Juveniles Should Be Treated As Adults Essay

Children under eighteen deserve more rights when being charged as adults in certain circumstances. Juveniles have the right to be treated as children and should have the right to their own, juvenile detonation center. In today’s society children think because there underage they are invincible to our court system. Children do not have the brain capacity to make good decisions but as children get older they should be held for more responsibility in their actions making them less immune to punishment. Although children today have less chance of going to prison in certain circumstances there is no lenience for serious actions.

The juvenile justice system was created to rehabilitate people who have committed minor crimes. Although certain circumstances require more punishment then minor offenders but younger children deserve fewer leniencies. Children placed in

the criminal justice are more likely to commit a crime after release from prison due to contact with other inmates. “It is apparent that children are in progress of growing up both physically and mentally so there actions should not be as any reason for harsh punishment” (Human Rights Watch 1). If children go into prison they’ll come out of prison as a full criminal and progressively more aggressive.
Juveniles have less brain development then adults meaning children shouldn’t be 100% responsible for their actions. “Children know the difference between right and wrong and are unable to stand trial. Because of their impairment, however, by definition they have diminished capacity to understand and process mistakes and learn from experience, to engage logical reasoning, to control impulse, and to understand the reactions to others…”(Ortiz 1) “scientists have been able to understand the brains of children and juveniles. They have discovered that a natural occurring “pruning process,” which makes the brain operation more efficient, is not completed until age twenty-one or Twenty-two. Because the brains of juveniles, particularly the frontal lobes, are not fully developed, youth lack the ability to perform critical adult functions, such as plan, anticipate consequences, and control impulse.”(Ortiz 1)
Juveniles do not understand the concept of adult sentencing do to their lack of brain capacity they don’t understand the reaction to their action meaning if they do something wrong they won’t think about the consequences afterwards.

“Scientist is using mri’s to create 3D images of the child brain without radioactive technology to view and understand the juveniles thought process”. (Ortiz2) “Researchers found that juvenile don’t think about the outcome of their actions. One person found that children have a short thought process that doesn’t allow them to think of consequences”. (Human rights watch 2) “Neuroscience has been used to study the brain threw a person’s growing process starting as a child ending as an adult”.(Humans rights watch 2)

In most states the age state punishment is 18 and but for certain circumstances they will make that rule void. If young children went to prison or jail they would be highly influenced of the other inmates causing theses children to become more aggressive. About 1000 inmates die in jail a year, for a child to witness something like that would ruin the innocence of a

child.

“Florida is leading the nation in the number of children tried as adults for the past 15 years”.( McCrea 1) “In other places like brazil you could commit murder and only receive a sentence of 30 years in prison.”(mcCrea 1) over 200000 children are mistrial in courts with unfair punishments. In the early 2000s a middle school child shot and killed his teacher offences like that have a right to be tried as a serious offence and they should be tried accordingly to the law. There is a fine line between punishable and non-punishable for teens if you were to do something that would provide the death penalty. If the death penalty was needed there should be a further trial for children under 18, any age over 18 should be more lenient in the court of law. One child should not be held responsible for their actions it should be the parents that are responsible for the children’s bad actions. “trying minors as adults, a young child is too stupid to decide if things are bad or not it’s the parents job to teach them right from wrong” (estudillo 1). Therefore in many believe that children should be punished for wrong actions but in some they believe the law system should be more lenient on children