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”.
Treatment can not only help a juvenile offender get past the actions that caused him/her to be an offender in the first place but also can help the juvenile from repeating the same mistake again. There are many different treatment options available for juveniles I believe the decision should be based on the nature of the crime that they committed. A juvenile delinquent crime where I live, which is the state of New Jersey, is considered anyone under the age of 17 that commits a crime. There are many different types of crimes in the United States and outside of the more serious ones such as murder and rape. Smaller crimes by juveniles can be tough to judge because they can be based on so many different factors.
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.
However, a youth is more likely to spend more time in the juvenile system for a crime than the adult system. Therefore, adult sentences do not diminish the number of juvenile crimes. There are several case studies that show the different points of views people have on this topic. Colt Lundy was 15 when he decided to murder his abusive stepfather, Phillip Danner. He often bullied 12- year- old Paul Henry Gingerich and 12-year-old Chase Williams.
Jails and Prison Comparison October 19, 2013 CJA/ 234 Introduction The criminal justice system is a very complex system and if you don’t understand it you won’t know how it operates. Let’s take a walk through the criminal justice system by showing some distinct differences between jails and prison on a state and federal level. I would also like to make some comparisons and explore some influencing factors in growth in regards to jails and prisons. Safety in our society is one of the most leading issues to date without our correctional system victims would still live in fear and the criminal would go unpunished. The correctional system helps both the victim and the criminal to move forward.
Cases of juveniles being abused both physically and sexually as well as the suffering they endure in adult prisons have been rampant in the world today. Luck of proper facilities, information and law enforcement officers being left at their own discretion to decide on where to hold a minor when they are arrested have largely contributed to this problem. The question that everybody asks is how do you handle underage criminals who are a threat to public safety without exposing them to more harm? Statistics show that majority of the victims who commit suicides in jail are underage. As much as jails are meant to correct bad behaviors, there is a loophole when it comes to distinction between juvenile and adult jail.
Some would believe that this abusive force may sometimes be necessary for criminals that seriously need to be apprehended and are not complying with orders, but that force should only extend to a certain degree, which is just enough to subdue that criminal. In many cases, police officers continue to use gratuitous force on someone, often causing far greater damage then intended, or allowed, for that matter. Brutality by law enforcement dates as far back as to the Roman Empire, and are still quite prevalent in the world today….much more often than you would think, or could even imagine. Police brutality in the United States rose greatly in the 1920’s with the establishment of prohibition, and a few decades later brutality rates increased again during the African American Civil Rights Movement. Many civilians, including myself, believe that these police officers think they can do these things because they believe they are merely ‘’above the law.’’ This summer I was a victim of such crimes brought about by the New York Police Department.
Justice has evolved a great deal, especially when the death penalty is involved. It is cruel and unusual punishment to end such young misguided lives. Justice has come such a great deal over the years, yet has it come far enough? When we think of children, juveniles, things such as murder, death row, and life without parole usually do not come to mind. Should we hold juveniles responsible for the wrongful decisions that they make at an early age?
President Mark Soler of the Washington, D.C., Youth Law Center points out that adolescents/children are required by law to be incarcerated separately from adults. However, the overwhelmed juvenile justice system lets the adult criminal justice system handle many youth offenders. This causes numerous negative effects for convicted juveniles. The law recognizes that adolescents/children are less equipped to make important decisions than adults are. 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.
Most of the time people do not understand gang members but look at them automatically as corrupt people. People do not understand a lot of the gang members could have been raised around gangs and influenced around it. Without crime and deviance there would be a limit of certain jobs like police officers, court house, etc. “Accepted wisdom holds that crime is committed disproportionately by adolescents. According to data from the United States and other industrialized countries, property and violent crime rise rapidly in the teenage years to a peak at about ages 16 and 18, respectively, with a decline thereafter until old age (Hirschi & Gottfredson 1983, Farrington 1986, Flanagan & Maguire 1990)”.