Trying Kids As Adults Essay

732 Words2 Pages

Jonathan Mitchell
English 4
5-13-18

Trying kids as adults has been around since the eighteenth century children over the age of seven who were accused of crimes were tried as adults and sent to adult prisons. By the nineteenth century most states created separate work farms and reform schools for convicted children most of these places were in large cities like in New York and Chicago. The reform schools were made to rehabilitate the children and keep them away from adult offenders. In 1899 the first juvenile court was created in Cook County, Illinois from the Illinois Juvenile Court Act of 1899 the act gave the court the power to try to rehabilitate children between the age of 12 and 16 the act caused many states to create their own juvenile courts. In the 1910s people started to criticise juvenile court’s fairness the problem was the juveniles had no lawyer, trial and the judge made all of the decisions so some charges people felt were unfair.
In 1997 juvenile crime rose rapidly so the “get tough” law was created which lowered the age that juveniles can automatically be tried as adults and …show more content…

This can happen because the juveniles are in adult prisons were they can learn from adult criminals different criminal methods. Also juveniles being held in adult prisons have less rehabilitation opportunities than most juvenile centers so when it's time for them to get out of prison they have no job training. It is also very important for juveniles to be in a good counseling program which prisons don’t have but juvenile centers do. Without good programs like this juveniles are more likely to reoffend Florida’s courts have found that teen agers that were sentenced to adult prisons have higher recidivism rates (reoffend) and commit more serious crimes than teens that serve time in juvenile

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