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Should Children Be Tried As Adults Essay

930 Words4 Pages

Why Children Shouldn’t be Tried as Adults
As of June 25, 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that juveniles who have committed murder could not be sentenced to life in prison. Their reasoning for this, was that it violated the eighth amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. It is in good reason that this was made law, because never has a child's brain been equal to that of an adult's, the circumstances surrounding most of the cases sent to the courts are appalling, and the statistics of the finances to house inmates and that backup rehabilitation of the youths within the prison lead me to question the sanity of anyone who believes otherwise.
The overwhelming majority of those living in society believe children to be intellectually underdeveloped …show more content…

Statistically speaking 25% of all children within the United States have been exposed to violence within their home life. To these children this is what is the daily norm of how life is supposed to be. In a case such as this, the saying of you're a product of your environment, heavily comes into play. Consider the psychological effects of such a life. The children who live a life where they are witnesses to such atrocities have more problems than are evident to the common eye. They have a difficult time creating goals or desires, and majority have the assumption that their lives will hold nothing but a dark future. These children's characters are still in formation “They are less mature, more vulnerable to peer pressure , cannot escape from dangerous environments, and their characters are still in formation,” said Gail Garinger in the essay “Juveniles Don’t Deserve Life Sentences”. (2012) After committing a crime if these Juveniles so easily succumbed to other outside influences, it should be just as easy to influence the to make good choices with the right

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In Gail Garinger’s, “Juveniles Don’t Deserve Life Sentences,” she argues that juveniles have great potential in being able to change their lives for the better. Garinger starts off with the superpredator theory which involves kids who will commit crimes in groups, and in response, laws were made to easily try kids as adults in court. Even with the superpredator prediction never coming true, the laws that were made still exist. Garinger then moves on to describing how teens are different than adults in many different aspects. Garinger states, “As a former juvenile court judge, I have seen first hand the enormous capacity of children to change and turn themselves around” (Garinger par.

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Juveniles that go through the rehabilitation process will be able to have a clean record after they reach 18, whereas the exact opposite if they went through the adult justice system. Stevenson feels that, “We’ve become so fearful and vengeful that we’ve thrown away children, discarded the disabled, and sanctioned the imprisonment of the sick and the weak—not because they are a threat to public safety or beyond rehabilitation but because we think it makes us seem tough, less broken.” (289) This quote represents the treatment towards juveniles in prison and how the potential of these children is wasted. The goal of rehabilitation is to help the youth understand the consequences of their actions and learn how to make better choices in the

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1770 Words | 8 Pages

An adolescent is not allowed to drink, smoke, get married, or sign legal contracts because they aren’t capable of making mature decisions. In many poor communities, the only things adolescents see are crimes. Teenagers are like a sponge they absorb everything they see. Throughout many years, kids have committed crimes that have gotten them unreasonable sentences. From looking at many sources I found that teenagers don’t think of the consequences their actions might have on them.

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The same malleability that makes them vulnerable to peer pressure also makes them promising candidates for rehabilitation. ”(8) This makes the reader believe that, despite the heinous crimes the juveniles committed, they are still able to change. Gail Garinger’s claim of minors not receiving life sentences for the fact that they have the ability to change by using emotional responses in the reader makes her article the least credible.

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1266 Words | 6 Pages

In her essay, “The Irrationality of Life Sentences”, Jennifer Lackey shares that there are biological factors that contribute to a child’s differing thought processes. She says that “the prefrontal cortex of the brains of adolescents is still developing, and so they are more likely than adults to act on impulse, engage in dangerous or risky behavior, and misread social cues and emotions” (Lackey 1089). These biological differences, and the childhood lack of brain development, are causes for children to commit crime. Though they do not excuse the behavior, they should be taken into account empathetically. If these aspects were to be taken into further consideration in the future,

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582 Words | 3 Pages

In 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that it is immoral to give juveniles life sentences, even if they commit a crime as serious as murder, because it is a cruel and unusual punishment. This has been an issue in America as teenagers are often treated as adults in court due to a belief that their crimes warrant a harsh punishment. Many believe that these kids should not be given such major sentences because they are still immature and do not have the self control that adults do. I agree that juveniles do not deserve life sentences because they put less thought and planning into these crimes and they often are less malicious than adults. The article “Startling Finds on Teenage Brains” explains that the teenagers lose brain tissue that is responsible for self control and impulses (Thompson 7).

