The gavel bang echoed within the courtroom: a treacherous teenager had just been sentenced to life in prison, keeping society safer. Trying to portray adolescents as adults, which exposes them to life in prison or even death, has been a heated topic. People argue that teenagers are not fully mature biologically, but they intend to commit crimes. While it is a fact that teenagers have underdeveloped brains and might not consider the consequences of their actions, it is crucial to acknowledge that some teens deliberately commit heinous crimes and need to be tried as adults, and trying teens as adults can serve as a deterrent to further adolescent crime and it can make society safer. Adolescents should be tried as adults as it can serve as a deterrent …show more content…
He had committed crimes before, but never faced serious consequences. His parents always bailed him out, never wanting him to get in real trouble” (Bishop Jenkins). If Biro had been served with genuine consequences, his crime spree would have stopped the second he realized the severity of his actions. Biro committed multiple violent crimes before murdering Nancy and Richard Langert, such as lighting someone's clothes on fire and shooting out windows with a BB gun. Bishop-Jenkins acknowledges the fact that not all teenagers plan out horrible crimes, but “ there are. cases when older teens demonstrate heinousness and culpability and carry out truly horrific crimes. For those few, a couple years of detention and programs are not enough. These individuals can be appropriately treated as adults. They need to grow older before release” (Bishop-Jenkins). If teenagers are not tried as adults, they will get off with minor punishment and continue to commit crimes, even if they are not as severe. Treating adolescents the same as adults will indubitably reduce adolescent crime. Overall, enforcing harsher sentencing will help combat teenage …show more content…
If teenagers were appropriately treated as adults, the recidivism rate would likely drop as teenagers realized the severity of their actions. Without stricter punishment, teenagers do not fully grasp what they are doing. Safety should be a priority, and that is why dangerous people, regardless of age, need to be imprisoned. Many people argue that teenagers should not be tried as adults due to their undeveloped brains and engrained risk-taking behavior; however, without trying teenagers as adults, they will not learn and will always be a liability. While it is an undeniable fact that teens are not fully developed, Amanda Leigh Mascarelli adds, “[the ventral striatum] region seems ‘to be shouting louder’ between the ages of 13 and 17 than at any other time during human development” (Mascarelli). In other words, the brain, without influence from the teen, can pull them towards risky behavior. The underdeveloped brain explains the high recidivism rate among juveniles. However, the crime does not stop when their brains
In the article On Punishment and Teen Killers by Jenkins, sadly brings to our attention that kids are sometimes responsible for unimaginable crimes, in 1990 in a suburban Chicago neighborhood a teenager murdered a women, her husband, and her unborn child, as she begged for the life of her unborn child he shot her and later reported to a close friend that it was a “thrill kill”, that he just simply wanted to see what it felt like to shoot someone. A major recent issue being debated is whether or not we have the right to sentence Juveniles who commit heinous crimes to life in adult penitentiaries without parole. I strongly believe and agree with the law that states adolescents who commit these heinous crimes should be tried as adults and sentenced as adults, however I don’t believe they should be sentenced to life without parole. I chose this position because I believe that these young adults in no way should be excused for their actions and need to face the severe consequences of their actions. Although on the other hand I believe change is possible and that prison could be rehabilitating and that parole should be offered.
Thus, the shifting perceptions of the justice system has transformed what it means to be a child and an adult due to their pervasive, and punitive approaches to crime and delinquency. Although adolescents today enjoy many new freedoms and greater time to experiment, those that don’t conform to “normative behaviors” and engage in socially constructed definitions of delinquency, often end up under the firm hands of the juvenile justice system. Despite the creation of this phase in an adolescent’s life, the injustices within the adult justice system have breached into the juvenile system, thus, blurring the lines of what it means to be an adolescent in modern times. Thereby, the adolescent stage is constantly being manipulated to conform and match the social construction of crime and delinquency, and the rise in the practice of trying juveniles as adults within the court system and mandating life sentences is evidence of this
The article titled “ Juvenile Justice from Both Sides of the Bench”, published by PBS, and written by Janet Tobias and Michael Martin informs readers on numerous judges’ opinions on the juveniles being tried as adults. Judge Thomas Edwards believed that juveniles should not be tried as adults because they are still not mature enough to see the consequences of their actions and have a chance to minimize this behavior through rehabilitation programs. Judge LaDoris Cordell argues that although we shouldn’t give up on juveniles and instead help them be a part of society, however, she believes that some sophisticated teens that create horrible crimes should be tried as adults. Bridgett Jones claims that teens think differently than adults and still
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.
