In my opinion, New York State’s new policy on criminal responsibility is excellent. The New York State Legislators raised the age of criminal responsibility to eighteen-years-old. The New York State Legislators listened to the public outcry and made this necessary change in policy. The new policy will have a positive impact on teenagers, parents, taxpayers and the New York State’s economy for the next twenty-five years.
The New York State Legislators did the right thing and increased the age of criminal responsibility to eighteen-years-old. New York State will not automatically prosecute sixteen and seventeen-year-olds as adults anymore. Annually, nearly 28,000 sixteen and seventeen-year-olds face the possibility of criminal prosecution as an adult (Raise the age.com, n.d.). Now Adolescents don’t have to worry about adult prosecution in the criminal system. Sixteen and Seventeen-year-olds will have the opportunity to call their parents if they get arrested. Sixteen and
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Parents don’t have to worry about their children getting treated like an adult in the criminal justice system and receiving adult prison sentences. Making parents worry less and have less stress is wonderful for the entire community. Adolescents will get extensive rehabilitation in the form of psychiatric counseling, big brother programs and community service programs. Young people will have just human treatment so that they can become contributing members of society and not second-hand citizens (Karlin, 2017). Taxpayer’s dollars are not paying for adolescents in prisons, they are now paying for state college funds. This makes taxpayers happy because the tax money is going to help young people and it’s beneficial to a healthy society. The new criminal responsibility policy creates new opportunities for adolescents, who can look forward to a bright
In the academic article, Oklahoma’s juvenile justice system neglects to consider for the deviations in the liability and the rehabilitative potential among adults and children, and it carries numerous financial and social costs. Although adults and children are treated differently by the law, in the criminal context, these differences have faded over the past 40 years. The social costs of making a criminal out of a child who made bad decisions as a kid are often overlooked. Instead, we could turn that cost and direct it to make that child a contributing member of society. In my opinion, I feel that this article makes a strong point that we use all this money to keep these children incarcerated while hurting them instead of actually correcting
I am a concerned citizen of New York State and also a developmental psychologist specializing in stages of development in adolescents. I am writing to you because I was just made aware that, in NYS, adolescents still could receive the death penalty as a result of them committing a heinous crime. I believe during this particular stage of development, an adolescent is not fully capable of understanding the magnitude and seriousness of such an act. Psychosocial maturity is reached around the age of 24 that is when adolescents enter adulthood. Reaching cognitive maturity around the age of 16 does not assure maturation because the two structures develop at different rates and serve two different purposes, thus you need both
The act’s framers were concerned with the framework of the juvenile justice system. Believing that they could restrain juvenile delinquency through prevention rather than punishment, they increased the quality of the juvenile justice system. Policy specified that, “kids should be treated as kids” (Ravenell, 2002). However, rising crime rates throughout the late 1970s and 1980s lead to disillusionment with the system. The public became concerned that juvenile justice policy was too lenient. Practitioners scrambled to enact harsher penalties in an effort to slow the rising juvenile crime rates. The new policies restricted lenient punishment such as probation and lead to an increase in incarceration rates (Meade & Steiner, 2010).
There is a hefty altercation over what the true age of responsibility is in young adults and whether the diverse ages they are given to acquire rights are excessively complicated. Growing up, teens are given four separate ages as to when they reach ages of “responsibility”, 16, 18, 21 and 25. These separate ages raise questions as to why the law has set certain age requirements to obtain different rights.
In the case of Robinson v. California, 370 U.S. 660 (1962), the Supreme Court ruled that a law may not punish a status; i.e., one may not be punished to being an alcoholic or for being addicted to drugs. However, of course, one may be punished for actions such as abusing drugs. The question becomes; What if the status “forces” the action? What if a person, because of his/her addiction to drugs, is “forced” by the addiction to purchase and abuse the illegal drugs? Would punishing that person be unfairly punishing a status?
No, New York State’s criminal justice system must be smarter and treat adults and adolescents differently. The criminal justice system must create rehabilitation programs, services and alternative options for adolescent offenders. Young offenders are 34% more likely to be re-arrested for violent crimes (Raise the age.com, n.d.). Adolescents in adult jails are subject to physical assaults, sexual assaults, and suicides. Incarcerated youths in adult prisons are more likely to suffer emotional abuse and psychological damage (Raise the age.com, n.d). Annually more than $100 million dollars is spent to house youths in detentions and jails (Governor.ny.gov). The best option for New York State is to raise the age of criminal
Many jurisdictions have responded with so called “get tough” legislation. This type of legislation is a staple in the Crime Control Era that has taken the place of the Juvenile Rights Era, which ended around 1980. One such piece of legislation was Michigan’s Juvenile Waiver Law of 1997. In Michigan, prior to 1988, seventeen year-olds were the only minors automatically tried as adults, all others stayed in juvenile courts that afforded them the benefits discussed earlier. However, in response to rising violence get tough reforms were imposed. Kids, as young as fifteen, were now being tried automatically as adults for serious crimes. Additionally, if convicted of first-degree murder the judge can then choose to sentence the youth to a juvenile facility until twenty-one years of age, or mandatory life in adult prison. Then in 1997, legislation got even tougher. Fourteen year olds were now automatically charged as adults for serious offenses. Additionally, adult courts can no longer chose juvenile sentencing. One senator who helped craft the tougher legislation stated, “it doesn’t matter so much whether it’s 12 or 14 or 50 or 60, the Juvenile justice reform act’s basic finding was that if you do the crime, you do the time” (Barnes 2011). The number of juveniles serving life in adult correctional facilities
There are no national standards that declare the exact age at when a defendant knows right from wrong; however, states have adopted a variety of laws declaring the age of criminal responsibility. Thirty-seven states and the District of Columbia have set eighteen as the age of criminal responsibility; however, most defendants, seventeen or younger may be tried in juvenile courts. Some states such as Wisconsin, North Carolina, New York, Massachusetts, and Illinois set their minimum age for criminal acts at sixteen. Despite that fact, that states set individual ages for juveniles to be to tried as an adult for the crime committed, it is accurate to note that juveniles can and have been tried as adults when under the minimum age within the state law.
