9mo ago

Boy, 15, who fatally stabbed teenager he did not know in Birmingham is jailed for life

www.theguardian.com

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.

134 comments

This is genuinely disappointing. I understand the need for punishment, but unless there is therapy, a path to recovery and reintegration into society, we're just housing more and more people without a future.
- I'm sorry, but at 15 you're old enough to know that stabbing a stranger to death is wrong.
  
  Sure but what's even the point of a youth Justice system if you're gonna say that and try every kid as an adult?
  
  I'm sorry, but at 15 you're old enough to know that stabbing a stranger to death is wrong.
  Yes? What do you think they're implying, that we should try to rehabilitate criminals... but only if they're still young?
  I think (and forgive me if I'm wrong) they're essentially saying that without a rehabilitory justice system, we're just locking people up for life and creating a net drain on society. Financially, culturally... it's a morale drain on our nation, even.
  Not to mention that as a society we're abandoning a person who, through a justice system built on rehabilitation and not some ye oldie Catholic concept of creating a punishing Hell on Earth, could actually flourish one day, adding to our society instead of taking from it.
  A prison system designed to simply incarcerate, punish and torture those it touches will never offer anywhere near the same benefits to us as one that is designed to attempt to rehabilitate.
  Not everybody can be rehabilitated, of course, but that's like saying we shouldn't try to treat cancer, because not everybody can be cured.
  
  What is there to be sorry for?
  
  This implies some sort of racism or hate crime, not a random attack. There may be something more that needs to be done
  
  So a basic concept of right and wrong is enough to try someone as an adult?
  
  Yep. The kind of humanoid that would choose to do this has some sort of fundamental fault. Unit is defective, recall to warehouse, keep in observation to further refine diagnostic models. Or just return to manufacturer.
  
  Oh so we shouldn't help people unless they were perfect?
  What an insanely simplistic take on the matter. I don't believe you're seriously suggesting that the murderer didn't actually understand that stabbing people to death is wrong.
- What about the other teenager? The one who died?
  He never gets to go home, he'll never be part of society again.
  
  While that's obviously very sad and tragic the purpose of criminal justice should never be vengeance or an eye for an eye. It should be about rehabilitation and reintegration. Yes it's awful that a life was lost but functionally removing another life from society for forever is hardly a good solution.
  
  Well if we’re going to do tit for tat then let’s put this kid to death.
  
  Oh no, someone died... I guess the only solution is to provide free housing and food to the criminal, while not providing anything else he needs ensuring he'll stay a piece of shit that does nothing but steal from society and will likely end up killing more. /s
  Even a death sentence would be better at this point! Playing the emotion card falls flat if your solution is even worse.
- Are you serious? He killed a kid, for no reason, in cold blood. He should never walk free ever again.
- I think punishment comes first when it comes to murder though
  
  Is there any data showing that this is more effective for reducing future violent crime?
It should not be legal to hand out life sentences to minors, period.
In Germany the maximum sentence for minors is 10 years and depending on your developmental state you can count as a minor until you are 21 (You are always treated as one if you are under 18). And that is how it should be. Locking people up for life helps nobody.
- When I was 15, I knew it was wrong to stab people. It's not like getting into a fight on the playground. When you bring out a knife, or any deadly weapon, you immediately escalate things way beyond what school administration can handle.
  As a kid, I knew there were crimes I could do that were just "boys being boys." Smoking weed, petty theft, vandalism, even getting into fist-fights. I also knew there were crimes that were off limits, such as rape and murder. Just about everyone around me knew the same thing, too.
  You're advocating for a culture that encourages kids to commit more crimes and more serious crimes than they otherwise would because they know they will get off easy.
  
  It’s very obvious from your posts that you neither know what the purpose of a punishment in a legal state is, nor what the effects of them are.
  The idea that a multi year sentence is “getting of easy” is insane. And from what you are writing I get very strong vibes that you are one of those people who still subscribe to debunked ideas of perpetrator types, which are unironically Nazi-ideology.
  The world that you want to create is not a safer one, quite the opposite in fact. Rehabilitation is the by far most important aspect of a punishment and the idea that crimes like the one in question are committed by people who carefully weigh how many years they are willing to spend in prison and could thus be deterred is beyond ridiculous.
- This isn't a whole life sentence but 13 years and then parole for the rest of his life.
- Your prescription seems to assume that either:
  Everyone can be rehabilitated, which no society has ever achieved.
  That it's preferable to push a well understood risk to people's lives back into the community than it is to keep that risk in the care of the state where they can't kill more people.
  ...but you strike me as too sensible to prescribe that kind of thing, so what have I missed?
  
  Lots of/most/almost all prisoners are rehabilitated though?
  We only hear about the very small minority that make attention grabbing headlines.
  I'm in Europe BTW.
  
