Juveniles Being Tried As Adults

“Juvenile Justice: Too Young for Life in Prison?” by HUMA KHAN shares the story of Cameron William who faces up to 110 years in prison for second degree-murder. William shot at a police officer in Omaha Nebraska and was also charged with robbery and assault in another County (Khan 1). William is shown to have a record of felonies, as a result, he was tried as an adult and idicited. Teens who go to prison throw their life away at a young age but their is no excuse for murder. These people are criminals who happen to be young. Chief Deputy Brenda Beadle states “Anyone who pulls a gun and aim it at an officer is a very serious threat and I would consider him a very dangerous individual”. Veterans on the force such as Brenda Beatle argue the danger teens just like adults can pose to their communities. Therefore teens charged with felonies should be tried as adults.

By the age of 14, most teens are expected to know what they want to commit them selves to make a living. If kids are given that much responsibility and such a young age, then why can't they comprehend the consequences of violent crimes such as armed robbery and murder? The answer is that they can. While most teenagers won't be able to tell you the maximum sentence for aggravated assault, they will be able to tell you that you spend year’s prison. Most teenagers and kids know that the consequences of violent crimes are severe.” If we can teach them as young adults what is wrong and what is right it can prevent a great deal of violent

There are differences between a juvenile court and criminal court in the United States. The focus of the juvenile justice system is on rehabilitation, in hope of deterring the minor away from a life of crime so they will not commit a crime again as an adult. In contrast, the criminal justice system focuses on the punishment and often bases the sentencing outcome on the criminal history of the youth. In a study conducted, Butler (2011) showed that the participants’ experience with adult jails and prisons show that those facilities may instill fear but are otherwise emotionally—and often physically—dangerous for youth. Many of the adult prisoners, who were minors when they enter the adult institution, felt they were forced to “grow

Jenkins, Jennifer Bishop. “On Punishment and Teen Killers.” Juvenile Justice Information Exchange. 2 Aug. 2011. Web. 11 June 2012

Lundstrom’s article has the strongest ethos. She uses different trials of juvenile crime in order to strengthen her argument. For example, she mentions Lionel Tate, who beat a six year old girl to death, and states that “Tate supposedly was imitating his World Wrestling Federation heros when he pummeled his playmate, less than a third of his size.”(11) She uses examples such as Tate to indicate that these adolescents are yet to be mature. This puts it into the reader’s minds that these juveniles are indeed not yet adults, and therefore should not be tried as such. Lundstrom also uses statistics that prove that juvenile crime is down, that “the nation’s juvenile arrest for murder fell 68 percent from 1993 to 1999, hitting its lowest level since 1966, according to the Justice Department. The juvenile arrest rate for violent crime overall fell 36 percent from 1994 to 1999.”(19) The reason why she adds this is because, in a previous paragraph, Dan Macallair from the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice in San Francisco stated that “We’ve created this image tht teenagerrs are something to be feared,”(16) proving that the crime rate for these teens have dropped dramatically, showing that adolescents are not as violent as they once were. Marie Lundstrom states that all minors be

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/

The United States has a larger percent of its population incarcerated than any other country. America is responsible for a quarter of the world’s inmates, and its incarceration rate is growing exponentially. The expense generated by these overcrowded prisons cost the country a substantial amount of money every year. While people are incarcerated for several reasons, the country’s prisons are focused on punishment rather than reform, and the result is a misguided system that fails to rehabilitate criminals or discourage crime. This literature review will discuss the ineffectiveness of the United States’ criminal justice system and how mass incarceration of non-violent offenders, racial profiling, and a high rate of recidivism has become a problem.

Day, S. (2014). Runaway Man: A Journey Back to Hope. New York: Library of Congress.

Those in favor of trying juveniles as adults believe that it deters and minimizes crimes being committing by all minors. That trying juveniles as adults will bring the greatest good to the most amount of people. According to an article posted by the American Bar Association by Nicole Scialabba, “the increase in laws that allow more juveniles to be prosecuted in adult court rather than juvenile court was intended to serve as a deterrent for rising youth violent crime.” It is no secret that youth commit crimes in our society. In 2014, law enforcement agencies in the U.S. made an estimated 1 million arrests of persons under age 18 (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention). It is debated that juveniles are committing more serious and violent crimes because the youth think they can get off easy and take advantage of the system put in place. Those in favor of youth offenders being tried as adults believe that as juveniles are punished to the full extent of the law, future youth offender will think twice before committing a criminal act. In support of this, seventy-five percent of the transferred juveniles interviewed by Redding and Fuller (2004) felt that their experiences in the adult criminal justice system had taught them the serious consequences of committing crimes. As one juvenile explained, “[Being tried as an adult] showed me it’s not a game anymore. Before, I thought that since I’m a juvenile I could do just about anything and just get 6 months if I got

