The Development Of The Adolescent Framework Law

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.

As children, we have all stepped that “boundary” between right and wrong. From stealing money to shoplifting to fighting, we have all made our parents frustrated, made poor decisions, and perhaps, even made a egregious mistake. However, when does stepping that “boundary” become irremediable? Can the government punish minors under the same criteria they do with adults? And most importantly, what does the United States Constitution say? These are all questions that both the Missouri Supreme Court and the United States Supreme Court had to consider when they dived into the case of Roper v. Simmons. To provide a little historical

Garinger was a former juvenile court judge, so Garinger is a very credible source when it comes to the topic of juvenile criminals. To support Garinger’s credible usage of ethos, he demonstrates that in 2005, Supreme Court acknowledged that even though juveniles have committed terrible crimes such as homicide “juvenile offenders cannot with reliability be classified among the worst offenders” (6). This technique of providing the opinions of Supreme Court helps build Garinger’s credibility, and even more so that he is was a former juvenile court judges, so he most likely has a personal relationships with the Supreme Court. Readers feel sympathy to any juvenile who have been charged as adults and been sentenced to life without parole.

The movement to separate children from adults in the court system can be traced back to English common law, just like most of America’s criminal justice system. English lawyer William Blackstone had a significant influence on the separation of Juvenile and adult courts. Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England, that was first published in the late 1760’s, was widely read and well-regarded by the founders of America (History of Juvenile Justice). In Blackstone’s book, he identified individuals who were considered incapable of committing crimes (History of Juvenile Justice). Two requirement needed to be met in order for someone to commit a crime. First, the individual had to have a “vicious will”, or the intent to commit a crime (History of Juvenile Justice). Second, the individual had to commit the crime. Blackstone then when on to state that one group of people who were unable to commit a crime were called “infants” (History of Juvenile Justice). These people where not literality infant or babies, but people too young to understand their actions, and therefore lacked the “vicious will” needed to commit a crime. At

Supreme Court ruling Graham v. Florida (2010) banned the use of life without parole for juveniles who committed non-homicide crimes, and Roper v. Simmons (2005) abolished the use of the death penalty for juvenile offenders. They both argued that these sentences violated the 8th Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. While these landmark cases made great strides for the rights of minors passing through the criminal justice system, they are just the first steps in creating a juvenile justice system that takes into consideration the vast differences between adolescents and adults. Using sociological (Butler, 2010) and legal (Harvard Law Review, 2010) documents, this essay will explicate why the next such step to be taken is

“In the late 1980s, Robert Sampson and John Laub stumbled across the files from a decades-old research project conducted by Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck of the Harvard Law School. This study that followed young boys from childhood into early adulthood and led them to question previous criminological research practice and develop their age-graded theory. It has been said that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Therefore, it is no surprise that, when criminologists study adult offenders, they discover almost all of them committed crimes as an adolescent. However, it is not logical to assume that everyone who engages in crime as an adolescent will commit crimes as an adult. Moreover, if one continues this faulty line of reasoning

Approximately two million adolescents a year are arrested and out of that two million, 60,000 of them are incarcerated according to the American Journal of Public Health. The 60,000 incarcerated adolescents each year are being tried as adults in court because of the serious crimes they have committed. The crimes they have committed are anything from armed robbery to murder. Some juveniles might be first time offenders and others might be repeat offenders. Crimes have always been a major issue in the United States and can cause controversy in the criminal justice system. Charging a minor as an adult in criminal court varies from state to state based on each state’s jurisdiction. Some states consider anyone up to the age of 18 still a juvenile and would not be charged as an adult in criminal court, but other states may charge a juvenile as an adult at the age of 16 or 17. Jordan (2014) states, “Although states already had methods for transferring youth to the adult system, as a result of the growing fear of juvenile violence, most states implemented new laws to increase the number of youth entering the adult criminal system’ (Bernard & Kurlychek, 2010; Torbet et al., 1996)” (p. 315). While it sounds beneficial to incarcerate more adolescents in the adult criminal justice system to avoid juveniles from committing crimes in the future, that is not always the case. Incarcerating these juveniles can be life changing in a negative

