Young Kids, Hard Times Summary

With this being said, one issue that needs to be addressed in our justice system is developmental immaturity. In the film “Young Kids, Hard Times”, there was a debate on whether Paul Gingerich, a 12-year old boy, should be transferred from a juvenile prison to adult prison after being an accomplice to the murder of Colt Lundy’s stepfather. The fact that the youths do not have the same rights as adults should be an indicator of why we should treat kids differently. The juvenile justice system hold the presumption that their offender is immature, therefore, they focus on having a rehabilitation goal and use a non-adversarial approach (Cauffman, 2018). In the juvenile court, immaturity refers to the incomplete development, inexperienced judgment and “character still maturating” (Steingberg &

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). As we learned, during adolescence, these youths are developing neurologically, intellectually, emotionally, and psychosocially (Scott & Grisso, 2004). Therefore, without the full development of those four aspects, youths are considered as