Iowa teen convicted in beating death of Spanish teacher gets life in prison: "I wish I could go back and stop myself"

[delisen]

3. Anne Perry best selling writer committed similar crime.

Anne Perry, age 15, and her best friend murdered her friend’s mother by beating her to death on a walking trail. Australian justice was quite different for those two teenagers whose crime was also horrific.

I don’t know much about this current case but it seems to me that prevention is more useful than retribution and I don’t know that these sentences keep other teenagers from committing murder.

I don’t even know how many such murders are committed. Yet if we do have the ability to learn and prevent I would prefer we would make the conscious effort to do so. There seems to be so much raw ability to gather information and develop understanding now that we are not yet using to prevent crime.