Yet the person who caused that wound is still in the earliest chapters of life. Adolescent brains are unfinished; judgment, empathy, and self-control are still forming. That doesn’t excuse the harm, but it complicates what we believe punishment should do. If justice is only backward-looking, we may satisfy our anger while abandoning the possibility of transformation. If it is only merciful, we risk erasing victims. The hardest path is holding both truths at once: insisting on real accountability, while refusing to believe that one terrible act fully defines a human being who is still becoming.
Teen Girl Receives 86-Year Sentence—Here’s What Led to the Verdict
