Serious crimes in the United States can be best defined as murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, burglary, assault, arson, and or larceny-theft. Imagine your 15 years old and just killed a family member, but it was to protect your 4 year old sibling. Now in court your pleading guilty to manslaughter and tried as an adult and sentenced to 90 years without parole. Now your entire life is over within a matter of months. In another instead you got 5 years in prison, 20 years of parole and manslaughter, and goes on your record. Now you have a criminal record and you probably won’t ever be able to get a job. This isn't fair because you didn't kill them because you didn't like them or because they did something to hurt you, they are your family after …show more content…
Think about Jordan Brown, 11 years old, found guilty of killing his father’s fiancee, Kenzie, who was eight and a half months pregnant, before school while she was asleep. He received 10 years in juvenile prison but was given an adult sentence.Although the judge was serving justice for Kenzie he was right to give him time in prison, but I disagree with the sentencing time. Flowpsychology.com says “Crimes that are on your juvenile records hold much less weight in the world than those on your adult record. By putting a juvenile into adult court, you are also affecting their adult criminal record”.Now Jordan will have a criminal record because he’ll get out of jail when he is 21 years old meaning hell half less than half a chance of getting a job. Instead of them sentencing him to 10 years he could've did 3 at the most so that by the time he is a preteen he has experienced enough to show him this isn't the life he wants or while in jail he was given a person therapist to talk about that day and try to touch base with him. 10 years later he's probably lost all hope and feel like all he needed was someone to talk
In the article “On Punishment and Teen Killers” by Jennifer Jenkins asserts that teens are becoming more violent and starting commit more crimes because of the national television they watch.Jenkins tells the reader about “JLWOP” (Juvenile Life Without Parole) and how kids are being sentenced to life in prison without parole.Some people are trying to advocate to minimize the offender culpability because of their age.While kids are getting sentenced to life without parole, this disproves juvenile advocates reliance on the undeveloped brain.Some juvenile offenders truly understand what the victim family go through and how long it takes them to recover.There were millions of dollars spent to end JLWOP and to set convicted murderers free.
The Absurdity of Minors in Adult Prison Throughout history there have been many cases in which minors as young as eight years old have been not only tried as an adult, but placed in adult prisons for life. The justice system more often than not overlooks many important pieces of evidence due to incompetent lawyers, racial inequality, and economical differences. This evidence is what could make all the difference in placing a minor on juvenile court rather than adult court. Charging a minor as an adult is absurd, and there is not a single situation in which this could be deemed as a reasonable decision, because the brain of a minor is still developing unlike one of an adult, most minors come from an already troubled background that makes them
There are times juveniles should not be convicted as adults because sometimes the “crimes” may not harsh enough to be charged as an adult. For example, if a 8 year old saw a gun in their mother's purse and thought it was a toy and grabbed it and began to shoot who would be at fault ? Plus children in adult prisons are 10 times more likely to be taken advantage of in their time. Research shows that children prosecuted in the adult criminal justice system are more likely to reoffend than those held in the juvenile justice
Imagine a sibling, cousin, or friend, young and oblivious. Not having to worry about the world or the dangers that come with it, just enjoying their youth. Now imagine their once happy, free-spirited self, scared, sad, and lonely with handcuffs, a uniform behind cold metal bars. Imagine the last time you see them is while they are walking out of a courtroom, knowing they won't come back out because they were just sentenced to life in prison. It would be a horrible thing to witness knowing their life hadn’t truly started yet. Juveniles accused of violent crimes should not be tried and sentenced as adults because the frontal lobes of a juvenile's brain is not fully developed, they are more impulsive, and they focus on the potential outcome and
In the article,”Juveniles Don’t Deserve Life Sentences” Garinger says,”These children were told that they could never change and that no one cared what became of them”. It’s not right for someone as young as 15 years old to live the rest of his/her life behind bars without the chance of ever changing and becoming something better in life. I’m not saying that the child will always change, there will be some cases where a teenage killer will still be a killer when that person becomes an adult but for the most part, they usually change. They don’t want to be sent back to prison to rot there with no one to care for them for the rest of their lives, they want to live and become something bigger in life than just another person who made a bad choice and now has to pay for
Criminals are on foot everyday around the United States and other parts of the world. Whether they are young children, adults, seniors, or any kind of human being, crimes are committed everyday by people who look like a bad influence or others that look innocent walking down the streets who have never committed a crime before. Juveniles ages 7-15 should not be sentenced to life without parole for crimes they commit because it would not be fair for them to spend the rest of their lives in jail for committing a mistake. Reasons can be found on why juveniles should be left inside a cell and arguments can build up if people disagree with one another. Some adults commit crimes and are left with freedom after a satisfied amount of time locked up. Young teenagers can still be immature and do not have the mind to think like a regular human being. Young people also do not know what is wrong or right to do since they are not of legal age. Some teenagers are also not fully educated yet for they might have grown up without parents to yell at them to lead them through the right path. Most juveniles are barely in middle school and have not really learned anything about the real outside life yet. Juveniles that are sentenced for a reasonable amount of time can also be rehabilitated once they are out of prison so they can be leaded to the right path again without having to be locked up. Many young men are in rehabilitation centers because they disobey their parents or because they are drug
Imagine sitting in a courtroom, hoping the the judge will not give a harsh sentence. Unfortunately, that’s the case for many juveniles, some as young as 13! A juvenile is subject to a more severe sentence with the limited sentencing available. It is estimated that 250,000 youth are prosecuted as adults, each year. This number should change, as juveniles are not adults, both mentally and physically. Juveniles need an environment surrounded with guiding adults, education and the resources to help them. A juvenile is not an adult, and should not be tried as one.