If a juvenile, over fourteen has the ability and willingness to commit a violent crime they should be tried and punished as an adult. A fourteen year old knows right from wrong. He (or she) is able to tell whether they are committing a crime. If a juvenile is mature enough to commit an adult crime, they should be treated as an adult, and punished justly according to the adult law. The difference in age in two people should not determine their punishment if they have committed the same crime under the same or similar pretenses.
The United States leads the world in the incarceration of young people, there are over 100,000 youth placed in jail each year. Locking up youth has shown very little positive impact on reducing crime. Incarcerating youth have posed greater problems such as expenses, limited education, lack of employment, and effect on juveniles’ mental and physical well-being.
Prisons where essentially build to accommodate a number of prisoners but over the years it has reach over capacity. Today in the United States there are approximately 193,468 federal inmates that consisting of the Bureau of Prisons Custody, private managed facilities and other facilities. The inmates ages range from 18- 65 with the median age being in their late 30’s. This number is counting both male and female population with male being 93.3% of inmates and females being 6.7%. The number of inmates has steadily increase since 1980 with only having approximately less than 50,000 but today the number has gone more up. Drug offenses are the highest number for inmate’s imprisonment, the next highest offense would be weapons, explosives and arson; immigration and miscellaneous fall next in lines. The number for the other offenses such as robbery, extortion, fraud, bribery, burglary, larceny, property offenses and other offenses are lower. Overcrowding prison has become problematic as the prison population continue to increase leading to proper care and attention for prisoners.
On April 10, 2017, as part of FY 2018 Budget, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo signed legislation raising the age for criminal accountability. New York state was one of the states that no matter what the offense was it still processed anyone in the age of sixteen and seventeen as adults in the criminal justice system. Although the legislation raised the age for criminal responsibility, protestors still think that it hasn’t done much for the teenagers who have committed a criminal act. The bill states that sixteen and or seventeen-years-old who have committed a felony crime will still be tried in court as an adult, and those who have committed misdemeanor crime will not be tried in court as an adult. Such bill will highly impact society, the criminal
“I used to believe are our future but now I realize that this, sadly isn’t the reality. Through laws that treat kids like adults, the government is throwing away the future of children in this country.” (D. Lee) An estimated 200,000 juveniles are tried as adults. The term juvenile refers to any young person under the age of 18. For most states in the United States, the age of majority is 18. While there are many things that juveniles are unable to do until they reach the age of 18, being charged as an adult for a crime is not amongst those things in some states. Juveniles are not allowed to vote, drink alcohol, or sign a legal contract, yet they can be charged and treated like adults when it comes to them being
Did you know, that in the United States alone, Over 200,000 children are charged and imprisoned every year as adults? Early in the 20th century, most states established juvenile courts to rehabilitate and not just punish youthful offenders. The system was designed for children to have a second chance at their lives. “A separate juvenile-justice system, which sought to rehabilitate and not just punish children, was part of a movement by progressives to create a legally defined adolescence through the passage of child-labor and compulsory education laws and the creation of parks and open spaces.”(How to reduce crime Pg 1) Although the view on juveniles committing brutal crimes is nearly inconceivable, it is not a solution to give juveniles adult consequences because the effects of the adult system on juveniles are not effective.
Criminal procedure today deals with sets of rules that govern series of proceedings and which the government enforces criminal law. States and the federal government have their own criminal codes which define the type of conduct that would be considered a crime. Title 18 of the U.S. codes outlines all federal crimes typically crimes that deal with activities that go beyond state boundaries and which impacts federal interests. In state prosecutions, the state follows the criminal code of the individual state. Every state has its own criminal code and many states choose to follow or mimic the federal rules. The state procedural rules offer a defendant in a criminal prosecution greater protection than the U.S. constitution but it may not offer less protection. In today’s criminal procedures we a see lot of civil rights violations and criminal procedure violations, this usually happens in the streets when an officer doesn’t follow protocols and in the same instance violates that person’s civil rights for an unjustified arrest and lately suspects have been being injured once already in police custody for excessive force by the police officer. In Megan Sheehan, Plaintiff, v. Bay Area Rapid Transit, et al. is a perfect example of the excessive forced. March 17th, 2014 Megan Sheehan a bartender for an Irish bar in downtown San Francisco began to drink during her lunch break and as her shift ended she continued to drink as the night went on she was found sleeping on the bench in Lake