Children Should Not Be Tried As Adults Essay

Juvenile Justice Essay In the United States, there have been many cases where a juvenile would be found guilty and be tried as an adult. There are other cases where those juveniles are tried as adult forever. I am against charging juveniles as adults when they commit violent crimes, the juveniles lose many educational opportunities and the adult system is far too dangerous for the young juveniles. Juveniles are also young kids but only the fact that they do not get the same amount of education or experience that other teens gain. According to the article The Steep Costs of Keeping Juveniles in Adult Prisons by Jessica Lahey, the author states that the juveniles “lose more than their freedom when they enter adult prisons; they lose out on the educational and

There have been many times over the years where a child commits a crime and they either get the punishment of a child or they get the punishment of an adult depending on their age, or depending on what the crime they committed was. If you send a child to adult prison it is a lot more harsh than juve so they have to be kept from the other inmates because it is too dangerous for them to be around them. The children transferred to criminal court were less likely to commit the same crime than those who went through the juvenile system. The children who re offended offended sooner and more often than the children who were tried in the juvenile court. In some states if the child is convicted in criminal court they can plead insanity and get out of the of the sentence they would be facing.

There are other alternatives beside adult court for juveniles who commit serious crimes. Many minors who commit serious crimes and are put into adult jails under complete lockdown are driven to insanity, provided not all the children who killed did it just because; for a lot of them it was self-defense, and if you put them in a separate section in juvenile hall with other kids who committed crimes like their own then they can have positive interaction but still be kept under lock and key. Should those youth who were protecting themselves be condemned to living in solitude for the rest of their lives for defending his/her self? There are always alternative choices. There is always a right and a wrong even if the lines are blurred.

A common issue in today’s society is the increasing number of young people who are being sentenced for joint enterprise. There are many arguments for and against this law due to many not wanting innocent people locked up for a crime they witnessed, or being sentenced for observing dangerous and illegal actions which isn’t actually their fault. I believe joint enterprise should no longer be used. The reason for this is because I personally think only the one who commits the crime should hold a punishment. I do believe those who took part deserve to be punished too, just not as severely.

In the article it states, “The court said that minors who commit terrible crimes are less responsible than adults: They are less mature, more susceptible to peer pressure, and their personalities are not yet fully formed.” In this quote the author is reasoning against life without parole because they are less mature and not fully developed. Although all crimes deserve proper punishment, juveniles should not receive life without parole because they are still developing and this punishment leaves no room for a second chance

The mind of a young child and the various elements surrounding it that can create a huge disaster among many people. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to experience the unexpected. Name "two" big differences that exist in this book that are in contrast to what we learned this semester? We learned that juveniles do not have the right to a trail by jury or the right to bail when Jacob had both of those things due to the Massachusetts law stated that if a juvenile commits first degree murder to go straight to adult court. Both of those things are two major differences between the book and what we learned in class.

Some people believe that juveniles shouldn’t get sentenced to life in prison because of brain studies, age, and the way of living. Recent brain studies have suggested that teenagers suffer from brain-tissue loss, this might be the reason why they commit idiotic decisions. In Gail Garingers article “Juveniles Don’t Deserve Life Sentences” she states “Young people are biologically different from adults.” Then she talks about the young adolescents being sentenced to die in prison. Also how there is a myth about the superpredator and how children are hopelessly

With this being said, all of the negative factors that make up the above mentioned methods of punishment, neglect to provide what the children really need from rehabilitation; treatment. Juveniles with alcohol and drug related offenses go untreated, mental health problems are ignored, and learning disabilities are overlooked. Rehabilitative options are becoming vaster within our communities. The reform has led many to developing new programs based off of research findings and pros and cons from the attempted rehabilitative methods mentioned above. The ideal was rehabilitating, but the methods were all wrong.

She uses emotional appeal rather than concrete facts, such as “they are less mature, more vulnerable to peer pressure, cannot escape from the dangerous environments, and their characters are still in formation. And because they remain unformed, it is impossible to assure that they will always present an unacceptable risk to public safety.”(6) She uses loaded language to create an emotional response to her readers, creating sympathy for the juveniles. She also claims that, “as a former juvenile court judge, I have seen firsthand the enormous capacity of children to change and turn themselves around. The same malleability that makes them vulnerable to peer pressure also makes them promising candidates for rehabilitation.”(8) This makes the reader believe that, despite the heinous crimes the juveniles committed, they are still able to change. Gail Garinger’s claim of minors not receiving life sentences for the fact that they have the ability to change by using emotional responses in the reader makes her article the least credible.

Many states still kept their minimum sentence laws. Opponents of minimum sentence laws argue that they lead to more people in prison, waste taxpayer money, and devastates families. Along with these reasons, the laws also continue to affect minorities negatively and they fail to reduce the drug trade. People that support the minimum sentence laws argue that they help keep criminals off the street longer, cause crime rates to decline, and deters people from committing certain crimes. (Issues &