I suppose morally speaking I would say you transition when you develop personal agency and can make your own decision to be a criminal, which if you’ve been raised as a criminal all your life might not actually every happen. As far as if criminality is a bad thing, in a lot of countries or situations I don’t believe it necessarily is.
Legally speaking when you transition depends on the country you’re in.
Jeez… I didn’t read his original query that way at all. Just at what point do you start holding individuals responsible for their actions? The law (in the US) says at 18… but is that right? I mean a child raised that way isn’t doesn’t magically become more culpable on their 18th birthday. What if they’re still living at home and being intimidated by guardians? What if they start enjoying the work? what if they start teaching younger siblings? I dunno I find the whole thing complicated. I assume that’s what the original commenter was getting at.
Language evolves. I think what you wanted to say was, “that’s not the way I use the phrase, but your use is now a valid definition, just as literally also means figuratively, depending on the context.”
(I had to point this out because I’ve been tempted to make the same correction you did, but it’s a losing battle. English usage is not prescriptive.)
Uhm, well, it’s probably closer to truth than you might like. Thailand is notorious as a destination for paedophiles; it apparently has a child sex tourism industry? So these children may very well be faced with such a choice, for reals.
Excuse me, I have to go pour bleach on my brain or something. Kudos to @frauenfelder for obscuring the faces, good job Mark.
Ok, seeing the kid fingering the watchband reminds me of the professional stage performers who do “pickpocket” acts. I can never tell the degree to which they are A) using stooges B) doing tricks on regular audience members who can tell they are being pickpocketed, but are playing along, or C) actually being fooled by smooth slight of and and their own inattntional blindness…
I’m intrigued as well.
Looking at the photo, I think the kid on our left is gently but steadily pulling the woman off balance to her right, while the kid on our right keeps her in check, both providing enough distraction to keep the woman’s attention occupied especially by providing enough manual pressure on her index finger that she’s not paying attention to her wrist.
That’s my take on it.
The real deal.
Bro (or Bro-dette), I really could care less.
*g *
Speaking of misuse of language… That’s not evolution. More like de-evolution.
I beg to defer
(in too minds about that one).
The purse looks like a juicier target. Nothing like a little unofficial redistribution of wealth.
Just learned that ‘beg the question’, used appropriately, is itself a mistranslation. From the Wikipedes:
The term “begging the question”, as this is usually phrased, originated in the 16th century as a mistranslation of the Latin petitio principii, which actually translates as “assuming the initial point”.[2] In modern vernacular usage, “to beg the question” is frequently[citation needed] used to mean “to invite the question” (as in “This begs the question of whether…”) or “to dodge a question”.[2] These usages are often criticized as being mistaken.[3]
The real issue isn’t the missing watch or the cute little devil team that stole it. Rather it’s the fight it caused over losing the watch the boyfriend gave her. “You lose everything I give you!”
Speaking of misuse of language… There is no such thing as de-evolution. Evolution does not have a direction. Just because humans evolved to achieve higher intelligence than our forebears, that does not mean that evolution trends towards “more intelligence,” or that a trend that made humans less intelligent would be de-evolution.
The “most evolved” form is always the form that is newest, not necessarily the one that we would define as “best.”
Now where’s my damned pedant pendant?
That’s an open-ended moral / psychological question. More prosaically, we need to know when the special entity known as “child” disappears, so that we can deal with a regular adult who is Equal Under The Law. You gotta draw the line somewhere. The 18 threshold was set in most countries when kids started working as early as 10 and received very little education; nowadays at that age you’ve likely attended school for 10 years or more, and laws are, overall, much less draconian than they were. There is simply no case for raising this threshold, IMHO.
I’ve had chicklet-selling kids try to steal things out my my pockets in Mexico. I’ve had people rifle through my backpack while I was wearing it in Hong Kong. My travel philosophy today is to carry as little as possible.
It might be better to say they might be abused, unless we’re counting “go steal stuff so we can buy food” as abuse.
There’s people who do it in this country. When I worked retail, there actually was something to the hoary old trope about a black family being there to steal stuff, but if you found out what their story was, it was because they were desperately poor and no prospects. But I was still told I should be mad at 'em because, you know, why don’t they just go get a job? Nevermind that the employer had no intention of hiring those people.
Sorry, derailing rant is done.
Same here; in fact, I think it’s pretty well established in the U.S. that some crimes will get an under-18 youth tried as an adult, with the assumption that, say, a 13 year old should know that it’s not okay to kill someone, torch a house, keep going when she says “no”, and so on.
That’s not even a crime if you’re a white kid with wealthy parents and a bright future ahead of you 
Snapped just in the nicking of time he watched unfascinated!
When they’re old enough to sing and dance about their crimes.
