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Hiroko Goto, a professor of law at Chiba University. She opposes calls to lower the age that people can be tried as adult criminals to 18 from the current 20. (Tokyo Weekender)
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Minors, that is, people under the age of 20, are fundamentally different to adults as their brains are not fully developed. Sending them to an adult prison would only make matters worse.
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10 Comments
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some14some
..and allowing them voting Right...? would only make matters...?
BertieWooster
I wonder what Goto sensei thinks of sending adults to prison.
Effective?
jcapan
A professor of law? How about a medical expert who can prove the difference between 18 and 20?
Keeping the two separate until 18 or 20 doesn't much matter IMO. But giving teens, say 15-20, soft sentences after they explore new experiences like murder is absurd.
ebisen
She's does have no qualification for having an opinion on this subject... A person thinking that somebody's brain fundamentally changes the day she/he had the 20th birthday is fundamentally wrong...
nath
No, but studies have shown that logic centers are not fully developed until about 21 years old.
nath
I have brought this up before in other articles but was told my thoughts were moot and not accepted. The frontal lobe develops much more slowly and actually might be in the mid to late twenties. Without this development, irrational, spontaneous and rash decisions are made. This is what makes for great athletes, and for great soldiers. Both take chances. Older soldiers would hesitate do to logic and life experience getting in the way of being a hero and often becoming dead.
samwatters
"Minors, that is, people under the age of 20, are fundamentally different to adults as their brains are not fully developed."
Maybe so but the brains of 18 year olds are developed enough to know the difference between right and wrong and therefore the consequences should not be softened.
Novenachama
Young people age 18 should be treated as an adult and if they're sent to prison, they should be sent to a place that holds 18 to 25 year-olds, not a full adult prison.
BertieWooster
In nearly 50 years experience of teaching, I've daily heard cutting and totally logical common sense from the incompletely "developed" minds of 10 year olds and complete CRAP from "fully developed" minds of 40 and above.
I rest my case.