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1252 Words | 6 Pages

What if you were kidnapped as a child, forced into doing crimes that you didn’t know you were committing, then you got arrested for them? That will be the life of a child soldier if they are prosecuted for their actions. Children are combatants in nearly three-quarters of the world's conflicts and have posed difficult dilemmas for the professional governments they confront, including the United States, such as whether or not choosing to prosecute them or not. Children should not be prosecuted for their actions because they were forced to join and commit their crimes, and because children do not know the difference between right and wrong.

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494 Words | 2 Pages

When someone who commits a crime is determined to be mentally inadequate to be held accountable for the crimes they have committed, there are things that we do to charge them, but in a lesser way because of their mental capacity. Which begs the question, why are we allowing children to be sentenced to life, when their brains aren’t fully developed? When a child commits a crime we look over that, and stop seeing them as children. We shouldn’t sentence children to a life in prison when their brains are not only underdeveloped, but also missing a good portion of gray matter.

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993 Words | 4 Pages

Today in the United States we still have debates on whether or not a juvenile should spend his or her life in prison. On June 25, 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that juveniles who commit murder could not receive a life in prison term. This decision was made due to the fact that it violated the Eighth Amendment which bans cruel and unusual punishment. Four justices strongly disagreed and said that a juvenile should always be punished for their heinous crimes with a life sentence, I personally agree with these four justices. The juvenile should face time in prison for his or her crime to a certain extend.

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490 Words | 2 Pages

It should be illegal for juveniles to receive life sentences. Life sentences, without parole, for juveniles is cruel and unusual punishment. Adolescents should be able to obtain life sentences, which include parole. Penalizing juveniles with life imprisonment should be prohibited as they do not have an entirely developed encephalon. “The rational part of a teen's brain isn't fully developed and won't be until age 25” (“Understanding the Teen Brain”).

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599 Words | 3 Pages

According to Kolk, Hopper and Crozier, all forms of maltreatment have the ability to have significant lasting effects on “cognition, behavior, affect and social interaction.” And can affect neurotransmitter and neuroendocrine systems as well as the immune system of a child. The level of trauma experienced is subjective to the child’s background, age, and environment; amongst numerous other factors but it’s usually affected with an experience of child abuse. It is rather important to note that as the statistics show, all types of abuse, not only neglect have the ability to create major negative impacts in any child’s brain development. Every type of abuse may give us a clue as to why we still see high levels of crime, violence, and further abuse to continue to haunt the world today.

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1979 Words | 8 Pages

Those in favor of trying juveniles as adults believe that it deters and minimizes crimes being committing by all minors. That trying juveniles as adults will bring the greatest good to the most amount of people. According to an article posted by the American Bar Association by Nicole Scialabba, “the increase in laws that allow more juveniles to be prosecuted in adult court rather than juvenile court was intended to serve as a deterrent for rising youth violent crime.” It is no secret that youth commit crimes in our society. In 2014, law enforcement agencies in the U.S. made an estimated 1 million arrests of persons under age 18 (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention).

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1058 Words | 5 Pages

When children and teens commit a violent crime such as murder, courts convict them as adults. This means that children as young as eight have been tried as adults in court. Eventually, these convicts will be housed in jails with adults. Despite the federal law stating that juvenile and adult inmates must be separated, most states do not comply with these rules. Furthermore, a law that varies throughout the states is the age in which courts send the children to adult or juvenile prisons.

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949 Words | 4 Pages

All kids have different ways of proving they are mature enough to be treated as adults, but when should kids truly get seen as an adult? All kids are different when it comes to maturing or growing up, some kids still throw tantrums at the age of 16 while other kids are doing neighborhood work to raise a little money at the age of 10. Each and every kid matures at a different age, so when do they get seen as adults? Kids should get seen as adults when they act like one, when they realize that not everything will be handed to them and that they need to work for it or earn it, that responsibilities come first and not all the time do they get to have fun, do what they want, or get what they want. Kids have different ways of proving that they are mature or responsible to their parents.

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956 Words | 4 Pages

The maltreatment of children not only affects the children themselves, but also affects the family by making it dysfunctional. To prevent this awful child-battering, people should know what exactly child abuse is, its effects, and how to refrain it. Understanding exactly about the concept of child abuse will make the abuser know that this behavior is wrong and that s/he needs to stop the mistreatment of kids. If you see that a child has

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