The tough-on-crime political postures have resulted in hundreds of juveniles sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for non homicidal offenses. The examples used in “All God’s Children” all stand out to me as it makes me think about what the cause is behind those misjudgment or excessive sentence. Those cases all led me to think about the changes in the victims' rights, the incarceration of juveniles, the death penalty, more flexible sentencing laws, and the presence of injustice in a system we call justice, which too many juveniles, minorities, and mentally ill people were sentenced to jail in the U.S. America nowadays has the world's highest incarceration rate and its largest incarcerated population. And on “ All God’s Children”, it really strikes me when I learn that there are thousands of children like Trina, Ian, and Antonio who are sentenced to life imprisonment without parole or other extreme sentences. Three children children serving death-in-prison sentences for the crimes they committed …show more content…
The sexual assault in the prison, for example, will only worsen the situation and destroy the mental health of young prisoners. Though the treatment of the mentally ill in the prison has been attempted to be improved, it still prevents those in need of mental treatment from incarcerating. The case of George Daniel reminds me of how the mentally ill are abused by the justice system. Although the U.S. now has institutions for the mentally ill, they are locked away sometimes because of petty crime and the lack of utilization of programs such as mental health and drug courts in front of the criminal justice process, which leads more people with these morbidities to enter prisons. I think, in order to improve the current system and prevent a high rate of incarceration, the U.S. should pursue a more comprehensive and diverse treatment programs in the prisons, which would truly helps the
Within the last five years, violent offenses by children have increased 68 percent, crimes such as: murder, rape, assault, and robbery. Honestly, with these figures, it is not surprising at all that the Juveniles Courts focus less on the children in danger, and focus more on dangerous children. This in fact is most likely the underlying reasoning behind juveniles being tried as adults by imposing harsher and stiffer sentences. However, these policies fail to recognize the developmental differences between young people and
Capital punishment and bias in sentencing is among many issue minorities faced for many years in the better part of the nineteen hundreds. Now it continues to spill into the twenty first century due to the erroneous issues our criminal justice system has caused many people to suffer. In the book Just Mercy authored by Bryan Stevenson, Stevenson explains many cases of injustice. Stevenson goes into details of numerous cases of wrongfully accused people, thirteen and fourteen year olds being sentenced to death and sentences of life without parole for children. These issues Stevenson raises bring to question whether the death penalty is as viable as it should be. It brings to light the many issues our criminal justice system has today. There
In the United States, each year, there are numerous juvenile delinquents who are given mandatory life prison sentences. This paper will explain how a troubled boy at the age of 15 winds up being convicted, receiving one of the harshest punishments in the United States, and what actions may prevent future occurrence of this event happening to the lives of other delinquent youth.
The sentencing of underage criminals has remained a logistical and moral issue in the world for a very long time. The issue is brought to our perspective in the documentary Making a Murderer and the audio podcast Serial. When trying to overcome this issue, we ask ourselves, “When should juveniles receive life sentences?” or “Should young inmates be housed with adults?” or “Was the Supreme Court right to make it illegal to sentence a minor to death?”. There are multiple answers to these questions, and it’s necessary to either take a moral or logical approach to the problem.
Rather than robbing them of the chance to grow and become better human beings, though, the government has the ultimate responsibility to help transform these troubled youths into upstanding citizens—even if it is within the walls of a prison rather than a classroom or office building. Executing minors does nothing but remind us of America’s stubbornness to do what may take time but in the end is right.
...s A. Preciado, but despite these wrong decisions being made by juveniles, they deserve a second chance to better themselves as potential future citizens. Even Gail garinger who was a former juvenile judge believes that they are capable such manner, In her article, “Juveniles Don’t Deserve Life Sentences” written March 14, 2012 and published by New York Times, it states that “as a former juvenile court judge, I have seen firsthand the enormous capacity of children to change and turn themselves around. The same malleability that makes them vulnerable to peer pressure also makes them promising candidates for rehabilitation”. I believe, and still do, that even though juveniles that have taken a wrong path, regardless of what they 've done, need guidance from us and people who were once juveniles to mentor them and be given a second chance, just as I did a long time ago.
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 entirely eliminating the use of the life without parole sentence for juveniles, regardless of the nature of the crime being charged.
Humanity instructs us that we must behave with tolerance and respect towards all. Just Mercy exemplifies how that is not the case for many Americans. Critical Race Theory is a theory which focuses on the experiences of people who are minorities. It argues that people who are minorities in the United States are oppressed and, because of the state of being oppressed, creates fundamental disadvantages (Lecture 4.7). A study conducted for the case McCleskey v. Kemp revealed that when a black defendant killed a white victim, it increased the likelihood the black defendant would receive the death penalty (Stevenson, 2014). Looking at this fact through the lens of a critical race theorist, it illustrates how unconscious racism is ignored by our legal system. The actuality that, statistically, people of color have a higher chance of getting sentenced to death than white people is a blatant example of inequality. In Chapter 8, Stevenson discusses the case of multiple juveniles who were incarcerated and sentenced to death in prison. These juveniles who were sent to adult prisons, where juveniles are five times more likely to be the victims of sexual assault, show an innate inequality towards minors (Stevenson, 2014). Ian Manuel, George Stinney, and Antonio Nunez were all only fourteen-years-old when they were condemned to die in prison. Although they did commit crimes, the purpose of the juvenile justice system is to rehabilitate young offenders. Trying juveniles in adult court represents a prejudice against age, which Stevenson sought to fight by working on appeals for Manuel and Nunez (Stevenson, 2014). His humanity shines through once again, as he combats the justice system to give the adolescents another chance at life, rather than having them die in prison. The way prisoners with mental and/or physical disabilities are treated while incarcerated is also extremely
Garinger Gail “Juveniles Don’t Deserve Life Sentences” The New York Times, 14 March 2012. The New York Times 7 May 2014.
