The prosecution of Juveniles as an adult should be permitted

"1. Forethought: noun careful consideration of what will be necessary or may happen in the future. Premeditation: noun the action of planning something (especially a crime) beforehand: The type of premeditation that often goes along with a crime cannot be seriously compared to premeditation that occurs in what is essentially fantasy. With your logic, the type of premeditation required to succeed in Call of Duty will see me through in real military engagements.Which is utterly false and nonsensical. " This is clearly a strawman and does not counter my points about premeditation. You used premeditation and forethought as defining features of of someone being mature, I pointed out that they do not necessitate maturity. In fact, you making this strawman demonstrates that your own assertion that these demonstrate maturity is fallacious. It would be on your logic, not mine, that playing Call of Duty could imply that one is ready to be a soldier. "2. We don't have captial punishment for robbery. Punishments are most often tailored to the types of crimes commited." I was countering your assertion that the highest punishment allowable by law is just. It is possible to pass a law which would sentence jaywalkers to death, but such a penalty would be absurd. "Me? There's actually little difference in my nature when you compare my 13, 16, 19 and 21 and 25 year old self. Only difference now is responsibilities really. But I am simply an anecdote. The change associated with entering adulthood is also a weak argument. What if the serial murder/rapist in jail right now converts to Buddhism and becomes a pacifist? The serial murderer/rapist that he was/is still has to be punished. You can't get out punishment because there's a slight possibility that you could theoretically become a better person than you are now. " I disagree with you saying it is a weak argument. There is a difference between an adult that decides to change his ways and a child who has not yet matured to the point where he is capable of choosing to try to become a different person. http://io9.com... http://www.hrw.org... "Burden of proof is on you to prove that a police psychologist is biased against juveniles and private psychologists are biased in favor of juveniles. " Here is your proof. It has been demonstrated that the psychologists will be biased toward whoever is providing the paycheck. http://www.psychologicalscience.org... http://pss.sagepub.com... "3. Again. Apples and oranges. They might be able to lift this or that, but can they carry 80lbs of gear for who knows how long? How good is their stamina and agility when the floor isn't waxed and maintained? The most fit 18 year old will still best the most fit 15 year old, all other things being equal simply due to skeletal and muscular development." This is not particularly important to the debate, but I will now ask for your proof of this. 4. Voting: Citation required. 5. Porn: List one "professional, reputable" porn studio that makes child porn. I'll wait. That is not relevant. My point was that if you have a system where a person under the age of 18 can be deemed as counting as an adult, then there is no problem with making pornographic movies of that person. You have now thrown out two red herrings at this idea. The first was trafficking and the second was pointing out that reputable studios don't make illegal porn. "6. Guns: Average age of gang members age from 12-24 https://www.nonprofitrisk.org...... If you would allow children to buy guns, then you are allowing newly initiated gangmembers to buy guns." Are you then arguing that nobody under the age of 25 should be able to buy a gun? I fail to see how this is relevant. "In the case of your friend with the gerbil, anecdotal evidence is anecdotal. " Yes, it is anecdotal. "That's why we have psychologists that work with investigators, to see what kind of person we're dealing with. Not all juveniles will fit the bill, but some will. That's the job of the psychologists, the investigators and the prosecution to prove. If they have the evidence that they understood the ramifications of their actions then in my book adult prosectuion should be actively pursued. " As I have demonstrated, there will be conflicts of interest based on who is hiring the psychologists. This means that rich families will be able to have their members classified as children while poor families will have no such protection. This also leads to the need to ask who to believe when psychologists come to opposite conclusions. The only way to avoid this is to make these assessments before anyone has committed a crime by an independent psychologist such as someone who assesses children in schools on an annual basis.