Prisons: Children Should Be Tried As Adults

Rodriguez, Lisa
November 14,2017
English-1A
Rough draft

In the United States there are thousands who get sent to prison for various crimes. These crimes vary from petty theft to assault and homicide. Very rarely do you hear about a child getting sent to prison, but this situation has happened way more often over the past 20+ years. The United States is the only place that sends children to death-in-prison. According to the National Juvenile Justice Network, it states, “an estimated 250,000 youth are tried, sentenced, or incarcerated as adults every year across the United States”(njjn.org). I believe children should only get tried as adults, if their crimes involve homicide or seem mentally unstable, because every crime does need a punishment

What people don’t realize is that these children and teenagers that commit crimes, are still young and they do not have the mental ability to understand the consequences of their actions. These kids are not aware of what they are doing and are not aware of the reality of all the craziness they will face behind those adult prison bars. The youngest kids to be sent to prison was a 12 and 13 year old boy, who were convicted on January 30, 1996 of murder for dangling and dropping a 5 year old from a 14 story building. These two did this because the youngest refused to steal candy for them, the two were 10 and 11 at the time. “The use of adolescent neuroscience in the development of public policies affecting young people is a blurring of some very different issues that need to be separated: (a) what science does and does not say about brain development in adolescence; and (b) what neuroscience does and does not imply for the understanding of adolescent behavior”(Steinberg,psycnet.apa.org). The brain is still in a developing stage when these juveniles commit these crimes not until the age of 14 do these, immature and criminal children realize what they are doing. A child’s brain completely different from an adult's, a child can be influenced into doing something, compared to an adult who knows right from wrong and still decides to do

For example in Contra Costa County, in San Francisco, probation and county school officials would lock up young inmates in small cells for days as a three tier isolation program for their mental issues. According to an article from New America Media, “W.B. a 17-year-old boy inmate — already found mentally incompetent by a juvenile court — was put into solitary for more than two months out of a four-month period. He began hearing voices, talking to himself, thought he was being poisoned and broke down into a psychotic episode and was hospitalized for three weeks before being returned to the hall”(newamericamedia.org). Majority of these young inmates who get sent to prison at a young age start to make themselves go into a mental state which can sometimes be too late to detect. These juveniles do not have the mentality to help them get through the hardships in adult prisons. One of the methods adult prisons uses to keep juveniles safe from adults is to keep them in solitary confinement. This is where they are not allowed to see any one or use the bathroom and shower. They do get a short period where they get to go outside but no one else is there just that juvenile. They are locked up for almost 22 hours or more in a small cell alone. This is what leads a juvenile to become emotionally out of