Each year in the United States, children as young as 13 years old are sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in prison without any chance of getting released. There has been a worldwide agreement declaring that children cannot be held to the same standards of responsibility as adults and it is recognized that children are entitled to special protection and treatment. There are three types of juvenile waivers that have been allowing juveniles to be treated as adults in adult court. The Miller v. Alabama case is a step toward more just treatment of juvenile offenders following several decades’ worth of harsh treatment of youthful offenders.
Jake Evans, a 17-year-old teenage boy, murdered his mother and sister by firing multiple gunshots at home in Texas (Brown, 2012; Walsh, 2012). After this heinous act, he made a 911 call to inform the dispatcher what he had done with a calm voice. Evans’s cold-blood double homicide case led the media to depict him as an malevolent adolescent, even the judge hearing over Evans’s case refused to drop the capital murder charge against Evans (Winter, 2013). The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that individuals who are under the age of 18 at the time of their offense should not be sentenced to death or life without parole (Miller v. Alabama, 2012; Roper v. Simmons, 2005). Evans’s public defender requested to try the boy with murder instead of capital murder which has only two punitive sentencing outcomes in Texas--- life without parole and death penalty (Douglas, 2013). However, both sentences would be unconstitutional to Evans because he was 17 years old when he committed offense (Winter, 2013). As the judge insisted to charge Evans with the capital offense, once Evans was convicted, the judge, however, will face another issue which is how to deliver a lawful and appropriate verdict. Therefore, to resolve the problem, the Texas District and County Attorneys Association is attempting to revise the law without violating the initial Supreme Court ruling (Winter, 2013). When the public and the media encounter cases like Jake Evans’s, they tend to overemphasize on what the defendants have done and how to punish them rather focus on what happened to the juvenile offenders while growing up and what drove them to their actions. The purpose of this essay is to shift from the unjust emphasis on one portion of cases, the legal process, to how this al...
A deep look into juveniles in adult prisons. Touch bases on several smaller issues that contribute to juveniles being in and effects of adult prisons. The United States Bureau of Prisons handles two hundred and thirty-nine juveniles and their average age is seventeen. Execution of juveniles, The United States is one of only six countries to execute juveniles. There are sixty-eight juveniles sitting on death row for crimes committed as juveniles. Forty-three of those inmates are minorities. People, who are too young to vote, drink alcohol, or drive are held to the same standard of responsibility as adults. In prisons, they argue that the juveniles become targets of older, more hardened criminals. Brian Stevenson, Director of the Alabama Capital Resource Center said, “We have totally given up in the idea of reform of rehabilitation for the very young. We are basically saying we will throw those kids away. Leading To Prison Juvenile Justice Bulletin Report shows that two-thirds of juveniles apprehended for violent offenses were released or put on probation. Only slightly more than one-third of youths charged with homicide was transferred to adult criminal court. Little more than one out of every one hundred New York youths arrested for muggings, beatings, rape and murder ended up in a correctional institution. Another report showed a delinquent boy has to be arrested on average thirteen times before the court will act more restrictive than probation. Laws began changing as early as 1978 in New York to try juveniles over 12 who commit violent crimes as adults did. However, even since the laws changed only twenty percent of serious offenders served any time. The decision of whether to waive a juven...
The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world and of that over sixty percent of jail inmates reported having a mental health issue and 316,000 of them are severely mentally ill (Raphael & Stoll, 2013). Correctional facilities in the United States have become the primary mental health institutions today (Adams & Ferrandino, 2008). This imprisonment of the mentally ill in the United States has increased the incarceration rate and has left those individuals medically untreated and emotionally unstable while in jail and after being released. Better housing facilities, medical treatment and psychiatric counseling can be helpful in alleviating their illness as well as upon their release. This paper will explore the increasing incarceration rate of the mentally ill in the jails and prisons of the United States, the lack of medical services available to the mentally ill, the roles of the police, the correctional officers and the community and the revolving door phenomenon (Soderstrom, 2007). It will also review some of the existing and present policies that have been ineffective and present new policies that can be effective with the proper resources and training. The main objective of this paper is to illustrate that the criminalization of the mentally ill has become a public health problem and that our policy should focus more on rehabilitation rather than punishment.
Throughout history into today, there have been many problems with our prison system. Prisons are overcrowded, underfunded, rape rates are off the charts, and we as Americans have no idea how to fix it. We need to have shorter sentences and try to rehabilitate prisoners back to where they can function in society. Many prisoners barely have a high school education and do not receive further education in jail. Guards need to pay more attention to the well being of the inmates and start to notice signs of abuse and address them. These are just a few of the many problems in our prison systems that need to be addressed.
The services provided by correctional facilities in most are just components, and staff just don’t care many have lost their lives due to non-treatment received. Some of the diseases are expensive and can not be treated, although health care in prisons is bad it is still better than what those incarcerated would receive in their communities (Prison health care, 2007). In 2002 there was a nationwide debate only after a California inmate received a million-dollar heart transplant if it is a matter of life or death, I feel they deserve to be treated to save their life. What most have to remember is life happens and every person incarcerated is not a bad person circumstance, choices, and life happens that can lead individuals to do things they would not ordinally do.