Do Children/Juvenile Have The Capacity To Understand The Consequences Of Their Crimes

The United States of America is the only country in which juveniles are allowed to be tried as adults with life without parole. As of today, approximately 3000 minors are condemned to life without the circumstance of parole (Stevenson). Children who carry out horrendous crimes should get the deserved punishment. Juveniles should be tried as adults with life without parole but only in certain cases: depending on their motive or modus operandi, their crime, and criminal background.

Why should teen felons get to spend their jail time in juvenile detention centers for committing the same crimes as adults? In today’s world, teens are increasingly committing violent crimes and being put in juvenile detention centers. Teens need to be tried as adults because it helps to bring justice to families of victims, and it also teaches the teens accountability. Charging teens as adults will also help reduce crime in the United States. Although many people feel that teens should not be given severe punishments because they are immature and innocent, they have not considered the problem teens are creating by committing these crimes.. In reality, if teens are old enough and mature enough to commit violent and vicious crimes, they should

Kids ranging from 8-15 years are tried as a juvenile and to transfer the case into adult court, they would fill out an application to do so. Kids committing crimes such as armed robbery, rape, or even murder should be tried as an adult. This type of allegation will not go unseen just because he/she is a child. Even though these criminals are children, they will not or should not be exempt from the law or juvenile justice system.

The criminal justice system was created in order to punish people who choose to break the law. Some people believe they are above the law and decided to do whatever they like regardless of the consequences. Children and adults are both responsible for the actions they commit. The criminal justice should tried children as adults for committing felonies because a crime is a crime regardless of the age of the individual. This can be fulfilled by punishing juvelives with the correct sentence, by seeing that they know their actions lead to consequence and they have the proper process for a teen to be tried as adult.

The story regarding then seventeen year old Christopher Simmons is awful and I do not understand why people would abuse and torture people in the manner in which he did. According to the article, he had it in his mind that he just wanted to kill someone and it happened to be someone that he had prior contact with. No matter what state of mind he and the other juveniles were in, there was no excuse to treat Mrs. Crook the way that they did and murder her by throwing her off a bridge. It baffles my mind how cruel people can be, especially a juvenile; Simmons already had a plan in mind of how he wanted the crime to take place and I find this to be very sickening. Not only did he and the other juvenile murder someone, but they also committed a serious crime of burglary (www.law.cornell.edu).

There are certain instances of juveniles being tried as adults and sometimes ending up getting a life sentence without a chance of parole. I find that pretty harsh because there have been some cases where the juvenile meant no harm, they were either confused or brought along by gang members and they end up being charged along with the gang members for just being with them when a crime goes down. I believe that juveniles do not deserve to be given a life sentence because for one they are still maturing, they can learn from their mistakes and make amends, we still have to combat crimes like intended murder committed by a juvenile with extreme punishments especially if they are well over the age of 16.

In today’s society the youth generation seems to be facing some problems that there is no solution for. Juveniles are participating in many wrongdoing activities that they are not being held accountable for. I see many gray areas when it comes to the juveniles justice system and I strongly believe there should be changes made in order to help these juveniles be deterred from such behavior so they do not continue down a path that can affect the rest of their lives.

He includes these statistics to make the issue kairotic. The author goes back and forth between interviews with Greg to the startling statistics about juveniles. He put these in his article to show that the issue is more common than one may have thought. This is an issue everyday people over look and are not concerned about. These studies suggest that juveniles’ being tried as adults is a serious problem that is only going to get worse if the public isn’t educated about it. These studies also show that a great deal of teenagers who commit serious felonies have a severe psychological illness. Instead of getting the help, teenagers are forced into adult prisons without getting the mental help they desperately need. The author chose to write this article to advocate for the teens that are tried as adults when there is a juvenile court system. He uses Greg as an example of a teenager who was tried as an adult committing murder. He uses Greg to represent the other teenagers in the adult system who have committed a serious felony similar to his. The author writes about Greg’s interpersonal thoughts to show that what he was thinking about as a teenage boy is not normal and he should have gotten mental help. These statistics about teenagers committing parricide with mental health issues, coincides with another

Touching Spirit Bear by Ben Mikaelsen is a novel in which the main character , Cole Matthews, finds himself struggling with his own downfall. He also finds himself fighting his own spirit. Cole is banished from Drake, Alaska because he has committed a crime. His classmate Peter Driscal had told on him for breaking into the school. Now, if someone told on Cole Matthews, they were going to have to pay the price.

Over the past decades, the United States has seen steady and significant decreases in the national crime rate. However, that is not to say the U.S. is not still experiencing violent and heinous crimes. For instance, teen related murder, something of which only a few years ago seemed to be fairly uncommon but appear now to be on the rise. If one were to inquire about teen murders, they would find no deficiency on the internet or in the newspapers of such stories. Which gives way to the question of what is to be done with them and how to ensure that justice is served to all parties involved. Something that needs to be taken into consideration is the fact that these adolescents are not children nor are they truly adults. However, in many cases,

There are many children in the world who are being put behind bars and detained for alleged wrongdoing without protections they are entitled to. Throughout the world, children are charged and sentenced for actions that should not be considered as adult crimes. Here in the United States, the minimum age of criminal responsibility is age 12. Law enforcement officials and those in the juvenile justice system nationwide tend to mistreat underage individuals by trying cases while working through the lens of an adult. Unfair punishments are still handed down domestically, which is in violation of Supreme Court law. The following articles specifically address the idea that juvenile justice is unethical. In the article, “Juvenile Justice & Adolescent

In our society, crimes are being committed not only by adults but by juveniles as well. By law as soon as a person turns 18 they are considered to be an adult. So what if an adult and a juvenile were to commit the same crime yet were sentenced differently simply based on the fact that one is a child and one is an adult? Juveniles are committing violent crimes just as adults and should be given the equal treatment and sentencing as adults receive. Juveniles aren’t completely ignorant as everyone seems to think. In fact they are quite clever. If juveniles are capable of committing heinous crimes who knows what else they are capable of. Yet not all crimes juveniles execute aren’t evil crimes and should not be treated in such a harsh way. Juveniles should be tried as

Juveniles should be convicted as adults for violent crimes because it is not fair for juveniles to commit big crimes and get away with it so easily. If they want to act like adults, they should be treated.

In today’s world there are countless crimes committed every single day. “In 2015, there were 1.42 million total arrests, at a rate of 3,641 arrests per 100,000 residents” (State of California, Department of Justice). Grown adults are not the only people being arrested every year, there are also juveniles, children, being arrested every day. One topic of controversy today is whether or not juveniles who commit these crimes should be tried as adults in criminal court. There are many differences between the justice system for adults and the justice system for juveniles. If a juvenile is defined as a person under the age of eighteen can we justify trying them in as an adult? Is convicting juveniles as adults a better solution?

Childress, S. (2016, June 2). More States Consider Raising the Age for Juvenile Crime. Retrieved from PBS: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/more-states-consider-raising-the-age-for-juvenile-crime/