Muhammad Hassam Ali, 17, was killed by stranger after a four-minute conversation in city centre

Summary

A 15-year-old boy was sentenced to life in prison for fatally stabbing a stranger, Muhammad Hassam Ali, after a brief conversation in Birmingham city center. The second boy, who stood by, was sentenced to five years in secure accommodation. Ali’s family expressed their grief, describing him as a budding engineer whose life was tragically cut short.

  • Rivalarrival@lemmy.todayEnglish
    4515·
    12 days ago

    A youth justice system is for dealing with kids and teens who shoplift, or break noise ordinances, or run away from home, or abuse illicit substances, or any number of “boundary exploring” behaviors.

    A youth justice system is not the appropriate venue for dealing with “kids” so lacking in moral fiber as to deliberately and maliciously kill another person.

    The tolerance we have for “youthful indiscretion” does not and should not extend to this degree of violence. A youth justice system is not an appropriate venue for those determined to be fundamentally irredeemable.

    • barsoap@lemm.eeEnglish
      257·
      12 days ago

      You got the purpose of juvenile justice completely wrong: It is focussed more on rehabilitation and less on deterrence than the adult one because juveniles are still way more formable. Psychologists will descend upon him, and they’ll do the job his parents and neighbours didn’t (or couldn’t) do, a job which, at 15, noone is able to do on their own.

      those determined to be fundamentally irredeemable.

      That’s vile. Of course they’ll be unredeemable if you don’t give them the chance to redeem themselves.

      • Rivalarrival@lemmy.todayEnglish
        1121·
        12 days ago

        My decision to give or withhold a second chance for this kid is irrelevant.

        He can try as hard as he wants to dig redemption out of his victim’s grave, but it’s simply not possible. Unless you’re alleging this kid is some kind of necromancer, he is fundamentally incapable of redemption.

        Save the pshrinks for kids who can be saved.

        • barsoap@lemm.eeEnglish
          81·
          12 days ago

          Even if you now demand a life for a life, which isn’t your call to make, it very much is possible: He might save a life that, in prison or dead, he could not have saved. He might save twenty, even a million.

          You’re plain and simply out for blood. An eye has been struck out, and you hide your desire to see the whole world blind behind “well, we don’t have to poke it out, we only have to sew it shut” (put him in prison vs. executing).

          • RidderSport@feddit.orgEnglish
            2·
            11 days ago

            There’s virtually no crime that can be physically redeemed, except for property crimes. Literally any other criminal offense creates an irredeemable injury. But that is exactly why nearly developed country, except for the USA have a redemption-type penal system. How do you measure redemption? Is r*pe redeemed after 4 or 50 years? It will never be for the victim.

            But what you can do is try to help everyone to not become criminal again. Because for one, guess what, they’re human too. They weren’t born criminal and aren’t criminal by nature once they’ve committed a crime. They have the right to live their life as much as the guy they killed. Once you have them forfeit their right to a free life, you commit a similar crime. One that in this case is done by objectifying them as an object rather than a subject.

            This thinking is the result of hundreds of years of philosophical thinking and seeing the result of your mindset being used by tyrannys.

            If they do not pose a danger to anyone anymore and have reformed then they are to be let go. Also in dubio pro reo.

            As for minors, their mind is still developing, they may have cognitively known that killing someone is wrong, but they have not yet accepted it as their own moral. Not knowing even the basics of cognitive development of children, I feel like there’s not even a point to discuss with you

            • barsoap@lemm.eeEnglish
              1·
              10 days ago

              As for minors, their mind is still developing, […] Not knowing even the basics of cognitive development of children, I feel like there’s not even a point to discuss with you

              Are you sure you replied to the right guy because that’s an argument I made from the start.

          • Rivalarrival@lemmy.todayEnglish
            32·
            11 days ago

            He might save a life that, in prison or dead, he could not have saved. He might save twenty, even a million.

            Sure. He might save more lives than anyone who has ever existed. The chances of that happening are as good as winning the lottery, but hey, it could happen.

            He might also take another life. Or twenty. Or a million. The chances of that are substantially higher: far more people lose the lottery than win anything at all.

            The lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math. The best approach to playing the lottery is to lock up the money you would have used, and never let it out to buy a ticket.

            • Not a replicant@lemmy.worldEnglish
              3·
              11 days ago

              I find interesting that there’s a lot of “might”, “maybe” and “possible” when talking about rehabilitation, but not as much attention is paid to the “absolute” of another person’s death. Possibilities and potentials won’t bring that victim back to life.

            • barsoap@lemm.eeEnglish
              21·
              11 days ago

              If only he was now in a situation where he can be dealt with by specialists who can increase the odds substantially, and only be released if another set of specialists evaluate his mental state to have, as you put it, won the lottery.

              Throw away the keys and you worsen the odds. Also, break the European Convention on Human Rights, which demands that there be a light at the end of a tunnel for everyone: Because denying it, no matter how far away it may seem, amounts to taking away his freedom to free development of personality. In other words, he has a right to work towards redemption. To, if not arrive, at least begin to learn to walk into the right direction. Everybody does.

              Who are you to make a judgement on the future of his life while the blood on the knife hasn’t even dried yet? Can you predict the future? Make a judgement for the here and now, instead.

              • Rivalarrival@lemmy.todayEnglish
                11·
                11 days ago

                In other words, he has a right to work towards redemption.

                He can study necromancy for the rest of his life, and attempt to raise his victim from the grave. That’s his right. If he accomplishes it, we can talk about clemency.

                His right to seek redemption isn’t being infringed upon by locking him up permanently. It is the permanence of the death he caused that is denying him redemption.

                • barsoap@lemm.eeEnglish
                  2·
                  11 days ago

                  One comment earlier you seemed to have accepted saving a life as possible repayment for a taken life, now you don’t, any more. What happened?

                  • Rivalarrival@lemmy.todayEnglish
                    1·
                    11 days ago

                    I commented on it, but I never accepted your premise that saving lives counts toward redemption. The reason why is simple: Whatever future potential you envision this kid having, you must also give to the kid he killed. Balancing the number of potential future lives the murderer saves vs the same number of potential lives lost by killing his victim, this kid is always going to be one life short of redemption.

                    Edit:

                    Forgot to comment on this earlier:

                    Throw away the keys and you worsen the odds.

                    No, by locking him up forever, you greatly improve the odds that he won’t kill again. He is free to explore the development of his personality within the context of having his behavior directly supervised for the rest of his life.

    • geissi@feddit.orgEnglish
      164·
      12 days ago

      A youth justice system is for dealing with kids and teens who shoplift, or break noise ordinances, or run away from home, or abuse illicit substances, or any number of “boundary exploring” behaviors.

      A youth justice system is not the appropriate venue for dealing with “kids” so lacking in moral fiber as to deliberately and maliciously kill another person.

      If you’re distinguishing by the type of offense instead of by age, you don’t have a youth justice system, you have a minor offense justice system.
      Distinguishing by the severity of the offense is already part of the justice system.
      Youth justice systems explicitly consider the age and maturity of the offender, not just what they did.
      Also I’m not sure why a 15-year-old is a kid in one of your examples and a “kid” in the other.

      The tolerance we have for “youthful indiscretion” does not and should not extend to this degree of violence. A youth justice system is not an appropriate venue for those determined to be fundamentally irredeemable.

      This is not about tolerating behavior, it’s about reforming people to become members of society instead of lifelong burdens for the justice system.
      Despite the severity of his action, brandishing kids as “irredeemable” not only throws away their entire future but also burdens everyone else with keeping them contained forever.
      That profits nobody.