Juvenile Leniency Essay

When discussing juvenile offenders, there seems to be a distinct divide between how they should be treated in a court of law. Some believe such young citizens should be treated with leniency in court, while others could not agree less. So this raises the question, “Should we treat minors with more leniency than their adult counterparts because of their young, developing minds?” I believe that treating minors with leniency is doing them an insufferable injustice and it is vital that we treat them in equivalence to adults to instill the lesson that no one wrongful actions are inexcusable because of their age.
First and foremost, juveniles are commonly thought of as underdeveloped and naive children who are not always aware of the repercussions

As you can see, the
Seal 2 juvenile justice system is an extremely toxic one, because kids can take advantage of their situation and easily manipulate the outcome in their favor. Some youths are even known to commit crimes without much thought, due to the fact that know they can not be tried as an adult. Another major issue regarding this topic, is that trying kids as adults is hazardous to their well-being and that they should be placed in rehabilitation centers rather than jail. According to the “Coalition for Juvenile Justice”, “young people were deemed to be capable of being rehabilitated and changed.” With that being said, it is a wide misconception that therapy and counseling is the solution to all our problems. Some are under the impression that if we forced children to discuss their behavior with professionals than they are perfectly fit to be welcomed back into society. Unfortunately the answer is not that simple, because evidence has been found that “Rehabilitation centers have had little influence on youths. The counselors that deal with our youth are inexperienced and so have the skills to counteract their behavior”

However, Jeffrey Fagan also discovered that “ all juveniles sentenced to incarceration received nearly identical sentence length, regardless of whether they were tried in the criminal or juvenile court” (“Treating Kids Like Adults”). Although, the criminal justice system may seem unjust or cruel in theory, they are clearly not. It is also important to note that while the sentencing for criminal and juvenile court is “nearly identical”, it is vital that we try children as adult