First of all I will insist that a lot of things which are now illegal, shouldn't be illegal. Also some things which are illegal and should remain illegal are still punished too harshly. This would have an effect on justice both for adults and for minors.


I have two reasons to defend liability for minors. The first is philosophical. If I am defending the abolition of minorhood as we have it; proposing that minors have a variety of "adult" rights: freedom of movement and residence, right to own property and assets, freedom to choose their education, right to bear arms, right to work, right to vote, and so on, including of course sex related rights; then all of those rights (and any other which would be extended to minors) imply responsibilities in their exercize. Those responsibilities include that their exercize does not lead to criminal activity. The right to own assets and property doesn't extend to committing fraud; the right of movement doesn't extend to vehicular homicide; the right to choose residence doesn't extend to burglary; the right to bear arms doesn't extend to armed robbery or mass shootings.


The second reason is pragmatic. We are not speaking about something that is foolish but with a low danger to others, such as joyriding or underage drinking. We're not even speaking about something which is justifiedly illegal but with a low degree of violence, such as shoplifting. No, I am speaking about acts which not just are illegal and criminalized because of good reasons, but which indicate patterns of violence and danger from the part of the perpetrators: arson, animal abuse, raping, kidnapping, assault, violent robbery, and of course murder (all the more so in cases where any of these adds elements of torture). The people who perform these acts as minors overwhelmingly keep performing them as adults until they are neutralized through either incarceration or death. They also escalate the degree of violence and enlarge the victim pools, as with age they increase their physical strength, access to adult resources and sociocultural advantages, as well as simple experience (trials and errors) in committing these acts. This means that by stopping them early, you are protecting future victims. It isn't without a reason that I chose the Bulger case as example: the perpetrators were released at 18, even with new identities to give them a clean slate; and yet they still relapsed into crimes against children. The new victims would have been prevented if they had never been released.