The Pros And Cons Of Adolescents

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Our teenage years are historically known for exploration. It's understood in society that throughout adolescent teens will make decisions, good and bad, that they will learn and grow from. But what happens when they get pushed to far, when they see no other way out, or just a stupid mistake goes terribly wrong? When and where should we draw the line for the adolescents of America? There are only 12 minors serving life without parole in the rest of the world, is it really necessary for America to have 2,200 people severing life without parole sentences for felony murder crimes that they committed before they were 18.
A minor is legally defined as persons under a certain age limit. Eighteen is usually the legal adult age here in America (West). Even though legally eighteen makes you an adult, studies have should that this doesn't end our childhood development (Ritter). Massive development continues for at least the next seven years. They found this out by using a MRI machine or a magnetic resonance imaging machine, to map the blood flow to the areas of the brain when shown various stimuli. They tested a group of people from the ages 10 to 25. They would show each person a picture and then watch the blood flow of their brain. They found that when the adults saw the picture, both, their limbic area, emotions, and their prefrontal cortex lit up, which helps us navigate through intense feelings and emotional situations using judgment and reasoning. They were having an emotional reaction with proper judgment and reasoning behind that emotion. When teens viewed the same picture their tests showed that their limbic area was bright but almost nothing in their prefrontal cortex lit up. They were having an emotional reaction with no reasoni...

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...way to rehabilitate them. This doesn't mean all 2,000 plus life without parole inmates will be tried agian, and it doesn't mean a juvenile wont be sentences with it. All this is saying is that the judge really needs to look at all the pieces of the case before sentencing a teen to prison for life (Savage).
Even with this court ruling life in prison is still a huge deal in America. Is spending the rest of your life in prison for doing something when you were still a kid an appropriate punishment or does it just reinforce that you can never grow once you mess up there is no coming back, no getting better. With this research you can see the good and the bad in people, and the human mistakes that cause this topic to be so hard to separate. The kids here were the ones who slipped through the cracks, the ones who had no one to turn to, and they ended up paying the price.

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