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Should Children Be Tried As Adults Essay

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Adult Court for Criminal Children Criminal children around the world are committing atrocities and how the justice system deals with them is a hotbed of debate. While kids and teens do not hold the best judgment and will make mistakes, there needs to be a limit to what is tolerable. There are many supporters and critics of the practice of trying kids as adults. Varying in different states, multifarious laws state that offenders of the law of any age or above a specific age can be convicted as an adult if their crime was severe enough. Youthful criminals who commit violent acts should be tried as adults as they need to be held responsible for the good of society. Young people’s brains are not fully developed and they are the next generation, …show more content…

In the article, “Should Children Be Tried as Adults,” Nathaniel Abraham was provided as an example of a thirteen year old boy who was convicted as an adult. He was connected to almost two dozen crimes that included arson, beating two teenagers with metal pipes, snatching a woman’s purse at gunpoint, and murder at the age of eleven. If he went to juvenile court, he would have only been confined in a juvenile detention facility for a short period of time or went to counseling. While counseling would be beneficial to him, he also had to be held responsible for what he did. Imagine the family of the boy he murdered. Nathaniel shot the boy and imagine the horror and sadness on the faces of the boy’s family when they learned that he would no longer be with them, that their beloved brother, son, or grandson who had yet to live his life was dead. In another article on juvenile justice, it was written, “If offenders believed juvenile courts wouldn’t hold them fully responsible for their crimes, they would be likely to commit serious crimes.” Kids needs to know there are consequences. If they only received a warning or a lighter sentence, they would not care and would be a threat to others. In order to prevent more serious crimes from happening, the youthful criminals need to be stopped early on and learn that adult courts would hold them fully responsible for their

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Sending a juvenile to adult prisons won’t necessarily help solve their wrongdoings but they may be influenced by older offenders and never be able to change for the better. Richard may have never been able to get out of jail if he had been strongly influenced by older offenders even with the possibility of parole. The courts have a bias against Richard that can not be shifted even with Sasha’s family's endorsement. They control how Richard’s life will turn out while trying to solve a mistake they had the possibility of making another

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These days’ children are causing more harm than good in their communities, and it isn’t their fault. In the Time Magazine article, “Children without Pity” by Nancy Traver, Traver provides examples of corrupted children performing acts that healthy kids wouldn’t do. Their misguided past has affected their present causing them to react in violent behavior. For this reason, I believe that children should not be tried as adults. Kids have only seen and grown up around violence, so violence is what they result to.

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In the article “On Punishment and Teen Killers” published by the Juvenile Justice Information Exchange on Aug 2,2011 the author, Jennifer Jenkins, points out how teen killers should be tried as adults for crimes committed at an adult level. Jenkins states that “... I understand how hard it is to accept the reality that a 16 or 17 year old is capable of forming such requisite criminal intent.” If a the teen intended to kill someone then they should be locked up, but if that was not the intention then they should get the help necessary instead of being locked

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For example, Nathaniel Brazill was 13 years old when he was guilty of shooting a middle school and charged with second degree murder. He says that he made a “stupid mistake” but was convicted of second degree murder not first. In the article, “Startling Finds on Teenage Brains” it says that, “a child is not a man.” Meaning that a child shouldn 't be getting treated as an adult no they

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The article “Juveniles Don’t Deserve Life Sentences” argues that children in prison need to be given a chance to mature and be rehabilitated (Garinger 9). Because these killers likely committed these crimes on impulse, they would often realize after the fact that they were wrong to do such an action. Therefore, when they are released, they will be more careful and think about their actions before committing. If they are given a life sentence, they will never be given this chance to fix their life. Older people who commit murders are less likely to learn from their mistakes since they put more thought into the killing than adolescents

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There are certain crimes, no matter the age of the perpetrator and should be punished by receiving the most serious and lasting sentence. Being tried as adults exposes the juveniles to state penitentiaries and

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When teen felons choose to act without thinking, they are putting other people’s lives at risk. They need to be charged as adults because the victims of the crimes will not be given the justice they deserve when they have to worry about that criminal harming them again. Although some people think that sending a juvenile through adult court gives them no hope, they should have given this a little thought before committing the crime. Teens need to think about the consequences and how their actions affect others before they act. When choosing between putting a violent adolescent in prison and taking the chance of letting them commit that crime again, it is most suitable to let the teen be tried as an adult and to place them in prison.

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With this in mind, why do juveniles under the age of 18 continue to be transferred to an adult court system? In the United State, about 200,000 offenders under the age of 18 are tried and prosecuted in an adult criminal court (Steinberg & Cauffman, 2001). Those thousands of kids who are not fully mature are being placed in a system who assumes that their offender is “competent, responsible, and unlikely to change” (Steinberg & Cauffman, 2001). In other words, the system has given up on the idea that those juveniles can be rehabilitation based on their crime. It is important to note that individuals tend to mature differently compare to peers, meaning that they develop different abilities at different rates and times (Steinberg &Cauffman, 2001).

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Should children who commit crimes be tried as adults? I think that children who commit violent crimes should be tried as adults, and here's why. Firstly, ages shouldn't matter when it comes to committing a crime. What I mean by that is, ages shouldn’t partake in this situation.

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Although some may say that children should be treated as adults if they commit murder, a more just and reasonable solution is to try them as adults, but then hold them in juvenile detention until they tun the age of 18. At age 18 the children will be re-assessed and the court can re-open the case, and see how long their sentence in prison will be.

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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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Annotated bibliography Childress, S. (2016, June 2). More States Consider Raising the Age for Juvenile Crime. Retrieved from PBS: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/more-states-consider-raising-the-age-for-juvenile-crime/ More states are considering to raising the age for juvenile crimes before being tried as adult because young offender's mental capacity. The idea is to cut the cost of incarcerate young offender in adult prison and ensure offenders to receive proper education and specialized care to change their behavior. Putting children in adult prison does not deter crime.

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Even children have the capability to act and think the way as an adult would. Juveniles need to be held accountable for their actions because it was their actions that caused for them to be put in such a situation. 13 year old Derek King and his 12 year old brother, Alex, were being charged of bludgeoning their father, Terry King, to death. In the book, “Angels of Death,” by Gary C. King stated, “I hit him once and then I heard him moan and then I was afraid that he might wake up and see us, so I just kept on hitting him... I threw the bat on the bed, lit the bed on fire because I was scared of the [evidence] and everything.

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Juvenile Justice Should juveniles get treated as adults that’s one of the biggest controversy in our nation now days, with many juveniles committing crimes that are inconceivable according to their age. Judges have the last word on how to treat this young people. Many people argue that “the teens that are under eighteen are only kids, they won’t count them as young adults, not until they commit crimes. And the bigger the crime, the more eager this people are to call them adults” (Lundstrom 87). This is why people can’t come to a decision as how these young people should be treated like.

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Can you imagine waking up behind closed walls and bars? Waking up to see your inmate who is a 45-year-old bank robber and you are a 14-year-old minor who made a big mistake. This is why minors who have committed crimes should not be treated the same as adults. Some reasons are because the consequences given to minors in adult court would impact a minor’s life in a negative way. If a minor is tried through a juvenile court, they have a greater chance of rehabilitation.

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