Legal System Has Never Had An Answer For Violent Kids By Stephen L. Carter

Mrs. Smith
English 111
Jan. 28, 2023
Rhetorical analysis: “Legal system has never had an answer for violent kids” In this article, the author, Stephen L. Carter, goes into detail on the reasons why the legal system is confused or conflicted on whether they should or shouldn’t charge young children below the age of 10 for their crimes. This article is somewhat controversial because of the recent case that happened in Virginia with the 6-year-old, but he uses this to his advantage to get his point across and to try and shed some light on the way the justice system has and continues to handle these cases in the past. Not only is the topic something controversial, but his opinion on what they could do and how to solve it is also controversial.

Mainly, he uses past cases of younger children murdering either their parents, friends, or people that they know to show how they all have the same outcome, this outcome is the fact that they never go to jail, but they go into different areas to get their mental health checked out, except for one case; in which, he uses this one case to show that it doesn’t outweigh the others just because he was charged for manslaughter. As seen in a case in particular that he brings up is the case of Alsa Thompson who had confessed to poisoning people and he talks about what the justice system did to her, “One expert testified that Alsa was ‘a menace to society.’ Eventually she was placed ‘under the supervision of persons versed in the nursing of weakening minds back to health.’” (Carter par.8). He also uses past cases of young children committing murder or trying to kill innocents to not only grab the reader's attention but also to bring his point across at the end of the

One big point is the fact that his topic is very sensitive to some people, especially parents whose kids are in school or are younger. He also says; “We’re horrified that a small child can kill, yet also repulsed by the idea that a small child would face trial -- not to mention imprisonment.” (Carter par. 11), which to readers could be seen as him being confused by the fact that we’re scared of a little kid killing someone, but can fathom the fact that they would go to court or even go prison, even though he had just killed someone. It could also be taken as trying to get the readers to understand that thinking like this is leading to us not taking action and imprisoning kids who have killed someone and could kill someone else later on in their