The Pros And Cons Of The Juvenile Justice System

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According to the authors of And Justice for Some, between the years 1985 and 1997, the number of juveniles placed in state prison more than doubled (Poe-Yamagata & Jones, 2000). While they are separated from the adult population if they were tried in the juvenile courts, when a juvenile is waived to the adult court, they are incarcerated with adult inmates in jails and prisons. In the past years, the courts are moving away from case-specific decisions on waiving juveniles to the criminal courts and are now considering the waiver on offense seriousness. This means that even if a person commits a crime at a very young age, if the offense is seriousness, they face the criminal courts. States try about 200,000 juveniles in adult courts every year because their juvenile courts end at fifteen or sixteen years of age, instead of seventeen; in addition, other states try about 55,000 more juveniles even though they were within the ages for their juvenile jurisdiction (Feld, 2008).
Roper v. Simmons Christopher Simmons, seventeen years old in 1993, planned to murder …show more content…

The issue with punishing a child as an adult is that the child then is cast aside from society; that the idea of them entering back into society is so heinous, we should lock them away forever is barbaric. There are only eight states and the District of Colombia that do not allow the sentence; four of those states: Alaska, Maine, New Mexico, and West Virginia will not assign that sentence for any person of any age. In twenty-seven of the forty-two states that have the life without parole sentence, the sentence is mandatory for anyone, of any age, found guilty of certain

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