Jason Simmons Juvenile Crime

This essay is about a young African-American male teen name Jason Simmons. Jason was born on July 24, 1998 to the parents of Tony and Sallie Simmons. They lived in a small town in South Carolina were there was not a high crime rate but crime still existed in their small town. Like all cities and town crime does not omit it because it’s small or large because there is always someone trying to get something for nothing. Furthermore, there was some known gang activity in the small town. Therefore, there were some concerns of the young kids in the town getting involved in this activity in order to fill like they were a part of the in crowd. Furthermore, a lot of the kids did get blamed for being a part of these local gangs but are not actually

He was caught taking a small bag of candy, a candy bar, bag of chips and a soda in which he did have the money to pay for but choose not to pay. Although, he was only eleven years old he was still charged with this crime as a juvenile and it was considered to be a misdemeanor under the state law of South Carolina Sections 22-3-540, 22-3-545, 22-3-550, and 14-25-65 (scstatehouse.gov, n.d.). Therefore, as a juvenile his crime was turned over to family court but that was not the only trouble he found himself to be a part of in a short time. Rather than stay at home after he found himself facing misdemeanor charges for shop-lifting he found himself later getting a simple assault charge as well. Now in the state of South Carolina simple assault is the carried out of a threat of bodily harm coupled with an apparent, present ability to cause the harm (S.C. Code Ann. § 16-3-600)(criminaldefenselawyer.com, n.d.). Therefore, he was charged with two misdemeanor crimes and was released to the care of his parents until his hearing date because as a juvenile he is entitled to a hearing in family court unless he is being tried as an adult. Furthermore, he had never been into any trouble with the local law or any law enforcement agency until these two incidents. There was also the fact that he had no known gang affiliation besides hanging with some known gang members but that is not enough

Now as a part of his sentencing there is also a mandatory curfew that he must maintain or he will be sent to the Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ). Furthermore, he received this form of sentencing because he had not been in any form of major trouble in the past and his council argued that issue. There is also the fact that he will have to take a drug test every time he goes to see his probation officer for his mandatory visit. Now this was one of Jason options when he went to court because he was looking at facing an indeterminate commitment which means he would have been committed to a juvenile facility for an indefinite time but it would not exceed his 21st birthday. He could have also been advised or sentenced to perform community service, supervised visits, a drug rehabilitation program, a marine institute or group home program as well as school attendance program. Now all of these programs could have been one of his required sentences if he had no other offenses or referrals and maintain his curfew for his previous crimes and even though, he did not receive any of these options the judge also stated that because of the simple assault charge. He could have placed him in a Placement Boot Camp for youth which, is a form of military basic training program for juvenile, a Violence Prevention Program, retail theft program for the shop-lifting and community based probation.