Juveniless Should Be Tried As Adults

Juveniles should not be tried and condemned as adults because they do not have the capacity to perceive what is good and bad. There has been a lot of controversy towards the subject of juveniles in the Court Justice System because many feel that juveniles are to young to be entangled with the law. People need to consider the possibilities of what the Juvenile Justice system can do to help and rehabilitate these delinquents instead of sending them off to an adult court to be tried as an adult, even though they are minors. When Juveniles are tried as adults, people do not know what type of person is being sent to jail and what type of person they are going to release into society later on. In the end Juveniles should not be charged as adults.

In the article “Kids Should Never Be Tried As Adults” the author says, “Think of [9 year-old] Cameron Kocher, who couldn’t even stay awake for his pretrial motions. Imagine Jordan Brown, now of all of 12 years old, advising his lawyer on approaches to cross-examining witnesses, or discussing pros and cons of pleading guilty,”(Robert Schwartz). This evidence that a child should not be talking about pros and cons and cross-examination at such a young age because they do not understand such things. These children were still in the age of innocence where they should be playing with toys instead of being at risk of spending over 10 years of jail time for something they did without understanding the consequences. In the same article the author states, “ In the early part of the decade, researchers for the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice found that…[Teenager’s] capacities change significantly over the course of adolescence. The researchers found what many of us were trying to say earlier about Cameron Kocher: that at age of 9, he simply couldn’t process information and plan a crime like an adult.” (Robert Schwartz). This evidence shows that a child is innocent and does not have the capacity to plan a crime like an adult would do. A child does not even understand what is right and wrong because they do not have

In PBS’ “Stickup Kid”, a man named Alonza Thomas was threatened with a gun by a man and was ordered to rob a store when he was trying to go back home. Alonza tried and failed to rob the store and was charged as an adult and given 13 years of jail time. This evidence shows how unfairly he was charged for a crime he was forced to do. Alonza had no choice but to commit the crime because the man put him into a position between life and death and Alonza had no choice but to save his own life. In Adam Foss’ TED talk the speaker says, “In the fall of 2009, a young man was arrested...He was 18 years old..He had his sights set on college but his part time minimum-wage job wasn’t providing the financial support he needed to enroll in school...In a series of bad decisions he stole 30 laptops from a store and sold them on the Internet.”(Adam Foss). This evidence explains the fact that juveniles are not dangerous because this juvenile did not want to hurt anyone in particular. He needed the extra money to help himself afford college but made a bad choice doing so. A lot of people may say that juveniles deserve to pay for their crimes no matter what their intentions were because they decided to break the law but is it is not logical to charge a juvenile that was threatened with a gun or that wanted to pay for an education with an excessive amount of jail time by