Yet the law fails to distinguish between adolescents/children and adults when it comes to spending the rest of their lives in prison for crimes they have committed before their 18th birthday. Adolescents/children who break the law must be held accountable, however we cannot give up on the possibility that a still developing young person will reform. Justice and financial responsibility both demand a more thoughtful approach. When adolescents/children commit crimes, does he/she instantly become an adult? Or does he maintain some of his/her childhood, despite his/her actions?
Minors should not be tried as adults because they have not experienced the world like adults have, and they are not competent enough to go through or understand a trial. Many argue that minors should be tried as adults because they know what they are doing, and since society is changing and it’s not how it used to be 10 years ago, minors should be tried as adults for the reason that they need to learn their lesson and realize the crime they did was wrong. But in a recent study examining the mental health of minors after being tried as adults says, “66% of youth processed in adult criminal court had at least one psychiatric disorder and 43% had two or more types of disorders”. Another study was done for adults and it said, “less than 35% of adult males have a psychiatric disorder compared to 64% of transferred Youth”. I compared the two studies, and you can see that minors being tried as an adult have more of a chance to at least one psychiatric disorder.
Youth that hang around people their age that are making bad choices and not abiding the law will involve in crimes with friends who are doing the same. Their environment can cause them to act out in negative ways, the lack of positive adults, abuse and neglect, and too much idle time and not enough planned activities. Children should not be tried as adults. “The United States Supreme Court has ruled that there are limitations on the punishment juveniles can receive even when they are tried in adult court. The law considers youth crimes to be less culpable than adult, therefore juvenile punishment should not be as severe as those available for adults, even for the exact same crime.” The punishment of a 14 year old, Arkansas teenager who wasn’t the triggerman at a video rental store that he and his robbed was fair.
A minor in general is someone under the age of 18. So the question at hand is should minors be tried as adults for crimes that they have committed? The answer is no (excluding murders)because in most cases minors are peer pressured into doing things that are not acceptable, and in some cases, can change as they grow and mature into adults. How about rehabilitation in a suitable facility can be a start, and then education and special activities can follow. According to (Zimring,1978) “The view is that young offenders deserved less severe punishment than adults justified the separate juvenile justice system and persisted, seemingly with broad public support, throughout most of the last century”.
As this has occurred, non-legal responses such as rehabilitation and advocacy services have attempted to achieve justice while legal responses lag behind. Overall there is a lack of justice, with high incarceration and recidivism, leaving young people stuck in the system, and the accumulative responses ineffective. Protecting young offenders is essential in achieving justice, and this is reached through doli incapax and the prohibition of releasing children’s names when involved in criminal proceedings. Doli incapax is the presumption that children under 14 are incapable of forming criminal intent (mens rea) under the Children (Criminal Proceedings) Act 1987 (NSW). This legislation coincides with international law obligations from the United Nations’ Convention of the Rights of a Child.
They protect, provide for and teach their kids what they need to know to be successful in life. Easily one could argue this without clearly coming to a verdict on whether teen curfews should be enforced as there are many pros and cons regarding this topic. The main focus that legal curfews address is the issue of teen crime (Baily, 1). Many could say that this is an incorrect way of looking at the issue. Kids in their mid teens have legitimate reasons for being out late at night without an adult.
Should Teenagers be tried as adults? Everyone has different opinions but in my case I agree because I’m old enough and smart enough to know what’s right and what’s wrong so unless you’re mentally impaired then there should be no excuse to committing any crime. The amounts of violence in our world and generation today shows us that the fact that if you commit a crime, you can get into lot of trouble even spend the rest of your life in jail has not reached the violent crime offenders especially our young offenders. Young teenagers who commit serious crimes should be tried in an adult court system. Trying teenagers as adults would convince potential and actual teenage offenders that if they commit adult crimes, they will serve adult times.
People have no clue of how that juvenile may live, or the things he or she may tolerate at home. The focus of the juvenile court system are simple: reduce the amount of concerns dealing with legal issues of guilt and innocence, the importance of the juveniles’ best interests, and privacy and protection. Once a juvenile has been accused of committing a crime, the first thing to find out is their involvement. Are they guilty or innocent? No one wants to convict an innocent man or woman of a crime they didn’t commit, so surely no one wants to convict a juvenile—without knowing.
The District Attorney’s Office charging these juveniles and taken the rights away from Judges. The fact that we do not have a juvenile justice system, that we have 51 separate juvenile justice systems. People should rethink the fact that children are children and need to be dealt with as so. The New Asylums The New Asylums was even more alarming than five children doing adult time. The mentally ill do not want or ask to be sick.
Minors should not be tried as adults in court because they lose the chance at receiving rehabilitation services, the recidivism rate is higher, and the stigma of a criminal past on an adults’ life. The adult criminal system has no special programming and treatment needed for the rehabilitation of convicted youths. The American Government spends money for the prevention of juvenile crime, the rehabilitation, and transitional services for young offenders convicted in the juvenile judicial system. Young adults should have an opportunity to take advantage of these programs too, not shoved into an overburdened, underfunded, and inefficient system. Resulting in perhaps additional or false convictions from the lack of positive reform needed to rehabilitate young minds.