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Juveniles be tried and treated as adults essay
Juveniles should be treated as adults debate
Should we treat juveniles as adults in the criminal justice system? essay
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Provide an appropriate title and an interesting opening paragraph to appeal to your stated audience (appeal with logic, ethics, or emotion).
Is it fair for one person, just seventeen years of age or younger, to be tried in a juvenile court, receiving a lesser sentence for under than someone who is just 5 months older who committed the same crime? Are juveniles under the age of 18 fully capable of being held responsible for their actions or are all juveniles mentally incapable of realizing their actions will have consequences? When you turn a certain age, you gain certain privileges. You have the ability to purchase certain things, the ability to purchase tobacco products at the local gas station, but most importantly the ability to be held responsible for your actions. To turn a new age every year is great but the age 18 sounds magical right?
2.Include a defensible, relevant thesis statement in the first paragraph. (Revised from Assignment 2)
Juveniles commit terrible crimes just like adults do and therefore no one should be exempt from equal punishment. A crime is a crime and for that reason Juveniles who commit violent crimes should be tried in the same way as adults. If minors who commit violent crimes were tried as adults and punished as adults, the number of violent crimes committed by youths would decline in my opinion. Consequently, in the future the number of violent crimes in general would decline as firmer penalties and punishments would be used to keep violent offenders in prison for longer sentences. Violent crimes can be defined as murder, rape, armed robbery, aggravated assault, larceny-theft and the like depending on state law (pbs.org). According to statistics the number of violent crimes committed by people under...
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... 29, 1998): C01. Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center. 27 November 2006. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/OVCR
Johnson, Kevin. “Police tie jump in crime to juveniles.” USA Today. 13 July 2006. 27
November 2006. www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-7-12-juveniles-cover_x.htm
Males, Mike and Dan Macallair. “The Color of Justice: An Analysis of Juvenile Adult
Court Transfers in California.” Building Blocks for Youth. 26 November 2006. www.buildingblocksforyouth.org/colorofjustice/coj.html
Reynolds, Morgen. “Imprisonment Reduces Crime.” Testimony from the U.S. House of
Representatives Committee on the Judiciary (October 2, 2000). Opposing ViewpointsResourceCenter. 27 November 2006. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/OVCR
Vogel, Jennifer. “Throw Away the Key: Juvenile Offenders are the Willie Hortons of
the 90s. Utne Reader (July/August 1994).
“You are hereby sentenced to life without the possibility of parole”. These are the words that a juvenile in America is likely to hear. Collectively, as a nation, the United States has incarcerated more juveniles with life sentences than any other nation. With this fact the arguments arise that juveniles should not be punished the same was as an adult would be but, is that really how the justice system should work? To allow a juvenile who recently robbed a store only get a slap on the wrist? Not comprehending that there are consequences for their actions and how what they have done affects the victims.
Jenson, Jeffrey and Howard, Matthew. "Youth Crime, Public Policy, and Practice in the Juvenile Justice System: Recent Trends and Needed Reforms." Social Work 43 (1998): 324-32
Today, the court system in this country is divided into two groups when comparing juveniles and adults. One is the Adult Criminal Justice System, and the other is the Juvenile Justice System. The terminology can be very different between the two systems. For instance; if an adult is arrested, they will be subject to a bail hearing. If a juvenile is arrested they must go through a detention hearing. Adults have trials which can be decided by a judge or jury. Juveniles go through a fact finding hearing and don’t receive verdicts because they are adjudicated. “They are not found guilty, but delinquent or involved” (Komiscruk). Another difference between the two is that juvenile court rooms are usually closed to the public, which includes the media. Their records are often confidential, protecting children from carrying the burdens of their delinquent activity into adulthood. Also, their records are supposed to be sealed. But what happens when a juvenile’s criminal case is transferred to an adult court? Are the guidelines or rules different from any other adult offender? What are the advantages and disadvantages of the sentencing guidelines?
Kids should be subjected to the measures of punishment that our judicial system is giving to them. Kids who show lots of enmity should be tried as adults. It is the only way to protect the innocent children. These kids know right from wrong, but they choose to do the wrong things and violence is wrong. As the laws have gotten stricter on discipline the kids have gotten wilder. When we let society tell us how to discipline our children then violent children is the result.
Meng, A., Segal, R., & Boden, E. (2013). American juvenile justice system: History in the making. International Journal of Adolescent Medicine and Health, 25(3), 275-278. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/ijamh-2013-0062
Juveniles should not be tried as an adult because they lack maturity and they are not psychologically developed. The juvenile justice system is putting youth at a high risk of not doing anything for themselves. If they lack maturity, they should not be in an adult prison. If they are not psychologically developed, they should not be in an adult prison because they are still young. Youth that is being charged as an adult, are more likely to commit more crime, than someone who is in a juvenile detention. More than likely, juveniles will end up in gang and other crime activities because that was all they was taught in the adult prison.
once the minor has committed a violent crime, they are no longer a kid. The minor had the ability to know right from wrong, but he still chose to commit the heinous crime anyway. Choosing to commit this violent crime means that the minor chose to act as an adult and must be held accountable. Once the minor has made the decision to act as an adult, they must be treated as an adult. If we do not teach minors that what they did has consequences they will never learn. Arguments can be made that minors should not be treated as adults and while these arguments do have merit, they are not my beliefs. In my opinion, minors who commit violent crimes need to be tried as adults. Justice does not discriminate when it comes to age. Right is right, and wrong is wrong and the wrong should be punished equally.
