Kids Are Kids Until They Commit A Crime Analysis

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As presented by James Q Wilson, a Harvard professor and crime expert, “Some persons will shun crime, even if we do nothing to deter them, while others will seek it out even if we do everything to reform them. Wicked people exist. Nothing avails except to set them apart from innocent people.” Nowadays, many people struggle to comprehend and accept that a teen is capable of executing such a heinous crime, such as, taking a life. Furthermore, the problem began to revolve around this failure to accept this fact. Since then, more have searched for ways to vindicate juvenile crime and as mentioned in “Kids Are Kids - Until They Commit A Crime”, most proposed that the teen immaturity could be the reason behind their actions, but a crime is a crime, …show more content…

Not to mention, soon after the incident, during trial, a former friend of the criminal testified and spoke about the thrill that the convict confessed to enjoy and that he “wanted to know what it felt like to shoot someone.” As Jennifer Jenkins (author of the article “On Punishment and Teen Killers”) can confirm, this offender was condemned to three life sentences in prison. After all, many still fail to recognize that there could be other significant factors that play out in influencing teens to commit wicked acts, such as, abuse (which could cause the convict to crave any type of attention), cultural differences (they could have been raised with more violence), environmental (he could be very wealthy and “spoiled” or he could be struggling financially and “needs to lash out”), or the very possible cause that everyone should be concerned about: mental illnesses, such as, schizophrenia, psychosis, or dissociative identity disorder. These psychological conditions are important to find within men, women, and children to not only keep them from harming themselves but others as well. Moreover, the disorders can cause a disconnection from reality, anger management issues, numbness (a feeling of emptiness and isolation towards your emotions), anxiety, depression, and much more. This information is important to keep in mind because mental illnesses could be a possible playing factor as to why the juveniles commit such wicked