Analysis: Should Kids Be Tried As Adults

Should Kids Be Tried As Adults? Kids are being tried as adults by our juvenile justice system depending on the crime they commit or by the degree of the murder they commit. The way the crime was committed the way it was planned out plays a major role on the sentence of those victims or kids who are tried as adults. Some kids get locked up their whole life while the others who are given a sentence can be just kept until they turn 25 and they just let them go. This system is criticized by many people who believe that those who commit these crimes and are sentenced to life time without parole are not given a second chance to life. Many change and realize that they want to turn their lives around but they are not given a chance to even study

The bigger or deadlier the crime the longer the sentence of the victim. In Kids Are Kids ----- Until They Commit Crimes by Marjie Lundstrom she talks about how a judge in Florida will decide how old really a kid is and whether he should be tried as an adult. She also talks about how people argue that kids are kids and should be treated as kids. Lundstrom says “That is until they foul up. Until they commit crimes. And the bigger the crime, the more eager we are to call them adults.” It shows that the kids are not innocent but we tend to call them adults because of the crime even though they can’t do many stuff like vote, drink, smoke, watch certain movies, but as soon as they do something then we always find a way to think of them as adults which isn’t reasonable at all because a kid is just a kid. In Lundstrom article she also says “Meanwhile, in Texas, a lawmaker has had it. You want to throw the adult book at kids? Fine, says Democratic state Rep. Ron Wilson of Houston. Lower the voting age to fourteen.” The Texas lawmaker argues that a kid is just a kid and if the court doesn’t want to treat them that way then they should have all the privileges that every adult has like voting, smoking, drinking, and other things that adults are allowed to do at their

This was the case in Teens Locked Up for Life without a Second Chance by Stephanie Chen which was about a 14 year old who killed his older step brother which was 17. The boy’s name was Quantell Lots then became one of Missouri’s youngest lives to be sentenced to life without parole. The boy was playing with his brother and accidently stabbed him and his brother died. Pilkington says “It made no difference that at the time of the deadly scuffle, Lotts was barely old enough to watch PG-13 movie and too young to drive, vote or buy beer.” It didn’t matter that all this was an accident and that they tried him as an adult when he clearly doesn’t have the rights to do what an adult does because he is not one so why is this any fair. His mother then forgave him and was helping to help get a release. He grew up in a home where nobody helped him as a young kid. Lotts then said “They locked me up and threw away the keys. They took away all hope for the future.” He knows that it is unfair for him to get locked up his whole life for something he didn't intend to happen. He knows he will never see the light again and that he will spend the rest of his life locked up, because they gave him no hope of being able to show how much he’s changed or to even prove himself to a parole board. He has tattoos on his arms that in one says “DEAD” and in the other it says “MAN” because that is how