| Should Juveniles Be Tried As Adults | | | Michelle Rogers | 10/5/2014 | | The whole purpose of the juvenile court system is to guide and rehabilitate adolescents/children by providing direction to those convicted of crime. The courts should be focusing on rehabilitation, while the state should act as a parental figure rather than a prosecutor or judge. Taking a parental approach would help channel youth in appropriate directions instead of simply punishing them for their mistakes. States deliberately give harsher sentences to teach adolescents/children a lesson. 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.
Where to put them? Most states have the same system in place to address juvenile offenders. For the purpose of this report many state Juvenile Justice Systems will be used as an example. Juvenile court is for persons under the age of 18 that have committed a criminal offence. They are a few exceptions to this rule, as to when a minor or juvenile maybe charged as an adult.
An adults sentence is to punish the offender for the crime he or committed. Once a juvenile enters the correctional system he or she could serve time in juvenile hall or boot camps. The juvenile system believes that with the right kind of help and guidance the juvenile can be rehabilitated, this why the juvenile system focuses on rehabilitation. The adults that are put into confinement are not often rehabilitated, because that is not what the adult system is about, it is about punishment for the crime that he or she has made on society. The juvenile system is more lenient than the adult system also.
However, the language and form of punishment used to rehabilitate and punish children differs greatly from that used in adult courts (Siegel, 2009). The juvenile court system serves two major functions; keeping juvenile offenders away from the society and rehabilitating or correcting them. Correction helps to hold juveniles accountable to their action by helping them to realize the wrong they have done. In addition, correction facilities help to educating, and imparting social skills among juvenile offenders. Through the correction function of juvenile court system, young offenders are influenced to realize their potential by helping them to build acceptable vocational and interpersonal skills.
Lastly, it will talk about the societal implications of abolishing juvenile court. Overview of the Juvenile Justice System The juvenile justice system was created because the justice system decided under the age of 18 a juvenile should not be held responsible for their delinquent acts. Therefore, they created a juvenile justice system to rehabilitate juveniles instead of punishing them, in the hope of keeping them from committing more crimes. Depending on the severity of the crime, the age of the offender, and amount of incidents, the juvenile court can waive its jurisdiction and have the juvenile transferred to the adult court to be punished. To guarantee the juvenile’s welfare and safety, the state statues deliver a baseline for courts and procedures they must follow when handling a juvenile in the adult justice system, called parens patriate.
Juveniles would not become repeated offenders. Some say they lack the maturity to understand the wrongness of comprehending their actions. Juveniles can be rehabilitated. The justice legal system, should they treat juvenile violent offenders as adults? My rebuttal: Yes, a heinous crime remains a heinous crime regardless who has committed it.
Juvenile and Adult Courts: A Comparative Analysis CJA-374 Abstract There are many similarities of which the juvenile justice system and the adult criminal justice system share. As a matter of fact, there was a time at which both systems were combined and all offenders were tried through the same court and served his or her sentence within the same facilities. The reason for change was essential primarily because the separation allowed youth to benefit from tools at which adult court systems did not provide. In current time, similarities are still shared between these two justice systems but there is a separation in age that limits juveniles from drastic punishment. Furthermore, the processes and procedures are fairly different from one another.
Evaluate the effectiveness of the criminal justice system in dealing with young offenders. Young offenders are those offenders that are between the ages of 10-18 and are considered to be less responsible for their actions than adults. The criminal justice system tries to provide just penalties for juvenile offenders in NSW through mediation processes attempting to achieve rehabilitation and eliminate the chances of recidivism. Juvenile justice is impacted by significant factors such as the age of criminal responsibility, alternatives to court punishing and punishment options. Even though juvenile justice is given a lot of significance and there is an existing juvenile justice system within NSW, it is only partially effective in providing just penalties for juvenile offenders.
Juvenile justice can be defined as the sector of the law applicable to persons not of legal age. Complying with the United Nations Conventions of the Rights of the Child, the juvenile justice system aims to combine the welfare and justice approaches to youth crime, in order to keep the best interests of the child as the most prominent of priorities. However, there remains a considerable list of aims to be addressed when the issue of responding to juvenile justice arises. These include decreasing rates of recidivism, providing rehabilitation into society, and ultimately recognizing that due to mental immaturity and lack of legal knowledge, young offenders require a degree of protection. The extent to which our legal system is able to adequately provide this is at times, questionable.
The law does recognize these differences, but, a Juvenile, like an adult, makes the choice to commit a crime or not. Therefore, like an adult, they must be held accountable. A Juvenile Delinquent is defined as an individual under the age of 18 who commit acts which would be unlawful if committed by an adult. More juveniles are growing up now without cooperating peacefully with the law than ever before. Many of them often pay a low price even when caught.