Thousands of kid criminals in the United States have been tried as adults and sent to prison (Equal Justice Initiative). The debate whether these kids should be tried as adults is a huge controversy. The decision to try them or to not try them as an adult can change their whole life. “Fourteen states have no minimum age for trying children as adults” (Equal Justice Initiative). Some people feel that children are too immature to fully understand the severity of their actions. People who are for kids to be tried as adults feel that if they are old enough to commit the crime, then they are old enough to understand what they are doing. There are people who feel that children should only be tried as adults depending on the crime.
For example, the court has already struck down the death penalty and the life in prison without parole for juveniles or for young offenders convicted of non-homicide. According to the article, “Juveniles Don’t Deserve Life In Prison,” Paul Garinger states that “Brain imaging studies reveal that the regions of the adolescent brain that are responsible for controlling thoughts, actions, and emotions are not fully developed. They can not be held to the same standards when they commit terrible crimes.” If this is true, there is no reason to treat juveniles as adults.
Sentencing juveniles to capital punishment is unethical and cruel. It is too severe for juveniles without the full reasoning ability and limited brain development to be sentence to the death penalty. Horn (2009) writes, “Youths lack the sense of responsibility that society requires of adults. Their personalities are not yet fixed… Young people have to little experience to fully grasp the consequences of their actions.” (Horn, 2009). This shows that juveniles do not have the experience that adults have to be like adults. Also, Stevenson (2014) writes, “Contemporary neurological, psychological…evidence has established that children are impaired by immature judgement, an underdeveloped capacity for self-regulation and responsibility, vulnerability to negative influences and outside pressures, and a lack of control over their own impulses and their environment.” (Stevenson, 2014, pg. 267-268). Stevenson (2014) is basically saying that children are not matured as adults and the court needs to look at these facts before giving such punishments. Not only that, Stevenson (2014) says, “Young adolescents lack life experience and background knowledge to inform their choices; they struggle to generate options and to imagine consequences; and, perhaps for good reason, they lack the necessary self-confidence to make reasoned judgements and stick by them” (Stevenson, 2014, pg. 268-269). Children should be
Approximately 107,000 youth younger than 18 is incarcerated on any given day “Juveniles in Adult Prisons and Jails”. There are so many arguments about if juveniles should be tried as adults. In my opinion, I don’t believe they should, mostly because the juvenile mind isn’t fully developed. In every state there are different rules and requirements for the juvenile to be tried as an adult. Instead of putting these Juveniles in prisons and jails there are different facilities these juveniles can be housed in. Inside prison the juveniles are isolated from everything and it affects them harshly. Juveniles shouldn’t be punished by being put into prisons or jails, there are so many other options to choose that aren’t as harsh.
Juveniles deserve to be tried the same as adults when they commit certain crimes. The justice systems of America are becoming completely unjust and easy to break through. Juvenile courts haven’t always been known to the everyday person.
Is it fair to give juveniles life sentences? On June 25 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that juveniles who committed murder could not be sentenced to life in prison because it violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the majority, stated that “Mandatory life without parole for a juvenile precludes consideration of his chronological age and its hallmark features- among them, immaturity, impetuosity, and failure to appreciate the risks and consequences. It prevents taking into account the family and home environment that surrounds him and from which he cannot usually extricate himself no matter how brutal or dysfunctional.” Juveniles should not be sentenced to life in prison or adult jail until legal age. Due to the facts that many are still young and aren’t over eighteen.
"Don't do the crime, if you can't do the time." -- David Grusin and Morgan Ames Much controversy exists on the question of whether a juvenile criminal should be punished to the same extent as an adult. Those who commit capital crimes, including adolescents, should be penalized according to the law. Age should not be a factor in the case of serious crimes.
As more minors are committing violent crimes, the question of whether they should be tried as adults has arisen. Children as young as 13 or 14 are committing violent crimes such as murder, rape, and armed robbery. Some of these children are being tried as adults while others are being tried as juveniles and receiving milder punishments. A juvenile offender may receive a few years in a juvenile detention facility and possibly probation following his release at age eighteen. An adult committing the same violent crime will receive a much harsher penalty, often years in jail, possibly a life sentence, with little or no chance of parole. The only difference between the two offenders is the age at which they committed the crime. Juveniles over the age of fourteen should be tried as adults when accused of violent crimes.