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.
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?
Youth justice is for the many nuanced & lower stakes scenarios. Stealing a car, breaking windows, shoplifting/petty theft, getting into fights, drug abuse/addiction, arson, criminal mischief, etc.
Not stabbing strangers to death.
You can’t equate the two.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
This implies some sort of racism or hate crime, not a random attack. There may be something more that needs to be done
What is there to be sorry for?
Pearsaltchocolatebar@discuss.online stabbed him.
So a basic concept of right and wrong is enough to try someone as an adult?
Yes. This isn’t a kid who made a stupid mistake. They murdered someone in cold blood.
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And since a 8 year old knows a stove might be hot he should be allowed to drive, drink and smoke ,right? 🥸
That’s just ridiculous. He should be allowed to vote too.
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.
Yeah this kind of rhetoric doesn’t sound at all like a deranged psychopath who believes in exterminating the “other”…
The “other” in this case being the predator who deliberately and maliciously inserted his knife blade into a human body for the express purpose of destroying that human.
It’s not psychopathic behavior to decide that such a person constitutes a threat, and should be separated from society by any necessary means available.
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.
If you stabbed someone to death after a brief conversation, there’s something wrong with you, and it likely puts you high on the ASP disorder spectrum, which doesn’t really have a cure. Its akin to being a psychopath (which really isn’t a diagnostic word anymore, but i think it gets the point across better). Point is, you don’t get better from being a psychopath.
If you stabbed someone to death after a brief conversation, there’s something wrong with you
I don’t think anyone is disagreeing with that.
Point is, you don’t get better from being a psychopath.
You’re a psychiatrist then, I take it?
You’re essentially saying that this kid is beyond ANY help at all. That’s a horrible opinion to hold, and it’s wrong. It’s a 15-year old. Teenagers are extremely volatile.
Like are you saying that when you went to school as a teenager, you didn’t witness several people practically wanting to kill others? Those kids managed to control their stabbiness. This kid didn’t. You’re asserting with absolute confidence he will never be able to.
That’s ridiculous.
Hey different person here. But there’s a difference between this and being a typically hormonally hair triggered teenager. It’s a strange comparison to make.
That being said I read the article and only the maximum sentence is life. It’s possible he gets out in as little as 13 years. I for one am hopeful he can get better. And if he can get better, then who can’t? It’s worth it to try
It’s worth it to try
That’s very much my point. My point isn’t that teenagers are especially murder-y, but that they’re somewhat especially emotional.
So the other guy giving up on him before he’s even had a fully developed brain is sad to me. Perhaps he’s a violent shit who will stay a violent shit, and in that case he should remain confined, but like you said, it’s worth it to try to help him.
I don’t think many people know that human brain fully developed in their 20s .
This means as society, the best approach is to keep them captive in controlled environment, gave them all the help to understand why they did they crime, and after they reach adulthood assist if they are risk to society or not.
You’re essentially saying that this kid is beyond ANY help at all.
Yes, thats exactly what I’m saying. It is not normal teenage behavior to stab someone over a conversation. Teenagers are more likely to throw punches, sure, but not pull a knife out and murder someone.
No, it’s definitely not normal to murder someone, but also, you definitely don’t have the authority to say he’s definitely beyond ANY help. That’s the part I find ridiculous, not the part where you think there’s something wrong with him. Of course there’s something wrong with him; he stabbed someone to death. The point is that despite murder being a horrific crime, as a society, we have moved past defining people as singularly evil for all killings.
If he did not know the kid, this isn’t even probably murder — it’s manslaughter. And if crimes of passion basically are things that you consider evidence of people being “outside ANY possible help”, then what, should we just start killing anyone who kills another person? Don’t listen to any reason, anything, just the death penalty for them, even if it was an accident? (Which this obviously wasn’t but this wasn’t premeditated either, meaning it’s not legally murder, that’s just a way for us to emphasise the horrific nature of the crime.)
Here. https://www.mtvuutiset.fi/artikkeli/teippasi-uhrin-painonnostotankoon-ja-upotti-jokeen-paasee-ehdonalaiseen/3336726 it’s a Finnish article, title translates as: “Taped victim to a weightlifting pole and sunk them into a river - gets free on parole.”
