Criminals Don T Deserve Life Sentence Essay

Kids are not born being criminals, there are numerous reasons why kids get drawn into the world of delinquency. Three main reasons are peer pressure, the desire for protection, and the thirst for power and money. Many teenagers feel pressured by peer groups into doing things that they don’t want to do, yet they perform these acts in order to fit in or to stop harassment. In the article, “Juveniles Don’t Deserve Life Sentences”, the author Gail Garinger states that adolescents are “...less mature, more vulnerable to peer pressure, cannot escape from dangerous environments, and their characters are still in formation” (¶6). A multitude of teens join criminal associations like street gangs in search of protection, most of them have a distanced

merely as a part of initiation to a new life of delinquency. Another factor that comes into play is the surroundings, if a teen lives in a bad neighborhood with a community full of criminals it is more convenient that he/she joins a gang where they will receive protection instead of attempting to survive remaining excluded and vulnerable. On the other hand, several adolescents walk into the path of crime in a quest to find power and wealth. There are two types of organized crime: traditional being the mafia and cartels and nontraditional being street gangs and clubs, both of those promise the opportunity to become rich without getting an education or working overwhelmingly hard. In the article, “Inside the life of a drug-trafficking teen” research made by Evelio Contreras shows that, “In Eagle Pass, Texas, where poverty and dirt roads outnumber jobs and opportunities, Mexico 's drug cartels prey on kids --- offering them thousands of dollars to smuggle hundreds of pounds of drugs each week.” (¶92). The kids see this as an easy form of getting money and it becomes their motivation to join, disregarding all possible outcomes and