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How is a life sentence for one person supposed to deter another born years later? The second person has never heard of the first.
The teen years are so difficult. I cannot see putting someone away for 50-plus years for a crime committed at the age of 14 or 15 or 18. They should at least have a chance at rehabilitation and returning to society.
How about if no one is sentenced for longer than their age at the time of the crime — 14 years for a 14-year-old, for example? Life without the possibility of parole is just too awful to contemplate for an adult, but it probably is not meaningful to a teen.
— Cornelia Williams, Camarillo
Law needs to be changed
I strongly disagree with trying juveniles as adults. They do not think like adults, and science has proved that they cannot. Their brains are not developed to that point.
We should let our juvenile-justice system do its job.
We should not be sending 14-year-old kids to be with hardened older criminals to get raped or murdered in prison. We can rehabilitate adults — why not kids who are so impressionable and moldable? Why mold them into tough criminals, which is all we are doing in sending them to adult prisons?
We make a point of knowing where sex offenders live, and we do not want them near our children, yet, we are going to send a child to live among them. What are we molding them to be?
Warehousing youths with hardened criminals is not the answer.
The law needs to be changed.