The current state of the juvenile justice system is one which has created an immense debate between a variety of people in the United States. The main question in this debate boils down to the issue of whether children should be able to be tried as an adult with no regard to their age. The juvenile court system is a separate entity from adult court which is used to handle the criminal cases of the youth in America. In the present, some children have their ability to fall under the jurisdiction of the adult courts revoked due to the gravity of their crimes. This should not be the case as the juvenile court should be given the ability to treat juveniles the way they should be.
Putting children in adult prison does not deter crime. It has an opposite effect on young offenders. Hence, raising the age for juvenile crimes allow young offender have more time to focus on rehabilitation. Cohn,
However, juveniles are often treated poorly after being tried and come out of the detention facilities in a worse condition than when they entered. The US juvenile justice
A grasp of the current conflict surrounding the responsibility and direction of the juvenile justice system becomes more obtainable when one takes into consideration how the system has progressed since its inception. The juvenile justice system was created in the late 1800s to reform U.S. policies regarding youth offenders. Since that time, a number of reforms - aimed at both protecting the "due process of law" rights of youth, and creating an aversion toward jail among the young - have made the juvenile justice system more comparable to the adult system, a shift from the United States original intent. In the late 1980s, juvenile crime, especially violent crime, began to increase dramatically (Snyder and Sickmund 1999; McCord et al. 2001; Butts
With as many as 200,000 adolescent entering the adult justice system each year, controversies arise regarding whether young criminals should be tried as adults. Many troubled adolescents as young as 13 years old are thrown into the adult jails for decades; thus, the current justice system has a reputation for meeting juvenile crime with harsh sentencing. However, are these punishments truly rehabilitating young criminals to one day become a law-abiding adult? For the kids living behind the adult prison walls, there is a greater negative impact on them rather than the necessary guidance to help them grow as a person. It is evident a criminal record can ruin an adult’s life let alone one of a juvenile.
When children and teens commit a violent crime such as murder, courts convict them as adults. This means that children as young as eight have been tried as adults in court. Eventually, these convicts will be housed in jails with adults. Despite the federal law stating that juvenile and adult inmates must be separated, most states do not comply with these rules. Furthermore, a law that varies throughout the states is the age in which courts send the children to adult or juvenile prisons.
For decades, the juvenile justice system experienced criticism from general public, scholars, and the judicial system. This culminated in several U.S. Supreme Court decisions which fundamentally altered the functioning of the system. These criticisms stemmed from the inability of the juvenile justice system to fulfill its intended mission of rehabilitating juveniles. There were many abuses of discretion, which led the U.S. Supreme Court to eventually conclude that juveniles received the worst of both worlds. In other words, the child received neither fair treatment in the courts nor rehabilitation in the juvenile correctional system.
Juvenile justice is a contentious topic in our society. In just twenty-three days, during the month of January, eleven school shootings occured. Although, the media frequently demonizes these juvenile murderers, as a informed citizens we have a moral obligation to examine the premise behind the actions of the accused because our children are our future. While juvenile and adult murderers deserve punishment for serious crimes, juveniles are capable of reform; therefore juveniles should never be sentenced to life without parole. Adolescents are biologically different from the general population which disproportionately increases the rate in which they commit crimes.
Because of this, it is essential to maintain a securely structured juvenile justice system in all corners of the world so that minor offenders can receive a punishment that is both appropriate and just for their crime. Moreover, the notion of providing socio-economic opportunities and services to encourage young people to avoid a criminal lifestyle should be promoted in urban and rural regions
Juvenile Justice Should juveniles get treated as adults that’s one of the biggest controversy in our nation now days, with many juveniles committing crimes that are inconceivable according to their age. Judges have the last word on how to treat this young people. Many people argue that “the teens that are under eighteen are only kids, they won’t count them as young adults, not until they commit crimes. And the bigger the crime, the more eager this people are to call them adults” (Lundstrom 87). This is why people can’t come to a decision as how these young people should be treated like.