When he got out on parole, he moved to the building I lived in. He made friends with me (because I was the weeder in a building of grannies). By that time he was already 50 something I think. Very polite, pretty nice guy to be around, never felt threatened. Made good food. And he asked me about a pound of meth that someone stole from the storage that I too had access to (not his cabin specifically, but the room the locked shacks/cabins are in). Now even back then I had driven a taxi for years in Finland, and knew all manners of criminals. This murderer (who actually did murder as it was premeditated, unlike the kid) definitely got rehabilitated to at least some extent. Never killed anyone again, that we know of, and I don’t doubt he did. He did beat one guy up, but that guy really had it coming and I don’t believe in violence. And I do mean he really had it coming. More sort of a vigilante thing, not random violence. And totally justified. I won’t go into details about that though. I get that this paragraph is now a pretty poor argument from the reader’s point of view, but trustmebro, he was alright, and prison had definitely changed him a lot as a person. Neatest dude I ever knew, spotless apartment, kitchen, fridge. Ate healthy, exercised. Then he got a bit too much into meth again at the time I moved out of the building and then I didn’t really hear from him until he was dead, but he definitely didn’t at least get convicted of killing anyone during those last few years.
The point I’m making is most criminals can be rehabilitated to quite an extent, even if not “completely”. To the extent that they understand not to pull of shit like stabbing people, at least. The kid probably has no idea of the hell he unleashed on his own life. And once he gets to feel that for a few years, I think he’ll be humbled a bit. So I would not say that he is “definitely beyond ANY help”.
you definitely don’t have the authority to say he’s definitely beyond ANY help. That’s the part I find ridiculous, not the part where you think there’s something wrong with him
It’s an approach known as perpetrator type theory (or “Tätertypenlehre” in German) that was notably deployed by the Nazis to be able to punish people they didn’t like much harder than others, by allowing them to say for example that someone was inherently and unchangeably a murderer and should thus be executed. The crime was essentially just proof of that, what you got punished for, was what some judge deemed to be the innate criminal personality you had. In particular this allowed to hand out lighter sentences to “Arians” and to decide that Jews for example were inherently bad and could thus be punished much harsher for the same crime.
I never said the kid was evil. He very likely has anti-social personality disorder, which we have labeled as sociopath/psychopath in popular culture. You can’t give someone like that therapy. They just have it.
The point is that despite murder being a horrific crime, as a society, we have moved past defining people as singularly evil for all killings.
We have not, and we should never move “past” that position.
To the extent that they understand not to pull of shit like stabbing people, at least.
Your standards suck. Get some better ones.
That’s all a sign of just how sick our society is. We can treat mental health, we can offer higher quality education, by doing so, we give a person the opportunity to elevate their socioeconomic status. These are largely key factors in criminal behavior. But instead we just lock up the criminal, because it’s cheaper. We can’t fix our society until the government stops prioritizing profit over health and education.
But instead we just lock up the criminal, because it’s cheaper.
Except, in the long run, it’s not. It’s only cheaper within the scope of one or two election cycles. Over the long haul, weighing the costs and economic benefits of making person a productive member of society again, it’s way cheaper to do that. But nobody ever won an election promising to spend more money now so that we don’t have to spend nearly as much in a few decades.
You are not including the “cost” of recidivism.
If he kills again after you release him, you have to include that “cost” on top of everything you spent to try to bring him back into society. Even if you get the recidivism rate down to an extraordinary 1%, 1% of the value of an innocent life is worth more than the costs of caging a hundred murderers for the rest of their lives.
When you include the typical risks of recidivism, the cost of rehabilitation greatly exceeds that of permanent incarceration.
We can’t fix our society until the government stops prioritizing profit over health and education.
I actually read the article, and if you get all the way to the first sentence, you’ll learn that he will be eligible for release starting at 28.
A 15-year-old boy who followed a teenager he did not know through Birmingham city centre and stabbed him to death after a four-minute conversation has been jailed for life with a minimum of 13 years.
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.
Takes care of recidivism, though. But I wouldn’t advocate it for that reason.
Someone who will commit murder at the age of 15 is very badly damaged, and will need a great deal of help to not be a danger to others in the future. That’s the compassionate route.
Almost zero governments will want to spend the money. Sadly, it’s cheaper to keep them locked up.
It also “takes care of” rehabilitation and redemption.
I’d agree, but only for crimes that aren’t fatal/serious enough. Deliberatly killing someone isn’t a thing society should forgive.
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.
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?
Taking a murderer off the streets?
I mean for other people. Of course we can reduce crime if everyone is imprisoned.
Murderers =/= everyone. What a dumbass argument you’re making.
