Should Juveniles Be Tried As Adults Essay

In 2020, law enforcement agencies in the U.S. estimated that they made 424,300 arrests of people under the age of 18. Juveniles can be as dangerous as adult criminals and should be tried as adults in a criminal court of law. If juveniles do not receive harsh punishments, such as a year-long sentence, they may continue to commit more crimes, potentially escalating the severity of their offenses. Therefore, it is important that juveniles are tried as adults in a criminal court of law.

Juveniles should be tried as adults in a criminal court of law because they are just as dangerous as adult criminals, and maybe even worse. “After being arrested in Ohio at 17, Callahan was sentenced to a long sentence for a drug conviction. However, he gained early release after more than a decade in prison, and less than two years later, Callahan murdered his ex-girlfriend and her two young children,” says William G. Otis, a former federal prosecutor and now a law professor at Georgetown University in Washington,

“The high court’s rulings also took into account new scientific research, including findings that the areas of the brain that deal with decision making, impulsiveness, and consequences are often not fully developed until people are in their 20s,” says Carl Stoffers, publisher of Article Juvenile Justice, Scholastic. Even though people under 20’s brains are not developed, they still make bad decisions, and we cannot speed up the process of development or control them so they do not. They still made that decision and are fully responsible, then they will think twice before committing a crime because they will know that there is a harsh punishment that will encounter them. Juveniles should be completely responsible for the crimes that they themselves make and must go to an adult criminal court of