Juveniles Should Be Tried As Adults Essay

If we choose to do nothing, our prison conditions will continue to bring about health hazards for the inmates. Stevenson strongly advocates for a more humane approach to youth justice and is strongly against trying minors as adults. The juvenile justice system needs to place more emphasis on support and correction than on punishment, taking into account the vulnerabilities and developmental differences of young offenders. In addition, it is important to convert juvenile correctional facilities into therapeutic and educational settings that target the underlying causes of misbehavior. In order for these children to become successful individuals, the primary components of juvenile detention have to be educational opportunities, psychological services, and rehabilitation programs (Hanink, 2018).

Since juvenile offenders are viewed as immaturity because their brains are not completely developed, they are considered as what is desired to be protected and educated in general. Minors are believed to be competent to be held responsible for their actions. Recently, it has been debated that juvenile offenders should be punished tougher like adult offenders or should not be punished tougher. The question is whether recent treatments are appropriate or not. If not, what kinds of treatments should provide for minor offenders to clean up their criminal behavior?

The juvenile justice system was fashioned in the late 1800s; restructuring policies in the United States concerning adolescent offenders was a part of a progressive era in are history. Thereafter, many modifications designed at both safeguarding the "due process of law" rights of adolescence, and generating an antipathy to jail amongst minor. This dislike has made juvenile justice system more equivalent to the adult structure, a significant change from what it was intended for in the

Around the whole world, children are committing crimes and thinking it is okay to do these sort of things, because they are learning from the people around them or family members having to commit crimes to keep the family well provided. Children wouldn’t be doing these crimes if they didn’t have such a bad environment around them. If a juvenile acts like an adult and does adult crimes, then they should be tried as adults. For example, stealing a car that wasn’t yours and starting a high speed chase. That’s an adult crime, but sometimes we shouldn’t just throw juveniles in jail.

The human brain is not fully developed until you are in your mid-20s. Should people be tried as an adult for crimes they committed as juveniles, before they were even 18 years of age? Jose, only 15 year olds at the time of the crime, had a difficult life, grew up in a rough neighborhood, and was eventually arrested and brought to court for murder after participating in a deadly brawl. The first major turning point for juvenile legal rights occurred in 1966, in the case Kent v. United States, where the Supreme Court decided that a juvenile cannot be waived to adult court without first being given due process, which includes a hearing, assistance of counsel, and a statement of reasons. Another major milestone for juvenile legal rights was in 1967, in the

It can often be forgotten in society that adults are not the only individuals who commit heinous crimes or sent to court and given sentences that include life in prison without the possibility of parole. Murder, armed robbery, sexual assault, these crimes being executed by not only adults, but juveniles under the age of 18. Throughout history, juvenile justice has remained an issue and the debate on whether juveniles should be tried as adults. In America, each state possesses their own laws in which they determine how a juvenile should be tried and whether they should be transferred into an adult court. During the 1990’s the rise of juvenile justice came into full swing, and the term “superpredators” was used to describe the youth as “dangerous”

When addressing the disparity of mental illness in the juvenile justice system, we must modify our current approaches to juvenile offenders, which begins with sentencing practices of the judiciary. It is crucial that judges consider the safety of the public when they are sentencing juvenile offenders; however, judges should guarantee that they take the well-being of the juvenile into consideration and use this to determine an appropriate intervention. To encourage this behavior among the judiciary, I propose the instillation of training sessions with mental health professionals. These sessions would be designed to modify judicial approaches to juvenile court cases. I envision that these sessions will work to identify the implicit biases regarding

According to Schiraldi and Drizin (1999), the first juvenile court in the United States was founded in Chicago in 1899 after a young lawyer named John Altgeld toured the House of Corrections and found hundreds of children as young as 8 years old jailed with adults. The Cook County Juvenile Court was created to rehabilitate instead of punishing the offenders under 16 years of age. In other words, for the juvenile court judges to treat rather than to punish juveniles placing attention on the offender instead of the offense. Most importantly, for the children to receive a second chance and keep them away from the adults in jails. Certainly, “jails and prisons clearly were no places for children” (Bartollas & Miller, 2017, p.5).

If we simply send juveniles through the adult justice system it might make them worse individuals. For instance, since their minds are still growing, by being around worse criminals they may pick on their criminal traits.

The environment in adult facilities is immensely different from juvenile facilities. Rehabilitation options are limited in adult facilities. It is hard for children to fit in with adults, or even be respected. Lack of attention and bullying are both major problems for juveniles in prison (Human Rights Watch). Juveniles in prison have a 18x greater risk of committing suicide, due to lack of supervision (Juvenile Forensic Evaluation Center) However, juvenile facilities provide higher quality education, adequate health care, and better security. 70% of juveniles are held under locked situations, rather than staff secure settings (Juvenile Forensic Evaluation Center). This decreases the amount of violence between juveniles and the staff. Since depression is a common health issue, juvenile facilities often have treatment available. Giving a juvenile the resources to help, can really benefit them at this

Punishing teenagers doesn’t do any good for the court system, while teenagers are still children they are held to different legal standing than adults. Juveniles are “defined as a person under the age of 18. In most states, juveniles are considered minors and are therefore subject to legal provisions and procedures more than adults. ”(Rogers) Juveniles are children so there is no reason that they should be treated as adults when society today doesn’t see them as adults.

At national, state, and local levels, there is increasing recognition of the importance of identifying and responding to the mental health needs of youths in the juvenile justice system, as policymakers and practitioners struggle to find ways to address causes and correlates of juvenile crime and delinquency. The proposed guidelines for mental health assessment provide explicit information about how, why, and when to obtain mental health information on justice youths at each important juncture in processing.

On the fateful day of July 28, 1999, six year old Tiffany Eunick was beaten to death by a 6 foot tall and 160 pound Lionel Tate. The autopsy report showed that Tate reportedly stomped on Eunick so hard her liver was lacerated, and the young girl sustained multiple bone fractures so severe that she was pronounced dead at the hospital hours later. Tate was controversially convicted of felony murder and thus sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole. Now why was this sentence so controversial? Because Lionel Tate was only twelve years old at the time of the murder. How do we determine mental competence of someone whose brain is still developing? How could someone who has not even finished puberty possibly understand the sever implications of such a brutal crime? How can we possibly try a juvenile as an adult when juveniles are proven to have diminished impulse control? This paper will discuss the history of charging juveniles of adults, discuss the issues that make this practice wrong while negating opposing arguments, and explain the various consequences that come with charging juvenile offenders as adults.

Kids should be subjected to the measures of punishment that our judicial system is giving to them. Kids who show lots of enmity should be tried as adults. It is the only way to protect the innocent children. These kids know right from wrong, but they choose to do the wrong things and violence is wrong. As the laws have gotten stricter on discipline the kids have gotten wilder. When we let society tell us how to discipline our children then violent children is the result.

I do not think it is a good idea to lock juveniles up in prisons with adults. For a child to set down and plan a murder for instance, there would have to be some kind of deep emotional problem. On the other side of this, if the child knows right from wrong and he can sit down and plan a murder, then you could say if he is old enough to kill someone then he is old enough to die. The juvenile criminal is rooted much deeper than right from wrong. It starts back from when they are small children. Most of them are usually outsiders or outcasts. Who can you hold fault for that other than society? If juveniles don't fit in with the popular kids in school they are considered an