It is expected that at a young age, children are taught the difference between what is right and what is wrong in all types of situations. The majority of Supreme Court Justices abolished mandatory life in prison for juveniles that commit heinous crimes, argued this with the consideration of age immaturity, impetuosity, and also negative family and home environments. These violent crimes can be defined as murder, rape, armed robbery, aggravated assault and the like depending on state law. With these monstrous acts in mind the supreme court justices argument could be proven otherwise through capability and accountability, the underdevelopment of the teenage brain and the severity of the crime. Juveniles commit heinous crimes just like adults
Thousands of kid criminals in the United States have been tried as adults and sent to prison (Equal Justice Initiative). The debate whether these kids should be tried as adults is a huge controversy. The decision to try them or to not try them as an adult can change their whole life. “Fourteen states have no minimum age for trying children as adults” (Equal Justice Initiative). Some people feel that children are too immature to fully understand the severity of their actions. People who are for kids to be tried as adults feel that if they are old enough to commit the crime, then they are old enough to understand what they are doing. There are people who feel that children should only be tried as adults depending on the crime.
Kids should be subjected to the measures of punishment that our judicial system is giving to them. Kids who show lots of enmity should be tried as adults. It is the only way to protect the innocent children. These kids know right from wrong, but they choose to do the wrong things and violence is wrong. As the laws have gotten stricter on discipline the kids have gotten wilder. When we let society tell us how to discipline our children then violent children is the result.
In today's society, personal responsibilities are held accountable only through explicit knowledge of an action's consequences. Without consequences, no individual can be held liable for his or her actions. As teenagers commit increasingly egregious crimes, the media shifts attention away from the actions of these teenagers and focuses on the seemingly severe punishments they are entitled to. Teenagers accused of violent crimes should be tried and sentenced justly, regardless of age, to ensure the law's equality before its citizens, to educate juveniles regarding the potential severity of their actions' consequences, and to prevent future acts of offense from occurring in society.
There has always been controversies as to whether juvenile criminals should be tried as adults or not. Over the years more and more teenagers have been involved in committing crimes. In some cases the juries have been too rough on the teens. Trying teens as adults can have a both positive and negative views. For example, teens that are detained can provide information about other crimes, can have an impact in social conditions, and serve as experience; however, it can be negative because teens are still not mature enough for that experience, they are exposed to adult criminals; and they will lose out on getting an education.
Paul Thompson says in his article “Startling Finds on Teenage Brains”, “massive loss of brain tissue occurs in the teenage years...brain cells and connections are being lost in the areas controlling impulses, risk taking, and self control..” (Thompson). This fact is used widely by those who disagree with the claim that juveniles should go to prison. However, this is ignoring many other points. For example, by sixteen a teenager can drive and by seventeen a teenager can get a job.
"Don't do the crime, if you can't do the time." -- David Grusin and Morgan Ames
While many argue that juveniles who commit serious crimes, such as murder, should be treated as adults, the fact is, juveniles under the age of eighteen, are not adults, and should not be treated as such. Juveniles are not mature enough or developed psychologically, and, therefore, do not consider the consequences of their actions. In the article, “Startling Finds on Teenage Brains” by Thompson, the writer argues that juveniles are not adults. Their brains develop at different stages and they learn skills that they need to learn at a certain time.
The claim that Garinger omits through her article, “Juveniles Don’t Deserve Life Sentences,” (2012), is that young adolescents should not be convicted and tried like adults. Although the Supreme Court knows that child offenders cannot “reliably be classified among the worst offenders,” they still sentence minors to life without parole. As being the state appointed child advocate in Massachusetts and a former juvenile court judge, Garinger is the most credible author and proves to have the most Ethos throughout her article. Garinger has “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”
Suppose you’re at the mall with your friends and you see a boy from school running out of an expensive store, and the next day you see him on the tv for burglary and second-degree murder. This young man had a bright future ahead of him like many other teenagers or children, before they unintentionally murder someone and have been convicted for something they probably didn’t even thoroughly think about, and later imprisoned. It is simply the impulsive, erratic behavior teenagers have in their teenage years caused by the significant amount of tissue loss that led the teenager to make homicidal decisions. In the United States, teenagers can be tried as adults, go to prison for possibly the rest of their life and the youngest a child can be arrested
In today’s generation there are many children and teens that commit crimes to satisfy their self being. Every day we see in the news about the reasons why children or teens commit crimes like murder or homicide. Sentencing juveniles to life in prison is not a right response to prevent homicide and serious murder, because their brains are not fully develop and the bad environment they live in. Teenagers or children need to be remain unformed of preventing crimes in today’s society. With this said, juvenile’s mental brains, backgrounds and growth are the reasons why they are not proficient to maintain themselves in a prison cell.