How could you even infer that this was the point they were making? So far off the mark.
They literally said putting a murderer away for life is like locking everyone up.
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How does your question take into account the victim’s family at all? You may not like it but one of the pillars of justice is seeking a fair and just punishment for the victim and their loved ones. You may not care about the murder victim’s family so somebody has to.
You can’t act like a crime is all about the perpetrator and their needs.
How does the punishment help the family of the victim?
They are describing revenge but don’t want to say that word.
No, it’s for safety.
These kids targeted poor Ali as they thought he’d ‘jumped one of their mates’ the week before, if they were allowed out and about, they’d likely kill more of the family in their own revenge scheme.
Well what he did was permanent. So unless you can figure out a way to undo it, I think the punishment should fit the crime. Putting him back out on the streets doesn’t help the family either so it’s kind of a moot point.
Are you serious? He killed a kid, for no reason, in cold blood. He should never walk free ever again.
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.
Regardless of the veracity of your argument, it is not helpful to denigrate someone you are conversing with. Please just work with the information you have in the context of the discussion. There’s no need to make such insinuations to establish your point.
Nor is it helpful to cast Godwin so early…
I have no idea what that means
If you don’t want people to point out that you are spreading Nazi-ideology, than maybe don’t spread Nazi-Ideology…
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:
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Everyone can be rehabilitated, which no society has ever achieved.
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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.
Not really. Look up the life of car thiefs. Most gain inside knowledge after leaving prison with fresh connections.
Prisons are almost like a networking opportunity. Mark Cann made an interesting video about it.
Are you arguing for or against mass incarceration?
I’m too stupid to have the right answer. I can just make noise and hope someone smarter comes up with better solutions.
“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.
I think it’s pretty straightforwardly reasonable to say that we should above all else, remove their ability to continue to do harm. There’s going to be a range of views on exactly what that should look like - mostly based on your view of how punitive we should be. Options would include confinement, exile, medication, lobotomy, and execution.
Personally, I think ending someone through death, lobotomy, and the like is unnecessarily barbaric. Confinement in one form or another seems like the most reasonable option, and I think consentual alternatives are debatable.
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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.
If only our past behavior could give you some insight into the kind of people we are and how we can be expected to behave in the future. But given the complete absence of data I guess that’s just impossible. Oh well.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think their point is that “fucking up” makes it sound like he did a little oopsie, a boys will be boys, youthful idiocy thing. Which it isn’t at all
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We’re not, the victim lost everything: their future, their life, moments with family, etc. And you’re making it sound like, “Well, yeah, but he just made a mistake.”
You don’t stab someone to death by mistake, it isn’t a “fuck up.” Killing someone via stabbing is an aggressive, personal, close quarters kind of death. You can’t stab someone to death “accidentally,” and during the act, did he ever stop? While the victim was likely shouting in pain or pleading or trying to get away, did the kid stop his “fuck up”?
No. He knew exactly what he was doing, and there’s no rehabilitating that, especially if it occurred after a brief conversation in public. He forfeited his right to his life as soon as he took his victim’s, when he chose to willfully stab a man to death.
Edit: Literally the first sentence details how the two boys had the four-minute conversation with the victim, followed the victim around Birmingham’s city centre, and then stabbed him to death despite the victim being a complete stranger.
And neither boy showed any remorse or emotion during their sentencing. The one who actually stabbed the victim tries to claim he feared for his safety, and was “just trying to scare the boy.” Guess that’s why he needed to plunge a large knife into the kid’s chest when, as the judge pointed out, all they did was try to get Mr. “Just Fucked Up” to leave them alone.
Yeah.
“They fucked up”. Means they did something really bad.
As far as I know while “fucking up” can be used in cases of accidents it generally implies culpability and that is the way in which I intended to use it.
No, you’re trying to play it off as the other commenter pointed out, as if it’s just kids will be kids.
You don’t accidentally stab someone to death. This wasn’t a “fuck up,” if you read the article, or even what I wrote in the comment above, you’d see that the kid followed the victim around after they had already tried to disengage from the guy with the knife.
Knife guy sought them out, escalated the situation despite the victim and his group trying to get knife guy to leave them alone, and then stabbed him in the chest.
Where’s the accident in that?
“They fucked up”. Means they did something really bad.
Not really an accurate definition. Without accuracy, mistakes will be made.
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~%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!
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Sure glad the mod removed this post. Which made me want to read it by clicking “source”. So I read it. Backfire much?
