Analysis: Juveniles Should Be Tried As Adults

Words: 1588
Pages: 7

A juvenile is someone young, a minor; they are considered to be someone under the age of 18. When it comes to crimes, juveniles are not punished as hard as an adult would if they committed the same crime because they are an adolescent. However many believe that if a juvenile were to commit some wicked crime, they should be prosecuted as an adult. Some think this doesn’t make sense because if they are a juvenile and not allowed to do any of the things an adult is allowed to do, for example voting, drinking, live on their own, and drive; then they should be tried as an adult. People who believe a juvenile should be charged as an adult say that if a juvenile kills someone for no reason, that they should get life in prison for something that they …show more content…
For example in the article “On Punishment and Teen Killers” by Jennifer Jenkins, she writes how all teen killers deserve to go to jail and pay for what they did. Jenkins writes this because she feels the juvenile is immature and he has always committed crimes and Jenkins writes, “he just wanted to “see what it felt like to shoot someone’” so it seems that Jenkins has no mercy towards the juvenile. I feel however that she is biased because a juvenile killed her sister and although what the juvenile did should not be tolerated he should be disciplined instead of punished. Teen killers should realize what they did and they should be taught what not to do than to be sent to jail and instead of changing and becoming better they get worse and rebel even …show more content…
In the article “Children in adult jails: Juvenile justice” the author talks about how sending a juvenile to jail ruins their life and makes them worse. The author writes, “it tends to turn young tearaways into serious criminals. Young people who are charged as adults are nearly 35% likelier to be rearrested than those who are tried as juveniles”, so prosecuting a juvenile as an adult and sending them to jail does no good because instead of learning what’s right and becoming someone better jail just makes them more into a criminal and they rebel more. The article “For teens: less time=less crime” the author also writes how that if they are sent to jail at such a young age they don’t finish school and they copy other juveniles habits, or habits from adults, for example when the author quotes, “’getting to know other kids in trouble may create social networks that might not be desirable’”. Juveniles should not be charged as adults because they are kids, they are young and they don’t know or understand what they are doing. And if teens were to get out of jail at some point they will just go back because of other crimes committed because of the environment in which they were in changed them and so it influenced