  “Western” countries don’t have a way to deal with the handful of truly irredeemable criminals. They will not and cannot be members of society ever.
  But what do we do with them? Lock them up forever? Kill them? Nobody knows.
- Locking them up helps all the other people they won't have the opportunity to hurt or kill
  
  Locking you (and everyone making similar comments here) up would also help all the people that you won’t have the opportunity to hurt or kill. Because how can I know that you won’t ever commit a crime like that?
  The idea that you can get security by simply locking everyone up who commits a crime is delusional and for the outcomes you only need to check the US.
- Fuck em.
  The victim got a life sentence. They're gone. I'd be fine with him being executed. There's ZERO remorse over filth like this. 15 is developed enough to know they literally killed someone.
- Why the fuck should he get a second chans on life when his victime never will ? If it where my son who where dead I wouldn't settle for anything else.
Good.
We should not let acts of violence like go unpunished.
We need to set an example for anyone else who may be thinking about committing the same thing.
- If your goal is to act as a deterrent then harsher sentences do not work, at least according to research.
  At this point, we think it is fair to say that we know of no reputable criminologist who has looked carefully at the overall body of research literature on “deterrence through sentencing” who believes that crime rates will be reduced, through deterrence, by raising the severity of sentences handed down in criminal courts.
  https://www.crimsl.utoronto.ca/research-publications/faculty-publications/issues-related-harsh-sentences-and-mandatory-minimum
- So basically I should punish these people who imprison everyone?
  Literally nobody is looking at this and thinking "damn, I guess I shouldn't stab people." There is no example. This bit of news will disappear and everyone will forget about it in a few hours while that kid is just gonna be miserable until dead.
  
  What's the better option then?
Isn’t boy 15 just another way to say teenager?
The point of jail for life is that it's worse than death.
Fuck prison sentences. If you've got that much of a problem with someone, shoot them and do it yourself.
The kid fucked up.
They should be rehabilitated slowly and serve their time and then be reintegrated into society when they show they are ready to be and have served sufficient time.
They shouldn’t be thrown away for 70 years.
- The kid fucked up.
  He stabbed someone to death, he didn't accidentally total his step dad's Corvette.
  The man he killed is never going to go home again, and he's not going to do anything for the next 70 years. His family will spend every holiday without him, every milestone in their lives passed without him.
  Because "the kid fucked up." 🙄
  
  Yes, the crime was horrendous. But if society just gives up on the idea of rehabilitating criminals that's not going to bring anyone back. It's just going to hurt more people unnecessarily, innocent and otherwise.
  Obviously the murderer should not be released until they are adequately rehabilitated (if they ever are). But in a just society prisons are for rehabilitation.
  
  Yeah. They did something terrible. I think we’re both on the same page here.
- So... I thought even England only had a life sentence for adults, and they had the option for parole every 10 years?
  Edit: average life term is 15-20 years before parole. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_imprisonment_in_England_and_Wales#%3A%7E%3Atext%3DIn_England_and_Wales%2C_the%2Cminimum_term_of_40_years.
  Life imprisonment is applicable only to defendants aged 18 and over. Those aged under 18 are sentenced to an indeterminate sentence (detention at His Majesty's pleasure). Any convict sentenced to a life sentence can in principle be held in custody for their whole life, assuming parole is never given for juveniles.
  Read the article, lots of nuances, he's probably got 10 years before his parole hearing, but this stuff goes in and out of courts a lot because the government often tries to interfere.
- Sadly, this seems like it's likely a case of psychopathy. Technically you can't diagnose minors with it, but they have pre-adult terms for the same thing.
  Children at that age, at least according to the majority of modern research, have extremely low rates of successful behavioral reconditioning towards socially acceptable norms. It's almost zero.
  The best researchers have been able to do, even with extremely intensive treatment, is to slightly curb their most violent and predatory tendencies.
  I agree that we should take a non-retributive approach to justice, but the sad truth in these cases, at least as far as we know right now, these folks cannot be fixed and reintroduced into the general population, they are too dangerous.
  Their brains, either through genetic misfortune, or through extreme sustained trauma from infancy, are permanently malformed. They lack any significant capacity for empathy or love. They cannot relate to other people on any level, especially emotionally. Their brains are literally not wired for it, as awful as that is.
  We shouldn't throw them in a hole though. They should be permanently imprisoned in specialty facilities that constantly treat their mental disorder and try to employ them in productive jobs that can help society. They should be provided proper medical care and resources, possibly tightly supervised short term release in condition of exceptional behavior and treatment response.
- Bro, what's going on? You're saying the same thing as half the rest of the posters here and getting downvoted to heck over it. Your comment isn't even edited!
- Sure glad the mod removed this post. Which made me want to read it by clicking "source". So I read it. Backfire much?

134 comments