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Juvenile Court System

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According to the Iowa State Daily, “Murder cases among 14-17 year olds have increased 160 percent between the years 1984 and 1999.” Sadly, these fourteen to seventeen-year-olds are still being categorized as juveniles, and are therefore tried in juvenile courts where they do not get a satisfying punishment. Today society gives these juveniles the right to vote at the age of eighteen; the fact is that when society declares an eighteen-year-old as an adult is such a random standard to determine one’s maturity as far as their crimes go. “We used to deal mostly with kids breaking street lights and now routinely people are seeing rape and robbery” claimed Harry Shorstein, a state attorney for the Fourth Judicial Circuit in Jacksonville, FL. (Hunzeker). …show more content…
“Young offenders commit violent acts at young ages, and statistics are showing the numbers rising at some alarming rates, a 60 percent increase in crimes being committed by juveniles since 1964” (Collier). In the past, the juvenile court was planned to protect these juveniles from being rejected from society for them doing wrong. Nowadays, the system continues to run under the principle of what is supposedly best for the juvenile. The system is becoming inappropriate for these violent children who are committing heinous crimes. Attorney Linda J. Collier, who also teaches a juvenile delinquency course at Cabrini College in Pennsylvania claims, “When prosecutor Brent Davis said he wasn’t for sure if he could charge 11 year old Andrew Golden and 13 year old Mitchell Johnson as adults after [the 1998] slaughter in Jonesboro, Arkansas, I cringed.” Youths committing violent crimes is an almost daily occurrence somewhere in America. Juvenile crimes started out as just truancy or vandalism; juveniles in today’s society are now more likely to commit more serious and heinous crimes that include; rape, murder and assault (Collier). These young offenders are starting, or even have already realized that since the court system will try them as adults no matter what, they think they will get away with more violent and heinous …show more content…
The fact is, that declaring an eighteen year old as an adult, is such an insignificant and random age as far as determining maturity and proceeding against their crime goes. According to Stephanie Tsai, “At the age of 18, teens are allowed to vote because people believe that by that age they can think rationally and sensibly. Until kids are 18, they cannot be held responsible for their actions.” Furthermore, the justice system uses lack of mental maturity as the reason juveniles have their own separate and more lenient court, causing the juvenile perpetrators to think they are able to get away with their choices (Chiou). As a response to the increased inevitability of juvenile crime, many states are carrying out legislation allowing these underage criminals to be tried and punished as adults. These policies result in harsher sentences and possible confinement with adults in state prisons, creating a controversy over the ethics of punishing juveniles so severely. The criminals of today are becoming younger and

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