Florida Criminal Justice Problem Is Symptom of a Cultural Problem

From the NYT: Justices Weigh Life in Prison for Youths Who Never Killed
There are just over 100 people in the world serving sentences of life without parole for crimes they committed as juveniles in which no one was killed; 77 of them are in Florida.

I spent 22 years living in Florida, so Florida weirdness, which comes up on a regular basis in news stories always catches my eye.

I don’t know the best approach to dealing with young teenagers who commit heinous crimes. If we’re going to treat them as adults when they commit crimes, though, it seems like they should get all the other rights and responsibilities of adulthood without committing a crime. People naturally want to break away from their nuclear family at that age and find their own way. The very best thing about US culture IMHO is that we view people finding their own way as a fundamentally virtuous thing. The trouble is breaking away from the nuclear family at 13 years old is compatible with modern society.

I don’t have a program in mind to apply this idea to the goal of reducing juvenile crime. People knowledgeable about criminology should work on it though.

What advice do I have for Florida regarding this problem? Foment feelings of community. Florida is full of people who left places where generations of their families lived in the Midewest and East Coast. The void left by family is filled with the mass media, which largely are funded to promote products. So consumerism replaces family culture. Florida needs to work on making people feel part of something, especially the poor. People need to feel like citizens and neighbors, not just consumers. People need to feel that there are few laws, enforced vigorously and fairly by a criminal justice system that they have some role in managing.