The more thought there is towards how the teenage brain develops, the more the questions grow towards what capabilities teenagers really can do, and what goes through their mind while doing the most reckless things. The questions rise, but the answers are never given. On the website, “ Debate.Org,” it states, “ They lack the prefrontal cortex, the lobe of the brain that helps with reasoning and judgment. Teens also do not have a fully developed cerebellum, the area of the brain that helps control impulse. Without these two physical characteristics that separate the men from the boys, teenagers can not possibly be expected to endure the same consequence as fully matured adults.” Lacking the prefrontal cortex is like a car with no wheels, how do we transport from one place to another without our wheels? As tempting as it is to argue against this, the ideal picture here is to show how a teenager will make irrational decisions due to their lack of development. No teenager can be fully development and undertaken as an adult when it is scientifically proven that their brain is still in the process of developing. The connection to their decisions are literally off set and no where near to one another, they make decisions without thinking the consequences, expecting to get out of their troubled actions easily. Teenagers committing a serious crime is something dangerous out the world, having them being tried as adults when they aren’t even fully developed only shows how corrupted the systems

Richard Ross has interviewed over 1,000 juveniles in over 200 facilities all over the United States, he has gone to detention centers, correctional centers, and treatment centers. He has also worked alongside with the police department and juvenile courtrooms in order to get a better inside on how juveniles feel while they are locked up. All the people he has interviewed are as young as 10 years old to their late 20’s there are both females and males, who are placed behind bars. Almost 3 of every 4-youths detained in a facility for delinquency are not in there for a serious violent crime (Ross, 2012). They are in there for a minor offense, that happened at school against a teacher or student, or juveniles don’t have a suitable home. In a couple of his interviews, the juveniles are locked up at a very young age and it isn’t their first time being locked up they had multiple offense. Also, once they are placed in the criminal justice system, it is hard for them not to live up the stigma of

57). Research shows that delinquency and youth violence have been on the rise over the decade growing in epidemic proportions since 1993 (Hoyt & Scherer, 1998). Delinquency means for one to break the law and does not have to involve any form of criminal activity in one doing so. However, it is known that antisocial behavior, delinquency, and violence share common roots and similar consequences according to Mcwhirter et al. (2013). Violent crimes committed by youth has escalated by youth victimized by youth violence doubling the in juvenile arrests for violent crime by 2010, and fueled anxieties about future crime wave as the juvenile delinquents mature into adults (Hoyt & Scherer, 1998) with female delinquency making its mark up the ladder according to research. Usually when a youth is classified as a delinquent it is associated with antisocial behaviors within the family and in the community such as aggression and can lead to related problems such as vandalism, substance usage and running away, theft, robbery, and larceny, gang memberships and school shootings. Juveniles are typically not charged like adults unless the crime is serious. Delinquency in the United States is examined with the emphasis on its relation to local communities and the groups and institutions that form the social world of children and adolescents (Cavan &

In an age where juvenile crime has escalated from simple truancy to more serious crimes such as mass school shootings some would agree it is time to abolish juvenile courts or modify the system at the very least. Because of the seriousness of juvenile crime in this day and age, most states have already lowered the age limit for juvenile court jurisdiction from 17 years and are prosecuting more children as adults depending of the seriousness of the crime. Some criminal justice and child welfare scholars argue that younger children do not have the mental capability or experience to weigh the consequence of committing a crime and much less understand the implications of a criminal record in their future. Furthermore, they note that most juveniles grow out of criminal behavior as they mature out of the system and in

Can you imagine waking up behind closed walls and bars? Waking up to see your inmate who is a 45-year-old bank robber and you are a 14-year-old minor who made a big mistake. This is why minors who have committed crimes should not be treated the same as adults. Some reasons are because the consequences given to minors in adult court would impact a minor’s life in a negative way. If a minor is tried through a juvenile court, they have a greater chance of rehabilitation.

In recent years, the average age for first arrest has dropped significantly, and younger boys and girls are committing crimes. Between 60-80%