Nationally, minor offenders were punished as adults before children became to be considered to be in a human developing process. The aim of early juvenile reform schools were

Regardless of expansive help inside the scholastic, lawful, and social-work callings, the perfect regularly neglected to satisfy its guarantee. After some time, the adolescent equity framework in numerous states returned to the corrective approach it was intended to supplant. In spite of the fact that they were frequently called "preparing schools," the foundations were adolescent penitentiaries. What's more, the introduce that the court, by definition, was acting "to the greatest advantage of the kid" left youthful guilty parties without the rights ensured to grown-up criminal litigants. There were rehashed records of damaging practices. The length of confinement was regularly irrelevant to the seriousness of the offense. Adolescent hearings were generally mystery, with no composed transcripts and no privilege to advance. Minors were not given lawful guidance, there were no shields against self-implication, and guilty

The juvenile justice system of the 1800’s is much improved in today’s society and it's still undergoing lots of changes in order to develop a better strategy of dealing with juveniles. Moreover, drastic changes made such as young offenders being tried different from adults in all states depending on the crime. These changes can be seen under the English common Law, the colonial America era, and the industrial revolution era. Today’s juvenile systems, changes made during the late 1800s were to protect the right of young offenders from harsh punishment but rehabilitate them back into the society.

In the early nineteenth century juveniles were treated the same as adults when it came to the legal system. We did not have separate courts or jails for juveniles and they would often receive the same punishments as adults that had committed crimes. “At the beginning of the

Many young adolescents who have committed horrendous crimes have been a huge topic amongst the Supreme Court. Whether young adolescents are viewed as innocent, naive children to the public, this not changed the fact they can commit brutal crimes. In spite of the fact that adolescents have committed brutal crimes such as murder, one needs to understand that their brains are not as fully developed as an adult brain would be. Adolescents should not be trialed to a life sentence or attend adult prisons; however, they should be punished for their actions and undergo rehabilitation programs to help them be prepared to fit in with the rest of society.

It is a common believe that adolescents require a special system thru which be processed because they are “youth who are in a transitional stage of development…young offenders that are neither innocent children nor mature adults…” (Nelson, 2012). Because juveniles are in a process of constant development sociologically, psychologically and physiologically, the juvenile court system focuses on alternative sentences and the creation of programs that will offer them rehabilitation instead of incarceration. However, in cases of extraordinary circumstances, the juvenile system shifts from looking at rehabilitation as a first choice to accountability and punishment (Read, n.d). All levels of society are collectively involved in delinquency

On the other hand, the advocates of the juvenile system believe that because children are not fully mentally or physically developed, they are not therefore accountable for their actions in the same way as adults (Ainsworth, 1995, p.932-933). Juvenile criminality for them is “youthful illness” brought about by external forces like environment or impoverished living conditions. Donna Bishop, an advocate of the juvenile justice system, encourages states to give these juveniles “room to reform.” She believes that a policy that is designed to discard youth in the middle of the transition to adulthood is uncharacteristic of a fair government (Bishop, 2000, p. 159). Supporters of this kind of reform program for juveniles are not amenable to the transfer to adult court

The juvenile justice system was founded on the belief that children are different from adults; therefore, the justice system and corrections sanctions for juveniles should acknowledge the differences. “Rising juvenile crime rates during the 1970s and 1980s spurred state legislatures across the country to exclude or transfer a significant share of offenders under the age of eighteen to the jurisdiction of the criminal court” (Fagan, 2008). The acknowledgement of these differences should be the bases for a proper juvenile justice system. The examination of the juvenile justice’s systems history, trends, and causation theories will provide an insight into the future of the juvenile justice system.