity of his offence by
fleeing the scene, conspiring to pervert the course of justice and expressing
racist attitudes towards his 19 year-old victim.
These
two scenarios – and there are many, many other examples of gross disparities in
the CJS in NZ – came back to mind because of the current debate around other
life-altering decisions that kids may rush or be pushed into before they are neurologically
mature, and at a point in life when they are peculiarly sensitive to peer
pressure.
If we
hope to ensure appropriate forms of justice for young offenders – something all
right-minded people must surely want to do - shouldn’t we also be alert to the life-altering consequences of all decisions that are made before people are neurologically mature?
