Hello, I’m Zhan Qingyun.

The US justice system treats juvenile crime harshly despite having invented juvenile courts: serious crimes bypass them, while their minimum trial age can be extremely low.

American progressive groups criticize adult-style proceedings and even juvenile charges against very young children as harmful and irresponsible.

A recent case renewed controversy. China debates whether fourteen is too high; many Americans ask whether their threshold is too low—or should exist at all.

States decide which children and offenses belong in which courts. Wisconsin requires any suspect aged ten or older accused of murder or attempted murder to be tried in ordinary adult criminal court.

A ten-year-old girl was in fact charged with murder there.

At a small home daycare, she was among children aged four, six, and ten, alongside a six-month-old infant.

According to reports, she picked up the baby and dropped it—accidentally, her lawyer said. When the infant cried, she repeatedly stomped on the baby, causing death.

A caregiver saw blood, called police, and the infant died at hospital. Wisconsin law required the girl to be handcuffed and taken to adult court.

That was lawful in Wisconsin.

In China, a ten-year-old who killed an infant would bear no criminal liability—an outcome many would also find frightening.

Yet putting a ten-year-old through adult trial seemed absurd to many Americans. She said she panicked and tried to stop the crying. That explanation is hard to accept, but fear may operate differently in a child.

Many argue that a ten-year-old cannot fully understand her action or its harm. Nevertheless, the system placed her in adult court.

State variation is extreme: elsewhere ten may be below even juvenile-court age, while Wisconsin mandates adult court.

Such cases sound exceptional but genuinely exist and require a social response.

From 2007 to 2016, forty-four US children aged ten or younger were held responsible for homicide. Their fates differed by state: long adult imprisonment, no punishment, or juvenile confinement.

In 2003, two twelve-year-old boys pleaded guilty to killing a thirteen-year-old and received twenty and fourteen years. A child can truly face decades in prison.

In Wisconsin in 2004, two twelve-year-old girls stabbed a classmate and left her to die; she survived. Charged with attempted murder, they were sent to adult court despite defense requests for juvenile proceedings.