Gail Garinger, a juvenile court judge, in her article “Juveniles Don’t Deserve Life Sentences” defends young offenders by saying that because they’re not fully developed or matured, they shouldn’t be treated the same way as adults and should be given a second chance. “Nationwide, 79 young adolescents have been sentenced to die in prison … These children were told that they could never change and that no one cared for what became of them. They were denied access to education and rehabilitation programs and left without help or hope” (Garinger 3).
Regardless of age, a killer is a killer. A killer can be the daily customer you have at your job or the child you’re babysitting. “The Supreme Court justices would be wise as well as compassionate to strike a balance: Make juvenile offenders responsible for their actions but don't completely rob them of hope. And this should apply not only to the inmates who were 14 at the time of their crimes but to the remaining 2,497 who were 15 to 18 years old,” (Ellison 19). Kids make mistakes all the time, that doesn’t mean we should take their life away from them. With overlooking the listed factors in court when sentencing a juvenile, this will improve the number of children in prisons. Not all of these children partake in the act because of evil, but merely because of
The criminal justice system is locking our young men and young women under the age of sixteen in prison for the rest of their lives. These are children who are just becoming teenagers and still have the possibility of living production lives. These are children who make the wrong decision because of impulse or persuasion. Have we lost hope in our youth of tomorrow.? Do we just give up on our kids because they make a mistake? Does placing a child in an adult prison decrease crime among juveniles? How can a 13-year-old understand the Miranda rights? The system now focuses on the punishment of crime committed, when we need to focus on the child. We need to provide our youth offenders with options other than prison. Juveniles under the
If a fourteen-year old child murders another person should they be tried in an adult court with the possibility of a life in prison without parole? According to a Gallup Poll conducted in 2003, 59% of people surveyed that they support harsher sentences for serious crimes committed by a minor. The juvenile courts can be traced back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a way to prevent the children of a growing immigrant population from falling victim to a life of crime. Despite the original intentions of the juvenile system, the recidivism rate for minors continues to rise at an alarming rate meaning that convicted youth are trapped in a viscous cycle of incarceration that never allows them to grow and prosper. This paper discusses the foundation and intention of the juvenile court system as well as focusing on three issue areas that are complicating the court system: the advancement of neurological studies such as Laurence Steinberg’s, A Social Neuroscience Perspective on Adolescent Risk-Taking, a lack of proper education and resources necessary to teach the incarcerated youth causing them to fall behind those who have attended a normal school, and an ineffective or complete lack of a rehabilitation plan for convicted juveniles. Finally, this paper discusses the Supreme Court case of Miller v. Alabama (2012) that rendered a 5-4 decision that declared charging a minor life in prison without parole unconstitutional.
A person’s mind is developing from the start of their life all the way up to when they are in their twenties. Yet the criminal justice system thinks, or thought, it was right for kids to be treated the same as adults when it came to committing serious felonies. A fifthteen year old can spend life in prison for killing someone alongside an adult
Adults are held accountable for their actions and expected to abide by the laws and if they do not there are consequences to follow. Some punishments can be as little as a monetary fine, or as detrimental as life imprisonment. Today, some children face these exact consequences depending on their actions. Certain children are held accountable for their actions and punished as adults in an adult courtroom depending on the offense and the jurisdiction. According to Youth Justice (2012), “On any given day, approximately 2,700 young people are locked up in adult prisons” (p. 4). This is hard to understand, because the United States has a juvenile justice system that is centered on rehabilitation and reforming youth into law-abiding citizens. Youth Justice (2012) also claimed, “On any given night in America 10,000 children are held in adults jails and prisons” (p. 3). Currently, all states participate in serving justice to juveniles even though it is extremely difficult. Even though all states have a juvenile justice system in place, they are still able to send children to an adult courtroom to be charged and punished as an adult, otherwise known as the term “waived.” Children should not be held to the same standards as adults, there is no formal goal or point in punishing a child as an adult, and lastly, juvenile delinquents deserve the most effective treatment and rehabilitation measures available, which is unlikely in the adult criminal justice
As adolescents, we have all made mistakes, some big some small but it never crossed our minds that one of these mistakes could change our lives forever. In this day in age, it's ludicrous to hear youth suspects receive harsh sentencing; being forced to go to an adult jail or prison, or in rare cases getting put on death row. “The practice of charging young people as adults gained momentum in America in the 1990s, as youth crime spiked” ("Children in Adult Jails"). Some argue that these pre-teens and/or teens should receive harsh sentencing regardless of their age because they were old enough to know right from wrong. Others believe juveniles should be tried as adults in certain circumstances, depending on the crime and its severity. On the other hand, many people believe youth offenders should receive a higher juvenile sentence as opposed to an adult sentence. This
In the discussion of heinous juvenile crime, one controversial issue has been whether juveniles committing such crimes should be locked up for life or should they be given a second chance? The conventional wisdom seems to be the latter. For example, according to a one survey by the Anchorage Youth Development Coalition, seventy-four percent of American adults argue that young people committing serious crime have the capacity to change for the better. My own view is that juveniles who commit heinous crimes cannot be excused because they are still a danger society since they cannot be rehabilitated and juvenile violent crime is rising. Moreover, it is not fair to the family members of the victims.