Should young people go to prison if they commit serious crimes?

In India we have reform schools for such young people or minors, We call them as 'Boston Schools' here after the young accused being heard in court is sent to such places and instead of punishing him or her, these people are reformed here by imparting education to them.Which includes conducting in the society, imparting social and moral values , teaching manners and etiquette's along with formal education. The duration will depend upon the severity of the crime and the prisoner or the school mate if required may be transferred to prison if he exceeds the age while in the school! Personally I feel that such schools are must in every country as the children are maturing too fast now a days because of early exposure of international arena because of mass media like TV channels and they are becoming smart in every area including crimes. There has to be check and it is always better to nip the crime at budding stage so that these innocent children are not grown up as a hard core criminals of tomorrow! Thanks for the discussion! I liked participatig in it! All the best!

He should at least go to Juvie, which pretty much is prison for minors. If a minor over 13 is committing serious crimes they need to see the harsh punishment their crimes would warrant in the real world. I think by the time you're 16 you can be tried as an adult and go to juvie. So if he commits another crime in another year, maybe the state will get fed up enough to try trying him as an adult.

In my opinion if the young boy is sensible enough to accept his crime and ready to be punished for it,then instead of sending him to the prison we can try to help him/her by sending him/her to some rehabilitation centre and helping the child to recover. It may be some careless act. But in the above case mentioned by you, I think he should be sent to prison because that child is dangerous. He should be severly punished.

The boy was not thrown to jail but will stay in a juvenile homes usually with the DSWD. He will stay there until he reaches 18 and will face the court. There are cases where minors are involved and they are not put in prison but put under reformation homes for counselling- not for punishment. If they won't show any improvement- the court will decide once they reach 18 and the case will be process as well.

I definitely think so.. Young people in our country don't go to jail too.. And i think because of that some of them think that it is okay to do bad things since they won't go to prison anyway... some of them even do more serious crimes, or criminals use minors to do their crimes for them..

Of course.. i think age does not really matter anymore. Since other young people take advantage f the law and even commit more crimes knowing teat the punishment is not so bad.. Their wrong deeds should be corrected as soon as possible.

I don't think he should go to to prison prison but juvenile hall for those who commit crimes under the adult age.

In my country, a 15 year old is a little person but I'm not sure if he committed a crime like this he won't go to jail. But if he was in my country, I would say, he is not so old to know what is right and wrong. Life brought him here and he probably copied someone older thinking that was right... I mean big people do make mistakes in recognizing what is right and wrong sometimes.. how can you expect a younger person to be always right in a decision?

I think those laws are so messed up, when they are that old they know right from wrong. Unless he has a handicap of some kind, i think he is old enough to know that's wrong and he should go to jail.

I am shocked to read that a 15 year old boy raped a 7 year old girl and excused due to he is a minor. This kind of criminals must be punished even though they are young. The boy already made a lot of crimes and escaped from the law due to his age. Most of the countries don't put the young criminals in to the jail. The law mentioned that a person must be above 16 years to put in to the jail. Young criminals take this as an advantage and doing their criminal activities. This kind of child criminals are deserved for the punishment. They must keep in a home and made them to realize their mistakes. IF the law excuse this kind of persons, they will continue their criminal activities and the count of child criminals will be increased in day by day manner. This kind of little boys whoever involved in criminal activities must be guide in a good way. They must be punished a little while for their mistake after that they must guide in a good way to realize their mistake. Government should take care about this kind of young criminals and change their activities and attitude to avoid this kind of criminal activities.

Im sorry, but at 15 you know what rape is PERIOD!! If he went out and stole a car, no, I think he should just go to juvenile detention or something of that sort. But this is rape!! He knows what it is and he knows it was wrong. It was a seven year old and he knew damm well that it was wrong. Who preys on a seven year old?! He needs to go to jail to understand what he did was so wrong!! The only thing that I think should keep him out of jail, is if unfortunately, he was a victim himself all these years and did not know the difference. I just do not have any tolerance for this area of crimes and I cannot change my feelings on this, no matter the age of the rapist!!