Comment on Open Thread, October 7 - October 12, 2013

Thu, 10 Oct 2013 16:02:31 GMT

you don't throw in jail a teenager just because of his/her natural impulses

Well, in the general case, of course you do... at least, if you throw them in jail at all. Adults, too. Most crimes are natural impulses, at least for people raised in a given culture; acts that we are neither naturally inclined to do nor explicitly taught to do tend not to be common enough to be worth the effort to pass laws against.

With respect to age of consent laws in particular, I would say there's more than one relevant age threshold if we're going to bother regulating this stuff by age at all; a typical thirteen-year-old is not equivalent to a typical 17-year-old, but neither is s/he equivalent to a typical 9-year-old.

I would also say that the kind of relationship matters more to capacity for consent than age, though I understand the "bright line" reasons for using the latter.

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